LitMUSE

Kate, a liberal and well-to-do holder of a graduate degree in social work, decides that she can do the most good in the social services department of a rural county in a southern state. In a few years she has established relationships of trust with her clients. Now two of those clients are posing a [...]

What importance do you place on competition as a component of the growth of personality and character? Is it an essential experience which should be cultivated in children? Is it an experience which would not exist in a perfect world? Should there be competition in public schools such as band and chorus contests, spelling bees, [...]

Exercising a prerogative provided by law, President Carter endorsed a “Cuban boat lift” which flooded Florida with thousands of refugees — many of whom were already identified in Cuba as “undesirables.” The seldomly disputed result of this decision has been a significant undermining of health and economic conditions as well as jeopardizing the personal safety [...]

Thomas Hobbes claimed that survival is basic in nature and, therefore, should be primary as we consider our relationship to government. To the rhetorical question, “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” Hobbes would have responded: “Absolutely — everything is better than being [...]

Do you believe that there should be any effort to legally control the presentation of “news” by newspapers and television? Damage has been done to individuals as a result of loosely controlled media reports: Lurid reporting of crime (especially bizarre ones) seems to trigger further incidents (e.g., skyjackings, snipings, sex crimes). Different networks or newspapers [...]

Any adult found guilty of having sex with a minor must serve a mandatory jail sentence of three years. A girl’s father found out, through her diary, that she was having sexual relations with her eighteen-year-old boyfriend; she is only fourteen. The girl’s father makes the D.A. prosecute the boyfriend. You are on the jury [...]

Sandy is an engineer on her way up in a major automobile manufacturing firm. She learns, through departmental gossip, that a new car designed by another department is being tested and has revealed a possibility of gas tank explosion on impact. She is told that the car is not going to be redesigned until next [...]

Aristotle makes a case for the legitimacy of “instrumental ends,” i.e., acts that are done as a means to other ends, as an ethical concept if they help humans fulfill their functions as humans. This notion has a direct relationship to the oldest of moral issues: Are there some goals (ends) so important that they [...]

Early in 1985, Roswell Gilbert took the life of his 76-year-old wife, a victim of Alzheimer’s Disease. He claimed that in her intense suffering and embarrassment, she begged him to end her life and that he acted out of both love for her and obligation to her. He was found guilty of first degree murder [...]

Thrasymachus claimed that “might makes right.” While most civilized people decry such a position, historically we have resorted to the use of might in solving problems probably more frequently than we have any other one solution. When this is done, it is usually followed immediately by a complex moral justification. What is your position on [...]