ADVANCE INFORMATION ON FINAL EXAM PHILOSOPHY 166 FALL, 2007 Arneson’s office hours this week—Thursday 4:30-5:30 and Friday 2-4. The final exam for this course will take place on Monday, December 10, from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in WLH 2207 (our regular classroom). The final exam will comprehend all course materials (required readings, lectures, and handouts) but will emphasize the material covered after the midterm exam. No use of books or notes will be permitted at any time during the final exam. The final exam counts for 40 per cent of your overall course grade. (If you are enrolled in this course on a Pass/Not Pass basis, you must earn a C- or better grade on the final exam in order to get a Pass grade in the course, with one exception: If you have an A- or better average grade on the midterm and the writing assignment, you have earned a Pass grade and you are not required to take the final exam.) The first hour and a half of the exam will consist of short-answer questions testing comprehension of course readings. These questions are to be answered in a paragraph-length “essay.” You will have some choice as to what questions to answer. The final hour and a half of the exam will consist of essay questions drawn from the list below. On the actual exam, four questions will be posed, 2 A questions and 2 B questions, and you will be asked to write essays on one A question and one B question. Each of the two sections of the final exam (the short-answer section and the essay section) counts equally toward your final exam grade. ESSAY QUESTIONS. A1. In Principles of Political Economy, Bk. IV, ch. 7, Mill writes, “I do not recognize as either just or salutary, a state of society in which there is any ‘class’ which is not labouring; any human beings exempt from bearing their share of the necessary labours of human life, except those unable to labor, or who have fairly earned rest by previous toil.” Mill here comes close to echoing Marx’s call for a classless society. Mill opposes the expropriation of capitalist private property and instead recommends various other ways to ameliorate the problem (reform of inheritance law, the industrial co-operative movement, and so on). Compare and assess Mill’s proposals and Marx’s remedy of revolutionary transformation by expropriation of capitalist private property. Comment on both the desirability of the goal of classlessness and the desirability and feasibility of seeking to approach it by these authors’ favored means is appropriate. A2. Consider the position of a worker in a competitive market economy who is a member of a worker-owned, worker-managed business enterprise of the sort Mill describes in Principles of Political Economy, Bk. IV, ch. 7. To what extent could a worker in this arrangement avoid the condition Marx calls “estranged labor” and that prompts Marx to favor abolition of private property? To what extent could a worker in a capitalist firm do the same? Compare and assess Mill’s and Marx’s remedies for the condition of the worker in a capitalist market economy, the condition Marx identifies as “estranged” or “alienated” labor. (For Marx’s thoughts on alienated labor, the relevant text is the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.) A3. In the Principles of Political Economy selections included in the course readings and in Considerations on Representative Government, Mill voices concern about the opposition of interests between capitalist employers of labor and their employees and what he sees as its negative consequences for society. He proposes several expedients for alleviating this socialproblem. Describe Mill’s proposed remedies, contrast his approach to this issue with that of Marx, and either defend Marx’s approach against Mill or Mill’s approach against Marx. A4. Modern societies maintain a legal prohibition on fight-to-the-death gladiator contests (in which the match ends only when one of the combatants is killed). Assume that if such contests were to become legally permitted, safeguards could be put in place to ensure that no one participates in such contests who does not freely choose to do so. Consider paternalistic, moralistic, and indirect harm-to-others reasons for sustaining the legal prohibition on such contests. In your view do such arguments (or others) suffice to justify this legal prohibition? Why or why not? In your view, is this legal prohibition unacceptable according to the Liberty Principle defended by Mill? Why or why not? ************** B1. Does Rousseau in The Social Contract subvert the Lockean natural rights tradition by subordinating the individual to the democratic collective judgment? Present a Lockean critique of this aspect of Rousseau’s thought and assess its soundness. B2. “The values of equality (in the degree to which individuals gain the benefits and bear the burdens of social cooperation) and individual freedom conflict in the circumstances of human life, and the just state gives priority to individual freedom.” Defend or attack this quoted claim. Your answer should consider some pertinent arguments and interpretations of the ideals of freedom and equality in the writings or Marx and Rousseau. B3. According to Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, if you actually freely consent to a government, then and only then does it have legitimate authority to command you. According to Mill’s On Liberty, if you actually freely consent to be involved in a transaction with another person, you have no right to be prevented from being harmed by that transaction and a right against others that they not interfere to restrict your liberty to be involved in the transaction,. Critics of Locke and Mill have objected that they both exaggerate the moral significance of actual consent, and that our moral duty to obey government and to refrain from meddling in other people’s transactions is determined far more by other factors. Defend or attack Locke’s and Mill’s positions on actual