Syllabus

PUBLIC POLICY STUDIES 116: POLICY CHOICE AS VALUE CONFLICT
DUKE UNIVERSITY
FALL 2003

Instructor: Bruce Payne, 148 Sanford Institute, 613-7346; e-mail: bruce.payne@duke.edu
Office Hours: Wednesdays, 2 to 5 PM, most weekday evenings, and by appointment

SYNOPSIS

The readings and class discussions pose questions about thec ethical dilemmas of personal and public life. How do conscience, character, and varieties of moral reasoning help us in facing deception, corruption, war, or injustice? How can irony, imagination, and history illuminate individual commitments and community moral choices? How can value-based arguments help in understand, supporting, or opposing large-scale social changes?

REQUIRED READING

Careful and thorough reading is essential to the life of the class, and should be completed by the first day for which the readings or films are listed. Items marked (*) should be purchased.

August 28 -- An introduction: morality and passion

* Borges, Jorge Luis "Deutsches Requiem" in Labyrinths, pp. 141 147.

September 2 and 4 -- Deception, and moral reasoning

* Bok, Sissela Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, pp. xiii to 219, 242 to 249.

September 9 and 11 -- War, irony, and the imagination

* Fussell, Paul "A Satire of Circumstance," "The Troglodyte World," and "The Golden Virgin" in The Great War and Modern Memory, pp. pp. 3 74, and pp. 131-135.

* Borges, Jorge Luis "The Garden of Forking Paths" in Labyrinths, pp. 19 29.

September 16 and 18 -- Morality and war

Walzer, Michael "Moral Judgment in Time of War" in Dissent 14.3 (1967) pp. 284 292.

Breaker Morant (film).

September 23 and 25 -- Character, policy, politics

* Levi, Primo "Iron" in The Periodic Table, pp. 37-50.

* Chabon, Michael "A Model World" in A Model World and Other Stories, pp. 53-73.

* Gurganus, Alan “Blessed Assurance” in White People.

September 30 and October 3 -- Insight and responsibility

Walzer, Michael "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands" in Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, no. 2 (Winter 1973) pp. 160 180.

* Warren, Robert Penn All the King's Men, pp. 1-228 (chapters 1 5).

October 8 and 10 -- Guilt, responsibility, and character

Warren, Robert Penn All the King's Men, pp. 229-438 (chapters 6 10).

October 16 -- Ideas and actions

* Gordimer, Nadine Burger's Daughter, part one, pp. 1-100.

October 21 and 23 -- Conscience and self-discovery

* Gordimer, Nadine Burger's Daughter, part one, pp. 101-250.

October 28 and 30 -- Personal commitments and political action

Gordimer, Nadine Burger's Daughter, parts two and three, pp. 251-361.

Gordimer, Nadine “Adam’s Rib: Fictions and Realities” in Writing and Being, pp. 1-19.

November 4 and 6 -- Power and freedom; history and hope

* Olsen, Tillie "I Stand Here Ironing," "Oh Yes," and "Tell Me a Riddle" in Tell Me a Riddle, pp. 1-12, 39-116.

Blake, William "Auguries of Innocence" (poem), and Symonds, John Addington "These Things Shall Be” (hymn).

November 11 and 13 – Extreme situations

Schindler's List, (a film by Steven Spielberg)

November 18 and 20 – A community facing moral choices

Weapons of the Spirit (a film by Pierre Sauvage).

The Children of Chabannes (a film by Lisa Gossels and Dean Wetherell)

November 25, December 2 and 4 – Conclusions

* Biguenet, John “I Am Not a Jew” in The Torturer’s Apprentice and readings to be announced

CLASS PARTICIPATION

The life of ethics is discussion: your active participation will help you and others to make sense of the readings and to weigh their implications for personal and public choices. For at least part of each class session, questions will be asked of students chosen at random from the class list. You should always be ready to respond in class to the study questions with thoughtful and considered answers. There will also be time in class for your questions about the readings. Beyond this, participation in informal study groups is strongly recommended, and small-group discussions with the instructor can often be scheduled (often over lunch, or dinner).

In addition to speaking in class, e-mail messages in response to the readings or class sessions are welcome. Send them to bruce.payne@duke.edu, with 116 in the subject field. Please write succinctly, and edit your messages. I will reply as quickly as I can.

EXAMS AND PAPERS

Twelve-minute essay exams on one of the study questions assigned for that week may be given during any class (expect eight or ten of these). Like the questions posed in class, these exams require thorough and reflective reading: they will be evaluated for the insights you bring to the material and on the care and accuracy of your analysis of the readings. Short-answer quizzes reflecting the concerns of the study questions may also be given at any time. Once during the semester you may substitute a reflection paper for an oral question, an exam, or a quiz for which you were unprepared. These papers, on subjects assigned by the instructor, should be at least three typed, double spaced pages, and are usually due in a week.

For the take-home final, you will be asked to reflect on aspects of the course in a paper of about eight pages. Details will be available in late November.

GRADING

Your grade: class participation, including responses to questions in class, other class comments, and e-mail participation, 30%; exams and quizzes, 60 %; take-home final, 10%. Graduate students, undergraduates, or alumni, working under my supervision, will grade some papers.