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Week 4 – Discussion 1

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Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Settings icon above for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.

Week 4 Discussion [WLOs: 1, 2, 3] [CLOs: 3, 4, 5]<

This week our main discussion will focus on explaining and evaluating the theory of virtue ethics as discussed in Chapter 5 of the textbook. Your instructor will be choosing the discussion question and posting it as the first post in the main discussion forum. The requirements for the discussion this week include the following:

• You must begin posting by Day 3 (Thursday).
• You must post a minimum of four separate posts on at least three separate days (e.g., Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, or Thursday, Friday, and Sunday, or Thursday, Saturday, and Monday, etc.).
• The total combined word count for all of your posts, counted together, should be at least 600 words, not including references.
• You must answer all the questions in the prompt and show evidence of having read the resources that are required to complete the discussion properly (such as by using quotes, referring to specific points made in the text, etc.).
• In order to satisfy the posting requirements for the week, posts must be made by Day 7 (Monday); posts made after Day 7 are welcome but will not count toward the requirements.
• Be sure to reply to your classmates and instructor. You are encouraged to read posts your instructor makes (even if they are not in response to your own post) and reply to those as a way of examining the ideas in greater depth.
• All postings (including replies to peers) are expected to be thought out, proofread for mechanical, grammatical, and spelling accuracy, and to advance the discussion in an intelligent and meaningful way (i.e., saying something like “I really enjoyed what you had to say” will not count). You are also encouraged to do outside research and quote from that as well.

For more information, please read the Frequently Asked Questions.

This discussion will be assessed on a 10-point scale and is worth 4% of your final grade.

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• COLLAPSE SUBDISCUSSIONMichael LarsonMichael Larson
  Aug 26, 2018Local: Aug 26 at 8pm<br>Course: Aug 26 at 6pmManage Discussion EntryDiscussion 1: Virtue and Teleology
  To ensure that your initial post starts its own unique thread, do not reply to this post.  Instead, please click the “Reply” link above this post.
  Please read the general discussion requirements above, as well as the announcements explaining the discussion requirements and answering the most frequently asked questions.  If you are still unsure about how to proceed with the discussion, please reply to one of those announcements or contact your instructor.

  Please carefully read and think about the entire prompt before composing your first post. This discussion will require you to have carefully read Chapter 5 of the textbook, as well as the assigned portions of Aristotle’s (1931) Nicomachean Ethics.
  Aristotle’s account of ethics is “teleological”, which means that our understanding of virtue and living well is based on a sense of the “telos” (function, purpose, or end) of something (see Aristotle’s text and the textbook for the full account). 

  1. Engage with the text: 
  2. Using at least one quote from the required text(s), explain the relation between virtue and living well on Aristotle’s account, and briefly describe some of the key characteristics of the virtues. 
  3. Reflect on yourself: 
  4. Identify an area of your life in which virtues are needed to do well.  Explain what the “telos” of that role or activity is, what virtues are needed and why they are needed, and what would be lost if someone tried to be successful in that activity who didn’t exercise the virtues.  This might be a role you have, a vocation or career, a hobby, or something common to all of us.
  5. Reflect on virtue: 
  6. In what ways do the virtues you identify display the characteristics Aristotle describes? For instance, you could explain whether they occupy an intermediate between too much and too little of some quality, how they would affect one’s emotions as well as ones actions, etc. 
  7. Discuss with your peers: 
  8. Discuss with your peers the answers they gave to these questions, and offer your own additional reflections, questions, challenges, etc.  You could consider possible ways in which the virtues may conflict with each other, or may conflict with the virtues needed in other areas of one’s life; whether practicing virtue in these activities may lead to less success as measured by, say, financial benefit or recognition; and so on.
     Aristotle. (1931). Nicomachean ethics (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html
     Thames, B. (2018). How should one live? Introduction to ethics and moral reasoning (3rd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education.