AFFIRMATIVE ACTION; PREFERENCE; ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES; TALES
摘要
"I had barely sat down when the bus driver, who had to have been only a few steps behind me all this time, snatched the magnetic partition card off the back of the seat in front of me and placed it on the back of my seat. It was only then that it dawned on me what I had done. Now I was illegally riding high. I felt a surge of overwhelming guilt, as if I had cheated or stolen something. I tried to stay on the bus until I reached my destination...." Ethical Dialogues on Preference: Philosophic and Poetic Tales of Affirmative Action is an original, artistic creation submitted for the Project Demonstrating Excellence (PDE). The first part of the PDE features fictional and poetic dialogues with scenes which address in a lively, satirical, and often humorous fashion, the issues of preferential treatment, employment, justice, religion, and physical appearance. It is action-oriented, carrying ethical issues into environmental settings, on a bus, in a park, in courtrooms, and in the discourse of daydreams and ghosts.
The second part of the PDE, the Contextual Essay, takes an interdisciplinary approach to the explanation of ethics. There is a deliberation on physics, Christianity, Buddhism, philology and linguistics, psychology, history, justice, politics, economics, and aesthetics. The physics of inertial force in Freud's study of the physiology of neurons is identified as an ontic theory and, together with Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's inertia of the Will, is contrasted to the moral development theories of Piaget and Kohlberg. The ancient Athenian judicial system and the Inquisition of the middle ages are compared to our modern American courts. Recognition is given to the significance of Plato's use of middle-voiced verbs in The Meno in his effort to convey a paradox in the human perception of morality. And, on the subject of aesthetics, it is noted that the theory of the capacity to perceive beauty, advanced by one of the characters in "Ethical Dialogues on Preference," has ethical implications, comparable to Buddhist teachings on silencing of the conscience.
目次
Abstract Chapter 1. On the Bus 2. Ghostly Strides 3. Laron's Trial 4. The Permit 5. Judge Fair's Letter 6. The Chaplain's Trial 7. The Symposium on Beauty
