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Fall 2006
Volume 06, Number 1

Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy

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An Issue I Would Die For

John Chaffee
LaGuardia College, City University of New York

Friedrich Nietzsche once characterized philosophers as "artists with concepts," and I believe that this is particularly true in the case of teaching philosophy. Certainly the teaching of philosophy involves exposing students to the core issues and central figures that constitute the rich history of philosophy. But the greatest challenge to teaching philosophy is also its most crucial: teaching students to "think philosophically," to engage in the rigorous analysis, reasoned discourse, and clear articulation of ideas that are the hallmarks of philosophers.

In the unit of the Introduction to Philosophy course that focuses on Socrates, I seek to engage students in the process of philosophical thinking by having them compose a Socratic Dialogue involving an issue that they would be willing to die for. The guidelines are as follows:

Throughout history people of high moral character have faced punishment, imprisonment, and even death rather than forsake their guiding principles. In Socrates’ case, he was unwilling to renounce his commitment to searching for wisdom, examining himself and others, and exhorting others to live virtuously and attend to their souls. Other people have been unwilling to:

- Renounce their religious beliefs

- Surrender their commitment to personal and political freedom

- Behave in a way that they considered to be immoral

Think about your deepest convictions and identify an issue for which you would be willing to face imprisonment or death. Imagine yourself in a court setting, similar to Socrates, in which you have one final chance to persuade your accusers that you do not deserve to die, even though you are unwilling to renounce your beliefs. Then compose a Socratic dialogue between you and your accusers in which you use penetrating questioning and compelling logic to make your case. Members of the class will act as your jury.

To help students prepare for this assignment, I distribute excerpts from dialogues written by former students in response to the assignment. Student volunteers read the dialogues aloud, and we discuss the structure and salient features of these examples. The class then brainstorms potential topics, a discussion fueled by subjects previous students have selected. As a next step, students bring in rough drafts of their dialogues (suggested length is five double-spaced pages), and they have an opportunity to share at least part of their dialogue with other class members in small groups for the purpose of receiving suggestions. (I circulate among the groups, serving as a resource as well.) On the day that the final dialogues are due, students take turns reading their dialogues aloud with a partner they have selected. Following each presentation, class members take a few minutes to identify the key points and core arguments, and suggest ideas that would strengthen their defense. Following their presentations, students hand in their dialogues to be reviewed and graded. As a final part of the unit, I collect clean copies of the dialogues and have them copied and bound as a "publication" with a copy of the Jacques-Louis David painting "The Death of Socrates" on the cover.

Students compose their dialogues on a wide variety of topics, and as LaGuardia has such a large international student population, their topics are international in scope, often involving issues of war, revolution, persecution, and human rights that are as current as today’s headlines. For example:

- Political repression in North Korea

- Pleas of an Iraqi citizen

- Perils of free expression in Bangladesh

- Women’s rights in Afghanistan

- A revolution in progress in Venezuela

- Democracy in Haiti

- Freedom of religion in China

- Human rights in Burma

- "Modern Slavery" (exploitation of undocumented immigrants)

- A refusal to be drafted

The results of this activity have been consistently gratifying. Rather than simply trying to follow Socrates’ line of reasoning in the Apology as outside observers, students are being placed in a situation in which they have to use a Socratic approach to defend their passionately held beliefs. And in so doing, they are experiencing firsthand the power of Socrates’ contribution to human thought. For Socrates, human thought was alive, a dynamic method of inquiry for confronting and clarifying the most profound questions that define our lives, individually and collectively. Socrates sought to erase the line between thought and action: we are obligated to act on the conclusions to which enlightened reflection leads us. Of all of the many gifts that Socrates has given to the world, it is recognizing the essential nature of rational inquiry in human affairs that is most profound and lasting. As the philosopher Richard Robinson observes:

Socrates impresses us, more than any other figure in literature, with the supreme importance of thinking as well as possible and making our actions conform to our thoughts. To this end he preaches the knowledge of one’s own starting-points, the hypothetical entertainment of opinions, the exploration of their consequences and connections, the willingness to follow the argument where it leads, the public confession of one’s thoughts, the invitation to others to criticize, the readiness to reconsider, and at the same time firm action in accordance with one’s present beliefs.

The questions that we and our students encounter today are no less significant and crucial than those facing the ancient Athenians: questions of war and peace, politics and ethics, truth and reality, life and death. Socrates was in deadly earnest when he made his startling challenge, "The unexamined life is not worth living," and it is a message that is at least as pertinent today for our students, as revealed in the following excerpts from two student dialogues. It should be noted that these student examples, by Gina Szeto and Elini-Melina Petratos, are entirely the students’ own work without any subsequent editing. Of course, the assignment elicits a variety of responses from students, ranging from very strong dialogues like these of Gina and Elini-Melina to less sophisticated ones. Yet the nature of the assignment seems to motivate students to produce the best work of which they are capable, and that whatever their level of sophistication, the activity is a valuable learning experience for each student.

The first excerpt is from a dialogue in which a former student of mine imaginatively recreates her father’s experience as a victim of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China in 1968, a radical political movement led by Mao Zedong that closed schools and virtually severed China’s relations with the outside world. Most of the books in China were prohibited at the time, so her father formed associations with people who smuggled books in and out of closed libraries. As a result of these actions, he was accused of being a traitor to Red China, a crime punishable by death, and he was brought before The Court of Justice for trial. In this excerpt Gina explores the nature and implications of political freedom in a culturally repressive society.

Political Repression in China
Gina Szeto

Gina: Two years ago, before the Cultural Revolution began, I was studying in the university. Since then my days have been filled with persecution, beatings, and public humiliations by the Red Guard. I am here today to ask whether a blind adherence to party policies could be more detrimental to China than cultivating human minds. How just is it to be incarcerated and put to death for thinking, reading, and learning?

Court: These are questions of a Western mind.

Gina: Too much attention is spent discarding ideas based on criteria that has no relationship to the ideas’ content. More time needs to be devoted to determining whether the idea is true, if it is applicable, and, if so, how it can be put to use. Don’t you agree?

Court: In conceiving a Western idea, the assumption is that it will be applied in a Western society, a society that is politically and culturally very different than ours.

Gina: I am not implying that we should adopt all political, economic, and social policies endorsed by the West. I am asking if an idea happens to be Western in origin, should it be discarded simply because it is Western? What criteria are used to determine the value of an idea?

Court: Mao is the leader of China. His policies and authority should never be questioned. When his authority is questioned, China is questioned, and if this happens our society will fall into chaos. This is done for the well being of everyone.

Gina: Isn’t it somewhat naïve to assume that despite countless failed and evolving attempts over man’s history to develop absolute and certain knowledge, that only Mao has the answer? Is Mao not also a human, like you and me? Hasn’t he, despite his best intentions, experienced failure nonetheless?

Court: Yes, I suppose that’s accurate.

Gina: Isn’t it therefore more productive to acknowledge the frailty of the human condition, the uncertainty of our notion of truth, and in so doing, keep our minds, and therefore theories and policies in the public sector, open to progress, flexible in the face of adversity and change? Or is it more productive to construct absolute and rigid policies, which are themselves a product of the political and social climate of the time, at the expense of truth, at the expense of our people?

Court: I don’t know.

Gina: Is it more likely that a generation of enlightened thinkers educated in history, science, and logic will detect and ultimately rectify unsound economic and social policies, or a generation of illiterate farmers?
Court: Of course enlightened thinking is necessary, and Mao will do the thinking for all.

Gina: And all other ideas are useless? Mao is the brain, and we are merely his limbs?

Court: It is for the welfare of all.

Gina: If my purpose is simply to exist, to breathe, and not utilize my inherent ability to think, rationalize, or question, then I would rather not live. A sentiment, as you know, shared by the thousands who have committed suicide over the past decade. If this is Mao’s purpose for the People’s Republic, he would do no worse if more resources were allocated toward building machines and robots because they will not rebel, they will not fight for the right to be free, because they, unlike us, are inherently not capable of free thought and action.

This next excerpt is also from a dialogue written by a former student, and is based on her experience with her dying father. In her introduction, Melina (who immigrated from Greece) notes that as it stands today neither the United States nor the New York State constitution grants individuals a right to suicide assistance or euthanasia. The courts have distinguished the right to refuse treatment from the right to get assistance in euthanasia, although the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment is constitutionally guaranteed. Suicide assistance generally constitutes a form of second-degree murder under New York law, regardless of whether the person consents to being assisted in ending their life. This is how Melina describes the circumstances that led to the criminal charge against her as she explores the relationship between the rights of the individual and the rights of the state when confronting the issue of assisted suicide.

For the Love of Life
Eleni-Melina Petratos

Two years ago my father was diagnosed with cancer and within four months of his diagnosis—and after repeated treatments of radiation and chemotherapy, the standard treatment for all cancer patients—his condition kept deteriorating and finally the cancer metastasized to his bones. The metastasis resulted in excruciating and constant pain that was not alleviated by any pain killers provided by his doctors. In the ensuing months of my father’s Golgotha I was faced with a myriad of moral, legal, and economic decisions, but none was more important than his wish and will to have a dignified end to an honorable life. Thus my decision to assist my father with euthanasia resulted in a charge of second-degree murder and brought me before this court.

Melina: Standing here before you in this austere room and in the grim reality that surrounds me takes me back to another room and another reality of which the anguish and consequences I wish upon no one in this room. The deadly silence in that hospital room was interrupted only by my father’s moans and gasps of pain, and the sterility of the whiteness of the room was colored only by the red fluidity of blood from my father’s body. Hours and eternity indiscernible, pain and agony his sole companions, and his implorations not as father to a daughter anymore, but as a human being to another, compelling and justified. To deny my father a good death was equivalent to dishonoring his life. Ask yourselves this unyielding question: Is life which is completely depleted of the smallest joy and fraught only with anguish and pain worth living?

Court: This court feels deep compassion for patients in those rare cases when pain cannot be alleviated even with aggressive palliative care. As a society, however, we have better ways to give people greater control and relief from suffering than by legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Melina: The society you speak of gives greater control to alleviate pain to those fortunate enough to afford the best possible health care and leaves the rest to grapple with debilitating illnesses with little hope of relief from pain. Isn’t it true that when society tries to rule the will of a person they inevitably interfere with the intrinsic moral values those individuals rightly so deserve?

Court: We as a society and under the laws that govern us must learn to respect the sanctity of life.

Melina: Are you speaking about the "sanctity of life" as defined by rigid and abstract religious beliefs and doctrines, grounded in law that permits a patient to die slowly by refusing sustained treatment, yet considers actively assisting the same patient to die in a humane way to be murder? Or are you speaking about the "sanctity of life" as defined by a life that is cognitive, fulfilling, and free of needless suffering, grounded in law that permits a patient to be assisted in achieving a humane and dignified final passage?

Court: You seem to be adopting a utilitarian approach to the meaning of life which holds that if an individual’s life does not achieve your criteria, then that individual is dispensable and his life is not worth living. Isn’t this the same basic approach that governed the social engineering of Nazi Germany?

Melina: That analogy is absurd. What you have alleged is a systematic method of physicians and geneticists to exterminate a certain population regardless of their health status. What I have presented here is the right of a terminally ill person to ask assistance in ending a life of pain and suffering—a life that has become alien and burdensome—and the moral obligation of a family member to carry out this wish. This way of thinking restores the dignity and respectability one holds for the true sanctity of life.

Court: Aside from what you have referred to as the religious perspective that views God as the Creator and sustainer of life, the simple fact is that people do get sick and in the process they deteriorate physically and eventually do die. However, we should not permit this to happen before their time. You say your father asked for assistance in dying. When they are sick people often get depressed and idealize death in an unrealistic way. But when given time to think clearly, no one really wants to die if they can prolong life.

Melina: Are we so afraid of death that we are led to believe that a wretched life engulfed in constant suffering and pain is better than the alternative? Demystification of the death process must begin with the patient, his physician, family members, and any others involved in frank conversations on the issues concerning the end of life. With such an approach we would not be traumatized when someone close to us who is waiting for death in the most horrendous possible condition asks for euthanasia—a good death.

Court: It is not for you to decide who lives and who dies.

Melina: I agree; that decision should be the right of each individual and as such my father chose to end his life rather than prolong a dismal existence wrapped in a coarse blanket of pain.

Court: As you stated, if it is the right of each individual to decide to take his or her life under these circumstances—something this court disagrees with—that negates your right to do it for them.

Melina: You allow him the right to decide and yet knowing the debilitating effects of his illness and his inability to carry out the action, you negate him his right to ask for assistance in that right thus to arrive at the desired result of his choice.

Court: Your father could have gone on living for months with the care he was provided, and we have cases of many patients who have surpassed that time frame and went on to live for almost a year.

Melina: You speak of him as a statistical entity, as a means not as an end when he was a vibrant, robust man, one who valued life for the opportunities afforded to him. He believed the dictum "Healthy mind, healthy body" as well as the corollary that when one is severed the other is but a useless vehicle with no purpose or destination.

Court: If everyone’s belief became a law the outcome would be anarchy at best.

Melina: You have your laws and you speak with convincing arguments regarding the legalities of the matter, and yet you disregard a universal law, one that entails human dignity and the right to a life that is conducted in the most productive, and fulfilling way. I stand here before you charged with a heinous crime, amidst my pain and sorrow of losing a loved one, and I have neither the wisdom nor the courage to tell you that what I did was noble or that it was carried out with the utmost certainty. No, esteemed court, I’m standing here and I tell you I have suffered and I have struggled with this decision. I will accept the punishment that your laws define for my action. I will not, however, be judged or sentenced on the morality of my action because it confers with it the undisputable right of each human being to choose a life that is suffused with quality, creativity, human dignity, and the appreciation of these meanings.

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