Some details concerning the requirements for Lee's seminar on Kantian Ethics

Each student will be asked to give a presentation to the seminar and submit a term paper. The presentation should be on some aspect of Kant's ethical thought, or exploration and critique of some commentary on Kant, or on Kantian aspects of the ethical thought of others (Donagan, Rawls, Nagel, etc.), etc. The topic of the presentation/term paper is to be chosen by the student with the advice and consent of the instructor. The presentation (and subsequent term paper) should not be a rehash of something we have done in class, although it could take significantly further some issue that arose in class. Typically the presentation (and subsequent term paper) will involve some research, but it should also involve significant thought on your part. It should not simply be a report of facts of the case or of the thoughts of other people. You should grapple with the issues. From time to time during the semester I may suggest possible topics.

You should plan for your presentation to take up eighty minutes, counting questions and discussion, so your talk should by itself last forty to fifty minutes.

I expect the final third of the course to be left for student presentations. Be aware that not everyone can be scheduled for the final week. Furthermore, given that you will also be writing term papers, avoiding the late weeks for the presentation is advisable.

There should be some feedback on the presentations from other members of the seminar both orally in the discussion period and in writing. (There will be a "short paper" assignment to critique the presentation.)

The term paper will typically be a written reworking of the presentation with the benefit of the discussion (oral and written) following the presentation.

Any use of sources should be footnoted adequately. If you got an idea from somewhere, indicate that. If you refer me to a book or an article be sure to give me enough information (title, author, edition, page number) for me to find the reference. If you think I may not have access to the article, you should consider providing a photocopy of it. Failure to provide adequate citations may hurt your grade.
Richard Lee, rlee@comp.uark.edu, last modified: 26 August 1996