Formal Requirements

• The paper must be typed, double-spaced, with reasonable margins (1”-1.5”) and font-size (11-12).
• The paper should be around 4-5 pages (minimum 800; maximum 1500).  Please staple all your pages together.
• You must include your name, the name of your teaching assistant, and your tutorial number.  You do not need a cover page.
• Please include an informative and/or imaginative title for your paper (i.e. something other than just “Paper 3”).

• Your introductory paragraph must contain a thesis statement, which you should underline.
• You must submit the final version of your paper to turnitin.com.

Due:  in tutorial, week 13.
 

Prompts

1.  Sweatshops are essentially characterized by bare-subsistence wages, long-hours, and unsafe and often unsanitary working conditions.  Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunnⁱ argue that, despite this, we should be careful how we react to sweatshops, as boycotting their products can do more harm than good to those we are trying to help.  Is this claim consistent with Kantian a approach to the morality of sweatshops?
 

Comment: Your thesis-statement can be quite straightforward, basically just: Kristof and WuDunn’s warning about the advisability of boycotting sweatshops is/is not consistent with a Kantian view on the morality of sweatshops.   Alternatively, you could go a step further, for example:  Although a Kantian would condemn/allow the practice of employing sweatshop labour, this conclusion is/is not consistent with the claim that we should not boycott such companies that engage in this practice.

Comment: Your introduction should provide a brief summary of the basic structure of your argument.

**Comment: The vast majority of your essay should focus on articulating what a Kantian would say about the morality of sweatshops.  That is, you want to focus specifically on the purely ethical question of whether it is morally right, according to Kantian ethics, for a person or company to treat people in a way that sweatshop owners treat their employees.  This will require both articulating the relevant aspects of the Kantian system (so not just summarizing everything you’ve learned about Kantian ethics) and then applying it to the case of sweatshops.  Once you’ve done this, then you should briefly discuss whether that is or is not logically consistent with the claim put forward by Kristof and WuDunn.

2.  Compare and contrast the Kantian attitude toward rights, as articulated by Onora O’Neil, with the Confucian attitude toward rights, as articulated by Wejen Chang.
 

Comment: You may wish to focus specifically on the Kantian concept of duty and the Confucian concept of fen, and the relation between these concepts and that of a human right.

Comment:  Whatever approach you take, you will need to explicate the Kantian and Confucian views on rights.

 Comment: you will probably want to draw on both O’Neil readings.

**Comment:  the thesis statement will be especially important for this essay.  A good compare and contrast essay is not simply a list of similarities and differences.  Rather, you want to focus on one overarching, unifying theme.  Typically, it is best to show either how what appears to be a difference is really, at a deeper level of analysis, a similarity or vice-versa (an apparent similarity is grounded on a deep conceptual difference).  Alternatively, you could try to defend a particular way of combining elements of both into a coherent hybrid theory.  (Click here for sample C&C thesis statements).