The final projects for 255 should be examinations of the contributions to moral psychology of some person or tradition that we have not covered in class. In brief, the projects should contain thoughtful exposition of the contributions to moral psychology made by this person or tradition. In particular, you should make clear:

• what, if anything, they had to say about the nature of the self or soul (psychology)
• what, if anything, they had to say about the nature of the good life for human beings (ethics)
• what, if anything, they had to say about therapeutic practices
• how these things tie together -- e.g., how a therapeutic practice is designed to bring about some particular aspect of the good life, or offset some weakness of our nature.

You are welcome, once you have done these things, to also engage in a critical assessment of the person you are discussing. You need not do this to do a good project, and you absolutely must do a good exposition of the person's thought in its own terms first.

If the person in question has things to say about one area of moral psychology but not another, you might want to try to make a case for what they seem implicitly to believe or how their views might be extended to include another area. For instance, a writer who is heavy on practice may implicitly base her suggestions on assumptions about psychology or the good life that are never made explicit, and you might want to try to tease these out. Or a person who talks theory without practical guidance may leave room for you to conjecture about what kinds of practices might be in accordance with the theory.-

Format

Your final project will be a web page or web site. You will need to learn how to design and publish websites if you have not already done so.You will also need to supply your group members with copies of draft of your project, or put it online in draft form, at the specified date, and supply comments for other members of your group.The final product will probably be the equivalent of about a 15 page paper, though some topics may require more or less space. The content is far more important than the form. Except, of course, when the form makes it impossible to appreciate the content--please, no yellow print against a blue paisley background or other such visual atrocities!-

Timetable

Ideas

I've listed some ideas below for those who have little idea what they'd like to work on. This is by no means an exhaustive list -- don't feel constrained to do something here if you'd like to do something else!

Philosophical Writers

• Plato (particularly the Republic)
• Other Stoics: Zeno, Chrysippus, Epictetus
• Hobbes (Leviathan Parts I and II, De Homine)
• Kant
• Hume
• J.S. Mill or Jeremy Bentham on Utilitarianism
• Nietzsche (sort of a 19th century Callicles)
• Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality
• Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination
• Mary Midgeley, Man and Beast
• Carol Gilligan
• Amelie Rorty, Explaining Emotions (Collection of essays by various contemporary philosophers)
• Mind and Morals, collection from MIT Press

Christianity

• Augustine
• John Wesley (after whom Wesleyan was named. Founder of Methodism (though he always considered himself an Anglican)--the "method" of which was a spiritual discipline to supplement the sacramental worship of the Church.
• Evagrius, Praktikos (quoted in the Sayings, perhaps the person who created the first systematic Christian moral psychology)
• Theophan the Recluse, The Spiritual Life (19th century Russian Orthodox bishop)
• Any of the writers in the Philokalia (an Orthodox collection of spiritual classics, published in English in four volumes)
• Peter Damien on "The Seven Deadly Sins". For a modern treatment of the topic, William Stafford, Disordered Loves: Healing the Seven Deadly Sins
• Scupoli, Spiritual Combat (Counter-Reformation Catholic writer, takes up the theme of prayer as a kind of spiritual combat.)
• Scupoli/Nicodemus/Theophan, Unseen Warfare (a remarkable book that has taken Scupoli's Catholic classic and then adapted and revised it for Greek (Nicodemus) and Russian Orthodox (Theophan) audiences.)
• Walter Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection. Hilton was a medieval English mystic.
• Foster, Richard, Celebration of Discipline. A contemporary exploration of traditional spiritual disciplines.
• Driskill, Joseph, Protestant Spiritual Exercises. One doesn't often hear the words in the title uttered together, so if you are looking for spiritual methods in the protestant tradition, this might be a place to start.
• Willard, Dallas, The Spirit of the Disciplines.
• St. Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict. The rule of the Benedictine order that has served as a model for most Christian monastic rules.

Islam (sorry there's not much here, but I'll get more if people want it)

• Lynn Wilcox, Sufism and Psychology (Sufism is a spiritual tradition within Islam)

Judaism (will work on getting more)

Buddhism (not a specialty of mine, but Jay Garfield suggests:)

• Santideva's Bochicarayavatara (Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life)
• Aryadeva's Catuhsataka (400 Stanzas on the Yogic Deeds of the Bodhisattva)
• Candrakirti's Madhyamakavatara (Entry into the Middle Way)

Chinese Philosophy (Supplied by Steve Angle)

• Mencius
• trans. D. C. Lau
• Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas
• Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought
• Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition (also deals with Wang Yang-ming)
• Dao De Jing (Tao-te Ching; purportedly by Lao Tzu)
• trans. D. C. Lau
• trans. Michael Lafargue
• (and many others)
• Kohn & LaFargue, Lao-tzu and the Tao-te Ching
• Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu)
• trans. Watson
• trans. A. C. Graham
• Mair, Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu
• Cheng Yi & Cheng Hao (11th c.; important early Neo-Confucians)
• Graham, Two Chinese Philosophers
• Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi; 1130-1200; sythesizer of Neo-Confucianism comparable to St. Thomas)
• Gardner, trans. Learning to Be a Sage
• Wang Yangming (1472-1529)
• Chan, trans., Instructions for Practical Living
• Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition
• Other and General
• Marks and Ames, Emotions in Asian Thought
• Tu, Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation
• Lopez, Religions of China in Practice (good essays on Taoist and Buddhist theory and practice)

Psychology

• Robert Coles, The Moral Intelligence of Children
• Kramer, Listening to Prozac. (Interesting meditations on the treatment of psychological conditions like depression with medications, the effects of pharmacology on personality and the notion of identity, and the issue of whether to use drugs for "cosmetic psychopharmacology". A bit on the popular side, but stimulating)
• Sigmund Freud
• Lawrence Kohlberg, The psychology of moral development : the nature and validity of moral stages, The Meaning and Measurement of Moral Development (Kohlberg is perhaps the most famous developmental psychologist working on moral development. It might be interesting to do Kohlberg's theories in connection with (philosopher) Carol Gilligan's criticisms of them.)

Cognitive Science

• E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology. (Esp. last chapters, on humanity), On Human Nature
• Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (a classic development of gene-selection in evoltionary theory with some applications to ourselves)
• Matt Ridley, The Red Queen (evolutionary treatment of sex), The Origins of Virtue (evolutionary discussion of altruism)
• Robert Wright, The Moral Animal (a recent attempt to talk about implications of evolutionary psychology for a mass market audience)
• Gilbert Harman (recent commentaries on experiments in social psychology that supposedly show that there are no virtues)
• Mary Midgeley, Beast and Man, The Ethical Primate
• Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality
• Mind and Morals, collection from MIT Press
• Edward Hundert, Lessons from an Optical Illusion: On Nature and Nurture, Knowledge and Values
• Franz de Waals, Good Natured. (Studies of chimps and bonobos.)
• Midwest Studies in Philosophy Volume XXII: Theories of the Emotions (various articles)