SCSU Spring 2010 1/25/10 – 5/22/10 Professor Pettigrew
PHI 200 02 W Problems in Philosophy 11:10am – 12:00am EN B210 EN D212, x26778
Office Hours: M 3:30-5, T 1-3 R 1-3:30
And by appointment

PHI 200 02 W Problems in Philosophy

Phase I Culminating Written Assignment

Due March 8, 2010


“Aristotle’s Ethics and Varian Fry’s Ethical Choice”

In this assignment you are to reflect on the initiatives, choices and actions of Varian Fry from the perspective of Aristotle Ethics.
In the first content section of the paper set forth your understanding of Aristotle’s Ethics such that you can subsequently discuss the extent to which Varian Fry is an exemplar of Aristotelian virtue. In this first section discuss:
1) Aristotle’s definition of virtue (Book II vi 1107a);
 2) The four ‘causes’ of ethics (Book II i-iv), with an identification and explication of each of the four ‘causes’;
 3) Aristotle’s description of the proper function of the soul. (Book I vii 1098 15); 
4) the central importance of the character-driven nature of the ethical choice in Book II iv. 
Make direct reference to Aristotle (with quotes identified by Book chapter and line numbers).

In the second content section analyze Fry’s decision to go to Marseille to save Jewish intellectuals and artists from the concentration camps from the perspective of Aristotle’s Ethics. How is Fry exemplary of one who makes a character-driven ethical choice? Further, what role could habituation be said to play in Fry’s choice? In other words, what experiences may have given form to Fry’s character such that he was able to make the decision to travel to Marseille to undertake his dangerous mission. You may well want to quote the passages from pages xi and xii concerning Fry’s respect for democracy and the right of asylum. He also writes of his disdain for the tactics of the Gestapo. Further, on page xii, he states that he was motivated by “deep political convictions”. In addition, Fry writes, on page xiii, of his debt of gratitude for the artistic expressions of the Jewish artists and intellectuals who were trapped in Marseille. He “felt obliged to help them”. This was probably the result of his exposure to the work of such authors as Franz Werfel and artists as Marc Chagall, in high school and college.

In the concluding section of the paper consider the impact of Fry’s witnessing the brutalization and dehumanization of the Jews in Germany in 1935 (as reported in his article in the New York Times, July 16, 1935.) on his decision to go to Marseille. To what extent and in what ways would the dehumanization of the Jews violate Aristotle’s account of the proper function of the human being? Would witnessing such dehumanization, thus described and depicted, have affected Varian Fry’s moral character?(To further develop your discussion of "dehumanization," make reference to Primo Levi's Survival at Auschwitz, with at least one passage from the text and page numbers for reference.) Again, in this section you may well want to make reference to the original unpublished foreword in which Fry speaks of the difficulties and residual trauma of his efforts to save people from the Nazis. He says it was the “most intense experience of his life” (241), but he also writes that he is haunted by the “ghosts,” ghosts of the living whose story he is compelled to tell, and the ghosts of those he could not save. This reminds us of Aristotle’s comment in Book II iii, that virtue… “is constantly dealing with what is harder, since the harder the task the better the success” (Ethics, II, iii)

Your paper needs an introduction with a topic sentence, sentences delineating the parts of the paper, and a sentence suggesting the conclusion. You need to make direct reference to Aristotle’ text (provide book and chapter and page number e.g. I, vii p. 33), the readings related to Fry (page numbers in parentheses) [N.B. these required references --with passages/excerpts/extracts from the text and page numbers-- related to Fry include the "FOREWORD," the "ORIGINAL UNPUBLISHED FOREWORD" , and the New York Times article authored by Fry in 1935] as well as to the film to “Varian’s War” with reasonably detailed reference to scenes and dialogue. Your paper needs to be typed and double spaced and four to six pages in length.