SCSU Spring 2010 1/25/09 – 5/22/09 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

Problems in Philosophy

First Written Assignment
(Preliminary assignment Phase One)
Due: February 19th, 2010

Varian Fry

In the culminating assignment for Phase One of our course you will discuss the extent to which Varian Fry is an exemplar of Aristotelian virtue. In this preliminary assignment you need to prepare for the culminating assignment by discussing Varian Fry’s choices, experiences, and reflections.

For example, discuss Fry’s choice to go to Marseille to save Jewish intellectuals and artists from the concentration camps. 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 may well have been the result of his exposure to the work of such authors as Franz Werfel and artists as Marc Chagall, in high school and college.

Further, 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. Again, in this section you may well want to make reference to the original unpublished foreword in which Fry speaks of the difficulties and residual trauma of his efforts to save people from the Nazis.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.

Your paper – approximately two pages in length--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 the readings related to Fry (page numbers in parentheses), and to the film “Varian’s War” with reasonably detailed reference to scenes and dialogue.