## MLK, "I have a dream"
1. Is his dream realized?
2. Is affirmative action contrary to his dream?
3. What does equality look like?
### Milgram, Experiment in Autonomy
1. A basic experiment in autonomy (self-rule) versus obedience (other-rule)
2. "Learners" were actors, "Teachers" were real people
2. "Teachers" were told by a scientist to shock the Learners.
3. Would they obey their conscience or the scientist?
### Results
- 60% of Yale undergrades were "fully obedient"
- 60% of general public in New Haven were the same
- 60-85% of subjects were obedient in Munich, Rome, South Africa, Australia, etc.
### Case Studies
1. Brandt protested and politely refused to continue (582)
2. Prozi protested but continued, upset and quickly (584)
3. Braverman protested but continued, giggling and feeling guilty (587)
>There was I. I'm a nice person, I think, hurting somebody, and caught up in what seemed a mad situation... and in the interest of science, one goes through with it. My reactions were awfully peculiar... giggly, trying to stifle laughter... This was a sheer reaction to a totally impossible situation... My wife said 'you can call yourself Eichmann'."
### Interpretation
1. Is everyone just aggressive, waiting for an excuse?
2. Let's try again where the Teacher is free to select the voltage
3. The average shock then was 60 volts (on a scale of 40-450)
4. This supports Hannah Arendt's argument, in *Eichmann in Jerusalem*, that evil is "banal" (trite, unoriginal, boring)
5. "Eichman was an uninspired bureaucrat" sitting at his desk and doing his job
### Responsibility
1. Batta "did his honest best", obeyed, and compared himself to the obstinate learner
2. Responsibility for one's action, rather than fulfilling someone else's orders, matters.
3. Responsibility for one part of the torture, rather than the torture directly, matters (592)
4. The less one can relinquish authority to a peer or authority, the more one feels the pressure of responsibility
### Variations
1. Physical presence (vs telephone) lessened obedience
2. Conflicting authority (vs expert consensus) ceased obedience
3. Social pressure (vs peer consensus) lessened obedience
### The Social Structure
>"The fragmentation of the total human act" where "no one is confronted with the consequences of his decision to carry out the evil act" is perhaps "the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society" (592)
### Discussion
* What is the value of autonomy?
### Discussion
* Your questions?
## Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism"
- Either "Existence precedes essence"
- Or "essence precedes existence"
### Christian Existentialism
- Paper cutters *are* objects with a nature (paper-cutter) and a purpose or function (cut paper)
- Man is artificer, creation is artifact
- The 'forms' of creation precede the created things, as molds precede objects
- Even without God, the notion of fixed natures remains (Plato, for example; and Kant)
- All men are human equally
### Atheistic Existentialism
- Human beings exist before they have a nature
- Humans are their own artificers
- "Man will be what he will have planned to be"
- "Will" means responsibility, self-determination
### Atheistic Existentialism II
- God and morality (597)
- God not existing might leave the moral law intact
- Or God not existing might ruin everything
- If "existence really does precede essence... there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom"
### The Young Man
- "Man is condemned to be free"
- His mother needed him
- His cause needed him
- Christianity or Kant tell him nothing
- He must choose
- Rely on nothing and no one, simply act (600)
### Vonnegut, "Harrison Bergeron"
- 2081 AD, everyone is equal
- Smart, beautiful, or well-spoken people are handicapped accordingly
- Harrison Bergeron is "14, escaped from jail... genius and an athelete... under-handicapped... extremely dangerous"
- He stops shrinking and hiding
- Diana Moon Glampers uses a shotgun
- Radio silence
### Discussion
* Your questions?