Answer any one of the questions listed below in 2–3 pages (double
spaced).
These essay questions are not exactly questions to which there is one correct
answer, or at least not questions to which I think I know the one correct
answer. Please do your best to back up whatever response you want to
make, based on the texts and, if they seem helpful, based on things I said
in lecture. As usual, your answer should be your own work. (If you use
any outside source — which I don’t really recommend — you must cite
it.)
If you have any questions about what plagiarism is or how to avoid it,
you can ask me, or consult the resources listed on the Library website.
For possible consequences of plagiarism, see the Academic Misconduct
Policy.
You can cite any of the assigned readings using just the title and page number.
If you cite anything else, use any format you want, just please include enough
information that I can find the source if necessary.
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assignments and grading in my FAQ.
Royce says that William Lenthall (the Speaker of the House of Commons)
was asserting ancient parliamentary privileges, albeit in an original and
precedent-setting way, when he made his famous reply to Charles I: “I have
neither eye to see nor tongue to speak, etc.” As I mentioned in lecture, Hume
(among others) would disagree with this as a historical matter: Hume claims
that these “ancient privileges” were basically invented in the 17th century.
If Hume is right, what difference might that make to Royce’s assessment of
Lenthall? What about Addams — how might she think of what Lenthall is
doing, and would Hume’s criticism have the same implications for her that it
has for Royce? Or, if you prefer, you could discuss Royce and Dewey instead
of Royce and Addams.
2.
In “Of the Sorrow Songs,” Du Bois writes: “Actively we have woven
ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation, — we fought
their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and
generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people
to despise not Justice, Mercy, and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a
curse” (p. 263). Why, according to Du Bois (see especially “Our Spiritual
Strivings”), does this loyalty to America result in a doubling of the self, rather
than in the kind of unification of the self that Royce expects from loyalty?
How does Du Bois think that unification of the self might nevertheless be
achieved? Is Du Bois’s project something Royce could understand and agree
with?
3.
Both de Cleyre and Dewey deplore the dominance of what Dewey calls
“money culture,” and in particular blame it for suppressing or overcoming
the traditional American ideals of equality and individual freedom. Are
they criticizing exactly the same thing? Why do they propose such different
solutions to the problem? Compare, for example, de Cleyre’s reservations
about socialism — even anarchist socialism (“Anarchism,” p. 112) — to
what Dewey says about the inevitability of socialism in ch. 6 of IndividualismOld and New. Or, if you prefer, you could discuss de Cleyre and Du Bois
instead of de Cleyre and Dewey (in which case you would want to look
especially at what Du Bois says in “The Wings of Atalanta” and “The Ruling
of Men”).
4.
Du Bois famously says that “the problem of the twentieth century is the
problem of the color line” (he says this in The Souls of Black Folk, but I
think we can assume he still held something like that in 1920, at the time
he published Darkwater, and that he would still have maintained something
like that in 1930, at the time Dewey published Individualism Old and New).
What does Dewey think is “the problem of the twentieth century”? What
would Du Bois say that Dewey is missing, both about America and about
the world as a whole? You might want to think in particular about some of
the things Du Bois says in “The Souls of White Folk.”
5.
Both de Cleyre (in “The Dominant Idea”) and Du Bois (especially in “Of
Beauty and Death”) seem to agree with Emerson that nature is an important
part of the education of the American scholar. Do the three of them agree
or disagree on why we need to learn something from nature, and/or on what
kind of thing we should expect to learn?