Course goal:  greater understanding of the course topic:  what is the good for a human being:  money, pleasure, honor, virtue, friendship, pleasure, contemplation?  what is virtue?  how is virtue acquired?  what is the highest virtue:  courage, moderation, friendship, pride, justice?  what is the best life:  contemplation or action?

Course text:  Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, translated by David Ross (Oxford University Press).  Students are required to use (1) a hard copy of (2) the Ross translation of the Nicomachean Ethics.  There are no exceptions to these two requirements.

Course requirements:
Readings as assigned
Participation in class discussion
Class attendance
Four papers (five or six pages each)
Optional fifth paper (five or six pages)

Attendance:  Much of the important work in this course goes on in class.  Students are expected to be in attendance except in cases of illness, emergency, religious holiday or university-sanctioned extracurricular activity, to be in attendance for the whole class session and not to make appointments that conflict with class sessions.  Graded assignments are based, in part, on class discussion and are expected to reflect familiarity with topics discussed.  As a result, it is to your disadvantage to miss class.

Attendance is required and will be taken at the beginning of each class session.  It is the student’s responsibility to sign the roll sheet in each class.  Students may miss three classes without penalty.  Five points will be subtracted from the final course grade for the fourth class missed and two points for each class missed after that.  Exceptions will be made in the case of illness, emergency, religious holiday or university-sanctioned extracurricular activity.  A written excuse or other evidence must be provided for exceptions to be made.

Missed classes:  If you miss class, contact one of your fellow students to find out what we did in your absence and to get notes on the class you missed.  Once you have done that, you are invited to talk to the instructor, either during office hours or before or after class, about what you missed.  Please do not email the instructor to find out what you missed in class or—really!—to tell the instructor that you will not be attending.

Papers:  The papers will be essays (not research papers).  They will be five or six pages long.  You need use no books other than the course texts in order to write the papers.  In an essay, you state a thesis, explain it and argue for it.  The basic structure of an essay is:  an introduction in which you state your thesis, the body of the essay in which you explain and argue for your thesis, the conclusion in which you summarize or highlight what you have done in the essay.
Essays will be word-processed or typed, double-spaced, in 10- or 12-point type.  They will have a title and a title page.  They will be in finished form and without errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation.  All quotations will be accompanied by a reference in parentheses.  Long quotations will be block indented.  Essays will be evaluated on the following basis:

References:  References will be to book, chapter and line numbers not to the page numbers in our edition, e.g.:

According to Aristotle, “happiness is activity of soul in accordance\with perfect virtue” (NE 1.13 1102a).

Optional fifth paper:  If you have completed all other paper assignments, you may turn in an optional fifth paper due the last day of class.  If the grade on the optional paper is higher than the lowest of your other paper grades, it will replace that grade.  If the grade on your optional paper is lower than or equal to your lowest paper grade, the grade on the optional paper will not be recorded.  The topic of the optional paper is any course paper question on which you have not already written.

Evaluation:  Grades will be based on the four papers weighted equally (1/4 each).  Excellent class participation may raise your grade somewhat over the mathematical average, at the discretion of the instructor.  Any points for non-attendance will be subtracted as described above.

Late papers will lose a letter grade (10 points) for each class session they are late.  Exceptions will be made only in cases of serious illness, emergency, religious holiday or university-sanctioned extracurricular activity.  A written excuse or other evidence must be provided for exceptions to be made.  Papers will be submitted on Canvas by midnight on the due date.  Papers submitted after that will be considered late.  There will be no extra credit work.  The student will be held responsible for knowing what goes on in class.  Absences will not excuse you from knowing due dates of papers.

The grading scale is:  94-100, A; 90-93 A-; 87-89 B+; 84-86 B; 80-83 B-; 77-79 C+; 74-76 C; 70-73 C-; 67-69 D+; 64-66 D; 60-63 D-; below 60, F.

It is the instructor’s policy that cheating, plagiarism or submission of written work for this course which was submitted in another course merits a course grade of ‘F’.

Course links:  The course outline and class assignments are posted on the world wide web.  They can be accessed through my personal academic website: <deborahachtenberg.com/arif19co>.  They are also accessible through the Canvas homepage for this course.  They will also be distributed in class.

Use of the internet:  Use of the internet for research purposes is appropriate.  However, students should use their own ideas in papers they write.  In addition, they should be aware that papers plagiarized from internet sources can easily be detected.

Plagiarism:  Plagiarism is a serious offense.  You plagiarize when you use someone else’s words or ideas without attribution.  When you do this, you are putting forward someone else’s work as if it were your own.

Changing a few words in a phrase or sentence is not enough to avoid plagiarism.  (1) Instead, when you utilize someone else’s exact phrases, put them in quotation marks and cite in parentheses the person whose words you have used.  (2) It is fine to paraphrase someone, but when you do, you must say so.  You can make it clear by saying “As Aristotle says…” or “According to Aristotle…”.  (3) Finally, do not utilize even short phrases from another person’s work without a citation.  If you follow these three guidelines, you will find it is easy to use sources in your own writing without being academically dishonest.

Internet resources:
Nicomachean Ethics (H. Rackham translation, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University, in English)

Nicomachean Ethics (J. Bywater edition, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University, in Greek)

Perseus (classics) (Tufts University site for texts, images, museum photography, site photography, etc., of the classical world)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (the on-line edition of Routledge’s encyclopedia of philosophy)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (another good on-line encyclopedia of philosophy, this one from Stanford University)

Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper (In addition to suggestions I will make in class, you may find this webpage from Jim Pryor at NYU’s Department of Philosophy helpful.)

Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (the electronic version of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, published in 1961, with updates)

Oxford English Dictionary  (the electronic version of the OED with the latest new and revised entries)

Liddell, Scott, Jones Lexicon (Perseus’s on-line version of the Liddell, Scott, Jones lexicon (dictionary) of ancient Greek.  To look up a transliterated Greek word–such as logos or physis–go to “Dictionary Entry Lookup.”  Enter the transliterated word and search for “the exact word” in “Greek.”  Click on the link that says “Middle Liddle” (that is the middle-sized Greek lexicon) for the most useful entries for this class.

Class format:  The class will be a combination of lecture and discussion.  Discussions generally will have a focus rather than being general discussion or debate.  Students will be asked to respond to questions asking them to reflect on the texts and the issues raised, to speculate in a thoughtful way when not sure, and in general to participate in discussion.  Each student is expected to make at least one in-class comment in every class session.

Class discussions will refer to the course text.  Students will need to bring the course text to class if they are to benefit from the discussions.

Web surfing and sending or reading e-mail or text messages during class are not allowed. In addition, please refrain from carrying on extensive side conversations during class discussion, and from eating during class.  Please silence cell phones before class.

Studying:  Many students will find that they do better work in this course if they study together with other students.

Time-sensitive communications:  In the unusual circumstance of need for a time-sensitive communication, the instructor will contact students by email utilizing student email addresses available on MyNevada.