Critical Question: Look at section 4.1 and the stories about court rulings around corporate responsibility. Which ruling or historical fact do you find most surprising and why?
Active reading assignments should be 1-2 pages in length. The purpose of this assignment is to facilitate your engagement with and understanding of the text. Importantly, ARAs are not reflection papers! Philosophical texts are difficult and the first step is always to get a handle on what the author is saying. This means students should hold off on interjecting their opinion at this stage.
Your ARA should address the following 4 parts:
1. What do you think is the author’s thesis or main point?
-Include some general context: what kind of paper is it? Ethics? Metaphysics? Etc. What kind of position is the author advancing: rationalism, deontology, etc.?
-State by way of summary or via a quote what is the main position the author is intending to prove.
2. Give two quotes that you think support this thesis.
-Simply pick 2 quotes (each a sentence or 2) that you think are important to understanding why the author is giving the above thesis.
3. Explain in your own words (3-5 sentences) how you think those quotes support the thesis.
-Here try to connect the quotes to the thesis. Why did you think those quotes were important and how does the author see them as providing reasons for thinking the thesis is true?
4. Answer the critical question (1-2 sentences) listed by the assignment drop box.
-There will be a critical question posted by the dropbox for each ARA that will be unique to that reading.
ARAs are graded on a 4 pt scale. They are graded for completeness not accuracy. It is not expected that students will completely understand what is going on in these readings on a first pass. Assignments that address all 4 parts above will receive 4/4. For any missing part students lose a point.
There is an example ARA in this module you can use for reference.
