*** Please use direct quote from :
themselves or other persons “merely as means,” the question of personal autonomy and authenticity
arises as a key concern. Whereas Kant seems to imply that personal autonomy is best expressed by a
person’s active engagement in the collective project of building a “kingdom of ends,” Lermontov and
Kierkegaard emphasize the difficult challenge of cultivating personal authenticity by resisting the
temptation of following the crowd. Mill, in turn, attempts to frame some kind of new compromise
between personal autonomy and community. Does he succeed? Your task is to select key passages from
all four authors and carefully discuss them in order to show your reader what’s at stake in each case.
How does Kant motivate us to embrace our duty? What new Romantic methods, in contrast, do
Lermontov and Kierkegaard use to probe the depths of human psychology? What, in your view, is Mill’s
best, or weakest, argument? Finally, you must weigh in: does any of these four representative authors
have an important lesson regarding personhood? Or should we pick and choose from their texts and
attempt a composite lesson in order to move forward?
The paper must not exceed five pages, double-spaced and with standard margins. It must be turned in
to me in class on Thursday, April 27.
Tips:
1. A short introduction works best.
2. Keep a distance towards the class: avoid writing things like “my favorite author so far” or “the
four authors we have read”.
3. Check the titles carefully. For example, Mill did not write a book with the title “On Liberty,
Utilitarianism and Other Essays.” He wrote “On Liberty” and “Utilitarianism.”
4. Footnotes: you only need to list the full editorial information the first time that you cite a work.
After that, author, title and page number suffice.
5. Read yourself over carefully to check for typos and weird things that autocorrect does…