Thursday, September 11th

Modern Day Transcendentalism??

Goal: Deconstruct Thoreau's ideas and the role of the individual in creating a just society

Term of the Day:  "Transhumanism" (From Wikipedia)Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance humanintellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.[1] Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the ethics of developing and using such technologies.[2]They speculate that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".[1]

Starter:

• Get out your Individual Seminar Prep notes and "Civil Disobedience" annotations for me to check-- turn them in after seminar 
• Watch "To be Human is to be Transhuman"
• Review your seminar prep notes and relevant quotes/pages you want to reference during seminar.
• Check-out a copy of Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Agenda
1.  Introduction to Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

• Author's website and Harvard course
• Read aloud the first page (real-world relevance here folks!!)
• Free-market economies
• price gouging (support laws against? oppose laws against?)

2. Seminar Groups 1 and 2 Today

Non-Seminar Work Time Options:

• Begin reading and annotating on "Doing the Right Thing"- Chapter 1 of Michael Sandel's book, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?  Due Monday

Required to only read these pages:
1-10 (to "What Wounds Deserve the Purple Heart?"
12-16 (starting at "Bailout Outrage") 
19-21 (ending at "Runaway Trolley")
24-30 (starting at "The Afghan Goatherds")

Today's Handouts

• Seminar Questions
• Seminar Rubric