Philosophy Day at UNESCO 18th November 2004 in Finland:
Philosophical Essay Event for Upper Secondary Schools.
Choose one of the following three topics. Write a
philosophical essay of approximately 1-2 pages on your chosen topic.
I
“Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true
answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many
possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of
custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things
are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes
the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the
region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by
showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.”
Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy 1912. (Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1971. Page 91.)
· Is there a sense in which philosophy is a “negative” discipline?
· Can you think of examples of philosophy “showing familiar things in an
unfamiliar aspect”?
· Discuss the concept of “certainty”. In what case, if any, can
propositions be known to be true?
II
”Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no
injustice.”
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1651. (Penguin Books, London, 1976. Page 188.)
· What is meant by this quotation from Thomas Hobbes?
· How else can justice be ensured in human society?
· Is it also necessary to have a concept of human right?
III
Drissa
When Drissa was a teenager, he left his village in Mali to look for work
in Côte d’Ivoire, where 43% of the world’s cocoa is produced. He was glad
to be offered a job on a cocoa plantation. Once on the plantation, Drissa
was forced to work very long and hard days with little to eat. If he
slowed in his work, he was beaten, likewise for an attempt to leave the
farm. At night he was locked into a small room with other men. Drissa was
more than 300 hundred miles away from home, in a foreign country, far from
any settlement, and he didn’t even know exactly where he was.
www.freetheslaves.net
Dangoule
16-year-old Dangoule Rasalaite left Lithuania for Sweden with a false
passport to work on a vegetable farm. She was collected from the airport
by a man who brought her to an appartement in Malmö, locked her in, and
explained that she owed him money for the passport and the trip. Then the
man took away her passport. To pay back the money, Dangoule had to
prostitute herself, her “employer” provided the clients.
www.ihmisoikeudet.net
· What moral problems can you point in Drissa’s and Dangoule’s stories?
· How could slavery be justified?
· Why is slavery banned by the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights?
