Application roles from the professor:

Application of Ethical Teaching to Case

Applications will be produced after (1) writing a summary (which does not mention any case); (2) presenting your most recent, graded case (although you may sometimes write a new case). In the application, the writer will deliberate the case AS IF the character or agent in the case were to be guided by the approach presented in the summary. Applications must be at least 200 words.

An application does not ask what you would do. An application does not ask what an agent would do independently on the basis of motivations that have nothing to do with the summary. This is asking how the summary would tend to guide action in difficult cases where deliberation appears to be required.

Considering that summaries have at least three direct quotes, the usual application will have at least three guidelines to consider. For each guideline or quote, the writer should clearly express what the guideline indicates and how it would be applied to the facts of the particular case under deliberation. Introduce your ethical author early in the application. Do not introduce new quotes in the application. Sometimes a writer will discover that the quotes presented in the summary are not the best ones to use for the application. In that case the summary should be revised to include presentation of the most relevant quotes.

The agent must deliberate a choice. Even when the appropriate choice appears very difficult to decide, the agent must deliberate toward the best choice that would be indicated by the summary. Close calls make for good deliberations, allowing the writer to develop a felt tension between options. But in the end, some choice must be made. What is the better choice to make? The writer has discretion in development of cases and in choices regarding which ethical teaching to summarize. Please do your best to generate a fruitful and interesting deliberation.

Conclude your application with a clear resolution, stating the choice that the agent will make going forward.