Faith and Moral Development
Fall 2003
Exam # 2

* NB:  As students at this University, please remember that you are all responsible for the honesty and integrity of everyone in this community.  That means it is your responsibility to report any and all cheating – even if it is your best friend.  To do any less would be a violation of your integrity and would cheapen any true friendship.

Essays:
    Please answer the following questions in the blue book provided in complete sentences and in legible, entirely literate prose.  Since in all cases, I have given you a choice of which questions you may answer, please remember to give the letter and number of the question you are answering in the blue book.  There is no benefit to doing more than the assigned number of questions. I will not choose the best answer.  I will grade them in order and move on.  By the same token, please don't forget to do any.  If you give some answer, I can give you some partial credit.  If you give me no words, then I can only give you no points.

A) Please answer one out of the following two questions: (10 points)

1. Discuss the results of the famous "Milgram Experiment." Why did Milgram conclude that "Men are led to kill with little difficulty"?

2. What, according to Christopher Browning (Ordinary Men, p. 184), is another "vital factor" responsible for the behavior of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 that was "touched upon but not fully explored in Milgram's experiments"?  Explain the significance.

B) Please answer one out of the following two questions: (15 points)

3. Describe the process of moral development in terms of a change from one sort of nature to another.  What sort of perspective might a Christian bring to bear with regard to this issue?  (What, in other words, would a person's Christian faith add to our understanding of why our "first nature" is not ultimately satisfactory?)

4. In class, we discussed the following questions:  What is the virtue that our culture seems especially to value today?  What virtue would men and women in our culture have valued more in, say, 1930 or 1940?  What are the pro's and con's of each?

C) Please answer one out of the following two questions: (15 points)

5. How might one's faith tradition aid in the process of moral instruction?  -- What resources might one find there?

6. Describe the following categories we discussed in class:  
(a) utilitarian individualism,
(b) expressive individualism.
Of which political party in America is each view characteristic?  What attitude about human nature is shared by both views?  In class, we discussed a possible alternative to both views.  What was it?

D) Please answer one out of the following two questions: (15 points)

7. What are some of the factors that caused the "ordinary men" of Reserve Police Battalion 101 to be able to do the things they did in Jozefow, Poland?  What, in other words, were the reasons these men cited for not excusing themselves from the killing?

8. On p. 150, Browning discusses one of the possible reasons for the reluctance on the part of the former soldiers to admit to their previous anti-Semitism, and he says:  "To admit an explicitly political or ideological dimension to their behavior, to concede that the morally inverted world of National Socialism -- so at odds with the political culture and accepted norms of the 1960s -- had made perfect sense to them at the time, would be to admit that they were political and moral eunuchs who simply accommodated to each successive regime."  Explain what Browning means.  How can people avoid becoming "political and moral eunuchs"? [In giving your answer, you might do well to call upon knowledge you have gained from your other reading in the class.]

E) Please answer one out of the following two questions: (15 points)

9. On p. 152, Browning talks about the "range of attitudes" towards Jews "revealed in less direct and guarded statements" made during the interrogations of the former reserve police battalion members.  Discuss the dichotomy of reactions to the Jews.  Why do you suppose there were these two very different reactions among the men?. A similar point is made about the German memory of Polish anti-Semitism.  What did the Germans think of the actions of the Poles who surrendered Jews to them?  What sort of mitigating factors does Browning point out?  Consider again the reactions of the German soldiers to the Jews, on the one hand, and the anti-Semitic Poles, on the other.  Now compare this phenomenon with the what Hallie suggests was the case with Henry David Thoreau when he looked upon the dead bodies on the beach at Hull and looked inside one of the "charity huts" in the area.  In both cases, what did the person see?  When you look upon circumstances, what do you see?  Compare this to what John Paul II says in his encyclical Veritatis splendor  about "how we are made holy" -- by "obedience" to what?

10. If the Jozefow killers were not specially selected by the government, were they perhaps "self-selected"?  Explain the thesis of Theodor Adorno in this regard.  What was Zygmunt Bauman's response to Adorno's thesis?  Explain the results of Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment.  According to Browning, what light does Zimbardo's study shine on the Adorno-Bauman debate?

F) Please answer one out of the following two questions: (15 points)

11. In discussing "Role and Rule in Determining Prosocial Action and Responsibility," Prof. Blumenthal discusses a threefold typology of motivation that had originally been suggested by the husband-and-wife team Samual and Pearl Oliner:  there is (a) the empathically oriented motivation;  (b) the normocentrically oriented motivation;  and (c) the motivation based on "principles."  Describe each, and mention which of the three seems to be the most common motivator among people.

12. In the next section (starting p. 45), Prof. Blumenthal suggests that "role and rule" also play an important part in determining antisocial action and responsibility.  What does this mean?  What evidence for this position does he find in the following:  
(a) the Zimbardo experiment at Stanford, and
(b) the conflict at My Lai?

G) Please answer one out of the following two questions: (15 points)

11. In a section entitled "Toward a Field Theory of That Which Facilitates Both Good and Evil," Prof. Blumenthal lays out "six dimensions shared by the phenomena which facilitate good and those which facilitate evil."  What are they?  Please briefly describe each.  Note, by the way, that what Blumenthal calls "character" is not exactly what we were describing when we were talking about "character" and the development of the virtues.  Discuss the difference.

12. Browning suggests that "modern bureaucratic life fosters a functional and physical distancing."  Discuss what he means.  Then describe the following means by which bureaucracies can accomplish this "functional and physical distancing": segmentation and routinization, the depersonalizing aspects of bureaucratized killing, the desensitizing effects of the division of labor.


Extra Credit (Possible +3 points):

At the end of p. 189, Christopher Browning (Ordinary Men) asks the following troubling question:  "If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?"  What would be your evaluation?