Respond to one viewing/reading source (200 words minimum) and then to at least two other student posts (15 points/5 pts/5 pts). At least 300 words total are expected (add word count). Write directly in the typing field. Remember that you may have to wait until someone chimes in on another topic than yours -- hence obliging you to go back and rejoin the discussion.For this week’s discussion board, choose one of these three topics and respond to all questions. Each option will require a bit of research, but all allow you to show off your creative-writing skills, if you choose: Please note that the Cicero readings are in the textbook and also posted in this week's module: 1. Cicero, On Duty. What responsibilities does the great Roman orator believe that people have towards their society? Is he encouraging altruism or self-interest -- or both? What are the results of successful diplomacy? What do you feel people owe society, if anything? Justify your position from personal and/or public experience -- in other words, things that have happened to you and/or to someone in the public eye (politicians, celebrities, historical personalities). 2. Pliny the Younger, Letters. This will require a bit of research. First, write a paragraph summarizing the event that Pliny the Younger describes. Be sure to tell us what happened to Pliny the Elder and also to the neighboring city of Herculaneum. Feel free to imagine the experience of surviving a natural disaster -- think Mt. Saint Helens, Hurricane Katrina, or our recent wildfires and floods! Then pick one of the many discoveries from Pompeii, furnishing a link and/or image. This might be a building, a sculpture, or a fresco. Using our 3-step art criticism rubric (formal/social/symbolic context), describe it, telling us its history and associations, and why you chose it. To comment on some else's post, explain why you agree/disagree with their choice and refer them to a similarly intriguing artwork (not necessarily from Pompeii).3: Triumvirat Presents Pompeii. After watching the BBC docudrama, listen to the musical retelling of the story by the German prog-rock group. How effectively does the concept album capture the human tragedy in musical terms? Considering it like a piece of musical theater, what scenes from Pompeiian life do the compositions imagine? Explain how the music impacts you, and under what circumstances you actually listened to it. You must discuss at least three of the songs, referring to lyrics and/or musical motifs to illustrate your points.

1. In this week's module we saw that the ethics of care views human life in terms of cycles of attachment. Overlapping relations and cycles of relations make up who we are as individuals. We do not get a sense of who we are by detaching ourselves from our relations with others. This contrasts with the conception of defining the self in separation from and even opposition to others. Do you agree with the idea that we are who we are in terms of our relations, and that we are neither independent nor separate?2.  In the AVP for this week we also saw that Gilligan rejects Kohlberg's assumption of a hierarchical ordering that places abstract thinking above thinking in terms of narratives involving human relations when trying to gauge the moral development of individuals. Do you see her critique as a strong one? And if so, what might the success of her critique suggest about employing similar feminist approaches to other areas of the Western philosophical tradition beyond just ethics—such as metaphysics or epistemology? These disciplines too, have tacitly assumed—at least since the Enlightenment—that genuine insight into the nature of reality and the structure of truth is to be arrived at via a penchant for abstract thinking, universalizable principles, and a strict adherence to rationality. For instance, how might a feminist, or what other philosopher's have called a “Communitarian”, approach to the metaphysical question concerning the nature of the individual, or self—and what it means to be one—contrast with what Hobbes or Kant took the self to be? PLEASE DON'T BID IF YOU CAN'T FALL WITHIN MY BUDGET THAT'S WHY I SET ONE. NO PLAGIARISM