Due May 23rd at NOON.
It is my hope that in taking this course you have not focused upon the readings as mandatory material for another requirement, but have instead internalized this course’s fundamental question: How can or should humans organize themselves into communities, into societies? Although I have used the social sciences as an organizing lens to discuss this topic, the question is not limited to academic debates. This final exam, I hope, will help you to continue (because I hope that you’ll never finish) thinking through how this course relates to your life, as a citizen of a society in which we hold that individual preferences, ideas, beliefs, and visions, are the guiding lights of government. I want you to take the abstract ideas of this class and make them concrete.
So, for your final exam, I want for you to describe how, throughout the course of your life, you hope (or not) to develop, to improve, to live in, to nourish, to bring about, the “a more perfect union” – a good society. This is your final project. In fact, starting to wrestle with this question is the point of the whole semester (and, in my more optimistic moments, of our lives).
As a precondition for this assignment you need to identify, as fully as possible, your vision of what a good society is. I want you to define this by what YOU think would be good, not by your guess of what I, or anybody else, would think the good society might be. Further, I do not want you to describe the “good” society as one that you think is impossible – a land of free money hanging on trees, milk and honey, paradise on earth, etc. Your good society should be a society that you think is plausible – if not paradise, it should be what you think the best possible solution might be in the “real” world. The founders were wise in calling for “a more perfect union,” rather than “a perfect union.” Note also that I want you to focus on a society. Even if you think the good society is best explained at the level of an individual or family, you should specify the social conditions in which that individual or family should operate.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that defining your vision of the good society is the final exam. It is not – it is a precondition for the heart of your final project. Once you know what your vision is, then, proceed to tell me how, in your life, you really could imagine working towards that vision. Don’t lie to sound good, though. If you think that working to bring about some possible better world couldn’t be further from how you intend to live your life, explain that as well. And there are certainly precedents for that – from Candide, to all of the skeptics who think positive change is illusory, and/or working for the same is for suckers.
Barring tragedy, a lifetime is long, and it is possible to work for different types of social change at different times. You need not imagine that you must finish everything by the time you’re thirty – or even thirty-three. Also note that I presume, by the very nature of this question, that the world that you live in is NOT perfect, and can stand to be improved in some way. Please do not give me a glorification of the status quo. All of you, I know, can envision at least some aspects of a plausible world better than the one you live in. Also, I fully acknowledge that your answer to this question is a provisional one – and I fully hope that if you read this essay in ten years, or twenty, you would have changed.
As always, don’t labor in confusion. Contact me if you have any questions or uncertainties. I look forward to reading your responses. I have really enjoyed this semester – this year - with you all. You have been a particularly enjoyable group to work with over the course of two semesters, especially noteworthy for your tolerance and patience with my slow grading, tediously long assignments, strange sense of what constitutes a fun reading, and ambiguous discussions. I appreciate your generally good spirits and sincere efforts to engage the course material. I have had several occasions where I learned something new from your questions, comments, and writings, and as a professor, I can’t really ask for more than that.
I will be in my office to collect exams between 10:00 am and 12:00 pm on May 23rd. If you want to turn the exam in early, you may do so (whether by leaving it in my history department mailbox, using e-mail, or sliding it under my door). However, I am not responsible for any lost exam. Should I, for any reason, not receive your exam by noon on May 23rd, you will receive a zero for your exam, no excuses. So, obviously, giving me the exam in person is your best choice. If you choose to give me the exam early, it is your responsibility to make sure I receive it – not mine. I am not responsible for bounced e-mails, wrong addresses, janitors who throw things away, or any other potential mishap. Of course the exam should be typed and double-spaced.