09 Jul Death penalty debate (is the death penalty ever justified? should governments abolish it?)

Once you have selected a topic, you will need to take a position and clearly formulate this as a thesis statement. This can be a very simple sentence such as ”in this paper, I will show that the death penalty is unethical and should be abolished” or ”in this paper, I will argue that euthanasia is morally justifiable in some situations”. You need to include your thesis statement at the very beginning of the paper.

(2) Research your topic by looking into the debate. You will need to use 3 sources from JSTOR for this section. Once you have done the research, you will need to discuss both sides of the debate and what scholars have written about it. For example, if you are writing about the death penalty, you will need to examine 3 scholarly articles from JSTOR, discuss both pro and anti death penalty positions, and show what the scholars have said about each position. In this section, you should not give your own opinion, but discuss the debate. This part of the paper gives the reader context on the debate so that then they can understand your opinion later on. 

(3) Select one of the philosophers that we studied–the Buddha, Kant, Mill or Sartre–and try to show how they would approach your topic. Additionally, you may discuss any of the philosophers contained in your textbook and use them as your philosopher for this paper. You do not necessarily need to look at what they said about your topic, but what implications their philosophy have on your ethical issue. For example, if you’re writing about the death penalty and you choose Kant, you could discuss how Kant might have approached the death penalty using his theory of the categorical imperative. For this section, you need to have at least 2 JSTOR scholarly articles in addition to 2 primary texts by your chosen philosopher. You can find these primary texts through the LSC online library. You will need to discuss the JSTOR article and show what scholars have said about your philosopher in relation to the ethics debate. For example, what do scholars think about Kant’s theory of the categorical imperative? Have they said anything about how he would approach the death penalty? Please do not directly quote the texts used, but refer to them and summarise their arguments. Please indicate in the introduction to your paper what philosopher you will rely on to think about your ethics topic.

Once you have (i) discussed the debate and (ii) discussed how your philosopher would have approached the debate, you will need to use what you have written to argue for your thesis. To do well in this section, you need to refer back to what both the scholars have said and what your philosopher said to argue for your thesis. Each statement you make needs to be supported by evidence; do not make statements that are unwarranted. The purpose of this section is to allow you to use the philosophers we have studied to argue for an ethics thesis.

Write a conclusion that gives the reader a take-away from your paper. This is not just a summary, but a set of conclusions based on your writing.

write a paper that has an introduction, thesis statement, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion