Sample short answer question topics
Here are some sample short answer question topics compiled from what you all worked on in discussion classes, with some additions from last year's students' suggestions.
Remember that short answer questions on the final exam will be either quotes or phrases/specialized terms for which you'll need to identify the author, explain the phrase/term/quote, and discuss in a few sentences how it relates to one of the author's other main arguments in their text.
A number of the brainstormed questions from the discussion classes were more like essay questions than short answer questions. So I tried to pull out possible phrases from those rather than providing the full questions below, since it could be confusing to have what look like essay questions be samples for short answer questions.
- narrow & wide definitions of terrorism
- categorical imperative
- rule vs. act utilitarianism
- jus in bello and jus ad bellum
- MSP and pacifism
- doctrine of double effect
- contingent and absolute pacifism
- external and internal ("spiritual") violence
- moral objectivism and moral relativism
- using people as means to ends vs. using them as mere means to ends
- adaptive preferences
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
“If we are to make sense of the view that to die is bad, it must be on the ground that life is a good and death is the corresponding deprivation or loss, bad not because of any positive features but because of the desirability of what it removes.”
“Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious or is it pious because it is loved?"
“If my argument so far has been sound, neither our distance from a preventable evil nor the number of other people who, in respect to that evil, are in the same situation as we are, lessens our obligation to mitigate or prevent that evil.”
“Among desires, some are natural and some are vain.”