The topic is more creative — you will need to build a dialogue. I have also attached it in MSWord format, so you can download it ans use it as your template for writing your dialogue.

Final Essay topic

Please continue the dialogue below until you reach 1500 words in total (so you write about 1300 words).

Rules:

1. Involve in the dialogue: Plato, Aristotle, and De Pizan.
2. Have long enough sentences spoken by each. Don’t exaggerate with sentences like “Yes” or “No”, or “Indeed”.
3. I will evaluate your dialogue according to how well you represent these three authors in the dialogue.
4. Do not depart too much from the topic I have set up. In other words, do not change the topic too much unless the new topic is clearly connected with what has been going on.
5. Each character should both challenge what another character has said, and defend himself or herself against those challenges.
5. Do not copy any sentences from your colleagues. I will check for originality.

Dialogue starts (characters: Plato, Aristotle, De Pizan) – Your essay starts here (in your submission delete whatever I wrote above – rules, etc.)

Aristotle: I respect my teacher, Plato’s work very much, but his mistake is to think that “the good” is universal. When it comes to human affairs, the good is very diverse. My virtue ethics accommodates this fact, as I don’t offer a universal recipe for the good life, but tell you what it means to be virtuous according to various particular situations.

De Pizan: Well, you talk about virtue relative to one’s social or gender identity. You say, for instance, that women’s virtue is something different from men’s virtue, and that women’s virtue has to do with raising the children and taking care of the household. That does not seem very sophisticated and well thought through. Women are no different from men in value, even when it comes to science, philosophy, politics, and matters of state administration. So a woman who has undeniable talent for military strategy would, according to you, not be virtuous, because she would rather be on the battlefield organizing and leading the troops than at home cooking for you. That seems absurd.

Plato: At least, in the Republic I explicitly mention that women can very well be guardians and some of them even elite guardians, to qualify for ruling. I do believe that human value is independent of gender. Of course, I also say that producers, people born with lower intellectual capacities, are not to be allowed to meddle in military or state affairs, but that is not a prejudice, as Aristotle’s view about women seems to, but an empirical observation to the effect that a state run by ignorant people would be inefficient and would soon be destroyed.