Pat Stansik Law, Morality, and Society Preiss 11/2/07

Rawls vs. Nozick: The Ultimate Showdown

Hey man, whats going on. Right now there is a good chance that my backpack got caught on one of your desks legs while you were moving it into the semi circular shape that we have to get into every time we do this and that you have no idea. So before you start reading my paper, could you please check because I really dont want to have to confront you about it if that did in fact happen. Thanks. Im also going to go out on a limb and guess that you are one of the many people in this class that has never heard me say anything in class in our small group discussions in which I volunteer to be the notetaker so that when our professor comes over to our group it isnt obvious that I dont even own half the books that are required for this class. I am almost positive that we probably turned to each other awkwardly a few minutes ago after realizing that every one else with our essay topic had already chosen a partner and mumbled something like You wanna do this. You must be somewhat surprised that what you thought was going to be a rough draft proclaiming whether or not John Rawls principles of justice withstood Robert Nozicks objections is pretty much me just explaining myself. Well, I have to make it look like I have a three page rough draft, and since I dont even know who John Rawls is, I figured I had to at least make it look like I fulfilled the requirement for todays peer editing session.

There is no way that the professor is going to actually read these papers, so writing a rough draft would have been a complete waste of my time. The final draft isnt due until next week, which means that as long as while you are reading this you make it seem as if you are reading a legitimate paper and dont make the professor suspicious, then we are fine. Requiring a rough draft when he isnt even going to read it, let alone skim through it to make sure that key ideas and themes such as innate self-interest, or the difference principle are present, is just asking for something like this to happen. When it comes down to it, the fact that our professor isnt willing to take the eight minutes it would take to flip through all of our papers and make sure we arent doing what Im doing right now shows me that he doesnt truly care. Plus I really need to go to sleep and get my other work that Ive put off until the very last minute done. Even if he did read these, I would be unable to produce a rough draft seeing as I havent even read any of the material and the notes I have taken are few and far between. I mean, just look at my title and try not to laugh. This whole class is pretty much about moral theories that would never actually work in our society, and every answer to every question is that every theory we have ever learned about is too idealistic. If you raise your hand and say that in this class, theres a pretty good chance youll get a good grade. If you could make it seem like you are making comments on my paper right now I would really appreciate it. I think that I might start reading these books and articles this weekend, but deep down I know that I will probably finish this paper without even reading of what this paper is supposed to be based off of. As long as I say things like the difference principle is not realistic or this would only work in a utopian society, I

think he will give me a decent grade. Well, that sentence got me very close to three pages; are we supposed to use three full pages, because he never specified. I think he probably meant three full pages but if I write it a little shorter I dont think he will mind considering he doesnt even read the papers. Hes probably coming over here pretty soon because every now and then he will scare us and swoop in on us and asks us to tell him something about the other persons paper. Tell him my ideas are strong but that my transitions need work. That seems pretty convincing. When he is talking to the other people in our group, you might even want to lean in close to me and point something out on my paper with your writing utensil. By the way, me reading your paper at this point in time probably isnt really going to help you. Well, I finished your paper and it seemed pretty good. I underlined the words that you misspelled and I probably made some comments that dont even make sense. We probably finished before the other groups so lets not start packing up because he might come over here and start to question why we were able to critique each others rough draft in such a timely manner. Again, thanks for taking the time to make it look like I actually put some effort into this. You probably just made some comment about how much work you still have left to do on your paper and how you think you are going to be fine if you start early. I would follow you out the door and continue our completely superficial conversation but my bag is stuck on your desk leg. Enjoy your weekend.