Philosophy, Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail:”
Consider Martin Luther King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail:”
1. How are Peirce’s first three methods for fixing belief pertinent to racial
practices in Birmingham at the time of King’s letter?
2. What did King learn from Socrates or Descartes?
3. What did King learn from Rousseau?
A. What is comparable in King’s time to Rousseau’s “state of nature”? Why
did King believe that that condition was intolerable?
B. What was King’s version of the social contract?
C. What, in King’s formulation, is the role of the general will?
4. How is the conflict between Mill’s On Liberty and Utilitarianism reflected in
the irresolution in King’s cure for segregation?