The purpose of this argumentative essay is to allow students to demonstrate how

The purpose of this argumentative essay is to allow students to demonstrate how much they have learned in the course. Students will argue for a thesis on one side of the ethics of forgiveness discussion as presented in The Sunflower book. Do you believe Simon W. in particular or the Jews (past and present) are morally obligated to forgive Germans who contributed to the Holocaust and have now apologized? Or by extension, is any person who has experienced a grave evil personally or within their family or people group obligated to forgive the perpetrator(s)? Do you believe Simon W. would be wrong to forgive the Nazi soldier who had killed many Jews? Why or why not?
To argue for your side, be sure to explain what forgiveness is, how it’s connected to other moral goods such as reconciliation, justice, etc. Make sure to integrate ideas from different ethical theories we discussed in Sandel’s book that may illuminate your own view or the views others hold on the opposite side of the discussion from yourself. In other words, you should be prepared to thoroughly defending your own view by considering objections to your view and then replying to those objections.
To earn an A, the paper should primarily engage The Sunflower book and other course materials, but using outside sources is permissible and can help boost the grade. Good outside sources will be from academic journal articles, books by the relevant experts, or other academic resources. Blogs, online news sources, and other popular
media-type outlets do NOT count. The paper must use properly formatted in-text citations and include a reference list that conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style. Use either footnotes or the author-date system and include a reference list on the last page.
Other Requirements: 1500-2000 words; Double-spaced; No cover page; Name and title at the top center of first page; Page numbers on the bottom right of each page; Standard twelve-point font (e.g. Times New Roman); One inch margins; .doc or .rtf file format only; The introduction should be no more than half a page. The conclusion should only review the main points. The paper should be a standard five paragraph argumentative essay (no more and no less than five paragraphs), which means an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
The thesis statement requirement:the last sentence of the introduction should be the complete thesis statement that clearly states your point of view. The topic sentence requirement: the first sentence of each body paragraph should act as a topic sentence and state the philosophical idea being analyzed.