Cultural Encounters
Format MLA
Volume of 2 pages (550 words)
Assignment type : Essay
Description
The Native American Church is a religious movement which combines Native American and Protestant beliefs. The Church’s rites involve the use of peyote – a psycho-active drug, thought by some of its users to induce a profound meditative state. In the 1980s, Alfred Leo Smith and Galen Black, both members of the Native American Church, were employed as counsellors at a drug rehabilitation clinic in the U.S. state of Oregon. At that time, use of peyote was prohibited under Oregon law. When Smith and Black were found to have taken peyote, they lost their jobs as drug counsellors, and they were then denied unemployment benefits, on the grounds that they had been dismissed for misconduct. Smith and Black challenged this decision, arguing that it violated their right to freely exercise their religion. Ultimately, their legal challenge was unsuccessful. However, the case led to a change in Oregon state law: the law now includes an exemption, allowing the use of peyote for religious purposes, provided that it is not used in a dangerous manner. Guidance Note: This question relates to the learning outcome for Philosophy, in that it aims to test your understanding of how philosophers use arguments and how they appeal to general, theoretical principles to answer philosophical questions about particular cases. You can, if you wish, find more details about this case online, but there is no need to do so: you are being asked to focus on the details of the case as they are presented above. Bear in mind, too, that the discussions online generally consider the issue from a legal point of view. Here, you are being asked to consider the case from a philosophical perspective – in particular, the perspective of liberalism as a philosophical theory – and your essay will be graded on that basis. You may wish to begin by giving a brief account of how the question fits into the wider debate about difference-blind liberalism. However, you should not spend 38 long on this. The main task is to examine the proposition that an exemption should be granted in this case. You should aim to present one or two arguments in favour of this proposition and one or two against. You should not try to cover every relevant argument: the idea is to select a small number so that you have space to set them out carefully. You should focus primarily on the arguments discussed in the study materials, but you can add your own points if you wish. You will be given credit for presenting the arguments as clearly and precisely as possible, while paying attention to the details of the case as described above. Finally, you should try to offer one or two reasons for preferring one view over another. You might do that as you go along or you can leave this until the end of the essay. However, you may decide that the issue depends on some matter of fact that is not settled by the description of the case given here: if so, it is perfectly acceptable to conclude that the issue depends on this, rather than reaching a definite conclusion in your essay.
