The
Final Exam will cover the material from the second half of the course,
including Islam, Europe, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Sartre, Foucault and Wittgenstein. You may use material from Lewis
Carroll, Humor or Art for your short answers, but they will not be on
the test. The test will be multiple choice questions (2 points each),
and four half page short answer questions explaining a key concept we
covered, connecting it to other class material and outside examples
(life experience, nonfiction or fiction all acceptable).
Islam:
Rise of Islam, systems of scholarship, technology, cryptanalysis
(pulling out the essential factors), Avicenna’s Floating Man thought
experiment (and Descartes’ Demon)
Descartes:
Deceiving demon, proof of self-consciousness, trustworthy world and
rational facts (2 + 3 = 5), dualism of mind and body, animals as
machines
Hume:
2 types of perceptions, impressions & ideas, 2nd always come from
1st, billiard balls and causation as an idea, prejudice, assumption,
association, events consistent with belief
Hegel:
Historical explanation & dialectic (positive, negative, synthesis
as the next positive), three stages of history, master-slave dialectic,
dogmatism vs. skepticism in the mind and in history, being &
non-being as becoming
Nietzsche:
German pessimism, turn from reason to will, Dionysian vs. Apollonian,
opposites work together, truth with false, reason with emotion, truth as
seduction, falsehood necessary to life and creation, language, grammar
and logic as deceptive, creative individuality, stand between morality
and nihilism, Zarathustra as first dualist and beyond dualism
Heidegger,
Sartre & Foucault: Existentialism, (H) time as horizon of
being/meaning, authenticity as accepting becoming, closed understanding
and death, modernity & the ready-at-hand, (S) waiter in the cafe,
criticism of racism, “Hell is other people”, authentic art &
literature, (F) institutions & power/knowledge, privileged &
marginalised terms, debate with Chomsky
Wittgenstein:
Language games & forms of life, logic in the world, not within,
against reduction to a single factor (psychoanalysis and the oven),
material metaphors for the mental (toolbox, brake lever, train cabin,
sign post), ‘one-thread’ is a chord of many, meanings as everyday use,
child at the blackboard, game of catch in a field
Concepts
for Short answers include: Descartes’ deceiving Demon, Hume’s billiard
table, Hegel’s dialectical stages, Hegel’s master/slave dialectic,
Nietzsche’s individual stand, Nietzsche’s Dionysian vs. Apollonian,
Nietzsche’s truth as seduction, Heidegger’s authenticity, Sartre’s cafe
waiter, Sartre’s “Hell is other people, Foucault’s power/knowledge,
Foucault’s debate with Chomsky, Wittgenstein’s oven, Wittgenstein’s
blackboard, Wittgenstein’s chord of threads
