Multiple Choice:
The multiple choice questions will cover the material we have studied
so far. While you should review both the lecture notes on my blog as
well as the readings for each week, below are listed the concepts and
points with which you should be familiar.
Origins & History of European Philosophy:
philosophy as thinking about thinking, opposition of belief &
doubt, dogmatism & skepticism, knowledge & wisdom, innovations
in the Tang & Song dynasties of China, Chinese mechanics, Islamic
algebra, Al Kindi & science, Al Farabi & imagination, Avicenna’s
floating man & psychology, Analytic & Continental split after
Kant, exclusive objectivity vs collective subjectivity, science vs art,
logical vs personal, clarity vs complexity, counter traditions of
Utilitarianism & Pragmatism
Rationalism:
opposition to Empiricism, reason reveals the universal, threat of
skepticism, Descartes & deceiving demon, dualism of body &
material mechanics vs mental & spiritual freedom, self-certainty
leading to mathematics and God, Spinoza & community vs heresy,
attack on Descartes’ dualism, pantheism, waves on the ocean, determinism
& illusion of freedom, Leibniz & binary system influenced by
China, best of all possible worlds, pre-established harmony of monads,
principle of identity/noncontradiction, principle of identity of
indiscernibles, principle of sufficient reason, sublime spirits vs
Empiricist dogs
Empiricism:
Locke & political rights with checks & balances, child as blank
slate, continuity of consciousness as identity, primary vs secondary
qualities, knowledge as probable and complex, Hume & all conceptions
are assumptions/habits/prejudices, impressions & ideas, billiard
table and causation, knight & dragon of skepticism, reason more
doubtful than sensation, skepticism vs passion & employment
Idealism:
Berkeley & immaterialism, apple as thing & fruit in the mind,
Johnson kicking the rock, substance as perception, recognition of
other’s ideas, Kant & universal morality, thing-in-itself, a priori
vs a posteriori, analytic vs synthetic, the synthetic a priori,
transcendent vs transcendental, understanding vs reason, categories of
cause & substance, freedom to be objective, island in the sea, ought
& is
Phenomenology:
Fichte & noumena as phenomena, self-consciousness as social
construct, intersubjectivity, assertion of Das Ich & resistance,
German nationalism, Schelling & opposition of expansion &
contraction, negation & mediation, Hegel & French Revolution,
dialectic & synthesis, semblance, sublation, self-completing
skepticism, determinate negation, contradiction as life, three stages of
history, master & slave, sense-certainty to perception to essences
to final system, Merleau-Ponty & corporeal subjectivity, partiality
of perspective, open world, Lakoff’s hard-wired metaphors
Pessimism:
Romantics & German Pessimism, Schopenhauer & will, thought as
motivated, individuation of abstraction, science vs art, history of
village & empire, living irrational world, Upanishads &
Buddhism, knot of the world, pendulum of boredom & pain, music,
animals knowing their names, Kierkegaard & the solitary individual,
unorthodox subjective Christianity, traitor vs spy, Socrates &
Irony, no objective determination, leap of faith, choosing oneself
Nietzsche:
Opposition to nationalism, Apollonian vs Dionysian, Heraclitus &
apes, philosophy as personal interpretation, reality as individual
construction, right to fault & contradiction, distrusting oneself,
conflict as desirable, creativity as virtue, mind as plurality of
drives, fictions of language & logic, self-deception good & bad,
life-affirming vs life-denying, revenge & pity, resentiment, Jesus
as immoralist, the superman
Short Answers:
Pick four topics from the list below. For each of your choices, write a
half page in each of the spaces provided. You should demonstrate that
you 1) understand the meaning of the concept, 2) that you can connect it
to other material from the class, and 3) that you can apply it to
examples. If you demonstrate each of these three things and complete
the required page length, you will get full points for your answer.
Avicenna’s Floating Man Descartes’ Deceiving Demon Spinoza’s Waves on the Ocean
Spinoza’s Illusion of Freedom Leibniz’s Empiricist Dogs Locke’s Blank Slate
Locke’s Continuity as Identity Locke’s Primary Qualities Hume’s Billiard Table
Berkeley’s Apple Kant’s Synthetic A Priori Fichte’s Das Ich
Hegel’s Dialectic & System Hegel’s Master & Slave Merleau-Ponty’s Partial Perspective
Schopenhauer’s Ship Kierkegaard’s Solitary Spy Nietzsche’s Apollo vs Dionysus
Nietzsche’s Morality vs Nihilism Nietzsche’s Mind as Drives Nietzsche’s Superman
