Chapter 7-Romanticism And Existentialism

Question 1

The philosophy that stresses the uniqueness of each person and that values irrationality much more than rationality. According to the romantic, people can and should trust their own natural impulses as guides for living

Answer 1

Romanticism

Question 2

Describe the general characteristics of romanticism

Answer 2

Emphasized the importance of the irrational components of human nature such as emotions, intuitions, and instincts

Studied the whole person not just his or her rational powers or empirically determined ideas

Sought to elevate human emotions, intuitions, and instincts from the inferior philosophical position they had occupied to one of being the primary guides for human conduct.

The good life with one lived in accordance with one’s inner nature, the great philosophical systems were no longer to be trusted, signs was also seen as antithetical or at best a irrelevant to understanding humans

Question 3

Considered the father of modern romanticism. He believed that human nature is basically good and that the best society is one in which people subjugate their individual will to the general will. The best education occurs when education is individualized and when a students natural abilities and curiosity are recognized

Answer 3

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Question 4

Describe Rousseau’s views with respect to feelings versus reason

Answer 4

The only justifiable government was one that allowed humans to reach their full potential and to fully express their free will. The best guide for human conduct is a persons honest feelings and inclinations. He distrusted reason, organize religion, science, and societal laws as guides for human conduct

Question 5

Rousseau’s term for a human not contaminated by society. Such a person, he believed, would live in accordance with his or her true feelings, would not be selfish, and would live harmoniously with other humans

Answer 5

The noble savage

Question 6

According to Rousseau, the innate tendency to live harmoniously with one’s fellow humans

Answer 6

General will

Question 7

Describe Rousseau’s views with respect to education

Answer 7

Education should take advantage of natural impulse is rather then distort them. Should not consist of pouring information into children in a highly structured school. Rather, education should create a situation in which a child’s natural abilities and interests can be nurtured. The child has a rich array of positive instincts, and the best education is one that allows these impulses to become actualized

Question 8

Believed that the will to survive is the most powerful human motive. Life is characterized by a cycle of needs and need satisfaction, and need satisfaction simply postpones death. The most people can do is to minimize the irrational forces operating within them by sublimating or repressing those forces

Answer 8

Arthur Schopenhauer

Question 9

According to Schopenhauer, the powerful need to perpetuate one’s life by satisfying ones biological needs

Answer 9

Will to survive

It is the most powerful drive toward self-preservation, not the intellect and not morality. To satisfy our will to survive, we must eat, sleep, eliminate, drink, and engage in sexual activity. The pain caused by an unsatisfied need causes us to act to satisfy the need. When the neatest satisfied, we experience momentary satisfaction or pleasure, which lasts only until another need arises, and it goes on. When all needs are satisfied, we experience boredom

Question 10

Describe Schopenhauer’s views regarding the relationship between intelligence and happiness

Answer 10

Suffering varies with awareness. Plant suffer no pain because they lack awareness. The lowest species of animals and insects suffer more, and higher animal still more. Human suffer the most, especially the most intelligent humans

The suffering caused by wisdom had a nobility associated with it but that the life of a fool was simply without hire meaning. For the intellectually gifted, solitude has two advantages: allows him or her to be alone with their thoughts, and it prevents needing to deal with intellectually inferior people

Question 11

Describe Schopenhauer views regarding the relationship between life and death

Answer 11

Life is the postponement of death, in this life and death struggle, death must always be the ultimate Victor. People do not clean to life because it is pleasant, they cling to life because they fear death

Question 12

Describe Schopenhauer’s views regarding the roles of sublimation and denial

Answer 12

Humans can and should rise above the powerful and irrational forces of the world. With great effort, humans are capable of approaching nirvana, a state characterized by freedom from a rational strivings. Anticipated Freud’s concept of sublimation when he said that some relief or escape from the rational forces within us can be attained by immersing ourselves in activities that are not need related and therefore cannot be frustrated or satiated, activity such as poetry, theater, art, music, or unselfish nonsexual sympathetic love

Question 13

Describe Schopenhauer’s views regarding unconscious motivation

Answer 13

He observed that all humans have positive or intellectual and rational, and negative, or animalistic impulses.

He spoke of repressing undesirable thoughts into the unconscious and of the resistance encountered when attempting to recognize repressed ideas. Freud credited Schopenhauer as being the first to discover these processes

Question 14

Describe the concept of the will to survive and explain its consequences

Answer 14

The will to survive causes and an ending cycle of needs and need satisfaction. Momentary pleasure is experienced when I need a satisfied, but what all needs are satisfied, we experience boredom

Question 15

The philosophy that examines the meaning in life and stresses the freedom that humans have to choose their own destiny. Lake romanticism, this philosophy stressed subjective experience and the uniqueness of each individual

Answer 15

Existentialism

Question 16

Claimed that humans could no longer rely on religious superstition or metaphysical speculation as guides for living; instead, they must determine life’s meaning for themselves. By exercising their will to power, people can continue to grow and overcome conventional morality. The term superman describe those who experimented with life and feelings and engaged in continuous self-overcoming

Answer 16

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Question 17

According to Nietzsche, that part of us that seeks order, tranquility, and predictability

Answer 17

Apollonian aspect of human nature

Question 18

According to Nietzsche, that part of us that seeks chaos, adventure, and passionate experiences

Answer 18

Dionysian aspect of human nature

The best art and literature reflects a fusion of these two tendencies, and the best life reflects controlled passion

Question 19

Describe Nietzsche’s positions with respect to psychology

Answer 19

He views himself as primarily a psychologist. Much of what would later appear in Freud’s writings appeared first in Nietzsche’s and both shared the goal of helping individuals gain control of their powerful, irrational impulses in order to live more creative, healthy lives

People must learn to modify their Dionysian impulses with the Apollonian rationality. Can be done through sublimation. Without the Dionysian influence, the Apollonian aspect of personality would be without emotional content and without the Apollonian influence, the Dionysian aspect of personality would remain formless.

Question 20

Nietzsche’s contention that there are no universal truths, only individual perspectives

Answer 20

Perspectivism

Question 21

Describe Nietzsche’s positions with respect to The death of God

Answer 21

He announced that God was dead and that we had killed him. Bye we he meant the philosophers and scientists of his day, and because we humans had relied on God for so long for the ultimate meaning of life and for our own conceptions of morality, we are lost now that he is dead.

There is no God who cares for us, our species occupies no significant station in the animal kingdom, and the earth is just one more meaningless heavenly body.

There are no abstract truth waiting to be discovered by all; there are only individual perspectives-perspectivism

Question 22

According to Nietzsche, beliefs that are thought to correspond to some absolute truth and, as such, are immutable and dangerous

Answer 22

Convictions

Question 23

According to Nietzsche, beliefs that are tentative and modifiable in light of new information and, therefore, reasonable

Answer 23

Opinions

Question 24

According to Nietzsche, The basic human need to become stronger, more complete, more superior. While satisfying this need, a person continually becomes something other than he or she was

Answer 24

Will to power

The answer to our predicament can be found only within ourselves. Humans need to acquire knowledge of themselves and then act on that knowledge. Such self examination reveals that the most basic human motive is the will to power. Believed that humans are basically a rational but thought that the instinct should not be repressed or sublimated but should be given expression. Even aggressive tendencies to not be totally inhibited. The will to power can be fully satisfied only if a person acts as he or she feels

Question 25

The name Nietzsche gave to those individuals who have the courage to rise above conventional morality and heard conformity and to follow their own inclinations instead. Can be translated as Overman, higherman, or superman

Answer 25

Supermen

Question 26

Describe the extent to which misinterpretations of Nietzsche’s concept of supermen have taken place

Answer 26

Was embraced by the German national Socialists, or the Nazis, who claimed that the German people were the supermen to whom he referred. Superman meant superior men, and the Germans were, they believed, superior.

Question 27

A period during which Western philosophy embraced the belief that unbiased reason or the objective methods of science could reveal the principles governing the universe. Once discovered, these principles could be used for the betterment of humankind

Answer 27

Enlightenment