Final Exam

Question 1

Where does the word “Stoic” come from?

Answer 1

greek word for porch

Question 2

According to Seneca, “the wise man will live as long as he ought, not ______________________________.”

Answer 2

as long as he can.”

Question 3

According to Seneca, a person, “As soon as there are many events in [a persons life] that give him trouble and disturb his peace of mind, he sets himself free.” What does he mean?

Answer 3

kill yourself, suicide

Question 4

According to Epictetus, what things are up to us?

Answer 4

Perception, intention, desire, aversion, and in sum whatever are our own doings

Question 5

According to Epictetus, what things are not up to us?

Answer 5

Body, property, reputation, political office and in sum, whatever are not our own doings

Question 6

According to Epictetus, what are the characteristics of those things that are up to us?

Answer 6

Naturally free, unforbidding, unimpeding

Question 7

According to Epictetus, what are the characteristics of those things that are not up to us?

Answer 7

Weak, slavish, forbidding, alien

Question 8

According to Epictetus, what is the aim of desire?

Answer 8

Is to get what arouses the desire

Question 9

Why does Epictetus say, “If you kiss your child or your wife, say that you are kissing a human being”?

Answer 9

Then if it dies you will not be upset

Question 10

According to Epictetus, what upsets people?

Answer 10

Ideas about things

Question 11

According to Epictetus, “It is the act of a philosophically ignorant person to blame others for his own troubles.” Who does the educated person blame?

Answer 11

Neither anyone else, or themselves

Question 12

Epictetus says that we should never say that “we have lost” anything, instead, what ought we say?

Answer 12

Given it back

Question 13

According to Epictetus, “What is proper for us to do is for the most part defined by” what?

Answer 13

Our social relationships

Question 14

According to Epictetus we ought to “dispense altogether with” what?

Answer 14

With whatever has to do with reputation or luxury

Question 15

According to Epictetus, “If someone tells you that somebody else is saying awful things about you,” how are you to reply?

Answer 15

Don’t defend yourself, say “he must not know about the other faults that I have, if these are the only ones he mentioned”

Question 16

According to Camus, there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, what is it?

Answer 16

suicide

Question 17

According to Camus, “A reason for living is also an excellent reason for _____________________.”

Answer 17

dying

Question 18

According to Camus, “Beginning to think is beginning to be _____________________.”

Answer 18

undermined

Question 19

Camus says that “killing yourself amounts to confessing;” confessing what?

Answer 19

Life is too much for you or that you do not understand it

Question 20

According to Camus, “The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat, what he believes to be true must determine his __________________.”

Answer 20

action

Question 21

Camus - “At the end of the awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery. In itself weariness has something sickening about it. Here, I must conclude that it is good. For everything begins with _________________________ and nothing is worth anything except through it…….”

Answer 21

consciousness

Question 22

What was Sisyphus’s punishment?

Answer 22

to push a large rock back up a hill for eternity

Question 23

Camus, speaking of Sisyphus, says, “The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by ______________________.”

Answer 23

scorn

Question 24

According to Camus, “Sisyphus is the absurd _________________.”

Answer 24

hero

Question 25

According to Camus, “One must imagine Sisyphus __________________.”

Answer 25

happy

Question 26

Does Nagel think that the fact that what we do now won’t matter in a million years could constitute a good reason for life’s being absurd? (Yes/No)

Answer 26

No

Question 27

Nagel says, “First, life does not consist of a sequence of activities each of which has as its purpose some later member of the sequence. Chains of justification come repeatedly to an end within life, and whether the process as a whole can be justified has no bearing on the finality of these __________________,

Answer 27

endpoints

Question 28

Nagel says, “The standard arguments for absurdity appear therefore to fail as arguments. Yet I believe they attempt to express something that is difficult to state, but fundamentally __________________________,” (Fill in the Blank).

Answer 28

correct

Question 29

Nagel Says, “If there is a philosophical sense of absurdity, however, it must arise from the perception of something universal—some respect in which pretension and reality inevitably clash for us all.” According to Nagel, what respect is it ‘in which pretension and reality inevitably clash;’ is this the same as Absurdity as conceived of by Albert Camus? How? OR is it different? How?

Answer 29

Collision of seriousness we live our lives, and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything as arbitrary or open to doubt. For Nagel the collision takes place in our self, for Camus it takes place between our self and the world. Both are about the reasons we want or the reasons we have

Question 30

According to Nagel, “a role in some larger enterprise cannot confer significance unless that enterprise is itself ________________________.” (Fill in the Blank).

Answer 30

significant

Question 31

“Camus maintains….. that the absurd arises because the world fails to meet our demands for meaning.” Nagel responds to this position, by arguing that “the absurdity of our situation derives not from a collision between our expectations and the world, but from a collision _____________________ _______________________.” (Fill in the blanks).

Answer 31

within ourselves

Question 32

According to Nagel, What would happen “ If we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard”?

Answer 32

Our lives and beliefs would collapse

Question 33

What is Nagel’s criticism of Camus suggested response to Absurdity? How does Nagel suggest we may respond instead?

Answer 33

Camus recommends defiance and scorn. There is no reason to believe anything matters, then that does not matter either. Approach with irony.

Question 34

“In his discussion of truth, Kierkegaard says “The objective accent falls on _____________ is said; the subjective accent falls on ______________ it is said,” (Fill in the blanks).

Answer 34

what .... how

Question 35

Kierkegaard - “Objectively it is a question simply about the content of the proposition, but subjectively it is a question of_________________________,” (Fill in the blank).

Answer 35

inwardness

Question 36

Kierkegaard - “But since the passion of the infinite is exactly subjectivity, subjectivity is the________________________________,” (Fill in the Blank).

Answer 36

truth

Question 37

Kierkegaard - “Now the above definition of truth is an equivalent description of _______________. Without risk there is no ___________________. ______________ is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and objective uncertainty,” (Fill in the Blanks).

Answer 37

faith ... faith ...faith

Question 38

Kierkegaard - “To anticipate what I will develop later, Socratic ignorance is an analogy to the category of the __________________, only that there is still less objective certainty in the absurd, and therefore infinitely greater tension in its inwardness,” (Fill in the Blank).

Answer 38

absurd

Question 39

According to Kierkegaard, “the eternal truth is essential a paradox,” and so he asks the question, “How does this paradox come into existence?” How does he answer this question?

Answer 39

By juxtaposing eternal, essential truth with temporal existence

Question 40

According to Kierkegaard, what happens to the eternal truth when it “is related to an existing individual”?

Answer 40

Truth becomes a paradox

Question 41

According to Kierkegaard, what is “subjectivity at its height’? put another way, what does it involve?

Answer 41

The truth as paradox encounters the individual who is caught in sin and suffering, but who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith when he never the less makes the leap of faith

Question 42

According to Kierkegaard, ‘What is the Absurd?’

Answer 42

The eternal truth has entered time, God has entered existence, has been born, has grown, and so on, has become like any other human being

Question 43

According to Sartre, what are the two types of existentialism? What do they have in common?

Answer 43

* Those who are Christians, and those who are atheists | * They think existence precedes essence

Question 44

What is the point of the paper cutter example? How is the paper cutter different from a human? What phrase captures this difference?

Answer 44

Essence precedes existence

Question 45

Which philosopher does Sartre quote as describing a human-being as “human reality”?

Answer 45

Heidegger

Question 46

What does Sartre say about human nature?

Answer 46

You can’t explain things away due to human nature

Question 47

According to Sartre and Existentialism more generally, “If existence really does precede essence, man is ____________________ for what he is,” (Fill in the Blank).

Answer 47

Responsible

Question 48

How does Sartre define “Anguish”?

Answer 48

The man who involves himself and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a lawmaker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself, can not help escape feeling total and deep responsibility

Question 49

Which philosopher does Sartre refer to when he talks about “the anguish of Abraham”?

Answer 49

Kierkegaard

Question 50

According to Sartre, what does ‘Forlornness’ mean?

Answer 50

That God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of that

Question 51

According to Sartre, what does “Despair” mean?

Answer 51

That we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the ensemble of the probabilities which make our action possible

Question 52

According to Sartre, in what sense are we “abandoned in the world”?

Answer 52

That I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant

Question 53

As William Lane Craig notes, “in 1929 an alarming thing happened. An astronomer named Edwin Hubble discovered that the light from distant galaxies appears to be redder than it should.” What conclusions where drawn from the fact that the ‘light from distant galaxies appears to be redder than it should’? What discovery/theory did this lead to?

Answer 53

The universe is expanding and the possibility of the big bang theory

Question 54

The Author, William lane Craig argues that, “from the first premises—that whatever begins to exist has a cause—and the second premises—that the universe began to exist—it follows logically that _______________________,” (Fill in the Blank—hint: its more than one word).

Answer 54

the universe has a cause

Question 55

William Lane Craig wonders, “How can a first event come to exist if the cause of that event exists changelessly and eternally? Why isn’t the effect as co-eternal as the cause?,” How does he get around this problem?

Answer 55

• Agent causation

Question 56

What is the Anthropic Principle?

Answer 56

The universe has to be in a very particular otherwise it never would have given rise to human life, if it were any other way we would not be here to wonder why it is.

Question 57

6. What is William Lane Craig’s reply to the objection that “If everything has a cause of its existence, then the cause of the universe must also have a cause of its existence,”?

Answer 57

Agent causation

Question 58

William Lane Craig writes, “Hence, amazing as it may seem, the most plausible answer to the question of why something exists rather than nothing is that ____________ _____________,” (Fill in the Blank).

Answer 58

God Exists

Question 59

n Leibniz’s analogy from Books to the Universe, he asks three questions: Why have there always been such books? Why were these books written? Why were they written in the way they were? Explain each of these three questions in relation to the Universe; what is he really asking? (Hint: “Why has there always been a universe?” is not an acceptable answer. You must go slightly beyond that. The answers will not be clearly laid out in the text, rather I am expecting you to do some critical reasoning here. I will accept a variety of answers, provided they do more or less reflect Leibniz’s point)

Answer 59

Efficient, what set things in motion? Final, why is there a universe? Purpose of the universe. Formal, why area the properties (universal metaphysical laws) the way they are? Why are there laws? It is impossible to find a complete explanation of why the universe has always existed, why it was made and why it is the way it is. We may gain a glimpse of understanding by looking at previous states, but never a complete understanding.

Question 60

On page 3, Leibniz writes, “This also makes it obvious how God, the author of the world, can be free even though everything happens determinately.” In response to William Lane Craig’s The Kalam Cosmological Argument, I raised the objection that his argument relied on fanciful notion of agent causation. Does Leibniz’s picture of freedom, here attributed to God, fall victim to the same objection? Why or why not?

Answer 60

Yes because God is still an agent able to start events unaffected by previous events even if it is out of wisdom and perfection. Craig, agent causation is uncaused. Leibniz, god is a free actor, god is a physically necessary being, another form of agent causation.

Question 61

On page 6, Leibniz writes, “The fact that minds are specially catered for in the universe shouldn’t cause surprise, given certain facts about them.” What is the point that Leibniz is trying to make here? (Hint: Its is one of the central points of his argument). What does it mean that “minds are specially catered for”?

Answer 61

* The reason things are the way they are is that god exists, and it was his perfect choice to make us in his image. Minds are catered to since they are in the image of god. * Minds think in terms of rationality. The universe is made by minds, that is why it is rationally ordered. The universe can be made sense of by minds.

Question 62

What does Ortega mean when he says that “Life is given to us empty,”? What are the consequences that follow from this?

Answer 62

Life comes with no purpose or meaning but it is up to us to give it meaning

Question 63

What does Ortega mean when he says that, “Life is a poetic task”?

Answer 63

Since life is given to us empty we have the opportunity to write our own plot of existence, to make it appealing and exciting

Question 64

According to Ortega, what is the one vocation common to all people?

Answer 64

happiness

Question 65

According to Ortega, what is the difference between work and sport?

Answer 65

Sport is an effort put forth for enjoyment while work is an effort put forth with some other profit in mind

Question 66

In Craig’s argument, what is Hilbert’s Hotel meant to prove?

Answer 66

An actual infinite cannot exist. an infinite temporal regress is an actual infinite. therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.