Flashcards in Final Exam Deck (66)
Loading flashcards...
1
Where does the word “Stoic” come from?
greek word for porch
2
According to Seneca, “the wise man will live as long as he ought, not ______________________________.”
as long as he can.”
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?
kill yourself, suicide
4
According to Epictetus, what things are up to us?
Perception, intention, desire, aversion, and in sum whatever are our own doings
5
According to Epictetus, what things are not up to us?
Body, property, reputation, political office and in sum, whatever are not our own doings
6
According to Epictetus, what are the characteristics of those things that are up to us?
Naturally free, unforbidding, unimpeding
7
According to Epictetus, what are the characteristics of those things that are not up to us?
Weak, slavish, forbidding, alien
8
According to Epictetus, what is the aim of desire?
Is to get what arouses the desire
9
Why does Epictetus say, “If you kiss your child or your wife, say that you are kissing a human being”?
Then if it dies you will not be upset
10
According to Epictetus, what upsets people?
Ideas about things
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?
Neither anyone else, or themselves
12
Epictetus says that we should never say that “we have lost” anything, instead, what ought we say?
Given it back
13
According to Epictetus, “What is proper for us to do is for the most part defined by” what?
Our social relationships
14
According to Epictetus we ought to “dispense altogether with” what?
With whatever has to do with reputation or luxury
15
According to Epictetus, “If someone tells you that somebody else is saying awful things about you,” how are you to reply?
Don’t defend yourself, say “he must not know about the other faults that I have, if these are the only ones he mentioned”
16
According to Camus, there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, what is it?
suicide
17
According to Camus, “A reason for living is also an excellent reason for _____________________.”
dying
18
According to Camus, “Beginning to think is beginning to be _____________________.”
undermined
19
Camus says that “killing yourself amounts to confessing;” confessing what?
Life is too much for you or that you do not understand it
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 __________________.”
action
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…….”
consciousness
22
What was Sisyphus’s punishment?
to push a large rock back up a hill for eternity
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 ______________________.”
scorn
24
According to Camus, “Sisyphus is the absurd _________________.”
hero
25
According to Camus, “One must imagine Sisyphus __________________.”
happy
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)
No
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 __________________,
endpoints
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).
correct
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?
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
30
According to Nagel, “a role in some larger enterprise cannot confer significance unless that enterprise is itself ________________________.” (Fill in the Blank).
significant
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).
within ourselves
32
According to Nagel, What would happen “ If we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard”?
Our lives and beliefs would collapse
33
What is Nagel’s criticism of Camus suggested response to Absurdity? How does Nagel suggest we may respond instead?
Camus recommends defiance and scorn. There is no reason to believe anything matters, then that does not matter either. Approach with irony.
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).
what .... how
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).
inwardness
36
Kierkegaard - “But since the passion of the infinite is exactly subjectivity, subjectivity is the________________________________,” (Fill in the Blank).
truth
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).
faith ... faith ...faith
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).
absurd
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?
By juxtaposing eternal, essential truth with temporal existence
40
According to Kierkegaard, what happens to the eternal truth when it “is related to an existing individual”?
Truth becomes a paradox
41
According to Kierkegaard, what is “subjectivity at its height’? put another way, what does it involve?
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
42
According to Kierkegaard, ‘What is the Absurd?’
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
43
According to Sartre, what are the two types of existentialism? What do they have in common?
• Those who are Christians, and those who are atheists
• They think existence precedes essence
44
What is the point of the paper cutter example? How is the paper cutter different from a human? What phrase captures this difference?
Essence precedes existence
45
Which philosopher does Sartre quote as describing a human-being as “human reality”?
Heidegger
46
What does Sartre say about human nature?
You can’t explain things away due to human nature
47
According to Sartre and Existentialism more generally, “If existence really does precede essence, man is ____________________ for what he is,” (Fill in the Blank).
Responsible
48
How does Sartre define “Anguish”?
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
49
Which philosopher does Sartre refer to when he talks about “the anguish of Abraham”?
Kierkegaard
50
According to Sartre, what does ‘Forlornness’ mean?
That God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of that
51
According to Sartre, what does “Despair” mean?
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
52
According to Sartre, in what sense are we “abandoned in the world”?
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
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?
The universe is expanding and the possibility of the big bang theory
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).
the universe has a cause
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?
• Agent causation
56
What is the Anthropic Principle?
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.
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,”?
Agent causation
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).
God Exists
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)
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.
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?
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.
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”?
• 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.
62
What does Ortega mean when he says that “Life is given to us empty,”? What are the consequences that follow from this?
Life comes with no purpose or meaning but it is up to us to give it meaning
63
What does Ortega mean when he says that, “Life is a poetic task”?
Since life is given to us empty we have the opportunity to write our own plot of existence, to make it appealing and exciting
64
According to Ortega, what is the one vocation common to all people?
happiness
65
According to Ortega, what is the difference between work and sport?
Sport is an effort put forth for enjoyment while work is an effort put forth with some other profit in mind
66
