Good Old Days
Why is Don Quixote considered the first modern novel? What makes it modern?
Meta-narration: the characters/world in the book know they are in a book. Writing aware of itself as writing.
What is the whole point of Nietzsche's Parable of the Madman?
That atheists are not honest in facing up to the consequences of disbelieving in God, and that everything must be remade/redefined from the bottom-up.
What is the subtitle of Shelley's Frankenstein?
The Modern Prometheus
How do Aquinas & Pope Benedict define love?
"To will the good for another."
"You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!"
Shelley, Frankenstein
What was the primary difference between how Weber and Lewis defined enchantment?
Weber: as a social/historical/cultural force
Lewis: as a psychological/spiritual cycle
Fill this in from Prospero: "And thence retire me to my Milan, where Every third _____ shall be my ______."
Prospero: "And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave."
What effect did learning how to read have on Douglass and the Creature in Frankenstein?
Both became painfully aware of their oppressive condition.
Because you can belong to a community without knowing all the members of that community.
"Scientific progress is a fraction, the most important fraction, of the process of intellectualization which we have been undergoing for thousands of years..."
Max Weber, "Science as Vocation."
How does Kant define "Enlightenment."
Man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
What is the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence?
The demon-inspired thought experiment that you should do only what you could will eternally again.
What made Douglass forever "unfit to be a slave"? How?
Learning how to read made him restless.
What is proper education supposed to be, for Pope Benedict?
"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world
That has such people in ’t!"
Miranda (Prospero's daughter)
What was the Luther vs. Erasmus debate about? What did each side argue?
About whether Truth should be published openly.
Erasmus: censorship is important for illiterate groups and volatile truths
Luther: truth at all costs, including deaths
When does The Tempest turn from a vengeance story to a story of forgiveness and reconciliation? (What happens in the play at this point?)
Ariel reports the suffering of the nobles to Prospero, saying: "Mine [affections] would, sir, were I human."
Who is this about?
"‘Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever-demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air:
— Gone, gone, sold and gone...
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!’ "
The death by abandonment of Douglass' grandmother.
Why are duties more fundamental and important than Rights, for Pope Benedict?
Duties are other-focused (and therefore expressions of love).
Rights are me-focused, me-first.
"Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing."
Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense."
For Lewis, what's the difference between Theoretical Reason and Practical Reason?
Theoretical Reason: Truth and Reality
Practical Reason: Good and Evil
What is the Title and Name of the Knight that beats Don Quixote in battle, forcing him to return to his village and become a shepherd?
Knight of the White Moon
Sanson Carrasco (the Bachelor/poet/friend)
What's the sequence of deaths caused by the Creature in Frankenstein?
William (younger brother)
Justine Mortiz (framed friend/servant)
Henry Clerval (Victor's best friend)
Elizabeth (cousin/fiance)
Alphonse (Father)
What does the Latin phrase "Incurvatus in se" mean?
To be turned/curved in on oneself (sin).
"The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary colour in the spectrum."
C.S. Lewis, The Poison of Subjectivism.