Good Old Days
What do the Golden Apples of Hippomenes represent in Du Bois's "the Wings of Atalanta"?
The enticements of materialism and money.
Why do (scientific) experiments matter, for Francis Bacon? Why do we need them?
Because our senses are fallible.
Experiments control and correct for that fallibility.
Ultimately, experiments judge a hypothesis, not individual scientists.
Authority = experimentation
What does Nihilism mean? Where does it come from (conceptually)?
Nihilism = philosophy of nothingness, or no objective meaning/foundations for truth.
It comes from the void/abyss left by the "death of God."
"We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life."
Viktor Fankl, "Man's Search for Meaning."
= The "daily and hourly" challenge to make our lives meaningful, to be "worthy of our sufferings."
Explain the difference between W.E.B. Du Bois's and Booker T Washington's approaches to education. What did each want for the black community?
Du Bois: cultural education in the humanities (more knowledge, more power).
Washington: technical/industrial education (more money, more power).
"The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."
How do these concluding lines of King Lear summarize the whole play?
The drama unfolds because characters prefer flattery (of King Lear, including himself) than honest truth-telling.
According to Schumacher, what are the 4 Levels of Being? What is distinctive about each level?
Human (Self-awareness/consciousness)
Animal (Awareness)
Plant (Life)
Mineral (Matter)
What kind of world does Kafka depict in "On the Tram"? How does this relate to Nietzsche or Vattimo?
A world without objective meaning, a world in which "God is dead."
This world is alienating from self and others, but also allows us to see the wonder in a stranger.
"The real enemy of liberty is the person who thinks she can and should preach final and definitive truth. To put it another way: the salvation of our postmodern civilization can only be an aesthetic salvation."
Vattimo, from "Nihilism and Emancipation."
= To avoid mutual destruction, we must live life as styles or flavors or artists (aesthetically) not as objective truth claims or philosophers.
What is the Allegory of the Cave? What does it represent/mean?
Who wrote it? Where?
Plato, the Republic, Book 7.
Journey of the mind/soul through education: movement from shadows (ignorance) to real world (enlightenment).
To show the consequences of excessive charity towards others in a cruel, unjust world.
To exemplify that the Enlightened One - the one who knows and tells the real Truth - often does die.
What does "Tolle Lege" mean? Where did we read it? What was happening?
"Take up and read. Take up and read."
Augustine heard a voice tell him this in the garden of Book 8 of the Confessions.
Who wrote the Parable of the Madman? What is it meant to show/teach?
Nietzsche
The consequences of disbelief in God.
The need for a radical reorientation.
The importance of honesty.
"The known mut be in the knower after the manner of the knower... There is nothing, however, that the divine intellect does not actually know, and nothing that the human intellect does not know potentially..."
Aquinas, "On Truth."
Truth is conformity (adequation) between God's mind (intellect), the human mind, and the thing known (object).
Why did the Athenians have Socrates killed? How does this relate to the Allegory of the Cave?
They killed him for "corrupting the minds of the youth" (through reason, rather than reliance on tradition).
In the Allegory of the Cave, the prisoners turn on the enlightened one and try to kill him.
As a cautionary tale, what was the overall warning we took away from Shelly's Frankenstein?
The danger of a reductionistic scientism (Bacon).
The danger of trying to "play God" through science.
The danger of not controlling consequences, even with our best intentions.
What is the privation theory of evil? How does it "solve" the Problem of Evil?
Privation theory: Evil has no substance; it is not a thing. Evil is the absence of Good.
If Evil is not a created thing, God cannot be faulted for having created it.
What's the link between the Death of Socrates and the Death of Sophie Scholl we saw in the movie? Why is she killed? Why does she go along with her death?
Enlightened ones are often persecuted by the unenlightened cave-prisoners. She is seen as a threat to the status quo and system, but she gives her life for "the Idea."
"Calm and cheerful was her manner, though modest, pure and honorable her charm as she coaxed me to come and hesitate no longer, stretching kindly hands to welcome and embrace me, hands filled with a wealth of heartening examples."
The Vision of Lady Continence
Book 8, Augustine's Confessions.
= A sexually chaste life was not as impossible, boring and barren as Augustine had previous thought. Instead, Continence (self-control) is attractive and possible.
in "On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral sense," where does the concept of Truth for Nietzsche come from? What does the concept of Truth *do*?
It comes from our desire to control and dominate others.
"Truth" allows us to manipulate others.
How old was Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein?
18/19.
For Augustine, why was Manicheenism an obstacle for conversion to Christianity?
(2) It posited that matter was evil (which means the Incarnation of Jesus would make no sense).
According to Vattimo, what's the primary difference between modern and post-modern views of history?
Modern: linear, teleological (pointing to an end).
Post-modern: non-linear, no internal logic or meta-narrative to all of history. This require a kind of tourism in history.
"So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil."
WEB Du Bois, "Of the Training of Black Men."
= That real, objective Truth is liberating and empowering him to live above the divisions of racism/the color line.