School of Life Literature and Philosophy Review Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key authors, philosophical concepts, literary works, and psychological theories from the School of Life summaries.

Moral Reform (Jane Austen)

Jane Austen's primary artistic ambition to make readers less selfish, more rational, and more considerate of others, rather than merely chronicling Regency social manners.

Mutual Education (Jane Austen)

Austen's concept of marriage in Pride and Prejudice, asserting that the ideal partner helps one outgrow flaws rather than simply accepting them as they are.

Internal Exile (James Baldwin)

The psychological practice of behaving like visitors in one's own country—detached from local pettiness, status games, and small-minded expectations without needing physical emigration.

Tragicomedy (Samuel Beckett)

A dramatic style characteristic of Samuel Beckett that delivers profound bleakness and existential angst through black comedy and precise prose.

Ithaca (C. P. Cavafy)

A symbolic ultimate destination in Cavafy's poetry, representing how life's true fulfillment stems from the growth and wisdom gathered during the journey rather than the arrival.

The Absurd (Albert Camus)

Camus's philosophical concept, portrayed in The Plague, that all human beings are permanently vulnerable to random, meaningless catastrophe.

Decency (Albert Camus)

In The Plague, Dr Rieux's definition of ethical action against suffering: simply doing one's job tirelessly without believing in a final victory over death.

The Descent of Man (Charles Darwin)

Darwin's 1871 book arguing that humans remain psychologically at the same moral level as their ancestors, deliberately avoiding the term 'ascent' because he rejected moral progress.

Empathetic Identification (Charles Dickens)

Dickens's literary technique of placing relatable child characters inside cruel institutions to force comfortable readers to feel empathy through personal identification.

Notes from the Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Dostoevsky's novella arguing that humans have a self-sabotaging talent for unhappiness and that solving one source of suffering merely redirects it elsewhere.

The Grand Inquisitor (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

A parable in The Brothers Karamazov showing that Christ's perfection is impossible for humans, emphasizing the need to forgive human imperfection rather than punish it.

La Bêtise (Gustave Flaubert)

A form of modern stupidity loathed by Flaubert, characterized by knowing numerous facts while lacking true understanding.

Dictionary of Received Ideas (Gustave Flaubert)

Flaubert's posthumously published satirical work targeting common clichés, bourgeois snobbery, and unthinking social conventions.

Historical Normalcy of Crisis (Edward Gibbon)

Gibbon's thesis in Decline and Fall showing that societal collapse and crisis are normal historical constants rather than signs of unique modern doom.

Classicism (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Goethe's mature philosophical shift away from idealizing Romantic passions toward accepting the practical realities, routines, and disappointments of long-term life.

Faustian Ideal (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Goethe's vision of living life fully by experiencing diverse paths—academic, hedonistic, and political—without being permanently trapped by any single one.

Stream of Consciousness (James Joyce)

A narrative style developed in Ulysses to mirror the mind's actual moment-to-moment associative sound, blending profound and trivial thoughts simultaneously.

Integritas (James Joyce)

The aesthetic concept adapted from Aquinas by Joyce, defining the first goal of art as grasping the complete integrity and unique identity of a subject with intense clarity.

Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Emerson's core principle asserting that individuals must trust their own inner intuitions and mind above inherited religious, social, and cultural traditions.

Transparent Eyeball (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Emerson's metaphor for a transcendent state where personal ego dissolves and one feels connected to a universal current of being within ordinary nature.

Kafkaesque

A state of feeling powerless, humiliated, or guilt-ridden when facing opaque, irrational administrative systems or tyrannical, unyielding authority figures.

A Hunger Artist (Franz Kafka)

Kafka's final story about a public fasting performer, serving as a bleak parable about being valued by society for the wrong reasons.

Fabrizio Corbera (Giuseppe di Lampedusa)

The aristocratic protagonist of The Leopard whose complex character highlights the deep human need to be known fully and treated with non-judgmental tenderness.

Championing of Ordinary Life (George Orwell)

Orwell's defense of everyday working-class pleasures, food, and traditions against abstract, ideologically fanatical schemes of intellectuals.

Politics and the English Language (George Orwell)

Orwell's 1946 essay attacking pretentious, jargon-laden prose and establishing guidelines for plain writing to prevent political manipulation.

Proustian Moment (Marcel Proust)

An involuntary, intense recollection of past experience triggered by a specific sensory cue, such as tasting a tea-soaked madeleine.

Art as Moral Education (Leo Tolstoy)

Tolstoy's belief that literature's chief function is to expand human kindness and tolerance by providing direct access to the hidden inner lives of others.

Deism (Voltaire)

Voltaire's theological stance advocating for a minimal, rational belief in God for social cohesion while fiercely attacking organized church institutions and fanaticism.

Optimism (Voltaire / Candide)

The philosophical doctrine satirized in Candide that asserts all evil contributes to a universal good in a perfectly ordered world.

Cultivate Our Garden (Voltaire)

The practical conclusion of Candide advocating that individuals focus on small, manageable personal projects to protect themselves from wider world distress.

De Profundis (Oscar Wilde)

The reflective essay written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, exploring suffering, self-reckoning, and his downfall.

A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf)

Virginia Woolf's essay establishing that women's intellectual freedom and artistic creation require financial independence and dedicated personal space.

Rice Theory of Character

The sociological theory suggesting that wet-rice farming fosters collaborative, precise, and group-oriented cultural habits due to collective irrigation needs.

Editing Machine (Alain de Botton)

Alain de Botton's model of a healthy mind that ranks thoughts and suppresses destabilizing ideas so a person can function daily.

Misdirected Emotion (Alain de Botton)

The concept that negative emotional states such as irritability, anxiety, or depression are unprocessed feelings detached from their true original source.