Perspectives Vocab Fall 2025

Fall '25, Prof. Noval

Which figure of Greek Mythology said, “You’ll never persuade me to give up the truth,” ironically.

Oedipus

Which character in Oedipus does the quote, “You, Oedipus, your misery teaches me to call no mortal blessed,” come from?

Chorus of Oedipus

Pollution of Bloodguilt

The notion that murder and/or murders defiled the land and community where they resided, requiring exile or purgation of bloodguilt by killer’s death.

Scapegoat

The figure whose expulsion/persecution/death relieves the community’s (internal and environmental) strife.

Ontology

The fundamental nature or principles of being or reality.

Cosmos

Greek word for “order” which comes from “beauty” and “universe/world”.

Cosmogony

A narrative that explains how the cosmos came to be.

Theogony

A narrative that explains how the gods came to be.

Polytheism

The acknowledgement and worship of multiple divine/supernatural realities.

Monolatry

The worship of only one divine being, while acknowledging the existence of others.

Myth

A narrative account meant to explain fundamental realities of the world; involves god or gods; recited to keep its community together in its fundamental vision or practices.

Theological anthropology

An account for human nature in light of some divine revelation.

Divine revelation

Granting of knowledge that we can’t access by God/gods.

Prophets

Those who recieve divine revelation

Image of God

The doctrine that humans reflect some features of God and exist in relation to God.

The “fall”

The story of humanity’s disobedience and subsequent exile from paradise into death.

Who are the subjects of the passage, “And the eyes of the two were opened, and they knew they were naked” (Genesis 3:7)?

Adam and Eve after consuming the forbidden fruit.

Etiology

A story that explains an origin (ex. custom or place name).

Right of Primogeniture

“Primo”, meaning first, “geniture”, meaning birth; the right of the firstborn to inherit most or all of the father’s property.

Who said, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the soil” (Genesis, 4:15), and to who?

God to Cain

What does the quote, “The Lord set a mark upon Cain so that whoever found him would not slay him” (Genesis, 4:15), describe?

The Lord protects Cain by saying he will avenge him 7 times.

Mimicry

Imitation of another’s actions

Mimesis

Imitation of another’s desire

Model/Mediator

One who mediates a desire

Acquisitive Mimesis

Desire for a model’s object

Metaphysical Mimesis

Desire for a model’s status

Restricted Object/Status

An object of desire that can not be shared.

Covenant

A treaty between God and individuals or a nation, sometimes with mutual obligations and promises.

Anthropromorphism

The depiction of divine beings with human characteristics

Election

God’s choice of one person or nation over another for God’s own reasons and purposes.

Sin

The choice to let oneself be overtaken by disordered desire

What does Jacob’s new name, ‘Israel’ mean?

He who strives with God

Who says, “For seeing your face is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis), and to who?

Jacob to Esau

Dei Verbum

Catholic teaching document on how to interpret Scripture (Bible).

Divine Providence

Latin for “foresight”. The doctrine that God directs all earthly events, including moral evil, towards the greater good of the whole.

Who said, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good” (Genesis), and to who?

Joseph to his brothers

Theodicy

A justification of God’s causing evil and suffering

The Inconsistent Triad

God is good; God is all-powerful; unjust suffering exists

Retribution Theology

The belief that people will get what they deserve; evil actions elicit curse, righteous actions elicit reward.

Retributive Justice

To punish evil and to reward righteousness

Free will of Theodicy

God responds to free choices through retributive justice.

What does “The Satan” mean?

Hebrew for “accuser, adversary”. A divine being subordinate to God.

Who said, “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”, and in response to who?

Job in his first response to God

Who said, “I am angry at you and your two friends, because you have not spoken rightly of me, as Job has,” and to who?

God to Eliphaz

Logic of Reciprocity

Quid pro quo; an eye for an eye; I give you what you give me.

Affirming the Consequent

A logical fallacy that assumes since in some instances, A causes B, it is true that if B, therefore A caused it.

Theophany

The appearance of a god; often accompanied by meteorological phenomena in religious texts.

Intrinsic Benefit

A benefit built into what we are doing.

Extrinsic Reward

A reward external to what we are doing.

Faith

The affirmation of transcendent meaning, even if it is incomprehensible to us in our state.

Apologia

Greek term for “defense speech”.

Philosophia

"Love of wisdom”

Wisdom

The knowledge and skill of caring for the health of the soul.

Learned Ignorance

Knowing that one does not know the truth of a matter.

Unlearned Ignorance

Not knowing that one does not know what one think one knows.

Virtue

Greek for ‘excellence’’ in Plato and Aristotle, the excellence that human nature is capable of.

Who said, “For a human, the unexamined life is not worth living”?

Socrates

Who said, “It is not difficult to avoid death… it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death”?

Socrates

Who said, “A good man cannot be harmed in life or in death, and his affairs are not neglected by the gods”?

Socrates

Aporia

Greek for ‘dead-end’’ comes to mean state of embarrassing confusion.

Performative Criterion for Recognizing Truth

The truth will not be self-contradictory.

Ad Hominem

A logical fallacy in which you attack the character of the person making an argument instead of the strength of the argument.

Humility

The virtue of honestly estimating one’s capabilities; a precondition for pursuing genuine inquiry.

Civil Disobedience

To disobey the laws of one’s community / state because one believes they are unjust laws.

Who said, “Philosophizing is the training for dying”?

Socrates

“Form” or “Nature”

“Form” refers to physical structure or external appearance while “nature” relates to its essential qualities, character, or functions. Contrast between form and nature highlights how nature can be more significant than form.

Wonder

The desire to know that drives genuine inquiry: unfolds according to a natural and concrete pattern if not interfered with.

Bias

The emotions that interfere with wonder’s natural unfolding

Objectivity in Knowing

What wonder and inquiry is headed towards

To speak what is “worthy of the gods”

To depict the gods as they are, not with vices of humans (bad anthropomorphism).

Restorative justice

Punishment that is ordered to the betterment of the evildoer.

Cardinal “hings” virtues

Wisdom, Temperance, Justice, Courage

Platonic Divine Goodness

Gods cause only the good, and punish only to improve evildoers.

Platonic Divine Immutability / Simplicity

Gods can not change, for they are perfect, and so they can not lie by changing form, as poets have depicted them doing.

Platonic Wisdom

Knowledge about the good of the whole city / soul, about its internal and external relations, knowing how to order diverse elements.

Platonic Courage

The power to preserve, through everything, the correct belief about what is truly frightening because truly evil, and about which part should rule the city / soul.

Platonic Temperance

The masses’ obedience to rulers and self-mastery concerning pleasures of food, drink, and sex; a harmony between different parts of the city / soul.

Platonic Justice

For each part of the city / soul to possess and do what belongs to it alone.

Introspective Analysis

To attend to and ask questions about interior life of consciousness, in order to understand the structure of human consciousness.

Insight

The understanding of intelligibility in presentations; the act that produces the first object of the desire to know.

Intelligibility

Means “makes-senseness”. A pattern in data that can only be understood, not sensed; what Plato means by “form”; the first object of wonder.

Question

A felt tension oriented towards intelligibility and its object.

Data of the senses

Data given by the bodily senses. Public.

Data of consciousness

Insights and the intelligible; experiences of consciousness. Private.

Logical contradiction

When two concepts are incompatible such that both can not be true.

Performative self-contradiction

When the content of what one does/says contradicts the performance of doing/saying it.

Intellectual conversion

To judge that reality includes the intelligible and is more than the sensible; the unconverted think the converted are crazy, but the converted understand the limited viewpoint of the unconverted. 

Moral conversion

To judge that the good is not identical with maximizing pleasure and getting ahead; the unconverted think the converted are crazy, but the converted understand the limited viewpoint of the unconverted.

Ethics

The study of human character and moral choosing.

Eudaimonia

Greek word for “flourishing” or “state of living well”.

Character

The habitual shape of our moral self; seen in the stable intentions that reveal value priorities.

Virtue as a middle state

Virtue is the mean between vicious extremes of deficiency and of excess.

Habit, def. 1

(habitus) a stable disposition to feel and to act in a certain manner. 

Who said, “Being a morally good person is all about pleasures and pains.”?

Aristotle

Virtuous person

According to Aristotle, one who does the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason, in the right way.

Circumstances

The facts on the ground that shape the moral goodness of a choice.

Object

What is chosen or performed in a decision.

Intention

The end goal of the means chosen in a choice.

Choice

To assent to desiring a means because one has judged it as good or better than another option to reach one’s end or intention.

A quotation that shows how character shapes choices

“The kind of person you are determines what seems good to you.”