Untitled Flashcards Set

PHIL 100 – Introduction to Philosophy

Final Examination

(25% of semester grade)

Plato:

The necessity of self-reflection – “the unexamined life is not worth living”

Vice is worse than death (death of the soul worse than death of the body)

Socrates as gadfly awakening Athens

Know the Analogy of the Sun, Divided Line, and Allegory of the Cave

Why the just life is better than the unjust life?

1.     Vice enslaves, virtue frees

2.     One who pursues wisdom sees all ways of living (pleasure, honor, contemplation) and chooses justice. Those who seek pleasure only know the life of pleasure, etc.

3.     Only fulfilling pleasure comes from understanding. Physical pleasures are finite and fleeting. Person who is not temperate always wants and is never satisfied/unhappy

Aristotle

What is the best kind of life?

The life of contemplation. It cannot be the life of pleasure (fit only for cattle) nor the life of honor (since honor can be easily given and taken away)

What is all our actions done for the sake of?

Happiness/Flourishing (We can still be wrong about what will make us happy)

What is Aristotle’s conception of happiness?

Flourishing, fulfillment, deep satisfaction

The end that all actions and human affairs are ordered toward

The most complete activity (done for its own sake)

Cannot be improved and lacking in nothing (permanent)

The end/goal of virtue

What sets humans apart from other animals?

Rationality: the ability to grasp universals (the essence of what a thing is), and to reason morally

What is Aristotle’s conception of virtue?

Virtue as mean. Excess and deficiency as vice.

Ex. The virtue of generosity deals with the action of giving and taking money. Giving away money excessively (e.g., spending money on lavish trivialities at the expense of your family) and being too miserly with money (e.g., hording money for no purpose other than to have more of it) are vicious (bad) ways of dealing with the action of giving and taking money. Generosity is giving away the right amount of money for the right reasons, etc.

N.B. the mean may be closer to one extreme than the other (ex. Courage is closer to rashness than cowardice).

How are the virtues acquired?

Virtues of Intellect: through teaching

Virtues of Character: through habit, repeated good actions

What is hylomorphism?

Living creatures are composed of body and soul, matter and form

Matter is the principle of potentiality (change) – body

Form is the principle of actuality – soul that animates the body

What is the difference between substantial change and accidental change?

Substantial change – changes what a thing really is (ex. death)

Accidental change – changes the accidents of something (ex. hair color, weight)

What are the Four Causes?

Material: What something is made out of (ex. The wood of a wooden chair)

Efficient: What makes/causes change (ex. The builder of a chair)

Formal: The archetype/essence of something (ex. The “chairness” of a chair)

Final: The purpose/goal of something (ex. The purpose of sitting for a chair)

St. Augustine

What is our unhappiness typically caused by?

Our own wrongdoings/sins

Know Augustine’s’ response to the problem of evil

St. Thomas Aquinas:

Things that we know about God:

God exists, and God is One: can be known by natural reason

God is Triune (Trinity): requires God revealing that to us (e.g., matter of faith)

The harmony and necessity of both faith and reason

What does man’s ultimate happiness consist of?

Contemplating God

Review St. Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways

1.     Prime Mover

2.     Uncaused Cause

3.     Argument from Contingency/Necessary Being

4.     Argument from Degree

5.     Teleological Argument

Modern Project and the Modern Turn in Philosophy

Know Descartes’ project of radical Doubt

Know Hume’s empiricism and denial of causal knowledge

What is Kant’s Categorical Imperative?

You can never treat someone as a mere means to an end. Using people is morally impermissible

How can Nagel’s distinction between objectivity and subjectivity apply to the hard problem of consciousness?

Scientists are unable to explain the genesis of consciousness through purely material means. Nagel says that this failure is not due to a lack of our ability to engage in science but because the scientists are seeking an objective account of an experience that is subjective

Review Nietzsche’s parable of the madman

            Why is the death of God significant?

            Will to power – morality as determined by the Overman

What is Ayer’s verification principle?

Statements can only be true or false if it is analytic (true by definition) or empirically verifiable. You cannot do this with moral statements. Therefore, moral judgments (ex. murder is bad) is meaningless.

Problems:

Entails genuine moral disagreement is impossible

            Some moral statements do seem to have truth value (ex. rape, child abuse)

            Self-defeating

What is the ultimate aim of the modern project?

Emancipation from authority (esp. the Church)

è Elimination of Final Causality

What happens to faith when it becomes separated from reason?

Faith becomes subjective and private

Intellectual Diseases

Idealism – objects of faith become graspable by mere reason

Atheistic Humanism – faith as hindering reason

Scientific Positivism – reason becomes the positive sciences

Pragmatism – ethical principles cease to be unchanging -> end of utility

Eclecticism – cherry picking different ideas without overall coherence

Nihilism – Rejection of objective truth and meaning

Pieper:

What enables us to transcend the world of work?

The philosophical act

The religious act

The artistic act

The shock of death

The shock of eros (eros as the upward impulse of the human heart to what is Good, True, and Beautiful)

What are some problems with the Proletarian worker?

He doesn’t understand the real meaning of work

He is willing to suffer just because it is difficult

He is completely absorbed into useful work

Views leisure as a break (work for the sake of work) -> not really leisure

What can leisure be described as?

Foundation for Western civilization

Non-activity

Celebration

Contemplative attitude

How can the totalitarian world of work be de-proletarianized?

Allowing people to own property

Limiting the power of the state

Overcoming our own inner impoverishment

What is the connection between leisure and worship?

Worship is necessary for leisure

Apart from worship, leisure becomes laziness and idleness

Worship is the origin of arts

What makes Christian worship unique?

It is the only form of worship in the Europeanized world

It is at once sacrifice and sacrament

Every day is a feast day