Review MMW Final

REVIEW SESSION: TBD


(This is meant to be a review guide, not the exam itself.  Ultimately, you are accountable for all the key materials in the readings and lectures.)


Exam will be designed for 3 hrs (PLEASE BRING TWO UNMARKED BLUEBOOKS AND PENS TO WRITE WITH.  YOU WILL EXCHANGE ONE AT THE START OF THE EXAM.


PLEASE DO NOT ARRIVE LATE TO THE EXAM AS IT WOULD DISQUALIFY YOU FROM TAKING THE EXAM)


Exam time and location: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13TH 11:30 AM—2:30 PM (WLH 2001)


Part I.  Objective

You need to be familiar with the historical context and significance of the following names and terms from your readings and lectures.  Be sure you are able to address the relevant “who?” “what?” “where?” and “when?’, and most importantly, “why?” issues associated with each one.  Multiple Choice and Matching Terms questions will be drawn from this guide, but it is also very useful in preparing for the passage IDs and cumulative essay.

     


Key Names & Terms for Unit on Ancient India


Indus and Vedic Culture

Indus Valley

Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro

Stamped seals

Indus Yogi/“Lord of Creatures”

Symbolism of the bull

Lingams

The Great Bath

Aryan Influx

Dravidians

Dyaus Pitar

Varuna

Rita or “natural order of things”

Rig Vedas

Indra vs. Vritra

Soma

Agni

Myth of Purusha

Varna system (Brahmins, Kshatriyas,

Vaishyas, Shudras)

Upanishads

Brahman vs. Atman

Sannyasin

Birth of Buddhism

Siddhartha Gautama

Bodhisattva

Tushita Heaven

Kapilavatsu

Four Encounters

Symbolic role of Mara

The Middle Path

The “rose-apple tree” recollection

Law of Dependent Origination

Four Noble Truths

Eightfold Noble Path

Dharma (Buddhist meaning)

Sangha

Angulimala

Challenge to caste system

Devadatta’s challenge

Accepting Chunda’s meal offering

The Perfection of Wisdom

Heart Sutra

Sunyata (Emptiness)

Five skandhas

“The second arrow”

Nirvana (Total annihilation of self)

The story of Patācārā

Ananda’s important role

Mahaprajapati and nuns

Eight Precepts for nuns



Key Names & Terms for Unit on Ancient Greece


The Formation of the Greek Polis

Topography of Hellas

Mycenaean Kingdoms

The Iliad

Trade and piracy

Dorian invasions

Dark Age of illiteracy

Greek colonization of Ionia

Homeric tradition

Agon (contest)

Arête (well-rounded excellence)

Polis (meaning?)

Agora (marketplace)

Acropolis (citadel)

Ideal size of Polis

Hoplites

Phalanx

Solon’s socio-economic reforms

Pisistratus

Cleisthenes

Ten Demes

Autocracy paving way or democracy?

Persian Wars

Herodotus

Road from Susa to Sardis

Aristagoras

Ionian Rebellion

Miletus

Darius

Hippias and the “Hill Party”

Miltiades

Battle of Marathon

Themistocles

Silver mines in Sunium or Laureum

Piraeus

Battle of Thermopylae

Lycurgan Constitution

Battle of Salamis

Trireme and rowers

“Golden Age” of Athens

Athenian Imperialism and Peloponnesian Wars

Thucydides

Delian League

Peloponnesian Confederation

Helot rebellions

Challenges of secession

Athenian legal system

Mitylene rebellion on Lesbos 428

Cleon vs. Diodotus

Pericles as “strategoi”

General Assembly

The Boulê

“The Old Oligarch’s” critique of

democracy

Athenian reactions to the Plague of 430

Nicias vs. Alcibiades

Demagoguery

Expedition to Sicily

Egestaean allies

Critique of Democracy

Socrates

Lysander

Critias

“The Thirty”

Meaning of “Apology”

Crito’s appeal to Socrates

Socrates’s daemon

“Gadfly to a lethargic horse”

What were the accusations?

The “Laws” of Athens for Socrates

To Koinon




Part II. Long Passage Identifications

Three passages from the following selection will be included on the final.  You will choose two to write on.  In your response, you must identify briefly the specific historical, social, philosophical, or religious context, in which each passage occurs (e.g. speaker, subject, occasion, purpose, general time period).  You also need to explain their direct relevance to key themes for their respective tradition, focusing particularly on the words and phrases highlighted in bold.  Each response should be at least one full paragraph long (about ¾ page in length).  Be specific and succinct!  Most importantly, demonstrate your own familiarity with relevant readings with independent insights.  The text references in parenthesis will not be provided on the actual exam.


  1. “Ananda, a nun, even one who has been ordained for a hundred years, must respectfully salute a monk, even one who has been ordained but a day.  This, Ananda, is the first cardinal rule for nuns, which they should respect, esteem, honor, and venerate as long as they live and steadfastly maintain as though it were the shore of the great ocean.” (Strong “The Acceptance of Women into the Order”)


  1. “He saw that the condition for birth lay in processes of becoming already set in motion; that the condition for this was grasping or craving; that the condition for this was desire; and the condition for desire, feelings of happiness, suffering, or indifference; and the conditions for these, sensual contact…” (“The Life of the Buddha”)


  1. “Unsteady, indeed, are these boats in the form of sacrifice, eighteen in number, in which is prescribed only the inferior work.  The fools who delight in these sacrificial rituals the highest spiritual good go again and again through the cycle of old age and death.” (“Mundaka Upanishad”)


  1. “The entire life of the polis, and the relation between its parts, were much easier to grasp, because of the small scale of things.  Therefore, to say ‘It is everyone’s duty to help the polis’ was not to express a fine sentiment but to speak the plainest and most urgent common sense.  Public affairs had an immediacy and a concreteness which they cannot possibly have for us.” (Kitto “The Polis”)


  1. "For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me. I was attached to this city by the god--though it seems ridiculous thing to say--as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse reach and every one of you. to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company." (“Apology”)


  1. “Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block to action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all..” (“Funeral Oration of Pericles”)


Part III.  Essay (Cumulative)

Two questions from the following options will appear on the final.  You will choose one to write on during the exam.  Be sure to prepare in a way that allows you to provide a focused thesis, concrete examples from readings and lectures, relevant connections in the readings, and independent insight.  Go for depth not scope, quality not quantity.  You will not be rewarded for merely “dumping information,” but for developing a coherent and relevant interpretation of the topic, amply supported by textual references.  Suggested length: 5 full blue-book pages, single-spaced.   Please be sure to follow these guidelines:


  • At least one but no more than two of the three main “traditions” you discuss for your essay option must come from the pre-midterm course material (in bold).  The “traditions” we have covered in this course that you can discuss include the following: 1) Hunter-gathering societies, 2) Sumerian, 3) Ancient Israelite, 4) Confucian, 5) Daoist, 6) Vedic, 7) Buddhist, 8) Ancient Greek

  • You must provide and discuss at least two specific references from relevant course readings to support each of the three “traditions” on which you choose to focus (direct quotes or page citations are not necessary, but you must use specific examples or passages from the reading as support; for example, you can say, “In Ridley’s discussion of a possible origin to the practice of bartering, he examines the division of labor that may have differentiated the chores of women and men among Paleolithic hunter-gatherers …” or “In his own defense against the accusation that he did not worship the gods of the city, Socrates in the “Apology” told the jurors that he owed greater obedience to his daemon than to…”)

  • Even though these prompts will be the actual ones I will include on the exam, the essay options on the exam will also require you to discuss TWO additional examples from the course related to each of the prompts.  You will only find out what the examples are during the exam itself (these two can be part of or in addition to your minimum six examples from the readings).  Be assured that the required examples, drawn from the two review guides, will be of obvious relevance and significance to each specific prompt.  You should of course prepare to discuss other relevant examples of your own choosing in developing your essay.


Here are the three prompt options (two will appear on the final; you will choose one to write on):


  1. A key question posed by many of the “Axial Age” sages we encountered was “What is the fundamental cause of human suffering and how can an individual overcome it?”  Focusing on three “traditions” we have studied, explain how each would answer these two related questions.  Ultimately, which tradition in your opinion offered the most compelling solution and why?    


  1. Much of the course has focused on the culturally distinct realizations of wisdom during the so-called Axial Age.  Yet, there does seem to be a common thread connecting them all, a quality that the Greeks called ekstasis, or “stepping out of the self or ego.”  This can be understood as a personal aspiration for humility and selflessness.  Focusing on three traditions we have studied, explain what this quality meant for each tradition, and how it could best be achieved in each cultural context.


  1. In this course, we have encountered a wide range of individuals who epitomized the Socratic spirit of “an unexamined life is not worth living.”  Although each of them may have offered different ideas or solutions for how a society or individual could be improved, they all seemed to have one quality in common: unwavering integrity.  Choosing three major figures, real or mythical, from our course as examples, please discuss how integrity provided the crucial basis of their wisdom.