Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Kant to Schopenhauer





O 98-114, PW 89-101


1. What did the Romantics emphasize? What was their view of rationalism and empiricism?


2. How did Herder describe Germany's cultural heritage?  What did Goethe's "Faust" sell his soul for?

3. What did Immanuel Kant "synthesize" (i.e., what philosophies and what kinds of statements?)? Where did he live? What did he do every day (that his neighbors noticed)? Who was his favorite French author? Who "awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers"? (And what does that mean?)

4. What are Kantian "categories"? Appearance and reality correspond to what "worlds"? Which did Kant say was knowable? How? What did he say was unknowable?

5. What did Kant find awesome? How did he answer ethical questions (such as whether it's ever acceptable to tell a lie)? 

6. Who said there's no such thing as the thing-in-itself? Who said architecture is frozen music? Who loved dogs and introduced Kant to the French?

7.Who said "the real is the rational & the rational is real," also denied the existence of unknowable things in themselves, and said everything is intricately related (like a jigsaw, or a giant organism)?

8. What historical process did Hegel claim connects spirit, nature, and mind? What are its parts? When does it end? 

9. According to Hegel, what's another term for "Time-Spirit"? What is history? What's the creative source of reality?

10. What blind, irrational force did Schopenhauer, "starting from Kant," say is the "thing-in-itself" and the source of evil? How did he think wisdom could be achieved?
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11. Kant was originally a follower of who?

12. Kant proposed to limit what, to make room for what? What "great ideas" did he hope to place beyond the reach of science?

13. What, according to Kant, do we do to the objects of our experience, with the result that we don't have to infer or prove the existence of an external world? (TIP: This is a useful mnemonic, worth remembering.) To whom was this a direct response?

14. How did Kant reconceive Descartes' conception of self, or "thinking thing"?

15. How did Kant say we demonstrate our freedom? When are we unfree?

16. Why did Kant think faith in an unproven God a "rational postulate" (though not knowledge)?

17. Who did Hegel call "world history on horseback"? What did he consider philosophy's final goal?

18. What was Hegel's term for what he considered the all-enveloping "cosmic soul" that includes us as part of all nature and history? What did he see as its most important implication?

19. What Kantian thesis about knowledge and consciousness did Hegel reject? What Aristotelian thesis did he accept? What does this imply about the self? What "sensibility" did he embrace?

20. What was Hegel saying about philosophy when he spoke of the "Owl of Minerva"?

21. What kind of hero were the young Romantics looking for? Who did they find? What did their hero most despise in Hegel's philosophy?

22. How did Schopenhauer adapt Kant's philosophy to his own? What was his view of the point or purpose of existence? What did he share with the Buddhists? How did he think we could break free of the controlling and all-consuming Will?

2 comments:

Jessica Henry, 2:40 Class said...

Immanuel Kant believed that any act carried out with self-interest could not be moral. Kant was stated as saying, “to tell a falsehood to a murderer who asked us whether our friend of whom he was in pursuit, had taken refuge in our house, would be a crime.” Do you believe this to be true? Why or why not? Consider for a moment famous moral quandaries such as stealing a loaf of bread to feed yourself and your starving children as highlighted in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.

Unknown said...

DQ, 9:40 Class

Kant believed in the traditional meanings of analytical and synthetic propositions: analytic ones use words, while synthetic ones focused on mental processes further than this. He also employed two other terms, priori (knowledge coming from reasoning) and posteriori (knowledge coming from experience). Which of these is most important in making small, everyday decisions? Which is best to use in deciding more important things? Is there a distinction?

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