Study
Questions for Mid-Term Examination: 2002
These
Questions are in addition to those contained in your Weekly Questions!
Background Questions:
1) Explain
the attitude of the following figures to the relationship between Christianity
and philosophy: a) Tertullian; b) Justin Martyr; c) Augustine.
2) Explain
what is meant by an allegorical or figurative reading of the Bible. Why was developing this method of reading the
Bible essential for monotheistic philosophy?
3) Why is
the Jewish philosopher Philo so important to Christian thinkers? How does he differ from the Rabbis in
interpreting the Bible?
4) Explain
the importance of the notions of Original Sin and Justification in Paul. How do these concepts affect the philosophy
of Augustine?
5) Explain the Christian concern for
orthodoxy. What are the chief tenets of
the following heresies:, Pelagianism,
Manicheanism?
Why is each considered a heresy by orthodox
Christians?
6) How do Christians read the Torah differently
from Jews?
7) What are
the meanings of the following rabbinical hermeneutical terms: P’shat; Remez; Drash; Sod. (See “Pardes” file on the front pages of MyClasses.)
Plotinus:
1) Why was
Neo-Platonism (the doctrine of Plotinus) so attractive to early Christian
philosophers such as Augustine?
2) Give a brief account of the three hypostasai
and their generation in the Plotinian account of
being. Also discuss the role of hulé (matter) in his system.
3) Starting
with the problem of how entities are unities, give Plotinus' argument for the
necessity of The One (to hen).
4) Explain
the Plotinian distinction of discursive and intuitive
thought.
5) Explain Plotinus'
notion of beauty as it is revealed in the human being.
Augustine, Plato and Plotinus:
1) Compare
and contrast Plato and Augustine's accounts of Truth (see WP, 298-99).
2) Contrast
the thought of Augustine and Plotinus in relation to: a) Creation/Cosmos; b)
Evil; c) G-d.
3) Explain the difference between Plotinus' notion
of being and Augustine's.
4) Why is
the inner life of the Augustinian soul permeated with an anxiety unknown by
Plotinus?
The City of
1) In what
manner does the omnipotence of G-d cause problems, when Augustine confronts the
issue of how humans will to be good or evil?
2) Why is
the will not an evil for Augustine, even if it would choose to do evil?
3) Discuss
the ontological status of evil for Augustine and why it is so important for him
to determine this status.
4) How and
why is immutability so important for Augustine?
How is it connected to his notions of being and of peace?
5) Explain
how Augustine characterizes the goodness of nature in The City of God
and how his account might be taken to be environmentally aware in a
contemporary sense.
6) Why is
the statement of G-d to Moses--I AM WHO AM--so important to Augustine? How is this given a different interpretation
in Midrash Rabbah?
7) Contrast
the city of man with the city of G-d.
How is peace at play in each of these?
8) Why does
Augustine argue that slaves should accept their lot rather than rebelling
against it?
9) Explain
Augustine's thoughts on predestination and how he might have failed to make
full use of his own insight to resolve this issue. (See: WP, 308-09)
10) In what
manner does Augustine justify the goodness of the predatory order of
nature? Why must he be insistent on
seeing such an order as a mode of goodness?
What would Augustine have to say to those environmentalists who insist
that we must take a biocentric perspective on nature
(one that emphasizes nature in itself over human perspectives of nature)?
The
Confessions:
1) Discuss the nature of the Augustinian confessio.
Why is it necessary for Augustine's philosophical thinking (especially
concerning G-d) to be in tension with this confessio?
2)
Distinguish "soul-time" or "inner-time" from
chronological time. For both Augustine
and Plotinus, why is soul-time more real than chronological time? In what manner is time an
image of eternity?
3) Why can one not speak of creation as a
beginning?
4) Explain why eternity for Augustine is not the same as
"a really really long time that never
ends."
On the Trinity:
1) Explain
Augustine's account of the trinitarian structure of
the human soul.
2) Discuss the problem that arises when Augustine
thinks of G-d as an infinite personality, as opposed to the Greek tendency to
think of G-d as an ultimate "reality."
3) What
does it mean that the soul is capex
dei, capable of G-d? In what sense is the soul
an image of G-d?
4) Explain how
for Augustine the mind/soul is not a fixed substance (underlying various
faculties or other characteristics of the mind) but a trinitarian
mode of inter-relation.
5) Explain how one's mind is an invenire, an “invening”
(a coming into itself).
6) Why does
Augustine insist that one must hear the truth in one's heart in order to be
able to philosophize authentically? (How
is it that one's approach to the truth is as dependent upon one's attentiveness
as upon one's understanding?)
7) Discuss how for Augustine G-d's
being is not simply a principle but also an address, an illumination, to which
one is called to be attentive.
Levinas
“To the Other”:
1) What does Levinas mean by the “paradigmatic method” and why is it
used by him in treating the theme of repentance and forgiveness?
2) What is a magical notion of forgiveness?
3) Why is
it dangerous to approach another who is need of forgiveness?
Discuss the meaning of the following sentences:
(On
the Free Choice of the Will)
"What
do we do when we are eager to be wise?
Don't we with all possible keenness give our whole soul, so to speak, to
what is mentally discerned, and keep it steadfastly fixed on that, so that it
may not rejoice in any private possession of its own which will implicate it in
transient things, but having put off all affections for things temporal and
spatial, it may apprehend what remains ever one and the same?"
"Now that movement of "aversion,"
which we admit is sin, is a defective movement; and all defect comes from
nothing."
"An errant horse is better than a stone that
cannot err because it has neither motion nor feeling of its own. So a creature which sins by its own free will
is more excellent than one which cannot sin because it has no free will."
(City of
"It is, in fact, the very law of transitory
things that, here on earth whether such things are at home, some should be born
while others die, the weak should give way to the strong and the victims should
nourish the life of the victors."
"All natures, then, are good simply because
they exist and, therefore, have each its own measure of being, its own beauty,
even, in a way, its own peace."
“Nevertheless, all alone as he (Caucus) was in a
cave that was always "warm with the blood of some recent victim," his
sole longing was for peace in which no force could do him harm and no fear
disturb his rest. Even with his own body
he wanted to be at peace, and he was at ease only when peace was there."
"However, slavery is now penal in character
and planned by that law which commands the preservation of the natural order
and forbids its disturbance. If no crime
had ever been perpetrated against this law, there would be no crime to repress
with the penalty of enslavement."
(Of the
Trinity)
"But
the mind errs, when it so lovingly and intimately connects itself with these
images, as even to consider itself to be something of the same kind."
"But they are three [memory, understanding and
will], in that wherein they are mutually referred to each other; and if they
were not equal, and this not only each to each, but also each to all, they
certainly could not mutually contain each other; for not only is each contained
by each, but also all by each."
(On
Time)
"How, then, can these two kinds of time, the past
and the future, be, when the past no longer is and the future as yet does not
be? But if the present were always
present, and would not pass into the past, it would no longer be time but
eternity...Does it not follow that we can truly say that it is time, only
because it tends toward non-being?"