Chapter 17: The Interpreters: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger Flashcards
Though they used rather different approaches, what did Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger both focus on as central to philosophy?
a. Inductive reasoning
b. Interpretation
c. Creativity
d. Technological reasoning
b. Interpretation
As thinkers focused on interpretation of words and meanings, what is productively playful about Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s concerns with “the end of philosophy”?
a. If they succeed in bringing an end to philosophy, they would find themselves (and their colleagues and students) out of work.
b. They are trying to see the end of something while still in the midst of it, though ends are always something figured out by looking back not forward.
c. The atrocities of two world wars in the early twentieth century were supposed to bring humility to philosophy, and yet humility showed up through the appearance of arrogance.
d. End can mean goal or purpose. It can also mean the final part of something, which is also often the beginning of something else. Wittgenstein and Heidegger could mean both at the same time.
d. End can mean goal or purpose. It can also mean the final part of something, which is also often the beginning of something else. Wittgenstein and Heidegger could mean both at the same time.
What is the name of the method of interpretation that seeks to find meaning in texts, words, images, and ideas by careful and critical reading?
a. Hermeneutics
b. Deconstruction
c. Phenomenology
d. Existentialism
a. Hermeneutics
How is interpretation considered circular?
a. It is best done with others, sitting together in a circle where everyone’s contributions are considered equal.
b. Once you start doing it, you can never stop.
c. There is no beginning place, so you just find yourself already doing it.
d. Something must be assumed to get started, but the thing assumed is also what you are trying to understand.
d. Something must be assumed to get started, but the thing assumed is also what you are trying to understand.
How are even language, logic, and thought subject to hermeneutic circles?
a. We can question the rules of grammar and logic, or we can question the rule that says follow the rules. Each question assumes the other.
b. Philosophers cannot think about thinking without also being thinkers; they are the least equipped to ask questions of their own field.
c. We are born with a language of thought but have to learn the rules before we are allowed to deconstruct them.
d. There is no getting outside of both language and logic together to evaluate them separately.
a. We can question the rules of grammar and logic, or we can question the rule that says follow the rules. Each question assumes the other.
What is meant by deconstruction as a general philosophical method?
a. The method defined in the writings of Jacques Derrida as an approach to literary criticism that is not confined to philosophy
b. Any hypercritical attack on common sense done through complex word play
c. The treatment of philosophical problems as conceptual and linguistic confusions that can be cleared up only when the broadest, most inclusive meaning can be found
d. Any close textual analysis of hidden meanings and “privileges” in philosophical arguments, theories, and claims
d. Any close textual analysis of hidden meanings and “privileges” in philosophical arguments, theories, and claims
How do deconstructors approach philosophy?
a. Searching for the single, true meaning of a given text
b. Searching for the author’s original intent
c. Progressively, assisting in the arrival of the best meaning
d. Historically, scrutinizing the development of words and ideas
d. Historically, scrutinizing the development of words and ideas
Which philosophers restrict themselves to close logical and linguistic analyses, mostly regarding the independent (atomic) entities that make up the universe?
a. Analytic philosophers
b. Continental philosophers
c. Idealists
d. Phenomenologists
a. Analytic philosophers
Which twentieth-century philosophers are likely to include in their philosophical work considerations of history, power, sociology, art, poetry, and psychology?
a. Continental philosophers
b. Analytic philosophers
c. Members of the Vienna Circle
d. Logical positivists.
a. Continental philosophers
Which book, influential in analytic philosophy, did Wittgenstein begin writing while he was a prisoner of war?
a. Philosophical Investigations
b. Against Violence
c. On Certainty
d. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
d. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
What reasons does Wittgenstein give in the Tractatus for rejecting earlier philosophers’ attempts to grapple directly with problems of existence, knowledge, truth, and value?
a. Those problems have essentially already been solved by commonsense, but philosophers make them appear difficult to keep themselves appearing important.
b. Those problems are too complex and too slippery to solve and so should be avoided.
c. Those problems are boring when compared to the “paradoxes of the spirit.”
d. Those problems are not really problems at all but illusory results of misunderstanding what language is and how it works.
d. Those problems are not really problems at all but illusory results of misunderstanding what language is and how it works.
According to Wittgenstein, what happens to those so-called philosophical problems once their true nature as merely linguistic misunderstandings is recognized?
a. They merge into one meta-problem, the problem of the “form of life.”
b. They become guides for us out of our moodiness and sadness.
c. They will simply disappear.
d. They finally grab hold to “wake us from our dogmatic slumbers.”
c. They will simply disappear.
Having abandoned philosophy as the Tractatus supposedly brought philosophy to an end, what brought Wittgenstein back to philosophy to write the Philosophical Investigations?
a. The first book was guilty of its own criticism; instead, he needed to look at language in ordinary use.
b. The outbreak of a second world war shook him to his core, and he realized he would have to rethink the entirety of human thought and philosophical method.
c. He tried out many other careers and found them all lacking, so he decided to return to university life, which required publishing regardless of whether he believed what he wrote.
d. He saw the effects of his ideas on an entire generation of students and wrote a follow-up book to clarify misinterpretations of his first book.
a. The first book was guilty of its own criticism; instead, he needed to look at language in ordinary use.
In Philosophical Investigations, how did Wittgenstein characterize the task of the philosopher?
a. Agitating us into wakeful attention to the human condition
b. Making life conform to the structure of thought
c. Undertaking logical analysis of grand problems
d. Seeing how language really works
d. Seeing how language really works
When philosophers take it as their primary task to clear up what we say about experience, not all of what we utter, but what we really mean when we say things, they have completed what?
a. The linguistic turn
b. The epistemological turn
c. The deconstruction
d. The return to the things themselves
a. The linguistic turn
Why did Wittgenstein characterize his own philosophy as a kind of therapy?
a. He understood most philosophers to be mentally unwell and in need of care.
b. His approach to dissolving philosophical problems through clearing up confusions was meant to improve our everyday lives.
c. Philosophers are the original doctors, as seen in the PhD titles, and he wanted to emphasize that training.
d. Changing the language with which he described his work, in method and goal, was meant to separate him from the entire history of philosophy.
b. His approach to dissolving philosophical problems through clearing up confusions was meant to improve our everyday lives.
How did Hannah Arendt describe being in class with Heidegger?
a. He managed heated student debates with skill and good humor.
b. Enrolling in class was “being with Being itself.”
c. He was the hardest grader of all her professors.
d. She said that in his lectures, “Thinking has come to life again.”
d. She said that in his lectures, “Thinking has come to life again.”
Heidegger was a confirmed Nazi who never condemned the Holocaust despite multiple opportunities in his later life. We could choose not to read his philosophy anymore, simply for these reasons, or even because his own philosophy connected ideas to life. Why do some, including Arendt and Rorty, defend continuing to read his work?
a. They defend continuing to read Heidegger’s work so we can learn what hate, specifically anti-Semitism, looks like and be better prepared to respond.
b. The good philosophy does, the originality of thought, cannot be found anywhere else and would be lost without our continuing to read Heidegger’s work.
c. Both those philosophers had close, personal relationships with him; they were protecting him.
d. We can separate judgments of persons from the content of their philosophy, so the private life of any writer is irrelevant to their writing.
a. They defend continuing to read Heidegger’s work so we can learn what hate, specifically anti-Semitism, looks like and be better prepared to respond.
What method of philosophy, first developed by Husserl, focuses on experienced facts rather than abstractions to reveal human consciousness and uses purely descriptive statements to provide descriptive analysis of consciousness?
a. Existentialism
b. Skepticism
c. Ontology
d. Phenomenology
d. Phenomenology
Heidegger, inspired by Husserl’s insight into a kind of thinking often concealed by modern technological and scientific thought, pushed past his thinking about beings to think about what?
a. Being
b. Life
c. Truth
d. Meaning
a. Being
What is dasein, and why is it important to Heidegger’s thinking?
a. Dasein is a uniquely German way of being at home in the world that Heidegger, most at home living close to the land in rural Germany, made famous.
b. Dasein is existence. Philosophers inquire into what exists and what it means to exist, but Heidegger fundamentally rethought only the first thing while rejecting questions of the meaning of life.
c. Dasein is us, human beings. As the only beings whose being is a concern for itself, thinking about that, about thinking itself, is the essence of philosophizing.
d. Dasein is being, and as a social ontologist, this was Heidegger’s main area of research.
c. Dasein is us, human beings. As the only beings whose being is a concern for itself, thinking about that, about thinking itself, is the essence of philosophizing.
Living with an attitude in “a” world is living authentically. Living with an attitude in “the” world is not. What is the difference between “a” world and “the” world?
a. “The” world is of everyday life that we live in unreflectively and automatically. “A” world is a product of philosophical reflection, which Heidegger says is necessary to authentic life.
b. “A” world is our world, inhabiting a human world and having experiences in it; however, “the” world is the single, objective world some humans live detached from.
c. Authentic existence is where we each individually choose our own worlds, “a” world of mine as opposed to “the” one and only external world philosophers try to force us to recognize and agree about.
d. “The” world is an inauthentic philosophical abstraction from the primacy of empirical sense data, whereas “a” world is the authentic product of philosophizing from one’s own firsthand experience.
b. “A” world is our world, inhabiting a human world and having experiences in it; however, “the” world is the single, objective world some humans live detached from.
How does Heidegger’s analysis of the “they” (closing off one’s authenticity by getting lost in the anonymity of the social self) help us understand Arendt’s description of the banality of evil?
a. Atrocities happen only when good, authentic people stay silent while evil people take charge.
b. Living an authentic life ensures making moral choices; wrong-doing comes from inauthenticity.
c. We are too easily tempted to go along with the crowd, even when they commit evil acts.
d. People are only too thrilled to do evil things when they do not have to give their names.
c. We are too easily tempted to go along with the crowd, even when they commit evil acts.
What is the difference between idle talk, what the “they” engage in, and dialogue?
a. Idle talk is what we do to get started and warm up, and to break the ice before a deep conversation can be effective.
b. Gossip is the most dangerous form of idle talk that would never occur if we engaged only in dialogue; the difference between them is a matter of morality.
c. Idle talk is what occurs between strangers or mere acquaintances, whereas dialogue occurs among friends. Dialogue thus can be a means of turning strangers into friends.
d. Idle talk seeks nothing beyond basic comprehension of the words the other speaks, but in dialogue participants seek to understand each other reciprocally and deeply.
d. Idle talk seeks nothing beyond basic comprehension of the words the other speaks, but in dialogue participants seek to understand each other reciprocally and deeply.
