Chapter 7 - Existentialism Flashcards
Which of the following most characterized Rousseau’s utopian society?
The surrender of the individual will to the general will
According to Nietzsche, the difference between freedom and slavery is:
A matter of choice
Nietzsche believed that the ____ aspect of human nature manifests itself in the desire for predictability and orderliness.
Apollonian
Hobbes, along with many theologians and philosophers, believed human nature to be ____, whereas Rousseau believed it to be basically ____.
animalistic; good
Goethe viewed science as:
useful but limited
Which of the following is the correct arrangement of the stages Kierkegaard suggested for the development of human freedom?
aesthetic, ethical, then religious
Schopenhauer stated that we may repress undesirable thoughts into the:
unconscious
Who viewed life as consisting of opposing forces such as love and hate, or good and evil?
Goethe
Goethe viewed ____ as the ultimate source of happiness.
liberty
What did romanticism and existentialism have in common?
The importance of subjective experience
Rousseau believed that education should:
stimulate the development of a child’s natural impulses
At the heart of Nietzsche’s psychology is the tension between:
Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies
According to Kierkegaard, God gives humans a way of dealing with the “absolute paradox” with:
faith
For Nietzsche, the most basic motive for human behavior was:
the will to power
Nietzsche primarily considered himself a:
psychologist
According to Rousseau, all the governments of his time were based on the faulty assumption that:
humans need to be governed
Rousseau supported Protestantism because:
God’s existence could be defended on the basis of individual feelings
According to Kierkegaard, the ultimate state of being is achieved when an individual decides to:
embrace God and take God’s existence on faith
The book, Emile, was written about education in the form of a novel. Who was the author?
Rousseau
Nietzsche’s ____ was clearly contrary to Enlightenment philosophy.
perspectivism
According to Rousseau, an effective government must be based on:
the general will
The romantic philosophers considered which human characteristic as most important?
benevolence
According to Schopenhauer, ____ suffer the most.
intelligent humans
According to Schopenhauer, when the blind, aimless universal manifests itself in a particular organism, it becomes:
the will to survive
Kierkegaard believed that the existence of God:
has to be taken on faith
Schopenhauer believed that most people cling to life because:
they fear death
Schopenhauer anticipated Freud’s concept of ____ when he said that we could at least partially escape the irrational forces within us by immersing ourselves in such things as music, poetry, or art.
sublimation
Nietzsche believed that the best life reflects:
controlled passion
According to Kierkegaard, the aesthetic stage consists of which of the following?
People are open to experiences and seek out many forms of pleasure, but they do not recognize their ability to choose.
According to Schopenhauer, the will to survive causes:
an unending cycle of needs and need satisfaction
According to Rousseau, which of the following provides the optimal condition for learning?
A child’s natural interests
Rousseau referred to a hypothetical human who is uncontaminated by society as a(n):
noble savage
Goethe’s idea to embrace the opposing forces present in life had a direct influence on:
Jung
Nietzsche believed that:
people are their own creation
According to Kierkegaard, the religious stage consists of which of the following?
People accept the responsibility of making choices, but use as their guides ethical principles established by others.
The statement, “Man is born free and yet we see him everywhere in chains” is associated with:
Rousseau
Nietzsche believed that many human problems would be solved if:
every individual strives to be all that he or she could be
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche had what in common?
A criticism of the organized church and science
Aesthetic attitudes and principles based on the culture, art, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, and characterized by emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion, and restrained emotion
Classicism (Neoclassicism)
Artistic and intellectual movement that originated in the late 18th CE and stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical correctness in art forms, and rebellion against social conventions
Romanticism
- Said that the goal of life was to embrace opposing forces
- Wrote Faust
- Interested in color perception, anatomy, botany
Goethe
- Said that impulses of the heart should guide behavior, not reason and logic
- Noble Savage: society corrupts and interferes with natural goodness
- The Social Contract: said that there was a common good, and that there is a trade off between personal gain and common good
- View on education: should be a free, open process; take adv of natural curiosity
- Elements of self-actualization
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788)
- The will to survive: the way to survive is to satisfy our needs
- Primary motive = self-preservation
- Intelligence leads to suffering
- “All willing springs from lack; all willing stems from suffering”
- Common to compare this philosopher and Freud
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
- Thought Hegel was too abstract to be of use
- Essence of humanity = individual uniqueness
- Have an existential choice to choose aesthetic style (gratifying pleasures) or ethical style (neither is better/worse); this choice is a leap of faith
- Either/Or details this choice
- Truth is subjective, an objective uncertainty, basically constitutes something you’re passionate about
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
- Critical of Schopenhauer
- Tension between Apollonian (rationality, predictability, orderliness) and Dionysian (irrational, chaotic, passionate) natures
- “God is dead; and we have killed him with science”
- Humans as irrational; but the ubermensch is one who has allowed the will to power to run free in him
- There is a struggle for superiority, growth, and expansion
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
