Philosopher's Bank

Question 1

Rene Descartes

Answer 1

1. Founder of modern philosophy
2. Starts us on rationalism – all knowledge comes through reason
3. Meditations on First Philosophy

Question 2

John Locke

Answer 2

1. Empiricism - all knowledge comes through senses
2. Customary relationships – primary/secondary qualities
3. People are good – Tabula Rasa
4. Heavily influenced Founding Fathers (life, liberty, and ownership of property)
5. Treatise on Government

Question 3

David Hume

Answer 3

1. Skepticism – if you were deceived by your senses you can’t trust them and so can’t know anything with certainty
2. Attacks Locke’s empiricism and classical arguments for the existence of God
3. Worldview breaks down because he has no basis for ethics.
4. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Question 4

Thomas Reid

Answer 4

1. Scottish Common Sense Realism
2. Objects are knowable because objects are real
3. Our sense can be deceived, but our cumulative senses are reliable

Question 5

Immanuel Kant

Answer 5

1. Transcendental Idealism – Impassable noumena and phenomena realms
2. The Categorical Imperative: morality, single absolute truth
3. Moving force behind liberalism
4. Critique of Pure Reason

Question 6

Georg Wilhelm Frederick Hegel

Answer 6

1. History of Progress (history is progress)
2. Absolute Idealism
3. Secularizing the sacred
4. Great Man Theory (a hinge)

Question 7

Jonathan Edwards

Answer 7

1. Minister at North Hampton
2. Part of the Great Awakening
3. Takes president position at Princeton

Question 8

Adam Smith

Answer 8

1. Birth of capitalism
2. Common Sense Realism problem is conscience
3. Committed to natural theology
4. Privatism not socialism – to bring wealth to the nations

Question 9

Volitare

Answer 9

1. French Encyclopedia of the enlightenment
2. Candide – novel, sarcastic treatment
3. Hates the church, uses Lisbon earthquake to mock God.

Question 10

George Berkeley

Answer 10

1. To be is to be perceived
2. All we can ever know is ideas
3. All qualities are secondary in that nothing exists unless it is perceived.

Question 11

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Answer 11

1. From Geneva (tale of two sons, Calvin & Rousseau, Rousseau wins)
2. “Humanity is born free, everywhere he is in chains”
3. Individual spirit is good and free, societies constrain and restrain (bad)
4. Noble savage, primitive person
5. Lord of the Flies (novel about cultural experience); Emil (education)

Question 12

Thomas Hobbes

Answer 12

1. Leviathan
2. Government is monster full of monsters
3. Influenced the Declaration of Independence in the obligations of the governed.

Question 13

Thomas Jefferson

Answer 13

1. Writer of the Constitution
2. Bringing Locke into the constitution
3. Mr. Enlightenment

Question 14

James Madison

Answer 14

1. Witherspoon’s student at Princeton
2. Given the “checks and balances” language from Witherspoon
3. Government is needed because of human depravity

Question 15

John Witherspoon

Answer 15

1. Princeton University
2. Brings Common Sense Realism to America
3. Only clergy to sign Declaration of Independence
4. Checks and balances