Exam 10: Epicurus in Waking or in Dream

Schopenhauer says, "On looking a little closer, we find that inorganic matter presents a constant conflict between chemical forces, which eventually annihilates it; and on the other hand, that organic life is impossible without continual change of matter, and cannot exist if it does not receive perpetual help from without. This is the realm of moral norms, and its opposite would be an immoral being, exposed to no attack from without, and needing nothing to support it."

According to Schopenhauer, "In a world where all is unstable, and nothing can endure, but is swept onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change; where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a rope-in such a world ..."

Wolf says that some people have held that if "there is no God, then there can be no meaning, in the sense of a point or purpose to our existence. We are simply a product of physical processes-there are no reasons for our existence, just ..."

According to Epicurus, "necessity destroys responsibility, and chance or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are ________, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach."

Trisel says, "If God exists and he created humanity as a means to fulfilling a purpose, but then chose not to clarify his purpose or our role, leaving people in a state of doubt, then this would be disrespectful to human beings." Do you agree with Trisel? Explain your answer.

Nagel says, "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn't matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair."

Taylor says, "Every small piece of junk fills the mind with what once, not long ago, was utterly real, with children's voices, plans made, and enterprises embarked upon. That is how these stones of Sisyphus were rolled up, and that is how they became incorporated into a beautiful temple, and that temple is what now lies before you. Meanwhile other buildings, institutions, nations, and civilizations spring up all around, only to share the same fate before long. And if the question 'What for?' is now asked, the answer is clear: Why not?"

Taylor says, "The meaning of life is _______________, it is not bestowed from without, and it far exceeds in both its beauty and permanence any heaven of which men have ever dreamed or yearned for."

According to Trisel, "in regard to whether one's individual life can be meaningful, it does not matter whether life ..."

Explain what Epicurus means when he says that "pleasure" means the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. Is Epicurus's definition of "pleasure" typical of what most people believe? Do you agree with Epicurus? Explain your answer.

According to Taylor, "Activity, and even long, drawn out and repetitive activity, has a meaning if it has some significant ___________, some more or less lasting end that can be considered to have been the direction and purpose of the activity."

According to Kierkegaard, "The poet cannot do what that other does, he can only admire, love and rejoice in the ego. Yet he too is happy, and not less so, for the ego is as it were his better nature, with which he is in love, rejoicing in the fact that this after all is not himself, that his love can be admiration."

Schopenhauer says, "Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have been living ____________: they will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life in the expectation of which they passed all their time."

Wolf says, "to devote one's life entirely to activities whose value is merely ___________, to devote oneself to activities whose sole justification is that it is good for you, is, in a sense I shall try to explain, practically solipsistic."

According to Trisel, many people believe that "If matter was involved in the emergence of life, this suggests that life was unintended and that it was not inevitable that life would develop."

Explain the meaning of Kierkegaard's claim: "The poet cannot do what that other does, he can only admire, love and rejoice in the hero. Yet he too is happy, and not less so, for the hero is as it were his better nature, with which he is in love, rejoicing in the fact that this after all is not himself, that his love can be admiration."

According to Kierkegaard, "if there were no sacred bond which united mankind, if one generation arose after another like the leafage in the forest, if the one generation replaced the other like the song of birds in the forest, if the human race passed through the world as the ship goes through the sea, like the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless activity, if an eternal oblivion were always lurking hungrily for its prey and there was no power strong enough to wrest it from its maw" then life would be timeless.

Epicurus wants us to realize that an awareness of our mortality allows us to enjoy life as long as we have it, and that "a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality." Do you agree with Epicurus views on immortality? Explain your answer.

Explain what Schopenhauer means when he says, "Time is that in which all things pass away; it is merely the form under which the will to live, the thing-in-itself and therefore imperishable, has revealed to it that its efforts are in vain; it is that agent by which at every moment all things in our hands become as nothing, and lose any real value they possess."

Epicurus argues that life should be directed to ___________ "since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it."