Deck 20: Immanuel Kant: Rehabilitating Reason Within Strict Limits

Question 1

Hegel says that the problem of the criterion cannot be solved by the philosopher,

A) but that's all right, since it is in the process of solving itself.
B) so we have to resign ourselves to living without knowledge.
C) because we are caught in a circle that cannot be got out of.
D) and it's a good thing, too, since that makes room for progress and development.

Answer 1

but that's all right, since it is in the process of solving itself.

Question 2

Phenomenology, as practiced by Hegel, is

A) a method of getting beyond mere phenomena to absolute reality.
B) a way of validating the phenomena experienced by the arbitrary individual.
C) a technique for observing consciousness as it develops.
D) irrelevant to reality, but significantly relevant to phenomena.

Answer 2

a technique for observing consciousness as it develops.

Question 3

At the stage of sense-certainty, consciousness

A) has absolute knowledge of its contents.
B) is wholly receptive and immediate.
C) is certain that it derives from the senses (eyes, ears, and so on).
D) can say with absolute certainty what is being experienced through the senses.

Answer 3

is wholly receptive and immediate.

Question 4

The dialectic of master and slave

A) demonstrates the exploitation of slaves throughout history and condemns it.
B) shows how we are all slaves, even though some of us take ourselves to be masters.
C) constitutes a practical prescription for freeing slaves, no matter what stage of history they may be in.
D) describes a necessary stage in the progress toward self-consciousness.

Question 5

Christianity, according to Hegel,

A) is the genuine expression of one essential stage in the development of consciousness.
B) expresses an unhappy consciousness about which the best that can be done is to accept it.
C) is the culmination of the history of the Spirit.
D) is the stage toward which Absolute Spirit is tending.

Question 6

Hegel's philosophy is aptly characterized as absolute idealism because

A) the Absolute Spirit is an idealistic dreamer of dreams that could never be realized.
B) whatever is real has its reality only in relation to the Absolute.
C) without ideals, we are absolutely lost.
D) reality is constituted in the consciousness of each absolutely unique individual.

Question 7

In the stages of objective spirit, consciousness

A) objectifies itself in the world of nature.
B) understands itself as just one object in the natural world along with others.
C) moves from Stoic to skeptical to Christian consciousness.
D) develops toward a rational society.

Question 8

In Hegel's view,

A) individuals join together in a "contract" to create the state.
B) individuals are related to the state as the liver is to the body it serves.
C) because individual human beings are metaphysically prior to any community, the state is only a fiction.
D) history is tending toward a state that will be a "slaughter bench."

Question 9

The goal of historical development, according to Hegel, is

A) unknowable.
B) absurd.
C) freedom.
D) insufficient to justify the horrors of history.

Question 10

The owl of Minerva, Hegel tells us, spreads its wings only at dusk. This means that

A) owls can see better at night than in the daytime.
B) Hegel believes in the old Greek gods.
C) philosophers are the only ones wise enough to give instruction as to what the world ought to be.
D) the world can be understood only retrospectively.

Question 11

How does Hegel propose to solve the problem of finding a criterion for knowledge?

Question 12

Why does consciousness in the state of sense-certainty need to move beyond it?

Question 13

Why is conflict involved in the development of self-consciousness?

Question 14

Why is it the slave, rather than the master, who moves Spirit forward toward self-consciousness?

Question 15

How does the Unhappy Consciousness move beyond Stoic and skeptical consciousness? And what makes it unhappy?

Question 16

Why is Hegelian reason able to succeed in its aims, while Kantian reason cannot?

Question 17

Sketch the development of society from the stage of custom, through that of morality, to ethics.

Question 18

What justifies the horrors of history, according to Hegel?

Question 19

What is phenomenology?

Question 20

Explain Hegel's absolute idealism as the theory of how reason and reality are related.

Question 21

How does Hegel think of God? How is God related to the world? To us?

Question 22

Compare what Hegel has to say about freedom and the arbitrary will with Hume's compatibilist analysis of human liberty.

Question 23

Descartes worried about skepticism concerning the "external" world and thought he had found a criterion for knowledge in the clarity and distinctness of certain ideas. Imagine that you are Hegel. What do you say to Descartes? Begin your answer with these words: "Look, René, . . ."

Question 24

What does Hegel appreciate about Kant's theory of morality? And how does he criticize it?

Question 25

How is Hegel's view concerning the state connected to his views about freedom and history?

Question 26

How, according to Hegel, are reason and reality related? Contrast his view with that of Kant.