Study Questions to Historical Interlude

Prepared by Dr. Jan Garrett

Last modification date: July 15, 2009

1. Plotinus saw the Platonic Form of the Good (aka The One) as the source of everything that exists. (Stevenson is mistaken in claiming that the Neo-Platonist source is God.) According to Augustine humans are capable of what? (131) What do you think this means? What did he mean by "I believe in order that I may understand?"

2. Do humans have free will? Describe Augustine's view on human sin and the role of God. (131-32) Where is human sin most clearly manifest for Augustine? With what view of women is this idea often associated in the history of Christianity? (132)

3. Explain Augustine's distinction between the City of Man and the City of God. Note, both are conceived as communities, civitas or city being a politically organized society like the Roman empire. Is the church simply equivalent to the City of God in his view? Was he willing to endorse the suppression of Christians with minority views? (132)

4. What unquestionable premise does Islamic thought share with medieval Christianity? What debates arose within Islamic civilization? (132-33) Why was al-Hallaj's heretical view? In what way did ibn Sina give philosophy priority over the imagistic language of Muslim Scripture (similar in that respect to Jewish and Christian Scripture)?

5. How did al-Ghazali criticize previous Muslim philosophers? On what basis did he defend religious faith? How did ibn Rushd respond to al-Ghazali? (133)

6. How does Thomas Aquinas distinguish between rational theology and revealed theology? Is faith under the control of the will? How is Aquinas an Aristotelian on human nature? How does he Christianize Aristotle's thought (two ways)? (134) How does Aquinas introduce an element of Platonism into his doctrine of immortality? (134)

7. In what (now controversial) respect is Aquinas like Augustine? (134-35)

8. Briefly, what characterizes Renaissance philosophy of the 15th and 16th centuries?

9. In what ways did Luther challenge the Catholic church (of which he had been a part)? The printing press was invented shortly before Luther's Reformation. How did Luther make use of it? (What did he translate into German?) Was he the only one to translate this book into languages that were commonly spoken in Europe? (136)

10. What replaces the Pope as the primary source of authority for Protestants such as John Calvin? What was the primary source of authority for the Radical Protestants such as Anabaptists and Quakers? How did the Euro-American liberal view of toleration emerge? (136-37)

11. What combination was triumphantly demonstrated in the scientific work of Galileo and Newton? What happened to the authority once enjoyed by Aristotle, the Bible, and the Church with regard to knowledge of the physical world? What problem remains to this day? (137)

12. What views did Thomas Hobbes reject? What metaphysical position did he espouse? (137-38) What was his view of human motivation? What does he think would happen if there is no common power to keep order? What is needed to save humanity from the evils of the "state of nature"? (Hobbes was a "social contract" theorist and imagined that people moved into an organized society by "contracting" with one another to avoid mutual aggression.) What criticism does Stevenson make of Hobbes' theory? (138)

13. Explain Descartes' dualist view of human nature? How does he understand body? Mind or soul? Why does he make a sharp distinction between humans and nonhuman animals? (138)

14. What is his main argument for dualism? (139)

15. What is his argument for the uniqueness of human beings in Discourse part V? (139)

16. How does he reconcile his Catholicism with his endorsement of the modern scientific method? (139)

17. What in a nutshell is Spinoza's view on human nature? (140)

18. What is empiricist about the view of David Hume? (141) How does Hume argue that we have no idea of matter (as a substance underlying qualities like red and heavy)? How does he argue that we have no coherent notion of soul or mental substance (underlying thoughts, emotions, dreams, etc.)? (141)

19. To what does he reduce the common idea of cause and effect as "necessary connection"? What, for Hume, is the basis for our expectation that future sequences will be like past ones? (141)

20. What was atypical of Rousseau (among the prominent figures of the French Enlightenment)? What is the gist of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality? (142) What important insight about education does Rousseau express in Emile? (143)

21. What ideas of Roussea influenced Kant? The Romantic movement of thought? (143)