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Review Questions for Mid-Term Exam
Introduction and Fundamental Questions: Who am I? 1. What does Pope John Paul II say about the importance of “Knowing Thyself”? Why is it important to one's life? Explain. 2. What, according to Viktor Frankl, was necessary for prisoners to survive the horrendous conditions in a Nazi concentration camp such as Auschwitz? How do Frankl's comments relate to what Pope John Paul II says about "knowing oneself"? (What does Frankl say? What does the Pope say? How do they relate?) 3. What, according to Emily Esfahani Smith, is the difference between hedonia and eudaimonia? 4. What, according to Emily Smith, are the four "pillars of meaning": the four things studies show help people to find meaning in their lives? Describe each of the four briefly. 5. What is the point of Walker Percy’s self-examination questions in Lost in the Cosmos? Explain. 6. What are the characteristics of what Michael Sandel calls "the unencumbered self"? 7. How in the modern world do we tend to think about happiness? What would John Paul II Viktor Frankl, Emily Esfahani Smith, and the authors of "The Happiness Trap" want us to realize about happiness? What are the "risks of meaninglessness"? 8. Why, according to Timothy Clydesdale, are college students not asking the "big questions" of meaning that so many college and university educators (like this one) want them to ask? 3. Consumerism: Buying and Selling a Sense of Self 1. According to Christian Smith and his colleagues, are America's emerging adults concerned about "competitive consumption"? What kinds of responses do they generally give when the issue of their buying habits and the buying habits of others comes up? What big questions are they neglecting when they approach consumer behavior this way? 2. According to Walker Percy, why are men and women subject to fashion? How does the "negating" of the person work? 3. How does "identity marketing" work? Why is it effective? 4. What, according to Juliet Schor, are the results of men and women in this country being subject to fashion? Explain. 5. According to John Paul II, what is the main problem with "consumerism"? Explain. 4. The Modern Moral Landscape 1. Christian Smith suggests that many emerging adults espouse a view he describes as “moral individualism.” What is “moral individualism” and how does it differ from “moral relativism”? Has Christian Smith found that emerging adults have strong arguments to defend their moral individualism? Discuss and explain. 2. One of the arguments that emerging adults will sometimes use to defend their moral individualism is that there is a lot of disagreement among different people about morals. What sort of replies does Smith give to this argument? 3. Something else emerging adults seem to feel strongly about is that, when it comes to moral matters, they don’t want to “judge” anyone else. How does Christian Smith respond to this unwillingness to “judge” others? 4. When it comes to the sources of morality, many emerging adults said they simply didn’t know. But there were others who ventured an opinion. Some seemed to think that morality was defined by what other people would think about you. Others thought that what was “good” was what functionally improved people’s situations. Another group argued that the basis for morality was whether it hurts other people. Others suggested a social contract theory of morality. What are the reasons Smith finds each of these options wanting (that is to say, it fails)? 5. When it comes to “absolute” principles in morality, we have to distinguish, claims Christian Smith. By “absolute,” in a moral context, we might mean universally binding, pertaining to all people at all times. But it can also entail a general principle, which applies to all kinds of relevant situations. Which of the two does Christian Smith favor and why? 6. In the final section of this chapter, Christian Smith proposes that “if these emerging adults are lost, it is because the larger culture and society into which they are being inducted is also lost.” What, according to Smith, are the cultural factors that have left so many emerging adults “morally adrift,” unable to think or reason clearly about moral questions? 7. What are the characteristics of what Christian Smith calls "moralistic therapeutic deism"? Why do you suppose this view is so popular among today's young people? 5. The Source of Confusion: A Confusion of Sources 1. How does Alasdair MacIntyre describe the current state of our moral language? 2. Why, according to MacIntyre, are contemporary moral argument “interminable”? 3. Please give examples of the confusion that can arise between Kantians, utilitarians, and proponents of "inalienable rights." 4. One often hears people justify their actions with this excuse: "Why shouldn't I be able to do what I want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else?" This, the so-called "harm principle," goes back to the work On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. What are some of the problems of trying to apply the "harm principle" generally? Moreover, what odd contradiction has arisen in the modern university with the application of Mill's principle? 6. Uncivil Discourse: Simulacra of Arguments in Rhetorical Junkspace 1. Why, according to Alasdair MacIntyre, have disagreements become so intractable today? Why have they become so bitter and harsh? 2. Why, according to MacIntyre, is “unmasking” the supposed hypocrisy of our opponents so much a part of our current moral discourse? 3. In the first section of Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah and his colleagues describe the lives of four different individuals: Brian Palmer, Joe Gorman, Margaret Oldham, and Wayne Bauer. Please describe each person’s conception of the goals of a good life. 4. Although all of these four people have very different views of the good life, Bellah describes them as “Different Voices in a Common Tradition.” What is that "common tradition"? What affect does that "common tradition" have on the way we think about the goals of the political society and, in particular, what governments are for? 5. Why would these four individuals have a hard time having any kind of discussion about the common good and collective actions of the community, state, or nation? 6. Describe what author Robert Epstein calls "The New Mind Control." How does it work? 7. What, according to Greg Jackson ("Vicious Cycles: Theses on a Philosophy of News"), are the problems with the way we as a society currently think about "news"? 8. Are contemporary social media helping us to have better discussions? Why or why not? 9. Consider for a moment, what if the answer to the previous question is "clearly not." Would coming to this realization cause you to stop using social media? If not, is it your assumption that you are uniquely insulated from the bad effects of social media? Has it every occurred to you that everyone who uses social media likely has this same assumption? 7. Freedom, Success, and Justice 1. How, according to Robert Bellah, do Americans tend to think about success? How do they define it? Why do they define it the way they do? How is their notion of success related to the common notion of "freedom" we encounter in the modern world? 2. According to Robert Bellah, how does our American tradition encourage us to think about justice? What is lacking, however, in this conception of justice? Why do Americans have difficulty conceptualizing any different notion of justice given the views they hold about "success" and "freedom"? 3. What is the common American notion of success? The common American notion of freedom? And the common American notion of justice? Explain how these three are connected. 4. Would "moralistic therapeutic deism" help challenge these American notions of success, freedom, and justice, or merely reinforce them? Explain. 5. Describe Fr. Pinckaers' distinction between "freedom of indifference" and "freedom for excellence"? What are the basic characteristics of each and how do they differ? 6. Explain the differences between having only a notion of freedom as freedom from external constraint as opposed to also adding the notion of freedom for excellence or for the good. What happens to love and commitment if we only have the notion of freedom as freedom from constraint? 8. Nature, Human Nature, and Human Flourishing 1. Why, according to Alasdair MacIntyre, did the Enlightenment project of justifying morality fail? (Please describe in terms of the threefold schema that characterized classic moral theory.) 2. Please describe the basic tenets of Stoicism and Epicureanism using the threefold schema: "nature --- rules or disciplines --- human flourishing." 9. Reflections on Virgil's Aeneid: Free Will, Fate, and the Gods Discuss the relationship between the gods, fate, free will, and obligations to others presupposed in the Aeneid. 10. Reflections on Virgil's Aeneid: What to do about Dido? 1. Aeneas has a very difficult and in many ways painful decision to make when he chooses to leave Carthage and his beloved Dido. Explain how each of the following would have advised Aeneas about what the "wise" choice to make would be. (Please include both their advice and why they would give the advice they give.) a) the Stoic Epictetus2. Please describe the essential elements of what Christian Smith calls "the shadow side of sexual liberation." 11. Humanity and Technology: Is There a Technical Fix for Every Human Problem? 1. Does the Church reject modern science? 2. Discuss the critique of certain approaches to modern natural science made by (a) John Paul II and (b) C. S. Lewis. 3. What does the Church propose as the proper way of viewing the relationship between science and theology? What service does the Church think she can offer the modern world, imbued as it is with science and technology? 1. Is Augustine’s Confessions an autobiography? How does Augustine choose to write the story of his life? 2. What topic fills the early sections of Book One of Augustine’s Confessions? 3. Early on in his life, Augustine had no words to be able to express his needs and desires. Soon, however, he was sent to school to learn reading and rhetoric. Discussion Augustine’s judgment about his early education? 4. Why did Monica postpone Augustine’s baptism? In making this decision for the reasons Augustine reports, what did she show she did not understand about baptism? 5. When she saw that Augustine was interested in sex, why did Monica not insist that Augustine take a wife? 6. What is so mystifying to Augustine about the pear tree incident? 13. Augustine's Intellectual Odyssey 1. Why was Augustine so unhappy with his youthful love of theatrical shows? 2. When Augustine first read the Bible, did he find it inspiring? Explain. 3. What was the Manicheean account of the origin of evil? Compare this account with the orthodox Christian account Augustine comes to embrace later in life? 14. Love Finds Augustine 1. Augustine eventually rejected the teaching of the Manichees and began to read the books of the neo-Platonists. He found many things there that resembled Christianity. What two things did he not find in those books that he found in the Christian Scriptures? What was significant about these two things? That is to say, how did believing in these two things change his approach to the moral life? 2. Compare Augustine’s view of the world he embraced as a Christian with that of a) the Stoics, b) the Epicureans, and c) the Platonists in terms of (1) their respective views of the human person and (2) their respective world-views. 3. Early on in his life, Augustine was a fan of Virgil’s Aeneid. By the time he wrote the Confessions, what had he come to understand about fate, free will, providence, and grace? Compare this view (his Christian view) with Virgil’s. 4. After living with his mistress for over ten years, Augustine sent her away back to North Africa. He decided to keep their son Adeotatus with him and not send him away with his mother because he thought he could provide his son a better education and better future. Did he make the right decision? If you say no, a man should not separate a child from his or her mother, I ask only that you look back at your reflection on the American soldier in Vietnam. If you said there that the soldier should, if possible, bring the child back to the United States with him, even if he couldn't get the child's mother out, and if your reasoning was that he would be able to provide a better education, more freedom, and a better future for his child in the States than the mother could in Vietnam, why the difference between the two cases? Why was Augustine not justified separating his son from his mother in order to keep him in a place where he could get a better education and yet the American soldier would be justified separating his child from its mother in order to keep the child in a place where he or she could get a better education? This is a moral dilemma. How might we begin to try to untangle the various issues? 15. What is Our Story? 1. What, according to Augustine's "On the Catechizing of the Uninstructed" are the "six ages" of history? What is significant about this notion of history? What is at the heart of this story; what is it meant to teach us? Please discuss in terms of its relevance for (a) the role of time in God's providence, and (b) how we understand the salvation of the world. 2. Augustine is famous for having coined the phrase: "The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament is made manifest in the New." Please discuss the relevance of this statement for our understanding of history and God's divine plan. Please discuss how this notion influences the way a Christian reads the Bible. 3. What is the challenge Glaucon and Adeimantus pose to Socrates in Book 2 (357a - 362c) of The Republic? How is this a challenge to Christians who want to justify the "moral life" based solely on the claim that "moral" people get their reward in heaven? What view of the relationship between any notion of life-after-death and one's moral choices in this life is needed instead? 4. Oliver O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, "History and Eschatology" (click the link to see questions) |