CVSP 203 Final, Fall 2001

f . AMERICAN UNIVER! LIBRARY Ae TEMOT CVSP 203 ~ Fall 2002 Final Exam (2 hours) Dr Wrisley This exam is in three parts. No books or notes are to be used in answering the questions. Absolute silence is required in the room. Eyes on your own paper. NOTE: The point values have changed slightly since the last exam. PartI: Identifications (15 minutes, 20 points). Choose two (2) of the following five (5) quotations below. As best as you can in about 5 sentences, identify (a) from what text it comes and the author (b) its context within the work or in what argument it is found (c) its significance to the work as a whoke, that is, what are some of the major themes of the author’s work reflected in it. Do not recopy the passage. A “In the beginning was the Word’: why, now /I’m stuck already! I must change that; how? / Is then ‘the word’ so great and high a thing? / There is some other rendering, / Which with the spirit’s guidance I must find. / We read: ‘In the beginning was the Mind,’ / Before you write this first phrase, think again; / Good sense eludes the overhasty pen. / Does ‘mind’ set worlds on their creative course? / It means: ‘In the beginning was the Force.’ / So it should be -but as I write this too, / Some instinct warns me that it will not do. / The spirit speaks! ] see how it must read, / And boldly write: ‘In the beginning was the Deed!” B. “T regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being. Those interests, 1 contend, authorize the subjection of individual spontaneity to external control, only in respect to those actions of each, which concem the interests of other people.” C. “But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to the abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential content is determined by the material conditions of your class. The selfish conception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property—historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production—this conception you share with every ruling class that has disappeared,” D. “Ice thaws upon the river , ice melts on the streams, / They are freed again as the spring sun gleams. / The valley is green with new life, new hopes; / Old winter is beaten ~ see how it withdrew / To skulk up there on rough mountain-slopes! / And now in its weakness all it can do / Is to scatter hail in impotent showers / Over the meadows as they turn green ... / And the countryside is still short of flowers, / So the people instead, dressed up so fine, / Are lured out into the sweet sunshine. ... / They have something today to celebrate, / For the Lord’s resurrection is theirs as well: / Today they have risen and been set free / From the mean damp houses where they dwell, / From their trades and crafts and drudgery ... / They have all risen into the light!” E. “Men do not solely want the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. Al] men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one; not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear, either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they tumed the whole force of education to effect their purpose.” { . Ahte uy UNIVERSE . LIBRARY to, . OF BEIRUT Part IIT: Essay. (1 hour, 40 points). Choose one ( of the three (3) essay topics below. In writing your response, be sure to give specific examples where you can drawn from the passages we read in the course. Be sure to give yourself enough time to answer this question thoroughly. NB: This essay is your opportunity to show me that you have thought about the material of the course and that you understand the arguments of the authors involved. You are being given twice as much time as the midterms for this essay. Show me what you have learned this term. 1. One of the definitions for the word ‘progress’ found in the dictionary is “a going forward, going on to further or higher stages, successive or continuous improvement”. Choose three (3) of these five (5) authors and discuss whether or not they believe in that concept of progress and how. (Kant, Locke, Hobbes, Marx, Descartes). 2. One of the definitions for the word ‘modem’ found in the dictionary is “having the characteristics of a movement marked by a break with traditional ideas or forms of expression”. Choose three (3) of these five (5) authors and discuss how they would respond to that idea of the modern (Smith, Faust, Marx, Mill, Bacon). 3. One of the major topics that has come up in our course has been the question of liberty or freedom. Each author that we have read also has his own notion of what the limits to human freedom are. Choose three (3) of these six (6) authors and discuss what those limits are, as far as you understand from the readings (Marx, Mill, Locke, Faust, Diderot, Kant).