CVSP 203 Final, Spring 2004

RICAN CUTTS! LIBRARY CS-203, Section 7, Final Exam, 4th June 2004. OF BRIATT 2 hours R.S. Smith Answer three questions, two from A and one from B. Do not write more than 3 sides per question. 15 marks each. A. Understanding primary texts. Explain the meaning, context and significance of two of the following passages. It may be useful to divide your explanations into three parts: a) immediate meaning or key ideas, b) context (where the passage fits in the argument), c) relation to the work as a whole; if relevant you may add a fourth part d) how one or other of the main themes touched upon in *. the passage are addressed by other CS-203 authors. 1-Goethe. FAUST: My sweet beloved child, don’t misconceive My meaning! Who dare say God’s name? Who dares to claim That he believes in God? And whose heart is so dead That he has ever boldly said: No, I do not believe? Holding all things in being, Does He not hold and keep You, me, even Himself? Does all this not besiege Your mind and heart, And weave in unseen visibility All round you its eternal mystery? Oh, fill your heart right up with all of this, And when you’re brimming over with the bliss Of such a feeling, call it what you like! Call it joy, or your heart, or love, or God! I have no name for it. The feeling’s all there is! The name’s mere noise and smoke — what does it do But cloud the heavenly radiance? MARGARETA. Well, I suppose all that makes sense; I think the priest says something like that too — Just in the wording there’s a difference. 2-Marx & Engels. “When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence. When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to the ideas of the Enlightenment, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge. ‘Undoubtedly’, it will be said, ‘religious, moral, philosophical, political, juridical ideas, etc., have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change. ‘There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.’ What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different times. kee pe te. : But whatever’form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, in forms of consciousness which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.” (Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, pp. 24-25) 3-Mill. “The despotism of custom is everywhere the standard hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement. The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of improvement; but the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals. The progressive principle, however, in either shape, whether as the love of liberty or of improvement, is antagonistic to the sway of Custom, involving at least emancipation from that yoke; and the contest between the two constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind. The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final appeal; justice and right mean conformity to custom...” (Mill, On Liberty, pp. 78) B. Comparative essay. Write an essay on one of the following topics. Essays lacking organization or argument will lose marks. 4. “Nature to be commanded must be obeyed” (Bacon, The New Organon, Aphorism-3). Discuss the different ways man’s control over nature — and/or over his own nature — is conceptualized in three different CS-203 authors. “Why scruple then at this late hour? Are you not — a colonial power?” (Mephistopheles to Faust, Faust Il) How is European colonialism reflected in the writings of three or more CS-203 authors? 6. Bacon, considering “what a difference there is between the life of men in the most civilized province of Europe, and in the wildest and most barbarous districts of New India [= America]”, says “this difference comes not from soil, not from climate, not from race, but from the arts [= science and technology].” (New Organon I-129) Discuss the way that human progress is conceived in CS-203 authors from Shakespeare to Mill.