Final Exam

Quote Identification (30%), suggested time: 20 minutes.

● Bible
● St. Augustine: Confessions
● Martin Luther: “Freedom of a Christian”
● Max Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
● Immanuel Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
● Sigmund Freud: Civilization and its Discontents
● Friedrich Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals; Selections from The Gay Science, The Will to
Power, Dawn, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
● Martin Heidegger: “Memorial Address”
● Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism
● Mark C. Taylor: Speed Limits

1. Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of
libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so
much in flexibility. The task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims in such a way that
they cannot come up against frustration from the external world. In this, sublimation of
the instincts lends its assistance.

2. Now I say: a human being and generally every rational being exists as an end in itself,
not merely as a means for the discretionary use for this or that will, but must in all its
actions, whether directed towards itself or also to other rational beings, always be
considered at the same time as an end.

3. But I was an unhappy young man, wretched as at the beginning of my adolescence

when I prayed you for chastity and said: “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
I was afraid that you might hear my prayer quickly, and that you might too rapidly heal
me of the disease of lust which I preferred to satisfy rather than suppress.

4. The values that have allowed Western capitalism to thrive now threaten its collapse:
commitment to parts, divisions, individualism, competition, utility, efficiency, simplicity,
choice, consumption, busyness, excess, growth, and speed—above all, speed. And the
values this regime has repressed now need to be cultivated: commitment to the whole,
relationships, community, cooperation, generosity, patience, subtlety, deliberation,
analysis, complexity, uncertainty, leisure, and reflection—above all, reflection.

5. Even the experience of the materially and sensually given world depends upon my being
in contact with other men, upon our common sense which regulates and controls all
 other senses and without which each of us would be enclosed in his own particularity of
sense data which in themselves are unreliable and treacherous. Only because we have
common sense, that is only because not one man, but men in the plural inhabit the earth
can we trust our immediate sensual experience.

6. No good work helps justify or save an unbeliever. On the other hand, no evil work makes
him wicked or damns him; but the unbelief which makes the person and the tree evil
does the evil and damnable works. Hence when a man is good or evil, this is effected
not by the works, but by the faith or unbelief.

7. The doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that
is, because one wanted to impute guilt. The entire old psychology, the psychology of will,
was conditioned by the fact that its originators, the priests at the head of ancient
communities, wanted to create for themselves the right to punish—or wanted to create
the right for God. Men were considered “free” so that they might be judged and
punished.

8. The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

9. This flight-from-thought is the ground of thoughtlessness. But part of this flight is that
man will neither see nor admit it. Man today will even flatly deny this flight from thinking.
He will assert the opposite. He will say—and quite rightly—that there were at no time
such far-reaching plans, so many inquires in so many areas, research carried out as
passionately as today. Of course. And this display of ingenuity and deliberation has its
own great usefulness. Such thought remains indispensable. But—it also remains true
that it is thinking of a special kind.

10. As far as the question of one’s own state of grace was concerned, at least, it was
impossible to rest content with Calvin’s reliance on the witness of preserving faith
effected by grace working in men… On the one hand, people were taught that they
simple had a duty to regard themselves as elect, and to dismiss any doubts as
temptation from the devil, since lack of assurance was a result of inadequate faith, in
other words, of the inadequate working of grace… On the other hand, tireless laboring in
a calling was urged as the best possible means of attaining this self-assurance.
Essays (35% each): ANSWER BOTH
Suggested time: 50 minutes each (5-10 minutes planning; 40-45 minutes writing).

1.) Discuss the sources of thoughtlessness and the ways of becoming thoughtless in
Arendt, Taylor, Kant, and one other author of your choice. (Total of 4 authors)
2.) Discuss the role of creativity and creation (loosely construed) in Arendt, Nietzsche, and
one other author of your choice. Discuss the meaning of creativity/creation, the role it
plays in the authors’ thought, and when appropriate what it is meant to overcome, (Total
of 3 authors)