PHIL1004 Final Essay Assignment

You may elect either to write two short essays (approximately 2 pages each) on any two of the topics given below or those given by Prof. Ni, or to write a single long paper (approximately 4 pages) on any one of the topics.

Additional topics

1) Descartes claims that we cannot doubt that we exist as thinking things - even if we are dreaming or that an evil demon is deceiving us about everything else. Explain why he thinks this. Do you agree?

2) Explain Descartes' two arguments for the existence of God (the trademark argument and the ontological argument). What are some objections that could be made against these arguments? Do you think Descartes could defend his arguments against these objections?

3) What is Hume's view on causation? What are his reasons for holding such a view, and do you agree with him?

4) According to Kant, in order to judge whether an action is morally permitted, we should consider if we could will the maxim of that action to be a universal law. Explain what Kant means by this. Can you think of any problems with this standard?

5) Explain and compare the epistemological views of any 2 of these philosophers: Plato, Descartes, Hume or Kant. Pay special attention to their respective views on the relationship between knowledge on one hand and pure reasoning or experience on the other.

6) Compare and critically assess any two philosophers covered in this course with regard to their views on morality.

7) Explain and discuss Nietzsche’s method of geneology as illustrated in the following aphorism from Daybreak. (Of course, you are allowed and encouraged to refer to other writings by Nietzsche.)

3.

So far it is on Good and Evil that we have meditated least profoundly: this was always too dangerous a subject. Conscience, a good reputation, hell, and at times even the police, have not allowed and do not allow of impartiality; in the presence of morality, as before all authority, we must not even think, much less speak: here we must obey! Ever since the beginning of the world, no authority has permitted itself to be made the subject of criticism; and to criticise morals -- to look upon morality as a problem, as problematic -- what! was that not -- is that not -- immoral? -- But morality has at its disposal not only every means of intimidation wherewith to keep itself free from critical hands and instruments of torture: its security lies rather in a certain art of enchantment, in which it is a past master -- it knows how to "enrapture." … The right answer would rather have been, that all philosophers, including Kant himself, were building under the seductive influence of morality -- that they aimed at certainty and "truth" only in appearance; but that in reality their attention was directed towards "majestic moral edifices," … in order to make room for his "moral kingdom," he found himself compelled to add to it an indemonstrable world, a logical "beyond " -- that was why he required his critique of pure reason! In other words, he would not have wanted it, if he had not deemed one thing to be more important than all the others: to render his moral kingdom unassailable by -- or, better still, invisible to, reason, -- for he felt too strongly the vulnerability of a moral order of things in the face of reason. For, when confronted with nature and history, when confronted with the ingrained immorality of nature and history, Kant was, like all good Germans from the earliest times, a pessimist: he believed in morality, not because it is demonstrated through nature and history, but despite its being steadily contradicted by them.