Note: The format for the final exam will be the same as for the midterm exam. There will be some quotes to identify, several questions to be answered quite briefly and one or two questions to be answered at greater length.
1 What is the ‘argument from design’? (In Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Cleanthes defends a version of this argument, first stated on p. 15.).)
2 In Hume’s Dialogues, Philo raises a number of objections to the argument from design. (See esp. pp.18-22, 35-41, 44-46, and 49-53.) Be prepared to state two or three of these objections in plain English.
3 How does Cleanthes use the example of “an articulate voice...heard in the clouds” to try to answer Philo’s criticisms? (See pp.23-26)
4 What is the ‘problem of evil’? (Philo states a version of this problem on page 63.)
5 What, according to Philo, are the four circumstances that account for most of the natural ‘evil’ in the world? Do you agree with him that an all-powerful God could easily have remedied these circumstances? (See pp 69-73)
6 How would you describe Nietzsche’s criticism of the Socratic/Platonic emphasis on reason?
7 How is Christian morality ‘anti-nature’ according to Nietzsche?
8 What does Nietzsche seem to be for? (See especially “Raids of an Untimely Man”, sections 33, 38, 41, 47 and 49 and “What I Owe to the Ancients”.)
9 What is Nietzsche’s doctrine of ‘the eternal recurrence’?
10 The title of Douglas Porpora’s book is How Holocausts Happen. Briefly, how do they happen, in his opinion?
11 What grounds does Porpora offer for his claim that what happened in Central America during the 1980’s was a ‘Holocaust-like event’?
12 How and for what reasons does Porpora think we should revise the official UN definition of ‘genocide’?
13 How does Porpora criticize relativism?
14 How does he argue that we have a responsibility to be ‘truth seekers’ and, in particular, to find out what our government is up to?
Note: You should also be prepared to explain what you think about these ideas and arguments.