Recent Western Philosophy Questions and Answers

Answer: D

For the early Wittgenstein, a name denotes a simple.

In the Tractatus, names are the simple signs of a fully analysed proposition, and 'the name means the object' (3.203). The objects named are simple (2.02): they have no parts, and they form the substance of the world. A name stands for such a simple object.

A fact is what a whole proposition pictures, a combination of objects, not what a name denotes. A mental state is not the meaning of a name in the Tractatus, and the simple objects are not physical objects in the ordinary sense, which are complex and further analysable.

Answer: B

The distinction is between grammatical and logical form.

Russell's theory of descriptions (1905) shows that a sentence such as 'The present King of France is bald' has the grammatical form of a subject-predicate sentence, but its logical form is a quantified statement: there is exactly one present King of France, and he is bald. The grammatical form misleads; analysis reveals the logical form.

Semantics and syntax are later technical terms that do not name the two forms Russell contrasts. Grammatical versus logical form is the distinction his theory made famous, and it set the programme of analytic philosophy.

Answer: D

The notion is related to indirect communication.

For Kierkegaard, truth as subjectivity is not a result that can be handed over like information. The existential truth of how to live has to be appropriated inwardly by each person. So it cannot be communicated directly; it can only be communicated indirectly, by provoking the reader to reflect and choose for himself. This is why Kierkegaard wrote under pseudonyms.

Direct, rational or propositional communication suits objective knowledge, which Kierkegaard contrasts with subjective truth.

Answer: A

The human being belongs to Being as a guardian.

In the 'Letter on Humanism' (1946), Heidegger says that man is not the lord of beings but the shepherd of Being, and that language is the house of Being in which man dwells as its guardian. The human being's task is to guard and preserve the openness in which Being shows itself.

Heidegger explicitly denies that man is master or creator of Being, the view he attributes to modern subjectivism and technology. 'Author' likewise makes man the source of Being, which is the reverse of his position.

Answer: A

For Rorty, traditional epistemology takes the mind to mirror reality.

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Richard Rorty argued that modern philosophy since Descartes and Locke pictured the mind as a great mirror containing representations of reality, some accurate and some not. Epistemology became the study of how to make those representations accurate.

Rorty's own pragmatism rejects this picture. The book's title names the metaphor, which is why mirroring, not negating, transcending or rationalising, is the answer.

Answer: A

Merleau-Ponty does not regard the lived body as a physical object.

In the Phenomenology of Perception, the lived body is not an object among objects that I observe from outside. It is the subject of perception, the zero point from which space is oriented, and the place where reflection is incarnate. His example of one hand touching the other, which can switch between touching and being touched, shows its reflexive character.

So zero point, reflexive touch and incarnate reflection are all ways he describes the lived body. Treating it as a mere physical object is the view he argues against.

Answer: D

Dewey regards inquiry as self-corrective.

For John Dewey, inquiry is the controlled transformation of an indeterminate situation into a determinate one. Its conclusions are warranted assertions, always open to revision in the light of further experience. Because inquiry tests its own results and corrects its errors as it goes, it is a process of constant revision.

Self-assertive and self-negating do not describe this method, and self-consciousness is not what makes revision necessary. Self-correction, which Dewey shares with Peirce, is the defining mark of scientific inquiry.

Answer: D

The key gives truth.

Nietzsche describes the will to power as the basic force or drive in all life, which acts by interpreting, by imposing form and inventing values, and by overcoming. He speaks of it as interpretation ('the will to power interprets'), as creative invention, and as force.

He does not identify it with truth. He treats 'truth' as itself a product of the will to power, a useful fiction or interpretation, and attacks the 'will to truth' as something to be questioned.

Answer: C

The key gives self and other are both subjects and objects.

For Sartre, a human being is both transcendence (a free subject) and facticity (an object, including an object for others' look). Bad faith is a lie to oneself that denies one side of this double reality: treating oneself as a mere thing, like the waiter playing at being a waiter, or as pure freedom with no facts.

Options A and B describe one-sided relations of the look, which are not the denial bad faith involves, and D denies both sides altogether.

Answer: C

Heidegger treats technology as a revelation of beings.

In The Question Concerning Technology (1954), Heidegger argues that the essence of technology is nothing technological: it is a mode of revealing (aletheia). Modern technology reveals beings as 'standing-reserve', resources to be ordered, under the 'enframing' (Gestell).

He explicitly rejects the 'instrumental and anthropological' definition of technology as a human activity or a means, so 'a human behavior', 'an act of manipulation' and 'a useful gadget' are the views he sets aside.