PHILOSOPHY 110 C – Final Examination

!!Write ONLY on paper supplied by instructor!!

NAME: __________________ Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Room 2-14 DISCUSS!! 2:30 – 4:45 PM

Section I: Identify any TEN out of fifteen people: Buddha, Alfred North Whitehead, Martin Luther King Jr., Epicurus, Confucius, Gaunilo, Anselm of Canterbury, Blaise Pascal, Carol Gilligan, Lawrence Kohlberg, Confucius, Pablo Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir, e.e.cummings, Ali, Ann Ferguson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Kate Millet, Mohammed, Nancy Chodorow, Malcolm X, Rabi’a al-Awadiyya, Mulla Sadra, Lao-Tze or Tzu.

Section II: Identify any FIVE out of ten concepts: Hinduism, Deism, Theism, Sufi, Leap of Faith, Sunni, pantheism, Zen Buddhism, Closure, Shiite, Animism, mysticism, satori, dharma, Buddhism, mukti, catharsis, Tao, Zen Buddhism, Karma, androgyny, atman, nirvana, koan.

Section III: Answer YOUR question and any FOUR of the next ten for 60 per cent of the grade:

1. Discuss Aristotle's theory of Art.

Aristotle said that the characteristic of art is that when we experience it, it gives us what he called “catharsis.” This word means in Greek ‘cleansing,’ but people generally assume that he meant ‘relief:’ when we experience art it makes us feel relieved and less tense and there is a sense that a burden has been taken off us. Aristotle hence thought that we use art to solve our problems: when we are unhappy, we can use art to feel happy again. He sides with Freud in thinking that art is useful: it provides a relief. Kant, on the other hand, thought art was a kind of doodling: making meaningless scrabbles on a piece of paper.

How does art provide relief? Aristotle proposes that when we see art that appeals to us, we recognize our problems. When we see a play about Medea dismembering her kids and throwing them overboard we recognize what we feel when the neighbor’s kids mess up our beautiful garden: we would like to strangle them and that of course is a problem: if we strangle them we go to jail, and if we don’t strangle them we develop a stomach ulcer, a headache, or we kick our dog. And when we see that on stage or in a movie, it is not our problem anymore: it is someone else’s problem and we can look at it from an objective point of view. Our oldest son had learning disabilities and the school psychologist organized a parents’ group where we tutored other children with learning disabilities. Then, so to say, we could have our pie and eat it: our child’s learning disabilities were not our problem anymore but someone else’s. At the same time, however, we were working at the problem so we didn’t feel guilty and we developed an understanding of the problem. Often, when confronted with a difficult problem, we tense up and that keeps us from solving it. When we see our problems in art, Aristotle says, we loosen up because it isn’t our problem anymore and when we are relaxed, we can solve it better. Still, we are working at the problem, which now is someone else’s: it is Medea’s, for example.

2. Explain why Modern Art is Art.

We can look upon works of art as a language: in a language we have words that can be put together or combined with other words, but only according certain rules. When we put ‘anyone’ with ‘lived,’ we run into a rule that says that ‘everyone’ can be combined with ‘lived’ but ‘anyone’ can not be combined with ‘lived.’ Similarly in art we find that ‘Jesus’ can be combined with ‘is crucified’ or ‘is our shepherd’ but not with ‘kills a soldier’ or ‘is the Jewish High Priest.’ This is especially true of art in the middle Ages: the paintings there are very predictable and there is not much variation. With time, however, we find more subject and less rules. In Medieval Art, for example, we find almost only Biblical figures that are combined with each other only in ways described in the Bible but in 19^th century art we find many more people that are combined in ways not described in the Bible. We find, for example, people traveling in a railroad, rowing on a river, dissecting a corpse in a medical school. In short, with time the rules for combining the figures relax and there are more figures. But the rules and figures still stay within the possibilities of this world. In our world a face has two eyes when you look at it from the front and one eye when we look at it from the side. Till World War I: then most of the rules disappear and we see a face from the side with two eyes.

So, in modern art most of the restrictive rules on art disappear, and those are the restrictive rules of reality. Reality tells us that eyes, mouth, and nose occur in a face in certain relationships: two eyes, below them a mouth, a nose between the eyes and the mouth. Modern art puts the eyes, nose and mouth wherever the artist wants.

Why does Modern Art dispose with the rules of reality? For better expression. In our language there is a rule that says you can combine ‘everybody’ with ‘lived’ but you cannot say ‘anybody lived.’ But the poet e.e. cummings decides to ignore that rule. His poem is about the average person, called ‘everyman’ in medieval plays, and how he lived. But he makes the poem more personal by using ‘anyone’ instead of ‘everyone’ or ‘everybody.’ ‘Anyone’ means ‘everyone’ but with the invitation to the listener to pick anyone, check whether the poet is right and then the listener will see that what the poet says is correct. Hence the poem begins something like: “Once upon a time an average person lived…” and then the poet uses the word “anyone” to tell the audience: “What I say is true, pick anyone, and you’ll see that he lived in a nice town …” The word “anyone” is not grammatical but more expressive since it contains the meaning: “pick anyone.” Entropy increases.

3. Discuss the Ontological Argument for the existence of God. What was Kant's opinion of such proofs?

This argument, first formulated by Anselm of Canterbury, runs as follows:

Premise 1: I can think of something that is more perfect than anything else, and I call that: ‘God.’ So, premise 1 states: God is perfect. (S)He may or may not exist; for the time being (S)He exists only in my mind. But (S)He is perfect.

Premise 2: Whatever is perfect, has to exist, otherwise it would not be perfect.

Conclusion: God is perfect (from premise 1) and therefore exists (from premise 2).

Objections:

1) perfect things do not HAVE to exist. Some things can be “too good to be true." Ideals don't have to exist, except in people's mind. Also:

2) whatever is most perfect, does not have to be perfect (the reverse of the Dinner Plate or Brussels Sprouts Argument), just like whatever is best in certain situations is the lesser evil and does not have to be good. Additionally,

3) can something be 'more perfect' than something else? An object or person is either perfect or not, just as a person is dead or alive. People may be 'closer to perfection,' but that does not make them 'more perfect.' And lastly:

4) Kant's formulation: perfection is a predicate, but existence is not.

This means that a predicate, for example "… is perfect," tells us something new or important about something's make-up or composition. For example, when I tell you: “your neighbor (the subject) is nice (the predicate),” I am adding to the description of your neighbor something you did not know or did not realize. But saying: “your neighbor exists” does not change anything in the description of the neighbor: (s)he is a skinny Eskimo who loves raw fish, throws wild fish parties and smells like fish, whether (s)he exists or I am merely imagining her or him. Now, an existing wild neighbor is a nuisance, but (s)he is so because (s)he is wild, because she does something to us. This is like, for example, a knife or a gun. They are not evil in themselves but can be used as tools to hurt us. If existing made the neighbor a nuisance, then all existing neighbors would be nuisances. But they are not; some are and others aren’t, depending on whether they throw wild fish parties or not.

In an argument we work with predicates—qualities that add something new or overlooked to the description--and 'exists' is not a predicate, and therefore does not fit in the argument. In premise 2 Anselm mixes apples and oranges: saying that "whoever is perfect, exists" is like talking about apples and then switch to oranges and pretend that we are still talking about the same thing. This is like saying: 1) Des Moines is in Iowa, 2) Iowa is a battleship, therefore: Des Moines is in a battleship. This argument is not valid because we changed categories: we started out with geographical units and then changed to ships, and you can’t change categories in an argument; you have to stay in the same category.

Of course premise 2 has psychological, though not logical, packing power. A hundred dollars may be the same as any other hundred dollars, but a hundred dollars we have is better than a hundred dollars we don't have. Or, an existing hundred dollars is preferable to a non-existing hundred dollars, but that is because of the existing, not because of the hundred dollars. And Anselm is saying that an existing hundred-dollar bill is not just preferable to a non-existing one, he says it is qualitatively different. And that is logically not defensible.

Kant said that looking for a proof for God's existence was pointless: we need God to make sense out of life; God's existence is a moral necessity.

4. Discuss Marx' explanation of Religion.

Marx had concluded that all our spiritual activity originates from the economic structure of our society and that, for example, in a capitalist economy people would have capitalist spiritual life and, especially, a capitalist religion that condoned injustice by promising rewards for injustice in the Afterlife. Capitalists exploit people, Marx said, and they use religion to justify exploitation and keep the exploited happy with promises. This is only partly supported by facts: many religions stress the need for justice for the poor and the exploited and a justice here on earth, not in the Afterlife. The fact that some people misuse religion tells us something about those people, not about religion.

5. Explain and discuss Pascal’s “Wager” or “Bet”.

Pascal reasoned that if one believed in God, one would be rewarded if (S)He existed, and if (S)He did not exist, one would have lived soberly and honestly for no religious reason but that would not be much of a loss, since it would have been a healthy life all the same. If one did not believe in God, one would go to Hell if God existed and one would live merely a short and unhealthy life of evil if (S)He did not exist. It would therefore be safer to assume God existed, because we would thereby avoid going to Hell, and if God did not exist, the healthy and lawful life would be a reward in itself.

There is no problem if there is only one God, but how do we know that? If there are many Gods, then the problem is: in which God do we have to believe to avoid Hell? Can we play it safe and believe in all Gods? What if Gods have contradictory commands: sacrifice your oldest child (the Phoenician God Baal in the Old Testament) or don't sacrifice anyone (Yahweh)?

6. Which natural disaster triggered the discussion of the existence of Evil? Why is the existence of Evil a problem?

In 1755 an earthquake destroyed the Portuguese capital Lisbon on the morning of Easter Sunday, when most God-fearing people were in church and all the bums were in bars. The churches collapsed and killed all worshippers while bums crawled out of the bars alive. This had an enormous impact in Europe since it seemed as if God had inflicted punishment on people who did not seem to deserve it. Previously people had noticed that good people suffer: the Old Testament Book of Job is about the suffering of a good person: Job. But the Lisbon earthquake was the first time that good people died on a large scale, and also the first time everybody in Europe could read about it in the newspapers. It also happened during a time when the natural sciences were flourishing, and when people started noticing cause-and-result relations everywhere, especially in the sciences. Newton had presented a model of a universe where everything—for example, a solar eclipse--has a cause and is predictable centuries before it would happen, and consequently people assumed that the earthquake must have had a cause, and they started to ask what the causes or cause was for this and for other examples of undeserved suffering. So, after Newton people started to assume that everything had a cause, and that the result was predictable from, and in agreement with, the cause. Or, that serious transgressions would result in serious disasters and light transgressions in light disasters. But people saw something completely different: life was unpredictable—just think of the stock market and the economy—and punishment or rewards were not in proportion with their causes: people who went to church on Easter morning where punished by being crushed in church; people who got drunk on Easter morning just were frightened but otherwise survived. Evil is when people suffer for no good reason; evil is when it seems as if there is something or somebody who makes us suffer just because something or somebody enjoys making us suffer. How come there is undeserved suffering? That is the problem of Evil.

7. Discuss Pantheism and explain why the Abrahamic religions reject it in Spinoza’s formulation.

The Abrahamic religions--Islam, Judaism and Christianity--focus on a contradiction in our religious experience, which makes us realize that God is immanent but also transcendent. God is immanent means that God is a part of this world: we feel that at certain moments God is with us. That agrees with Spinoza's pantheism. But we also feel that God is better that the world and not part of it, and that is the meaning of transcendent. In our world, for example, meaningless earthquakes kill thousands of innocent people but we believe that that is not God, since God is outside our world and better. Spinoza's pantheism would equate God with the universe, and in the universe senseless events occur which we do not want to ascribe to God. There is much evil in the world, and identifying God with the universe would mean identifying Him or Her with that evil. Spinoza denies that God is transcendent, and the Abrahamic religions assume (S)He is transcendent indeed so that (S)He is not blamed for the evil that is in our world.

Additionally: Abrahamic scholars believe that God created the universe and therefore must have existed before there was a universe. Spinoza assumed that God and the universe were the same, and in that case God could not have created the universe.

8. Discuss Augustine’s argument against the existence of Evil. Which philosopher provided the basis for this argument?

Augustine took an idea of the Greek philosopher Parmenides, who claimed that whatever really exists, exists forever. All that exists only for some time, even a few centuries, does not really exist, said Parmenides. This made him conclude that actually very few things existed, since most things disappear sooner or later. The only things that really existed, Parmenides thought, were mathematical formulas.

Augustine decided that Parmenides had a good argument, even though Parmenides was a pagan Greek philosopher. So Augustine reasoned that Evil does not exist forever. For example, in Paradise, right after the creation of the world, there was no Evil. Also, when Christ returns to earth and the Thousand-Year Kingdom will begin, there will be no Evil either. So, Augustine claimed, Evil does not last, therefore it does not exist. The problem is, of course, that nobody ascribes to Parmenides' philosophy anymore. Additionally, it is of no help to someone who is tortured by the Des Moines Mafia to know that the evil done to him doesn't exist. The pain that is caused by Evil results in an internal sense proposition—e.g. “I suffer terribly!--which shows that Evil does indeed exist and claiming that it does not exist is wishful thinking.

9. Discuss Kierkegaard's attitude toward religion. Is religion rational? Does it matter? What is the importance of religion, according to Kierkegaard?

Kierkegaard thought that we create our own personality by our commitments. These commitments can be to varying items: a sports team, a job, our family, and our 'significant other.' When we declare that those items are for us most important, we identify ourselves as a Green Sox fan, or Pat's spouse, child, or employee. But sports, jobs and people have only a limited range, and our commitment to them creates only a part of our personality. God, however, has an unlimited range and covers all of creation, and by committing ourselves to God we create our maximal and total personality.

This commitment is not rational, Kierkegaard said. If it were rational, everybody would figure out which one God to believe in, and there would be no risk in our faith. If faith in God were rational, we would figure out on our adding machines whom to believe in, and then we would be like machines that blindly follow instructions or animals that follow instincts. What makes us the personalities which we are, Kierkegaard said, is that we make investments and take risks, can make mistakes, but have the courage to make a leap of faith and only in that way we create our personality. Sure, we make mistakes but God is merciful and forgives us. Without such a leap, we are machines or dumb animals.

10. Discuss the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God.

The Cosmological Argument claims that everything has to go back to a common beginning, a kind of 'Big Bang,' and that beginning means that there was a 'Beginner,' and that is God. This originated with Aristotle, who claimed that everything had to have a cause, and that cause had to have a cause too, and so on. But nothing goes on forever, Aristotle claimed, "there is no infinite regress," and there has to be a First Cause that caused everything. This First Cause he called God. Christian philosophers then took this argument over from Aristotle. But nowadays people are not so sure everything has to have a cause. In some areas of physics events happen without a cause. Also, we are not sure that there has to be a first cause. It is possible that life and time are endless, and that everything goes on without end and has been going on forever without a beginning, even though that is difficult to imagine for us. Lastly, it may be that Life is circular, and that events repeat themselves endlessly, maybe with some variations.

11. Discuss the Argument from Design for the existence of God. What did David Hume think about this proof?

The Argument from Design states that the Universe is a perfectly constructed machine that has to have been constructed by a Perfect Being, or God. David Hume was the first to criticize this and say that the universe is sloppily constructed and more like the job of a "beginning God." The movement of the stars may seem perfect but in other areas there is room for improvement, especially as far as justice is concerned. And that is very important since the Abrahamic God is a God of justice, of which there is not enough in this world.

12. Explain the Hindu and Buddhist idea of Karma.

Hinduism believes in re-incarnation: it teaches that when we die, we are reborn and have another go at life. Initially we start out with a soul, atman, which is not personal but is a part of the universal spirit, the Brahman. Throughout our lives our actions form additions to our atman and those additions personalize our atman and tend to influence our actions and steer us into certain directions. These additions that try to influence us are called ‘karma.’ For example, when I smoke, I become addicted and in this and my following lives I will tend to smoke. But, Hinduism teaches, we have a free will and can ignore what our karma wants us to do. We have a choice between being directed by our karma or following ‘dharma,’ the divine law that tells us what is good and what isn’t. When we follow our karma, we are punished by being re-born as a less attractive being, for example a mosquito but when we follow dharma we are born as a better human being, e.g. the child of nice and funny parents.

Buddhism differs from Hinduism in that Buddhism does not think we have souls. But, like Hinduism, Buddhism teaches that we decide by our actions whether we are going to be born ‘up’ or ‘down’ in our next life. The same applies to fortunes and misfortunes in our life: when we do good, we are rewarded in this life or the next; when we do wrong we are punished. There is no Evil in Hinduism or Buddhism: we always get what we deserve, if not in this life, then in the next.

13. Discuss Freud's explanation of religion.

Freud proposed that when we are about three years old, we believe that our parents are omnipotent and omniscient, like God. This is a comforting idea: someone will always be in charge and care for us, just like our parents. Then, as we grow older, Freud claims we change our minds about our parents, but we still keep the same idea of God that is typical for a three year old child. But there is no reason why that idea should stay the same because as we grow older, our ideas about the world change, and then why not our idea of God? Some people will indeed need safety, but they may find this safety in jobs, towns, families, companies, degrees, skills, knowledge. Others will enjoy the feeling of growing more independent and assume responsibilities and care for others as their parents had cared for them. There is no reason to assume that everybody will stay stuck in the idea of God they had in their first few years of life. Nowadays some think that Freud’s idea of God was actually the idea of Austrian society about their Emperor Franz Joseph, who was associated with a Superfather image who loved all his subjects and knew and could do anything. This image crashed, not surprisingly, in World War I when a revolution put an end to the Austrian monarchy.

14. Discuss Kant's theory of Art.

Kant thought that we first organize the basic elements of our experience into 'images' with the help of our imagination. For example, we see something red and then something round and with the help of our imagination we put the two together and then have the image 'something round and red.' This is the first step in our organization of our experience. The second step comes when with what he calls our 'understanding' we add to that image a concept: 'apple,' in this case.

Art, according to Kant, results when we 'get stuck' in this one identification and come up with some more concepts. We don't stop at 'apple' but go on: 'bloody moon,' 'bloody earth,' or even 'what Eve gave to Adam,' 'flattery,' 'teacher's pet,' and so on.

There is no purpose in this activity, Kant says, while normally the purpose of language or drawings is communication. But still, not just anything we do is Art. Art, Kant says, has "purposeless purposiveness," or "purposefull purposivelessness." That is, there is no purpose but the artist has to take her or his art seriously and work just as hard as if there really were a purpose. Kant says that this artistic behavior has no purpose. It is like doodling on a piece of paper during a boring class. But the way he describes Art sounds a lot like a description of Play. Play, too, has no purpose beyond itself but still everybody works hard at it and sticks to the rules. There are several theories about Play, and they may apply to Art too.

First, play is seen as training. Everybody plays football, which is useful because when Minnesota invades Iowa we have a large mass of trained people to fight them back. Secondly, it is seen not really as training, but as something related to it, which is best described as 'use it or lose it.' That is, we write short stories for fun and for no purpose, and then if we have to write a business letter, we can still write. Third, Kant and others think that conceptualizing in a disciplined way is what makes us people. "I conceptualize in a disciplined way, therefore I am." We are people and not dog or bats, Kant & others would say, because our synthetic a priori include such activities as 'establishing causal relations' and 'conceptualizing and interpreting.' Generally, we spot problems in our life, and deal with them by using our mind to find solutions. When we don't have any problems, we start imagining them. Some people claim we do so to keep in problem solving shape, but others say it comes naturally to us, like breathing. It is a part of our nature we can not live without.

15. Describe the three main movements in Islam.

All Muslims recognize Muhammad as the last Prophet; they consider Jesus to be another Prophet, a predecessor of Muhammad. They also believed that God or Allah sent Muhammad the Koran or Qur’an through the voice of the angel Gabriel. They are also guided by the Sunnah: the story of Mohammed's life and a collection of his sayings. The Hadith is a biography of Muhammad and some close associates and some of this decisions and therefore overlaps somewhat with the Sunnah.

The Sunni make up around 80% of the Islam. A Caliph used to head them, which was not an inherited function. The last Caliph, Mutasim, died in 1258 when the Mongols under Hulagu destroyed Baghdad. The Sunni are more administratively oriented while emotions and charisma play an important role among the Shiites.

The Shiites, mostly living in Persia or Iran, call their leader 'Imam;' all Imams have to be descended from Mohammed's daughter Fatima and her husband Ali. Ali's son, Husayn, was murdered before he could succeed his father Ali as an Imam, and this could be one reason why the Shiite movement is in general emotional, emphasizes suffering, and relies on charismatic leaders. There is now no living Imam; different Shiite division differ on who was the last Imam. The first four Imams were also the first four Caliphs. Some think the last Imam went into hiding centuries ago and eventually will return to lead the Faithful.

The Sufi movement is mystical; they emphasize direct and mystical knowledge of God, and therefore do not stress as much as the Sunni and the Shiites the main Islamic religious sources: the Koran, i.e. their holy scripture, and the Sunnah. Their center of worship is the Friday evening ‘dhikr’ or ‘zikr, which means ‘remembrance,’ which mostly consists in repeating Allah’s name, often in songs and poems. Music and literature is very important for the Sufi.

16.

. Discuss the Buddhist saying that people are like onions. What is at the core of this 'onion?' How does this relate to the doctrine of Karma & Dharma? What are the advantages of this view of one's personality?

At the core there is Nothing, and that is good because

then our personality can adapt to whatever task is at

hand by discarding whatever part of one's personality that is inconvenient at the moment. Our personality is shaped by the karma of our present and past lives and gets in the way when we have to perform a task that does not agree with out personality.

17. Explain Hegel's Classical vs. Romantic mode in Art. How did Hegel think these modes occurred? Was he right?

Hegel thought that the universe was one great Spirit that continuously changed into its opposite or antithesis, and then the original form of the Spirit and its antithesis would change into a synthesis. This, he claimed, was most clearly visible in Art, where we see a form of Art that emphasizes the relation between the Here and the Not-Here. This form of Art Hegel named "Romantic Art. It is succeeded by a form that emphasizes only the relation between different parts of the Here. This he called "Classical Art." For instance, in Medieval Art, a Romantic Art, the Here, that is: our life and this world, is only seen as a preparation for the Not-Here: Heaven. Art does not stand by itself: other expressions of the Spirit, for example theology or physics, also reflect this Here vs. Not-Here split. The Middle Ages are followed by the Renaissance, where the interest is only in the Here: our earth. Renaissance Art is therefore a Classical Art, in Hegel's terminology. It is the period of geographical explorations and scientific discovery, and in Art, too, the emphasis is on our earth. The Renaissance concentrates only on the Here, or our world, and is therefore the opposite or antithesis of the Middle Ages, which connected the Not-Here, or Heaven with the Here, or earth. After the Renaissance came the Baroque and the Contra-Reformation where the emphasis was again on the Here but also on the Not-Here. Moreover, the Not-Here had become diversified: there was now a Catholic Not-Here and one or more non-Catholic Not-Here's: Calvinist, Lutheran, Anabaptist. The Baroque is, according to Hegel, both the antithesis and the same as the Middle Ages: like the Middle Ages it divides the universe into the Here and the Not-Here, but it is also the opposite of the Middle Ages because the Not-Here or higher reality consists in the Baroque of several higher realities: those of Catholicism, Lutheranism, Anabaptism, Calvinism. Hegel should have added Judaism and the Islam but he was very narrow minded and Euro-centric. The Baroque is followed by Classicism that at first seems to display a split between the Here and the Not-Here: Classicism idealized Greek and Roman antiquity. But Greek and Roman antiquity are both part of the Here. They are both on this earth, though two or two-and-a-half thousand years ago. Classicism therefore concentrates on our earth and it is different from the Renaissance because in the Renaissance the earth was still seen as one whole, even though parts of it were still unknown. In Classicism the earth is seen as three different places: our world, the Greek world, and the Roman world, and the latter two were seen as better than our world. After Classicism--and all this is according to Hegel--comes Romanticism where there is an enormous diversification of the Not-Here. Not only do we find in the Not-Here major European religions, but Eastern religions, various forms of nationalism, 'other worlds' reachable with the help of drugs, and even beliefs in the divine nature of Love. After Romanticism comes Realism, where artists describe any part of our earth. The last period is Symbolism, where each individual artist has an 'other world' of her or his own creation, and sometimes even several such Not-Here's. The problem with Hegel's theory is that after around 1910 AD we see the emergence of several co-existing 'World Spirits,' and his neat categorization for alternating forms of art does not seem to apply after that date anymore. It also only applied to Western Europe, but for Hegel that was "the World!"

18. Is anatomy destiny for women? Does the female body force women in a role of care giver, mother, or feeder?

Simone de Beauvoir wrote about how many female biological

functions are dangerous or unpleasant for the woman, and serve more the human race than the individual woman. Menstruation, for example, is unpleasant. Pregnancy and

childbirth are dangerous for women but beneficial for mankind as a whole; additionally, they make women vulnerable so that they have to rely on the protection of males. Sherry Ortner agreed with De Beauvoir and notices that in many societies women are associated with nature: with children, feeding children and adults, and childbirth. But, Ortner continues, that does NOT mean that women should STAY with nature. On the contrary, her close association with nature makes woman uniquely qualified to appreciate culture. Only a woman, for example, can REALLY appreciate the change from a pre-toilet trained toddler to a Nobel prize winner because she has been intimately involved in the life of the toddler in a way no man is, according to Ortner. Ann Ferguson sees “androgyny” as a desired state: an androgynous person could be female or male, depending on whether it is at a given time more important to engage in female activities—feeding, giving birth, toilet training—or male activities: hunting, defending, running for the presidency. Only females, Ann Ferguson states, can be androgynous because their close relation to nature enables women to appreciate culture and nature in a way males can not.

19. Discuss Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky’s interpretation of suffering. How does it compare with the Buddhist or Hindu understanding of suffering?

Suffering occurs when something unpleasant occurs to us and we don’t do anything about it because we can’t or we accept it without reasoning or explanation. In religion, they claim, there is no real suffering because we decide that we suffer for a higher purpose: to please God, for example, or to get into Heaven. Then what we do is not suffering, it is an investment, a tool, to get something good. It is our tool or way to express we are committed to something or somebody by deciding that it or (s)he is worth suffering for. And when we 'suffer' for a purpose, then we don't 'suffer' anymore but we 'invest,' 'train,' or 'prepare' for something or somebody. Kierkegaard claims that this is how we choose our personality. Kierkegaard agrees with Kant that we choose our personality, and adds that we do so by committing our personality first of all to a God, but also to a spouse, or even a sports team. In Hinduism suffering is also seen as connected with personality and Self, but both suffering and Self are seen as something undesirable that should be ended as soon as possible, along with our Self or atman.

20. Discuss Carol Gilligan's interpretation of Lawrence Kohlberg's ethical experiment.

Lawrence Kohlberg conducted in experiment in which he told children about a husband whose wife was dying of a disease for which there was a cure available in the local drug store. The couple was poor, however, and could not buy the cure. Was the husband, Kohlberg asked, justified in stealing the drug, and why (not)? He was, answered the boys, because a human life is priceless and should be saved at any cost, even at the cost of committing a crime. The girls saw things differently and did not give a direct answer, and were therefore classified as logically inferior by Kohlberg. But Gilligan interpreted Kohlberg's research differently: girls answered that the druggist had an obligation to get the drug to the dying wife, and the husband had an obligation to pay for it, and that they should work something out between themselves in what nowadays would be called a 'win-win' solution. Gilligan connected the two different solutions with other research—by Nancy Chodorow--on male-female thinking and proposed that the boys' answer shows that they are interested in classifying actions as either right or wrong. This tendency to classify supposedly is typical for males. Girls, however, are not interested in classification but in relations. In this case there are relations between husband and wife (he has to find a cure for her), between the druggist and the wife (he has to supply medicine to his customers) and the husband and the druggist (the husband has to pay for what he buys). Are males interested in classifying? Aristotle attempted a classification by stating that most things or beings have an essence which consists of two parts: its form and its matter; Descartes classified the substances in three groups: God, Mind and Matter; and Hume did write about a relation, causality, but his thesis was that there is no causality. Immanuel Kant is probably the ultimate classifier: he provided a rigid way to classify all actions as right or wrong and did not allow for exceptions. Lying, as he showed in the Case of the Inquiring Murderer, is always wrong. So, at least as far as these philosophers are concerned, it seems as if Gilligan has a point.