course work /AN

Your answers to these questions will be about a paragraph (half page, single-spaced), and no more than one page (single-spaced).

1. Who are these two people in the picture; what do their gestures mean respectively?
2. Bonus question: Can we and should we learn from cats in terms of how to live better? (Referring to CBC radio program recommended in Lecture 1)
3. Bonus question: What lesson did you learn from watching Steve Jobs’ Stanford University Speech?
4. Is teaching like a teacher pouring water from a pitcher to an empty cup (student)? Why or why not? Explain why Socrates called a teacher should be like a midwife. (Lecture 2, slides 1 and 2)
5. What possible attitudes are there regarding deadlines (the ultimate deadline being death)? Which attitude would you adopt and why?
6. What’s the functional/metaphorical meaning of understanding the idea of resurrection? Why it seems more fruitful to understand it in this way than to understand it literally?
7. What’s the difference between the prisoners in Plato’s cave allegory and the fly in a fly bottle? (See Lecture 3, slide 10).
8. What is Mengzi’s view of human nature, and how does he prove it? What is Augustine’s view of human nature? How does he prove it?
9. Are Mengzi’s view of human nature and Augustine’s view of human nature in contradiction (one is right and the other is wrong)? Why or why not?
10. Using this picture to explain the difference between “seeing” and “seeing….as…”. Does “seeing…as…” imply that we can see anything arbitrarily and randomly (“Anything goes”)?
11. “Let us imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows, and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men.” (Pascal, Pensees, #199)

“The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end for ever.” (Pascal, Pensees, #210)

Did the above passages from Pascal say anything factually false? Do you agree with them? Why or why not?

12. Watch https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vhd0XdedLpY (starting 4:00-6:00) and explain what story you see in animation.
13. How do you distinguish brainwash and education? (See Lecture 5, slide 5)
14. What is the story of the Ring of Gyges and what does it mean about morality? (See Lecture 5, slide 6)
15. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” (“The Human Right Declaration”) Does this sentence mean rather “All human beings ought to be seen and treated as free and equal”? If so, why it is not said in the latter way?
16. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31New International Version) Why loving God is put in the ‘first place’? Why not just directly “Love your neighbor as yourself”?
17. Explain what moral lesson did you learn from the following Zen koan (story)?

As Zen master Pao-ch’e of Mount ma-yu was fanning himself, a monk camp up and said, “The nature of the wind is constancy.¹ There is no place it does not reach. Why use a fan?” Pao-ch’e answered, “You only know the nature of the wind is constancy. You haven’t yet grasped the meaning of its reaching every place.”² “What is the meaning of its reaching every place?” asked the monk. The master only fanned himself. The monk bowed deeply.³ (“Genjokoan,” 44-45, in Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans. The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002)

18. What positive lesson can you learn from YOLO (you only live once) and what might be some of the problems in the practice of it (YOLO)? (see Passage 60)
19. What’s wrong with the following sentences: “This book is similar to that book” or

“This book is different from that book.”

20. If I ask you what’s the weather like tomorrow, you answered: “It is going to rain and it is not going to rain”. What likely would be my response? If you answered: “It is going to rain or it is not going to rain”, what likely would be my response?
21. Suppose someone were a [religious] believer and said: “I believe in a Last Judgment,” and I said: “Well, I’m not so sure. Possibly.” You would say that there is an enormous gulf between us. If he said “There is German aeroplane overhead,” and I said “Possibly. I’m not so sure,” you’d say we were fairly near. (Passage 69, Wittgenstein, “Lecture on Religion”) Explain why there is “an enormous gulf between us”?
22. Use an example to explain how do people move from a common-sense question to a metaphysical (philosophical) question.
23. Do you agree with Nietzsche that there is no fact in itself, but just interpretation, and that what counts as truth is determined by might or power?