SAN DIEGO MESA COLLEGE
PHIL 111
SPRING 2011
INSTRUCTOR: PROF. NINA ROSENSTAND
PHILOSOPHY IN LITERATURE
Study guide, final exam
SPECIAL OFFICE HOURS, H-301G:
MTWR MAY 16-19: 10-11:05, M 2:10-2:30
AND BY APPOINTMENT
Messages to Instructor: (619) 388-2407
E-mail: nrosenst@sdccd.edu
Website: http://classroom.sdmesa.edu/nrosenst
Monday May 16: Final exam 11:10
Wednesday May 18: Final meeting. 11:10. Be on time! Finals and papers will be returned. No-shows
lose 2 points off their final exam.
FORMAT OF FINAL
Use a scantron Form #882 and a pencil #2. Total possible points: 60. This test is worth 60 percent of your
final exam.
Plagiarism policy: Using open books, electronic devices or notes during the test, or consulting with
other students, will result in an F on the test.
There will be 15 True/False questions; each correct answer is worth 2 points.
There will be 15 Multiple Choice questions; each correct answer is worth 2 points.
CHECK THE WEBSITE FOR POSSIBLE CHANGES TO THE READINGS.
READINGS:
Porter p.1-3: Epistemology
Porter pp.4-9: Plato’s Republic
Porter pp.16-23, Rashomon
Porter pp.24-27, Modes of Knowledge
Porter pp.37-49: Descartes’ Meditation 1 and 2
Porter pp.50-57: Hesse, Siddhartha
Course Reader pp.74-82: Rosenstand TMTS Ch.13, excerpt: Narrative Identity
KEY CONCEPTS:
Porter Ch.1
Epistemology = theory of knowledge
Typical questions:
How can we know that our experience corresponds to reality?
Can we know if other people experience the same world we do?
Plato’s Republic
The Allegory of the Cave
Life-long prisoners in a cave think they are watching true reality, but they are seeing shadows on a wall.
If one is liberated and emerges into the light, he is temporarily blinded. When he goes back into the cave,
he is again unable to see, and the others will laugh—and then put him to death.
Allegory of human life: our reality is only a shadowy reflection of the true reality of the “Forms”
We can learn nothing new, only re-remember what we once knew, before we were born.
= the theory of anamnesis [from your notes]
The Form of the Good as the highest idea [from your notes]
Plato as storyteller: reminds readers of the future that awaits Socrates [from your notes]
Rashomon
4 diverging stories about the same event: a woman and her samurai husband are attacked by a bandit.
Then the husband is killed.
Version 1, from the captured bandit: He raped the wife, and then fought a fair fight with the husband, at
the insistence of the wife.
Version 2, from the wife: After she was raped, her husband rejected her, and she fainted. When she woke
up, her knife was in his chest, so she admits to killing him, but doesn’t remember it.
Version 3, from the husband’s ghost: After the rape, his wife wanted to leave with the bandit, and asked
him to kill her husband. He refuses, and the husband kills himself.
Version 4, from the (neutral) woodcutter: The bandit offers to marry the wife, but she tells her husband to
kill him. He won’t, but she forces the men to fight to the death.
Conclusion: we end up doubting our own eyes. The truth may never be known.
Modes of Knowledge
Empiricism
Knowledge based on empirical evidence
Rationalism
Knowledge based on mathematical and logical truths
Intuitionism
Knowledge based on a sense of direct, emotional understanding
Descartes’s Meditation I and II
Project: to find something certain on which to build a new science, through a method of doubt
You can’t trust your senses: The Dream Conjecture
But can you trust math, even if you’re dreaming?>No: The Evil Demon Conjecture
But we can rely on one truth, with certain knowledge: I think, therefore I am
So: I am a thinking thing
From Your Notes: Metaphysics:
Metaphysics = theory of the fundamental nature of reality
Dualism: two forms of reality, usually mind and matter
Monism: one form of reality
Two monistic theories: idealism (only mind exists) and materialist (only matter exists)
Descartes and Plato are dualists with a leaning toward idealism: mind is more important than matter
Hesse, Siddhartha
Siddhartha goes through many stages to find enlightenment. He finds it as a simple ferryman on the river.
His old friend Govinda shows up, at first not recognizing him.
Siddhartha: If you seek too much, you can’t find. Seeking is having a goal, finding is being free.
Govinda: Teach me your doctrine.
Siddhartha: Wisdom can’t be communicated, only knowledge can. Everything that exists, is good;
everything is thing, animal, God and Buddha
Govinda’s vision when kissing Siddhartha’s forehead: Everything is one. And he understands.
View of knowledge: intuitionism. View of reality: idealism [from your notes]
Course Reader: Ch.13, “The Ethics of Self-Improvement: Narrative Identity”
Paul Ricoeur: We should seek our narrative identity and learn to see our own life as a story.
3 features characterize telling one’s life story: 1. The story is selective; 2. the story is incomplete; 3. the
story is fictional, implying causality
Erik Erikson: When we are mature, we should have obtained ego integrity.
Ricoeur: that can be obtained through seeing one’s life as a story.
Rewriting our past can change our future
Paul Ricoeur: Narrative time, the time within the story
Rosenstand: The Narrative Zone is where we learn lessons from world literature and films, and learn to
tell our own story.
Martha Nussbaum: Why do we need stories? Because we’ve never lived enough—we always need to
learn about other lives and other times.