Existentialism Final Exam Spring 2021
You have many questions to choose from. Answer a total of 4. Your answers should be
informative and provide evidence that you have carefully read and thought about
existentialism. They should be thoughtful and imaginative. This is not an open book exam,
so, do not copy from your notes or from the readings. Since I will not be present to monitor
the exam, the goddess of Existentialism has an eye on you to ensure that you are not doing
what you ought not to be doing. When you finish your exam, email it to me as a word
document and make sure your name is on it.
1. Provide an existentialist perception/interpretation of The Price of Honor
2. At a café, downtown in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche unexpectedly
meet each other. They find out they have a common interest in existentialism. What do you
expect they will agree and disagree on?
3. Provide an existentialist explication of Paul Klee’s painting. Read he caption by Walter
Benjamin below.
A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to
move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is
open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned
toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which
keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to
stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing
from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer
close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned,
while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.[1]
4. Present an existentialist inter presentation of either Embarrassment or Erotic Desire.
5. It is widely believed that “Existence precedes Essence” is a fundamental the key to the world of
existentialism. Use it to open the door to this world and share what you find about it. Do not take
this as a cliché.
6. What role does nothingness play in displaying the condition of being human?
7. In an introduction to philosophy course, students were introduced to existentialism. After the
end of the Semester, one of the students in the course was overheard in the hallway saying that
existentialism is a horrible presentation of philosophy. It tries to persuade us that life is not worth
living. You happen to be within the hearing range. What do you make of this claim?
8. Heated exchanges have been taking place regarding racism. What can existentialism contribute
to these exchanges?
9. For existentialists, to be is to be in-the-world. Elaborate on what they mean.
The Price of Honor
By Lisa Beyer/Amman Monday, Jan. 18, 1999
Sirhan, a 35-year-old murderer, is cheerful and relaxed and happy to tell his story. He's especially
proud to describe the efficiency with which he shot his young sister Suzanne in the head four
times last March. "She came to the house at 8:15," he relates, "and by 8:20 she was dead." Three
days before, the 16-year-old girl had reported to police that she had been raped. "She committed
a mistake, even if it was against her will," says Sirhan. "Anyway, it's better to have one person
die than to have the whole family die from shame."
His is not a logic rare in the Arab world. For centuries, men of the region have engaged in "honor
killing," the intrafamily slaughter of allegedly errant females. Women have endured the custom,
while legal establishments have tolerated or even condoned it. But now activists in Jordan,
backed by the royal family, are dragging the issue out of the darkness. "We are determined to be
an example in our part of the world," Queen Noor told CNN's Christiane Amanpour last week in
an interview for NewsStand: CNN & TIME.
Honor killing has its roots in the crude Arabic expression "a man's honor lies between the legs of
a woman." For Arab women, virginity before marriage and fidelity afterward are considered
musts. Men are expected to control their female relatives. If a woman strays, it is widely thought,
the dignity of the men can be restored only by killing her. In Jordan the 25 or so cases of honor
killing documented every year constitute a quarter of all homicides.
The slightest sniff of scandal can be a death warrant. The director of Jordan's National Institute
of Forensic Medicine, Dr. Mu'men Hadidi, says that in 80% of the cases in which he conducts a
hymenal exam, which is routine in Jordan when a girl has gone missing, the same girl will be
returned to him soon after as a corpse, even if she proved to be a virgin. "Once the story is out in
the community," says Asma Khader, a lawyer and feminist, "they have to kill." Forbidden sex
isn't always the issue. Marrying or divorcing against the family's wishes can also provoke
murder.
As is common in the Arab world, the law in Jordan winks at honor killers. If a man catches his
wife or a close female relative in the act of adultery and kills her, he is exempt from punishment.
If the situation only suggests illicit sex, he's entitled to a reduced sentence. In such cases, jail
terms range from a few months to a few years. Sirhan served six months.
For women under threat, there is little recourse. Running away is next to impossible since Arab
societies are close-knit and few women have the means to live alone. Jordanian authorities have
a bizarre remedy: they jail endangered women. "Rafa," 20, was locked up in an Amman prison
after her uncles and brothers vowed to murder her for having a three-day affair with a co-worker.
At any one time, Jordan's prisons may house 70 such women. Sometimes they are released after
their families promise not to harm them, though that is no guarantee. Suzanne's male relatives
signed such a pledge before Sirhan killed her.
Once an unspoken topic, honor killing in recent years has begun to be spotlighted in the media,
thanks in part to Rana Husseini, a trailblazing reporter for the English-language Jordan Times.
Since 1996 the Jordanian Women's Union has operated a hot line for women in distress. Creating
a safe house to protect them is the next objective of activists. Abolishing the legal loopholes is
another.
Even with such changes, honor killings are hard to combat. Sirhan says that at the time he killed
his sister, he thought he was committing a capital crime, yet he wasn't deterred. "I'm proud," he
beams. Sirhan served his time at the same prison in which "Rafa" languishes, contemplating her
catastrophic three-day romance. "With the mistake I made," she says, "I deserve to die."
{IT IS NOT CLEAR THAT RELIGION HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH HONOR
KILLING. IF IT DOES, THINK OF OTHER RELIGIONS IN WHICH VIRGINITY OR
PURITY OF WOMEN IS A SIGN OF HONOR}
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