Existentialism and Contemporary Philosophy
Final Exam Study Sheet
Exam time: May 14 (Wednesday), 2:45-4:45pm.
Short Answer Section. The following is a list of most of the key terms and concepts we
have covered. This is to help you in preparing for the short answer section of the exam.
There will be 12 short answer questions, of which you are to answer 10 (4 points each).
Hope and absurd
Problem of suicide
Philosophical suicide
Revolt
Passion
Myth of Sisyphus
Author-function
Intellectual property
Regimes of truth
Problematizing history
Genealogy
confinement
productivity/efficiency (value)
normalization
observation-examination-judgment
discipline
Jesus-St. Paul
power to say ‘I’
stuttering language
done with judgment
Exhaustion
Essay Question. Two of the following three will be on the final. You are to write an essay
on one of the two (60 points):
1. According to Camus, despite being a great writer of the absurd, Kafka ultimately
did not affirm and embrace the absurd. By taking Camus’s “Hope and the absurd
in the work of Franz Kafka” essay as your starting point, lay out what you take to
be Camus’ philosophy of the absurd. Along the way, be sure to detail the problem
of suicide, philosophical suicide, and the relationship between passion and revolt
for the absurd hero.
2. A central claim of Foucault’s is that traditional understandings of power simply
view it as the power to limit, or as the power to say no, whereas the power that is
most effective in supporting and maintaining social and cultural institutions is the
power that constitutes our desires; a positive power rather than a negative power.
Drawing on the readings, our classroom discussions, and your own insights and
examples, elaborate what Foucault means.
3. Deleuze argues that ‘literature begins only when a third person is born in us that
strips us of the power to say “I”.’ Drawing from the various essays we read for
class, discuss what you believe Deleuze takes literature to be, and in particular the
relationship between literature and life.