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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What assassinated American president did the narrator say was murdered by anarchists and nihilists?

2. In "Clearing a Space," when was My Age, My Beast written?

3. When did Tocqueville speak before the French Chamber of Deputies regarding the speed that the globe was unifying?

4. When did Voltaire become court philosopher to Frederick of Prussia?

5. What was philosopher and theologian Herder's nationality?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "Clearing a Space," whose ideas need to be understood and then dismantled?

2. In "Loving Onself Through Others," how is Rosseau's history of the human heart still playing itself out?

3. In the Prologue, what was the ideological orthodoxy after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989?

4. In "Loving Oneself Through Others," in Le Mondain, what did Voltaire tell people to do?

5. In the Prologue, what view does the author say that the book takes of a universal crisis?

6. In the Prologue, what was the attitude and thought about the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989?

7. In "Clearing a Space," what is modernity?

8. In "Clearing a Space," what did Fukuyama and Zakaria have to say about Western civilization and world development?

9. In the Prologue, what mystery did Emile Durkheim struggle with in his book from 1897?

10. In the Prologue what are many themes of the global unrest that the author has seen?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Mishra believes there is a connection between fanaticism and extremism. How are fanaticism and extremism timeless ideals? How does the intensity of fanaticism determine how destructive it becomes? What is extremism a reaction to? How is fanaticism the intensity of the response to those perceived wrongs?

Essay Topic 2

Germans were some of the first to embrace nationalism. Why did German thinkers and artist reject French civilization? What did they embrace instead? What is revealed about nationalism through German nationalists?

Essay Topic 3

Mishra believes that a universal crisis exists in the world today. What forces does Mishra see in the world today that are more complex than those forces that caused the great wars? What unrest does he see? Why does he believe that there may be a global civil war?

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This section contains 888 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample