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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 makes philosophers think that people do not have free will?

2. What do we have when a word can no longer be defined, according to Locke?

3. How does Locke say people should use language?

4. What can we talk about once we begin to abstract?

5. How does Locke define the essence of a thing?

Short Essay Questions

1. What problem is Locke trying to address with his discussion of identity in consciousness and identity in body?

2. How does Locke define power, in "Essay Concerning Human Understanding"?

3. How do we arrive at the essence of an idea?

4. Give an example of active powers.

5. What does Locke achieve by claiming that good and evil come from pleasure and pain?

6. What does Locke say is the only way to understand the properties of things?

7. How does Locke resolve the debate between determinists and libertarians?

8. What does Locke say is the danger in man's freedom to use words however he likes?

9. Where do the notions of good and evil come from, in Locke's opinion?

10. What does Locke say is the difference between a free will and a free agent?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How Christian is Locke's philosophy? In what specifics is it Christian, and in what ways does it have allegiances to other forms of religion? Is the ability of the individual to seek his own happiness a substitute for religion in Locke's philosophy? How does Locke's philosophy perform the central task of Christianity, namely of letting people transcend the physical plane, where death exists, and live another eternal life beyond life?

Essay Topic 2

Which was more important in Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," the actual terminology Locke uses for breaking knowledge down into parts, or the concept that epistemology liberates people from the concepts of instinctual knowledge of concepts like right and wrong?

Essay Topic 3

How would Locke account for the philosophy of deconstruction--or the notion that language is ultimately self-referential, and that meaning is eternally deferred, never arriving at an object per se? Is Locke's theory of language predicated on an ultimate arrival, or can it handle the notion that truth is, in Nietzsche's phrase, a mobile army of metaphors?

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