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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 do we have when an abstract idea cannot be broken down?

2. What does Locke say is ultimately grounded in pleasure and pain?

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

4. When does desire become action, in Locke's opinion?

5. What does Locke use as a definition of active powers?

Short Essay Questions

1. What do we do when we define a word, in Locke's account?

2. What is the correspondence theory of truth?

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

4. What is abstraction, according to Locke?

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

6. How does Locke define words?

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

8. Why are most words general, according to Locke?

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

10. What role does Locke attribute to God in forming man as a language-user?

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

What makes this book an essay? Is there a better term for it?

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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