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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. In what way could Hegel see a person, a table and a fruit as all identical?

2. What school of thought influenced Hegel's writing?

3. How does Hegel describe force?

4. How does Hegel describe Necessity?

5. What does Hegel explain in the introduction of The Phenomenology of Mind?

Short Essay Questions

1. According to Hegel's account, what is the mind's relationship with itself?

2. How, in Hegel's view, does the self become aware of the contradiction of selfhood?

3. What are the components of a "concrete individuality" in Hegel's terminology?

4. How does Hegel define force?

5. What is the relationship of freedom and fate in Hegel's terminology?

6. How are notions and reality related according to Hegel's philosophy?

7. How does Hegel define "irritability"?

8. What is the difference between "theoretical reason" and "practical reason" in Hegel's terminology?

9. What are the two meanings Hegel gives to the term "independent self-consciousness"?

10. What distinction does the translator Baille draw between "the fact of the matter" and "a matter of fact"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is Hegel writing for everyman or for specific types of people who are interested in a certain kind of self-discovery? Is he defining an archetypal experience of the soul's maturation, or is he talking about the experience divines and mystics undergo as they search for and find enlightenment?

Essay Topic 2

What further development stages can the soul undertake to experience, after it becomes an Absolute Spirit, in Hegel's terms? Put another way, what kinds of experience does Hegel leave out of "Phenomenology of Spirit"? Are there mystical or otherwise devout experiences he does not include?

Essay Topic 3

In the midst of his discussion of spirit and individuality, Hegel detours into a chapter on property and no property, and even describes communism as an ideal social system for distributing goods. What is the role of this social planning impulse throughout the rest of Phenomenology of Spirit? Is Hegel urging socio-political changes, or is he talking abstractly, or metaphorically, of the soul? How political is Hegel?

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