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==AUDIO REVIEW: Part 2... Part 1 (recorded in November: don't be confused)... Part 3
Exam 2 will be in class on April 29.
Condensed transcription of the audio reviews:
LHP- Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject belief in God?.
- Humans don't have what, said Jean Paul Sartre?
- Albert Camus used what myth to illustrate human absurdity?
- What was the main message of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus?
- What was Hannah Arendt’s descriptive phrase for what she saw as Adolf Eichmann's ordinariness?
- What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles of justice, and what was its primary device?
- What, according to John Searle is involved in truly understanding something, and how was this a response to Alan Turing's test of intelligence?
- How does Peter Singer represent the best tradition in philosophy?
- In Why Grow Up, what was Immanuel Kant's definition of enlightenment?
- What did Paul Goodman say about growing up?
- After Plato, who was the next philosopher to turn his attention to the details of child rearing?
- What are you committed to if you are committed to enlightenment?
- According to Hannah Arentd, the miracle that saves the world is what?
- Susan Neiman says you're not grown up if you've not rejected what? (Part 3, education)
- What does the U-bend tell us about aging?
- Shakespeare's play As You Like It is commonly misunderstood as a gloss on what bleak modern message?
- From John Kaag's Sick Souls Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life, what is distinctive about our age that makes James particularly relevant?
- What did James say in a 1906 letter to the British novelist H. G. Wells about success? Determinism has antipathy to the idea of what?
- What realization would make young people give more heed to their conduct according to James?
- From Kieran Settiya's Life is Hard, How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, Does he think that everything happens for a reason?
- What, contrary to René Descartes, does pain teach us about our bodies?
- What does he say about Descartes Hegel, Sarret, and Wittgenstein?
- What does Setia call Epicurus's attitude towards death?
- What did the Strawsons, the father and son philosophy duo, disagree about?
- What are telic and atelic activities? What happens when we focus too much on the former? What liberates Phil Connors in the film Groundhog Day? What do Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch say we need and do not need in order to appreciate and care about human suffering and injustice?
- What does Rebecca Solnit say about the relation between hope and action?
- What did Thoreau say at the end of Walden?
- What's the difference between truth and facts for William James?
- James's hallway or corridor metaphor, treating pragmatism primarily as a method in philosophy, reminds Kaag of what?
- What does James say is the difference between resignation and hope? (ch6)
- What did Seamus Heaney say about the relation between hope and history?
- What good news does Andersen hope is true?
- In her 60s de Beauvois embraced the poetry of what? XIII
- Agnes Callard says the idea that being a woman gives her what kind of standing is relatively unproblematic. Is it informational or managerial?
- John Kaag and his friend Clancy Martin, quoting a Buddhist master, say a problem with Western culture is that we try too hard to achieve what by ourselves?
- How did Thoreau's daily routine differ from Marcus Aurelius's?
“If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, ‘I won’t waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don’t care an iota whether I succeed or not.’ Say this sincerely, and feel it, and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently.” William James
What Has Concluded, That We May Conclude?
A Farewell Reflection for the End of the Semester
As we bring this semester of philosophy to a close, I want to leave you not with a neat conclusion—philosophy rarely deals in those—but with a resonant echo of what we’ve read, discussed, and lived together in thought.
We began our journey with Nigel Warburton’s A Little History of Philosophy, a guided walk through the great thinkers and grand questions that have shaped our intellectual inheritance. From Socrates to Sartre, we saw how ideas evolve and respond to the problems of their times—and how they echo into our own. Philosophy, we came to see, is not just a record of abstract speculation, but a living conversation: unfinished, urgent, ongoing.
From there, Susan Neiman’s Why Grow Up? challenged us to redefine maturity—not as resignation, but as resistance. To grow up is to confront injustice, to live with ambiguity without surrendering to despair. It's to face hardship without denying its reality or diminishing our ideals.
John Kaag’s Sick Souls, Healthy Minds brought us into the soul of American philosophy through the eyes of William James, whose presence has cast a meaningful light over our entire course. James taught us that philosophy is not a luxury—it’s a necessity, a tool for navigating life’s chaos with clarity and courage. His meliorism—his insistence that the world can be improved, must be improved, through common effort—offers us both responsibility and hope.
“What is this world going to be?” James asked.
“What is life going to make of itself?”
That is our question now. And we must take it seriously.
Some of you ventured beyond the required readings into Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland, which dissected the fantasy-prone habits of American culture. Others took up Kieran Setiya’s Life is Hard, a compassionate reflection on how we endure difficulty with grace. Still others found insight in Question Everything, a collection from the New York Times’s The Stone, where today’s philosophers wrestle with our most pressing moral and political dilemmas.
Across all these texts, one theme persists: philosophy matters. Not only in the classroom. Not only in books. But in life—in how we choose to live, what we dare to hope, and how we treat one another.
I’ve emphasized all semester the importance of thinking for yourself. But let me remind you again: that does not mean thinking by yourself. Philosophy begins in solitude, perhaps, but it grows only in community. We sharpen our questions in dialogue. We refine our insights by encountering difference. We must consult not only our own experience, but that of others. That, too, is the practice of philosophy.
Einstein famously said: “The important thing is not to stop asking questions.” I would add: don't stop listening, either. Don’t stop caring whether your questions make a difference.
And as we close, let me leave you with William James’s final published words, from his 1910 essay A Pluralistic Mystic, composed shortly before his death:
“What has concluded, that we may conclude?”
It’s not just a question. It’s an invitation—to keep living with open eyes, open minds, and open hearts. To remain curious. To remain engaged. To never mistake the end of a class, or a semester, or even a life, as the end of the conversation.
The streams of life are still flowing. So must we.
Let this be not a conclusion, but a commitment—
To inquiry. To honesty. To hope.
To one another.
To the unfinished work of making this world a place where better answers may yet be born.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day." ― —"Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'" LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64”
==
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