This Tournament Goes To Eleven 2007

Pre-20th-Century Philosophy (subject packet)

Written by: Illinois (Steven Canning, Mike Sorice, Trygve Meade)

Tossups

1) Diogenes Laertius lauds this thinker’s disciple Philolaus, while Simplicius and Plato record that his drowned follower Hippasus posited a finite universe and deduced the integer ratios in music, ideas usually credited to this thinker himself. Eudemus noted this philosopher’s idea of numerical eternal recurrence, while Diodorus claims that this he proscribed eating meat due to his theory of metempsychosis. His school in Croton centered on the Mathematikoi. For ten points, name this founder of a numerological cult in southern Italy; a Greek philosopher and namesake of a theorem relating the side lengths in a right triangle.

ANSWER: Pythagoras

2) This work outlines methods of compulsion by select groups and representation as means of entering into the titular state, and later singles out Calvinism for criticism. This book argues that competing versions of an idea may share truth between them, a proposition used as an argument against social censorship. Later, this tract posits the so-called Harm Principle, the idea that governments ought not compel citizens to do anything, except to preventing them from harming others. For ten points, identify this work, an essay by John Stuart Mill discussing freedom.

ANSWER: On Liberty

3) This work begins by offering four alternate versions of a central event, decides that religious devotion comes by “virtue of the absurd,” and ends concluding that its subject was a “knight of faith” and that religious matter can justly lie outside normal ethics. This work states that Christianity places the individual higher than society and defines the paradoxical, absolute, and universal. Written under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, it takes its name from Philippians and discusses faith and morality in the context of the story of Abraham and Isaac. For ten points, what is this work of Soren Kierkegaard in which obedience to God’s will induces the title conditions?

ANSWER: Fear and Trembling or Frygt og baeven

4) Colotes opposed a notable formulator of this theory, which was explained in an oft-recorded quote about the senses “by convention.” Nausiphanes taught this idea to Epicurus, who made it central to his physics. Aristotle held that this doctrine was an alternative to the unitary universe as a solution to the Campanian paradoxes; Aristotle’s now-lost commentary on this theory’s best-known proponent says that some of the central entities are hooked, while others are concave. The earliest Classical theory regarding these entities is due to Leucippus and his follower, a man from Abderanamed Democritus. For ten points, name this theory according to which the universe is comprised of an infinite void called “kenon” and innumerable tiny objects, the theory’s namesake indivisible entities.

ANSWER: Atomism (accept word forms like Atoms)

5) The work’s fourth book opens with the argument that one of the central concepts “is Indestructible” before proceeding to a discussion of the Comitea, while the third book ends with the claim that the titular entity releases one from obligations to “Check Usurpations” so as to prevent “The Death of the Body Politic.” Shortly after a discussion of slavery, this work proposes the title concept to supplant the state of nature, as the amalgamation of individual wills in the form of the so-called “General Will” may be bound by the titular concord. For ten points, identify this work which famously states that “man is born free, but everywhere is in chains,” a political-philosophical text by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

ANSWER: The Social Contract: or, Principles of Politic Law

6) A so-called “Second” group of these flourished in the third century CE and contained a group of up to four Philostrati, while a later Philostratus is famous for cataloging the Lives of this group. The Platonic dialogue named for this group seeks to solve the Being-Not Being Puzzle, while definitions of beauty, lies, and rhetoric are the objects of three dialogues named for members of this group. An Encomium of Helen and the claim that “Man is the measure of all things” are due to members of this school, who include Thrasymachus, Hippias, Protagoras, and Gorgias. For ten points, name this class of pseudo-philosophersdenounced by many as teachers of rhetorical tricks to temporal ends.

ANSWER: Sophists (accept word forms like Sophistry)

7) Price wrote about this person’s Theory of the External World and Maund wrote about his Theory of Knowledge to try and elucidate his epistemology. This thinker’s namesake Law holds that normative proscriptions cannot be deduced from descriptions, while the division of objects of reason into relations of ideas and matters of fact is known as his namesake dictum or fork. Section X of his most famous work argues against the existence of miracles which, along with his denial that God can be proven and his being one of the first to offer a secular moral theory, led to his being labeled an atheist. The author of Essays, Moral and Political and A Treatise on Human Nature, as well as the originator of the is-ought problem, for ten points, this is what Scottish author of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding?

ANSWER: David Hume

8) One of these resulting from a relaxation of Leibniz’ Law is named for the Masked Man, while another named for Loki deals with the nature of discourse. Roger Bacon divided these statements into so-called Offendicula, while Francis Bacon classified them into Idolia or Idols. One of these entities named for the entities themselves dismisses a conclusion due to a poor argument for it, while hypostatization is one of these in which an abstract object is treated as a concrete one. A famous Classical example of these, the petitio principii, occurs when a conclusion appears as a premise and is also known as “begging the question”. For ten points, name these logically unsound statements.

ANSWER: fallacies

9) The controversial fourth iteration of this entity was characterized by the debate between Arcesilaus and Carneades, and Antiochus of Ascalon. That iteration was founded by Philo of Larissa, the final undisputed leader, or scholarch, for this body. The middle period of this institution saw the introduction of epoche by Arcesilus, who did away with the dogmatizing of Crates and his predecessors. It was founded in a gymnasium sacred to Athena and a namesake hero. 529 CE saw Justinian close this and all other Pagan schools. For ten points, name this archetypal Athenian school of philosophy founded to propagate the teachings of Plato.

ANSWER: the Academy

10) Part B of this work’s fourth book, on “The True Nature of Self-Knowledge,” examines “Stocism, Skepticism, and Unhappiness,” especially the idea that, although individuals claim absolute freedom, no individual can claim to be absolute. The title concept is proposed to have passed through three forms,ending at consciousness of identity in relation to the world. A distinction is drawn between the title philosophy and metaphysics, the claims being that the former is the science of appearances; this work also claims that forms of consciousness can be studied through the dialectic structure of history, an idea given form in the later Philosophy of History. For ten points, identify this philosophical tract, an early work by Hegel dealing with the progress of human thought toward absolute knowledge.

ANSWER: The Phenomenology of Mind or Phänomenologie des Geistes (accept The Phenomenology of Spirit)

11) The third book of this work concludes that nature is the war of one of the title concepts with itself, and that beauty is the realization of that same concept, so tragedy is the summit of poetry. This work refines Kant’s idea that things in themselves are unknowable as it argues that the first title entity is all that is known at all, as “self in itself”, while the second is all that can be known of other things in themselves. One of the title concepts in this work is defined as “a striving, yearning force that takes various forms according to its inclinations”, and this work posits that by losing oneself in objects, especially classical music, one can overcome the tragedy of existence. For ten points, identify this pessimistic philosophical text, the seminal work by Arthur Schopenhauer.

ANSWER: The World as Will and Representation or Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (accept The World as Will and Idea)

12) This person gained a reputation as a radical with Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment of the French Revolution, which he wrote after leaving Jena due to financial reasons. His critical system known as Wissenschaftslehre is exemplified by The Science of Rights, while his ethics emphasized duty, as seen in The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge. His popular The Vocation of Man is partly a response to charges of atheism stemming in part from his application of his teacher’s critical philosophy to the divine in An Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation. For ten points, identify this German idealist, the foremost transcendentalist after his mentor, Immanuel Kant.

ANSWER: Johann Gottlieb Fichte

13) This thinker initially hoped to learn Persian philosophy, so he joined a campaign of the Emperor Gordian, but disaster led him to Rome instead. He was unsatisfied with his teachers until Ammonius Saccas, for whom he may have been a cipher. He developed a cosmology consisting of the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. He held that the soul comprised two parts and that the lower part drove to unite with the divine upper part. His complete works were collected and organized by his student, Porphyry. For ten points, identify this author of The Enneads, the founder of Neoplatonism.

ANSWER: Plotinus

14) Imprecisions in this work led Karl Leonhard Reinhold to publish theories of Representation and Cognition, which were attacked along with this work in Schulze’s Aenesidemus. This work’s viscous style emulates Baumgarten and Wolff, whose texts the author used as a lecturer. Its first section is divided into Aesthetic, Analytic, and Dialectic subsections and focuses on the sources of human knowledge, while the second section deals with the methodology of the title concept. Divided into the “Transcendental Doctrine of Elements” and the “Transcendental Doctrine of Method,” it is an attack on Leibniz’ belief that the mind can arrive at synthetic knowledge without observations. This describes, for ten points, what seminal epistemological work of Immanuel Kant, the first of his Critiques?

ANSWER: The Critique of Pure Reason

15) The cosmology of this philosophical system contained material objects coupled together by divine reason in the form of fire, alignment with which was virtue. However, their ascetic ethics held that external things were unimportant as neither good nor evil. Probably taking its name from the painted colonnade at which Zeno of Citium, its founder, taught, this school of Hellenistic philosophy held that the purpose of inquiry was to grow peace of mind and that one should live life according to nature. For ten points, what is this school of philosophy whose members included Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius?

ANSWER: Stoicism

16) Albert of Saxony and Paul of Venice inherited this person’s logic. His great nemesis was John Lutterell who, at both Avignon and Oxford, issued attacks on this thinker’s Ordinatio- comments on the Sentences. This caused him to remain an Inceptor, which is the origin of one of his bynames. His important treatises on logic were written after his Treatise to John XXII, the Pope who had this philosopher excommunicated. This Nominalist was notably opposed to Aquinas, holding theology to be outside the scope of reason, but he is most famous for the claim that “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” For ten points, identify this late medieval English philosopher who is most famous for his “razor.”

ANSWER: William ofOckham (accept Venerabilis Inceptor or Doctor Invincibilis; prompt on partial answers)

17) His work was not highly regarded in his own time, because he elevated his own philosophical system to a religion, declaring himself Pope. His ethics called for people to deny individual rights and live for others, and he coined the term “altruism” to describe it. In his most famous work he arranged the sciences in a hierarchy, and he later added religion to that hierarchy in System of Positive Polity. He posited that knowledge goes through theological, metaphysical, and positive stages in his Law of Three Stages. For ten points identify this French philosopher, the coiner of the word “sociology” and the founder of Positivism.

ANSWER: Auguste Comte

18) Clara Millerd wrote an important work in the interpretation of this thinker’s remaining work, of which about 500 lines survive. One of his works discusses the fall of spirits from an original state of grace, where Cypris is queen, while the other posits love as the force that causes matter to bind and mix; these are The Purifications and On Nature, respectively. Attributed to this thinker is probably the original division of the world into the elements of fire, air, water, and earth. For ten points, name this Sicilian self-styled god who is perhaps most famous for hurling himself into the volcanic crater on Mount Etna.

ANSWER: Empedocles

19) Growing out of “The Metaphysical Club” at Harvard, this school’s ideas first appeared in print in “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” Contemporary followers of this school include Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty. Among the beliefs of this school are that an ideology is true if it works, that the meaning of a statement comes from its consequences, and that unpractical ideas should be rejected. Its name first appeared in an 1898 address, “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results.” For ten points, identify this school whose founders include Charles Sanders Peirce and William James.

ANSWER: Pragmatism

20) Aristotle used this term to refer to argument based in reason, while another tradition held it as the “reason,” identical to both God and nature. Some translations of the Old Testament identify this as the creator in Genesis, and its relationship with God is a source of argument in Christian theology. The Gospel according to John famously identifies Jesus with this, and Hellenistic Jewish philosophers absorbed this concept into Jewish philosophy placing it as an intermediate between God and the cosmos. For ten points, identify this term meaning wisdom which was posited as the organization behind the universe.

ANSWER: Logos

21) Ammonius Hermiae is known primarily for commentaries on two sections of this collection, which was arranged by Andronicus of Rhodes. The first of its books presents an early category theory, while the second explains the use of quantifiers and the fifth builds upon Plato’s method of hypotheses to construct the dialectic. Fallacies are discussed in “On Sophistical Refutations”, and valid arguments are characterized and the syllogism introduced in the “Posterior Analytics” and the “Prior Analytics,” respectively. Francis Bacon wrote a text that attempted to replace the ideas of this work, a so-called New version of it, around 1620. For ten points, identify this collection of six books on logic, so named by the followers of Aristotle.

ANSWER: the Organon

Bonuses

1) A 50’s BCE update of this work by Cicero was set in the home of Scipio Africanus; the better-known work of this name is set in the home of Cephalus. For ten points each…

[10] Name this Plato work that begins with a definition of justice as “what is good for the stronger,” a claim which Socrates counters.

ANSWER: The Republic or Politea

[10] Socrates claims that the politea ought be headed by a philosopher-king since only a philosopher can comprehend this entity, described as ekgonos. Participants in it are just.

ANSWER: the form of the good (or idea of the good; accept word forms or synonyms for good like weal or goodness; prompt on just good)

[10] Socrates uses this allegory, involving prisoners chained-up in a titular location, to explain the nature of the Form of the Good and justify the role of the philosopher as ruler.

ANSWER: the allegory of the cave (accept common-sense equivalents)

2) A political radical, he became known for his moral philosophy which was published in works such as Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. For ten points each:

[10] Identify this 18th-century English philosopher who is also famous for his “Panopticon” prison design.

ANSWER: Jeremy Bentham

[10] Jeremy Bentham is often credited with starting this school of philosophy that counts John Stuart Mill as a member. Incorporating the Hedonic calculus, it claims the right is that which is of greatest use.

ANSWER: Utilitarianism