Editor’s Introduction
1. What does the word “philosophy” mean, according to its Greek origin?
2. What “crucial questions of human existence” does philosophy examine?
3. what four parts make up the editor’s definition of philosophy?
4. How is the intercultural nature of philosophy to be accounted for?

Upanishads
1. When were these texts written?
2. What two paths does Death describe to Nachiketas?
3. Why does Death consider Nachiketas to be wise?
4. Which things are considered transient, and which things are considered eternal?
5. How does one achieve sacred knowledge?
6. What is meant by the terms “Brahman,” “Atman,” and “Yoga?”
7. What is the real nature of the Atman?

Buddhist Scriptures
1. What is the story of Siddhartha?
2. What is the doctrine of anatman?
3. How does Nagasena compare the self to a chariot? What is his point?
4. What are Nagasena’s examples of the child, the flame, and the milk intended to show?
5. Is the soul a “living principle” which communicates through the senses?

Hume
1. What kind of impression must we have to justify the concept of an unchanging self?
2. How is the mind like a theater, according to Hume’s comparison?
3. How does Hume define “identity” and “diversity”?
4. What four mistakes lead us to confuse identity and diversity?
5. What conclusions does Hume draw about the existence of souls?

Schopenhauer
1. what is “transcendental” knowledge? How is this different from “immanent” knowledge?
2. How would the death of the self be described from these two perspectives?
3. What is the “Will to Live,” and where can it be found?
4. What is Schopenhauer’s opinion of individuality?

Plato
1. How does Xanthippe, Socrates’s wife, behave?
2. What message does Socrates give for Evanus, and how do his companions react?
3. How is death defined?
4. Does the philosopher prefer the soul or the body? Why?
5. What three arguments does Socrates offer to prove that the soul survives death?
6. What happens to impure souls after death?

Spelman
1. How do Plato’s views on beauty, love, and the state reflect his views of the body and women?
2. To what other groups does Plato compare women, and why?
3. What is “somatophobia” and “misogyny,” and how are the two related?
4. How have previous feminists unwittingly adopted somatophobia?
5. What alternatives are suggested by Spelman?

Parfit
1. What are “split-brain cases?”
2. How does the “Ego Theory” contrast with the “Bundle Theory?”
3. Who was the first “Bundle theorist?”
4. What imaginary cases support the “Bundle Theory” of the self?
5. What false beliefs do most of us have about ourselves?
6. What view does Parfit hold and why?

Sartre
1. What are the two kinds of existentialists, and what view do they have in common?
2. How does “essence precede existence” in the case of a paper-cutter?
3. How is God traditionally conceived as an artisan?
4. According to existentialism, who is responsible for what “man” becomes?
5. How does our responsibility involve “all mankind?”
6. What is “anguish,” and how does it apply to the situation of Abraham?
7. What is “forlornness,” and how is this exemplified in the story of the Jesuit?
8. What does Sartre mean by “despair?”
9. What meaning of “humanism” does Sartre accept?

Beauvoir
1. What problems arise with attempts to define the concept of “woman?”
2. In what way are the terms “masculine” and “feminine” asymmetrical?
3. What is meant by calling woman the “Other?”
4. In what ways does Beauvoir believe women and men are treated unequally?
5. What pressures prevent women from fighting against inequality?
6. How have men justified their domination of women?
7. What ethical standard does Beauvoir suggest for judging institutions?

Zack
1. How does Zack’s narrative illustrate the “exclusively disjunctive” nature of racial categories?
2. How does Zack understand “self-emancipation?”
3. How does our “kinship schema”create an asymmetrical racial inheritance?
4. Why is this asymmetrical schema unjust?
5. How is the problem of mixed race different from the problematization of mixed race?
6. What is deracination, and how might it lead to a new universalism?

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Last Updated: 2 February 2001