Prof. Harvey/HUM: History of Ideas/Diagnostic Midterm/Spring 2006


To fit this on one page, and to avoid having to pick and choose best verbatim answers I've just put key phrases/ideas below.  Virtually no one answered the last three--questions#8, 9, &10--SUGGESTING COLLECTIVE NOT KEEPING UP WITH THE IDEAS BOOK.  A good number could not get #6 on "Tintern Abbey" (which is puzzling; confusion about what "subjective" and "objective" mean?).  Some had points off for not seeing the ultimate point or consequence of the question (See#1 and #2 below).
 


 

1) What (or what possibility) does money introduce into the world according to Locke?
--the invention of money gets around the no-spoiling rule, and thereby allows for hoarding/accumulation and eventual vast discrepancies in ownership

2) According to Locke, in the state of nature, who gets to punish transgressors? Does Locke think this is good?
--before there is a separate so-tasked executive branch, all victims have a right to punish
--Locke thinks this is proper and just, but also difficult to keep in check and so punishment needs to be handed over to an executive branch

3) Explain in two sentences (in a fashion that does more than just repeat the term) what the "Enlightenment Era" or "Age of Reason" of the 17th and 18th century means?
--dogma and religious superstition is abandoned for rational claims and a scientific approach to nature

4) What does Equiano suggest about himself when he exults in wearing a new blue suit as a "freeman"?
--he seems more preoccupied with his status than the horrors of once being a slave; he seems to have forgotten his African roots and is concerned with appearance only

5) What is Equiano’s final version of Africa, at the end of his narrative?
--unlike his sentimental vision of a "simple" Africa, at the end he wants to introduce European economics/colonize Africa to make it part of the world market (i.e. exploit its natural wealth)

6) Explain whether Wordsworth’s Romantic poem "Tintern Abbey" expresses an objective or subjective view of nature.
--it is subjective because the entire poem is about interior processes of memory, intermixing of selfhood/nature, and the attempt to find value in nature that is more than an objective, cold picture

7) Explain, briefly, two ways in which Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Romantic Era novel.
--its descriptions/style are/is extreme and intense, not "realistic"
--it's about grand pursuits/ego ambitions rather than the family (though the monster longs to be part of the family)

8)*** Thomas Hobbes published a work called Leviathan. How does Hobbes’s work relate to John Locke’s Second Treatise?
--Whereas Locke sees the pre-law state of nature as a relatively idyllic place of natural rights from which we can see both the need for government and critique it, Hobbes sees the state of nature as so bloody and selfish that only surrender to a total, all-powerful authority/government will be sufficient to keep our state of nature instincts in check

9)*** In what ways did Newton’s ideas transform how the world was perceived?
--Newton explains the universe in terms of exclusively physical laws (gravity), which leads it being de-spiritualized and no longer interconnected in Great Chain of Being fashion.  Nature/the universe can now be studied and manipulated in entirely secular/scientific ways

10)*** Who was Berlioz? Why is he significant?
--He was an over-the-top Romantic composer, whose symphonic music was self-indulgent, highly emotional, and a break from the more ordered, less-emotional music of the preceding era.