PHT2/4 PHILOSOPHY TRIPOS Part II Friday 25 May 2012 09.00 to 12.00 Paper 4 EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY FROM KANT Answer three questions only. Write the number of the question at the beginning of each answer. If you are answering an either/or question, indicate the letter as well. STATIONERY REQUIREMENTS 20 Page Answer book x 1 Rough Work Pad You may not start to read the questions printed on the subsequent pages of this question paper until instructed that you may do so by the Invigilator
-2 - PHT2/4 1 Either (a) Can Kant's philosophy allow for the possibility of non- conceptual content? Should it? Or (b) 'The key to Kant's response to Hume is the Critique's use of transcendental arguments.' Discuss. 2 Critically assess Kant's conception of either logic or imagination. 3 Why does Kant hold that space and time are 'ideal'? What are the philosophical advantages, if any, of doing so? 4 'Kant cannot coherently make any claims about things in themselves.' Discuss. 5 In what sense is Hegel an idealist? Is that sense incompatible with realism? 6 What, if anything, can we learn from Hegel's claim that 'self- consciousness finds its satisfaction only in another self- consciousness'? 7 What would Hegel think is wrong with modern epistemology? Would he be right? 8 Either (a) 'Nietzsche's attack on the ascetic ideal has no relevance for contemporary Western society.' Discuss. Or (b) 'Nietzsche's Genealogy is fatally undermined by its lack of attention to economics.' Discuss. 9 Why, according to Nietzsche, did the slave revolt succeed? How plausible is his theory? 10 What implications, if any, do Nietzsche's arguments in the Birth of Tragedy have for contemporary artistic practice? 11 'Kant's conception of the self is a historically contingent phenomenon.' Discuss with reference to either Hegel or Nietzsche. 12 'It has gradually become clear what every great philosophy up till now has consisted in - namely unconscious autobiography.' Discuss with reference to any two authors on the syllabus. END OF PAPER