Quizzes Oct 10 & 12

Oct 10, ch19-20

1. How do Epictetus and Shantideva agree?

2. The first principle of non-satisfaction involves what admission?

3. What is samsara?

4. What did Stoics invent?

5. What do Chuang Tzu and Montaigne have in common?

6. Give an example of a Taoist paradox.

DQ:

• Do yo agree that things are inherently neutral, with respect to their bearing on your happiness, and that it's only your opinion of them that matters?
• In general, what's your attitude towards desire and attachment? Are they obstacles to happiness or prerequisites for it?
• Is the world one, many, both, or neither? 114
• Is it possible, or ethically responsible, to believe that "everything should come about just as it does"? 116
• What do you think of Epictetus's dog-cart illustration of Stoic freedom? 115
• How important do you think "willpower" and self-control are to your happiness? What can you do to strengthen them? 
• What does "Living the present" mean to you? Is there a problem with it, as either a goal or a possible attainment?
• What do you think of Cicero's praemeditatio? 117  Does anticipating bad possibilities make you happier in the long run, or less happy?
• Is it good to "ruminate" like a Stoic? 118
• Do you believe in karma? 120f What did John Lennon mean by "instant karma"?
• How do you understand the doctrine of anatman, "non-self"? If you're not a self in this sense, what are you? 121
• Do we get "many lives" or just one? Which would be better to believe, in terms of happiness? 127
• Do you see philosophy more as learning to die, as Cicero said, or as learning to live? Or is there no practical difference? 130
• Do you agree with Montaigne that we can all find "a path [not THE path] to happiness that suits us"? 131
• Is skepticism more conducive to your happiness than conviction, fallibilism, or any other approach to knowledge (and its lack)?
• What do you think of Montaigne's motto Que scay-je ("What do I know?") 134
• Are you attracted to Montaigne's style of Epicureanism? 138
• Do you agree with Chuang Tzu and the Taoists that "it's more important to know and transform ourselves than to try and transform the world and society"? 141 Are these really two different things?
• Do you agree that "we should not 'force' things, but go along with them"? 146 Isn't this a surrender to the status quo, especially in matters social and political?
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Oct 12, ch21 & epilog

1. Spinoza's symbol of continuity was what?

2. From what "cruel illusion" did Spinoza want to free us?

3. For Spinoza there's nothing more absurd than what?

4. What is the role of reason in securing happiness, for Spinoza?

5. Beyond eliminating obstacles, what must we do to be happy?

6. What are two ways of viewing "joy"?

DQ:

• Will you have any particular dying requests? 155
• Can we freely choose to renounce free will? Or freely choose to affirm it? Or seek new desires? (Remember Schopenhauer's "We can do what we want, but not want what we want.")
• Why shouldn't we expect a pantheistic universe to yield universal rules of behavior?
• Can a rationalist pantheist endorse delusional sources of happiness? 178
• Was Einstein being disingenous when he affirmed "Spinoza's God"?
• Comment: "There isn't an inch of earth where God is not."
• Yours?

==
Postscript. The anti-Ricard, novelist Michel Houellebecq - much closer to the French stereotype than Frederic Lenoir, who introduced us to him a few classes back - was interviewed in the Times. I prefer the Monk, myself.

PARIS — Michel Houellebecq was seated with his legs crossed in a chair in his publishers’ office here, chain-smoking and flicking away criticism that his latest novel, “Submission,” is Islamophobic, or at least critical of Islam. “I really couldn’t care less, to be honest,” said Mr. Houellebecq, France’s best-known world-weary bad-boy novelist, letting out a little laugh that interrupted his usual deadpan delivery.

Islam itself doesn’t interest him, he continued during a recent interviewbefore the novel’s release in the United States next Tuesday by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “What interests me is the fear that it creates, not the contents,” he said.

“Submission,” which is set in 2022 and imagines France under its first Muslim president, was published in France on Jan. 7, the day jihadists killed 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, whose cover that week featured Mr. Houellebecq (pronounced WELL-beck) in a magician’s hat, as if predicting the future.

Since then, he has been under 24-hour police protection, a fate that, he dryly said, “could be worse.” Among those killed was his friend the economist Bernard Maris. “It’s the first time someone I knew died for political reasons,” he added. Of the attack on the publication, he said, “I was sad, but I wasn’t surprised.”

A best seller across Europe, “Submission” hit a nerve in France, where it has sold an impressive 650,000 copies. Literary critics praised it. Feminists condemned its depiction of women (supine, in all senses of the word, including in not standing up to the imposition of Shariah law). The right called it prescient. The left called it a gift to the right-wing National Front. Prime Minister Manuel Valls denounced it, saying: “France isn’t Michel Houellebecq. It isn’t intolerance, hate, fear.” In August, France’s establishment dailies, Le Figaro and Le Monde, published five- and six-part series on him... (continues)