This self grading exam consists of 20 questions. Answers are entered by clicking the option button corresponding to your selection. The test is scored by clicking" Grade " Test at end of the exam. Correct answers are found through hypertext links located at the end of the exam.

 

Question #1 This ancient Greek philosopher is credited with creating the subject of logic, and did original work in marine biology as well as metaphysics and ethics.
    A)Plato
    B)Thales
    C)Aristotle
Question #2 A British empiricist and political philosopher, Thomas Jefferson described this philosopher as the father of liberalism, the epitome of empiricism's reasonableness, and the spiritual guide of the American Constitution.

    A)John Locke.
    B)James Madison.
    C)Robert Boyle

Question #3 "Intentionality is the hallmark of all consciousness," wrote this German philosopher of the early 20th Century.

    A)Jean Paul Sartre
    B)Edmund Husserl
    C)Ludwig Wittgenstein

Question #4 This scholastic philosopher is famous his identification of five proofs for the existence of God, though his real contribution is to the development of Catholic theology.

    A)St. Anselm
    B)St. Augustine
    C)St. Thomas Aquinas

Question #5 This German philosopher once said "What I understand by "Philosopher": a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger."

    A)Friedrich Nietzsche
    B)Arthur Schopenhauer
    C)Friedrich von Schelling

Question #6 Proclaimed as the "Father of modern philosophy," he developed four rules for the discovery of knowledge and once claimed that good sense is the most widely distributed thing among human beings.

    A)Francis Bacon
    B)Rene Descartes
    C)Galileo Galilei

Question #7 Greek philosopher who developed the theory that all knowledge is of ideas separate in existence from this world, and is famous for describing ordinary life as like being chained in a cave.

    A)Heraclitus
    B)Aristotle
    C)Plato

Question #8 "Nature," he argued, "has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure"; after his death and at his request, his stuffed body was placed in a glass box at the college he helped found.

    A)John Stuart Mill
    B)Jeremy Bentham
    C)Auguste Comte

Question #9 This philosopher was heavily influenced by the rationalism of Rene Descartes and argued that God is the only substance in existence, and God and Cosmos are one and the same.

    A)Baruch Spinoza
    B)Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz
    C)Giambattista Vico

Question #10 This philosopher believed that the genuine method of metaphysics is the fundamentally the method which Newton brought to science; he once rhapsodized that: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe...the starry heavens above and the moral law within."

    A)Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz
    B)Arthur Schopenhauer
    C)Immanuel Kant

Question #11 This 4th Century christian convert is famous for his idea that the human will is divided, and infamous for his suggestion that human beings are either for God or against Him.

    A)Origin
    B)Augustine
    C)Cornelius

Question #12 Another British philosopher, this man was an early researcher in logic and mathematics, and developed a paradox about "the class of all classes that are not members of themselves."

    A)John Stuart Mill
    B)Herbert Spencer
    C)Bertrand Russell

Question #13 Arguing that "mind has no sex," this English philosopher concluded that rights are not determined by gender, and that women should have complete personal and economic independence.

    A)Mary Wollstonecraft
    B)Mary Godwin Shelley
    C)Baroness von Stael

Question #14 He was probably the most famous philosopher of the 20th Century, though he argued that nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being, like a worm, and accused many people of hiding the truth from themselves and living a bourgeois life of bad faith.

    A)Ludwig Wittgenstein
    B)Jean-Paul Sartre
    C)Karl Marx

Question #15 Karl Marx referred this man as the "Prussian Aristotle," he once wrote that "history teaches us that people have never learnt anything from history."

    A)Georg W.F. Hegel
    B)Johann Gottlieb Fichte
    C)Friedrich von Schiller

Question #16 Though he is classified as one of the British empiricists, this scotsman set out to create the foundations of a genuine empirical science of human nature, only end up undermining those foundations.

    A)George Berkeley
    B)David Hume
    C)Francis Bacon

Question #17 This famous proponent of utilitarianism argued that altruism was as important as self-interest, and once quipped that he would rather be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.

    A)John Stuart Mill
    B)Bernard Williams
    C)Alfred Whitehead

Question #18 This nineteenth century thinker was famous for the complaint that philosophers before him have only interpreted the world, when the point is to change it.

    A)William James
    B)John Stuart Mill
    C)Karl Marx

Question #19 This Roman stoic described the life of every man as a soldier's service that is long and various.

    A)Epictetus
    B)Marcus Aurelius
    C)Seneca

Question #20 This french philosopher coined the phrase "noble savage," and described himself as the model of an estranged "modern man," cut off from his true nature.

    A)Rene Descartes
    B)Jean-Paul Sartre
    C)Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Correct Answers

#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20,