Q 01/05

Which Greek philosopher is associated with a question-and-answer method of inquiry?

A) Plato

B) Aristotle

C) Epicurus

D) Socrates

Answer · why

D) Socrates

In Plato's Theaetetus, Socrates compares his questioning to midwifery, drawing understanding out of his partners rather than putting it in.

Q 02/05

In which of Plato's works does he present the Allegory of the Cave?

A) Timaeus

B) Republic

C) Laws

D) Phaedo

Answer · why

B) Republic

Republic sets the cave in Book VII: prisoners chained since childhood take shadows on a wall for reality, and would kill anyone who tried to drag them...

Q 03/05

What Kantian concept says an action is moral if its maxim can be universalised without contradiction?

A) Hedonic Calculus

B) Categorical Imperative

C) Golden Mean

D) Principle of Utility

Answer · why

B) Categorical Imperative

The Categorical Imperative rules out a false promise to repay a loan, in Kant's own example: if everyone made such promises, nobody would believe them...

Q 04/05

Which 20th-century philosopher built his 1927 book Being and Time around the term 'Dasein'?

A) Martin Heidegger

B) Albert Camus

C) Jean-Paul Sartre

D) Ludwig Wittgenstein

Answer · why

A) Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger took Dasein, the ordinary German word for 'existence' that earlier philosophers had also used, and made it his name for the kind of b...

Q 05/05

Which branch of philosophy is concerned with the nature of knowledge, its acquisition, and its limits?

A) Metaphysics

B) Epistemology

C) Aesthetics

D) Ethics

Answer · why

B) Epistemology

Epistemology takes its name from the Greek episteme, 'knowledge'. Its questions go back to Plato, but the word itself is young: it was coined only in ...