Week 2: The historical context of cinema: cinema as a post-romantic art FACULTY OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY Semester 1, 2018 PHIL 238 Existential Questions Take-Home Exam Word Limit: 2,500 words...

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Week 2: The historical context of cinema: cinema as a post-romantic art FACULTY OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY Semester 1, 2018 PHIL 238 Existential Questions Take-Home Exam Word Limit: 2,500 words Due Date: Friday, 15 June 2018, 11.59pm. Weighting: 50% How to Submit: Online submission via the relevant TurnItIn link on the unit’s iLearn page. Marking criteria: - ability to understand and explain key philosophical issues and concepts - ability to evaluate arguments in a philosophical text - ability to structure your answers succinctly, clearly and coherently - ability to write clearly and correctly - ability to write to the required length A rubric is available on the unit's iLearn. Instructions on how to complete the take-home exam: Answer EACH ONE of the questions below. You should write between 400 and 500 words for each response. You don’t need to use secondary literature in your responses. The emphasis is on your understanding and explaining of the main authors. If you reference primary texts, which you are welcome to do (but do so sparingly as your answers should be succinct), make sure you use a consistent reference system. Do not count any footnotes in your word count. Please indicate the word count after EACH answer. Answer EACH ONE of the questions below Question 1: Camus on the “indifference” of the world Throughout his writings, Camus uses expressions like “the primitive hostility of the world” (in The Myth of Sisyphus, p.20), or “the benign indifference of the universe” (in the last page of The Stranger). Explain what these expressions mean and the different roles they play in Camus’ overall philosophical outlook. Question 2: Heidegger on authenticity and death What does Heidegger mean by “being-towards-death”? What role does “being- towards-death” play in his conception of human existence? Question 3: Sartre on freedom What does Sartre mean when he writes in Being and Nothingness: “the human being is its own nothingness”? Why is that particularly relevant for his conception of freedom? Question 4: Merleau-Ponty on embodied existence In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty writes: “the body, in so far as it has ‘behaviour patterns’, is that strange object which uses its own parts as a general system of symbols for the world, and through which we can consequently ‘be at home in’ that world, ‘understand’ it, and find significance in it.” (Phenomenology of Perception, p.245) Answer the following questions: - Why does Merleau-Ponty call the body a “strange object”? - What does he mean when he writes that the body uses “its own parts” as “a general system of symbols for the world”? - In what way does this conception of the body provide a new way of understanding how human beings can “be in the world”? Question 5: De Beauvoir on the ethics of action In succinct terms, characterise De Beauvoir’s existentialist theory of human action. In order to do so, answer the following questions: - What are the links De Beauvoir establishes between the existentialist concept of human existence and individual action? - What are some of the main features of her conception of action deriving from these links? [Jean_Paul_Sartre]_Being_and_Nothingness_A_Phenom.pdf Pheno of Perception.pdf