University of Pittsburgh, Summer Term 1998
Ben Eggleston, Instructor
Philosophy 0320—CRN 01205: Social Philosophy (writing)
mailbox: CL 1001—office: CL 1428E
Mondays, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., in CL 340
office hours: Sundays and Mondays, 4:45 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Internet: http://www.pitt.edu/~jbest3/SP.html
e-mail: jbest3+@pitt.edu

Quiz no. 2, make-up no. 1

June 15, 1998

On the front of this sheet of paper, answer each of the following questions. Provide a distinct answer for each question, numbering your answers as you proceed. Before turning in your quiz, fold this sheet of paper in half, lengthwise (i.e., so that the crease goes from top to botton, down the middle), and write your name on the back. Only answers written on the front will influence your grade, and nothing written on the front should reveal your identity.

  1. Rousseau thinks humans have “two principles that are prior to reason.” What do these two principles tell people?
  2. What does Rousseau think happens to a person when he becomes “habituated to the ways of society and a slave”?
  3. What does Rousseau say the “famous author” would have concluded if he had “gone back as far as natural man”?
  4. Why, according to Rousseau, is oppression impossible in the state of nature?
  5. What does Rousseau identify as “the first yoke [people] imposed on themselves without realizing it”?
  6. Who does Rousseau say “conceived the most thought-out project that ever entered the human mind”? What did they stand to gain from that project?
  7. What does Rousseau mean by “the final state of inequality” being “the extreme point that closes the circle and touches the point from which we started”?