Posted: July 18th, 2019
PHIL 288gp Final Examination
PHIL 288gp Final Examination Fall 2020 McCann
Please write essays in response to TWO of the questions below. Remember: clarity, cogency, conciseness, and completeness are the attributes of a good answer. Please submit your essays in a single document with the document name ‘288 Final Exam ’ via Turnitin no later than Tuesday November 17, 2020 at 4:00 p.m.
1. In a number of the works we’ve studied there has been a thematic connection between falling in love (or being overpowered by lust) and madness, at least of a mild sort. Among them: Plato’s Phaedrus, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (select at most two of the stories to discuss if you choose to discuss this work), the Letters of Abelard and Heloise, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, Double Indemnity, L’Atalante (where the madness-like symptoms befall Jean after the separation), The Lady Eve, and Titanic. Compare and contrast the treatment of this theme in at least three and no more than four of the above works, and make sure that your answer discusses works from quite different time periods and media types, and in which the consequences of the love differ. (I.e. you must discuss at least one literary work and one film, and at least one work in which the love leads to the death of one or more of the lovers and one in which it does not).
2. In what different ways do the existentialist philosophers Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Beauvoir use the notions of erotic love and sexual relations (sexual desire) in connection with their respective understandings of the meaning of human existence? What broad themes do they share, and what are the significant differences among them? Do any of these writers–Kierkegaard, Sartre, or Beauvoir—present a fully accurate account of the nature of love? Give reasons for your answer to this question (for example, you might explain what is lacking in their conceptions of love , or alternatively, explain why one of the accounts of love is superior to any of the others we’ve considered in this class).
3. What is the relation between love and marriage, according to Kierkegaard’s Diary of a Seducer, Vigo’s L’Atalante, Cameron’s Titanic (with regard to the life together that Jack and Rose discussed but which never came to pass), and Sturges’s The Lady Eve? Compare and contrast the ways in which the different power dynamics in the relationships depicted in these works drive the plot resolution in the stories. What are the major differences between the way love and marriage are understood in these works and the understanding implicit in the fairy tale Snow White, in its original print form (Grimm Brothers) and in the Disney version? Which view of the relationship between love and marriage is closest to being the correct one, and why do you think so?