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21 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
According to the Old Testament, the Israelites were bound to God by
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A covenant
While some might argue for C or D, those are interpretations outside of the Old Testament. As far as the Israelites were concerned—as far as we can tell from the Bible—the key bind between themselves and their God was the covenant between God and Abraham |
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According to the Book of Job, if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly good, then evil must come
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a mistaken, short-term impression of humans who do not know (and cannot know) all of God's plan
The problem of evil is how it can exist if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Job is one answer to this question: what seems to us to be evil may not be in the long run, either for ourselves or for the world/universe. Other answers go by the name of "theodicies" and have caused much debate |
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Jesus is most similar to which of the Old Testament groups
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the prophets
Jesus spoke in the vein of the Prophets. He often spoke poetically and was in general urging his people to more just and ethical behavior. |
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Jesus' "Golden Rule"—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—was anticipated by which of the following philosophers?
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Confucius
Two statements of the Golden Rule appear in the Analects, written by the Chinese ethical philosopher Confucius, who lived hundreds of years before Jesus. |
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The Ten Commandments are Deontological or Consequentialist?
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Deontological, because they are phrased as categorical imperatives
Not only are the Ten Commandments deontological and absolute, but their authority derives entirely from God's powerful attributes and thus do not require any reason beyond understanding the command. |
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One major ethical difference between the God of the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament is that the Old Testament God
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is concerned primarily with retributive justice, whereas Jesus is primarily concerned with distributive justice.
. As a generalization, it is true that Yahweh (or Jehovah), the Old Testament God, is more concerned with just retribution (against transgression by or against his chosen people) than with the just distribution of resources. However, Jesus, especially in his Sermon on the Mount, puts far more emphasis on distributive justice—if not here, then in the next world—than on punishment against transgressors |
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"Excellence in attaining and practicing the virtues" is described by which of the Greek terms
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Arête was a fundamental Greek notion, which, while it can mean "excellence" in general, in an ethical context means "virtue," with a special emphasis on striving toward ever-greater levels of virtue
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A relation of Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave" to his ethical system is
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The notion of perfect Forms, of which The Good is one
. The Good, to Plato, is the highest form of knowledge and is a perfect Form. Choice C is correct, in and of itself, but doesn't answer the question asked |
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what is a major similarity between Plato's ethics and Aristotle's
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I. Both argued that ethical behavior depends on maximizing irrationality
II. Both described and ranked different aspects of the mind (or "soul") III. Neither believed that women were equal to men in moral abilities |
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The Stoics believed that happiness consisted of _____
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Tranquility
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The skeptics _____
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I. did not accept that one could say anything definite about anything beyond appearances
II. did not accept that there was anything morally good or bad by nature III. strove for a mental state free from disturbance |
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Jesus' "Golden Rule"—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—was anticipated by which of the following philosophers?
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Confucius
. Two statements of the Golden Rule appear in the Analects, written by the Chinese ethical philosopher Confucius, who lived hundreds of years before Jesus |
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Natural law is incompatible with ____
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I. A deity
II. The denial of a shared basic human nature III. The lack of natural rights . Natural law requires some notion of human nature (stronger or at least more basic than any cultural variety). Natural rights emanate from this human nature, and natural law is based on both. One may or may not base human nature on a deity |
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Hobbes "Leviathan" is a metaphor for what?
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The nation-state
. Hobbes considered the state's power to be nearly absolute. (There is argument about this, as Hobbes did leave open the possibility of the dissolution and reconstitution of the state if the sovereign failed to hold up his end of the social contract: protection of the citizenry from the state of nature |
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A systematic conception of natural law originated with what ethical philosopher
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Aquinas
The key word is "systematic." Notions of natural law predate Aquinas, but he was the first thinker to systematically delineate the origin and operation of a natural-law-based ethical system. Aquinas' system had two features: 1. natural law emanates from divine providence and is thus innate in human beings and 2. natural law forms the rules by which human action should be judged. Some subsequent natural law theories have jettisoned #1, substituting a nontheistic concept of universality and authority for natural |
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Aquinas' "principle of double effect" states _____
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II. One act may have two effects, one intended and one unintended.
III. Under some conditions, an act that causes harm may be permissible if a good end is intended . By its nature, the "principle of double effect" states that an act may have two effects. Aquinas held that as long as the intent to do good is paramount in an act, even if a harmful side effect is foreseen, the act may still be ethical. The key point is that double effect concentrates on intentionality and presupposes not only the intelligibility of private intent but also the essential benevolence of the actor |
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Kant's ethical system is _____
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deontological
. Kant's moral philosophy is one of the most influential deontological theories. These ethical theories posit eternal moral truths that are inherent in being human. However, Kant held the existence of God (or of an immortal soul) to be unknowable but useful postulates in ethics |
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Kant's notion that one should act as though one were recommending one's act as an unbreakable, eternal, and universal law to fully rational free agents is called the _____
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kingdom of ends
The kingdom of ends is one formulation of Kant's central notion of the categorical imperative (unconditional imperatives). Even though it is a hypothetical "thought experiment," it is very different from the hypothetical imperative (conditional imperatives). |
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The felicific calculus assumes that ______
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there is enough time to use the calculus in real-life situations
. The felicific calculus assumes that all pleasures are of equal value and that there is enough time to use it in real-life situations. Its purpose is to calculate the pleasure that a specific action would cause, so it must assume that consequences of actions can be taken into account in ethics. |
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Bentham, unlike Mill, argued _____
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Bentham, unlike Mill, argued
Bentham believed that all pleasures were equivalent in value, whereas Mill did not. Both Mill and Bentham supported some measure of emancipation for women, and choice B is the "harm principle," an invention of Mill's. |
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What is the harm principle?
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liberty extends up to the point of inflicting harm on another
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