Directed Studies: History and Politics

Spring 2010
Final Examination
Monday, May 10, 2010
9 am

The exam consists of two parts:

Part I: Passages for identification (choose eight out of twelve; worth one-half the
exam);
Part II: One essay (choose one out of three; worth one-half the exam).
You will have three hours to complete the exam: two and one-half hours to write
and 30 minutes to revise your answers.
Please read through the entire exam before you begin and plan your time
accordingly. All answers should be written in your blue books.

PLEASE WAIT FOR INSTRUCTION TO TURN THIS PAGE AND BEGIN

Part I. Passages for identification (approximately 90 minutes).
Select eight (8) from the twelve (12) passages below. In one succinct paragraph
(35 sentences) please provide for each passage:
source (author, title);
relation to the work as a whole, i.e., what is the larger context;
significance of the idea expressed in the passage. In particular, comment on its
relationship to earlier work(s) to which the passage may be seen as a response,
and/or to future work(s) that carry forward or dispute the idea expressed.
a)
The very phrase human rights became for all concernedvictims,
persecutors, and onlookers alikethe evidence of hopeless idealism or fumbling
feeble-minded hypocrisy.
b)
Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and all the
good things which are connected with manners, and with civilization, have, in this
European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed

the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of the gentleman, and the spirit of
religion.
c) [N]o government is so subject to civil wars and internal agitations as a
democratic or popular one, since there is none that tends so forcefully and
continuously to change its form, or that demands greater vigilance and courage to
be maintained in its own formBetter to have liberty fraught with danger than
servitude in peace.
d) [A] mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several
departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a
tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.
e) All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and
mans is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and
his relations with his kind.
f) Religious peoples are therefore naturally strong in precisely the spot where
democratic peoples are weak; this makes very visible how important it is that men
keep to their religion when becoming equal.
g) I look on bad conscience as a serious illness to which man was forced to
succumb by the pressure of the most fundamental of all changes which he
experienced, that change whereby he finally found himself imprisoned within the
confines of society and peace.
h) [In the state of war] there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is
uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the earth, no navigation, nor use of
commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments
of moving and removing things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of
the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society
i) In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to
maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the
assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the
help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence
only.
j) [R]evolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs.
Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the
slips of human frailty, will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a
long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make
the design visible to the people, it is not to be wondered, that they should then
rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure
to them the ends to which government was at first erected
k) Only a ruler who is himself enlightened and has no dread of shadows, yet who
likewise has a well-disciplined, numerous army to guarantee public peace, can say

what no republic may dare, namely: Argue as much as you want and about what
you want, but obey!
l) Men have less hesitation to offend one who makes himself loved than one who
makes himself feared.

Part II. Essay (One essay, approximately 90 minutes). Your essay will be
evaluated for the quality of its thesis, the strength of its evidence, and the clarity
and persuasiveness of its argument.
Choose one of the following prompts and craft an essay in response.
1) Hannah Arendt suggests that totalitarianism has its roots in the Western
philosophical tradition, yet also claims that it marks an almost complete break in
the continuous flow of Western history. Of the thinkers we have studied this
semester, which ones could be seen to provide the grounds out of which
totalitarianism has arisen? Which could be seen to offer a solution?
2) Is history progressive? Take three or four thinkers we have studied this semester
and discuss their views. Which side is more persuasive? Does it matter if there is
progress in history?
3) In the tradition of political thought we have studied this semester, was
Nietzsche doing anything radical by declaring that: God is dead? Discuss to what
extent three authors offer a political remedy to this fundamentally modern problem.