Chapters 6-8

Front 1

According to Kierkegaard, this category would include values and religious claims. They are impossible to prove but have profound relationship to our existence.

Back 1

Subjective Thought D

Front 2

According to Hegel, this is the result of Absolute Spirit attempting to think itself, which distanced it from its own essence and began history as we know it.

Back 2

God's Self-Alienation E

Front 3

The structure of all thought and reality, according to Hegel. It holds that all objects and events are processes of synthesizing a positivity and a negativity. It describes reality as a series of theses, antitheses, and syntheses.

Back 3

Dialectic F

Front 4

According to Nietzsche, exercising this is to "lie creatively," or to force reality to submit to one's own creative power. Our biology, our thought, and our language are all manifestations of it.

Back 4

Will to Power H

Front 5

According to Kierkegaard, this category would include factual matters such as math, science, or history. These matters have no essential relationship to our existence.

Back 5

Objective Thought C

Front 6

This is a phrase that Nietzsche used to denote the end of traditional forms of authority: historical, political, religious and moral.

Back 6

God is dead B

Front 7

The belief that right and wrong should be measured by the "greatest happiness for the greatest number."

Back 7

Utilitarianism J

Front 8

Nietzsche's superhuman person who represents the ideal approach to life: laughter, dance, the death of God and eternal recurrence. He can make decisions in the face of absurdity.

Back 8

Der Ubermensch I

Front 9

Kierkegaard's person who is able to choose, to act, and take responsibility for the results of his action despite the despair of having to choose--like the biblical character Abraham.

Back 9

Knight of Faith G

Front 10

This is the process of a subject being split from its object. In Marx's case he was concerned about this being produced by socio-poilitico-economic forces that drive a wedge between individual humans and their products. This can result in human dysfunction since humans are what they make.

Back 10

Alienation A

Front 11

Jacques Derrida's theory that all traditional texts undermine and refute their own ideas because of the lack of meaning in words.

Back 11

Deconstruction A

Front 12

The method that seeks to understand reality through a "bracketing" of normal assumptions so that we can experience an object or event as it is actually lived.

Back 12

Phenomenology G

Front 13

This was a backlash against Hegelian idealism in Britain and America that primarily analyzed language and meaning. It was anti metaphysical, concerned with detail analysis, and far removed from the problems that afflicted ordinary people.

Back 13

Analytic Philosophy B

Front 14

The general belief that humans are subjects with the freedom to create themselves, others, values, and the meaning of the external world.

Back 14

Existentialism F

Front 15

This began as a reaction against phenomenology and existentialism and concluded that the mind is universlaly structured to process its data in terms of certain general formulas.

Back 15

Structuralism E

Front 16

The hatred of women. It is this attitude which poststructuralist feminists trace to cultural language and against which they write.

Back 16

Misogyny H

Front 17

The study of signs.

Back 17

Semiology or Semiotics D

Front 18

From the theory of psychoanalysis (Freud), it signifies the cultural belief that women are somehow lacking, incomplete, and inadequate males.

Back 18

Penis Envy C

Front 19

This is a peculiarly American philosophy that made knowledge functional, practical--rather than a search for transcendant truth.

Back 19

Pragmatism J

Front 20

A combination of a sound or visual image (signifier) and a concept (signified). Structuralists and poststructuralists have also applied this term to human behaviors.

Back 20

Sign I