Human Spirituality
George Elliot's husband, John Cross, wrote of George that from her earliest years she was marked by an __________ for one person who should be all in all to her, and to whom she should be all in all. a) benign indifference b) absolute need c) occasional desire d) allergic reaction
Absolute Need
Fatalism, by contrast, is a more _____________ notion, requiring only that (some) matters could not be other than they turn out to be...." a) worldly b) inconsistent c) abstract d) architectural
Abstract
Solomon opens this chapter by writing that "spirituality is the __________ of death as the completion of life, as the closure that gives an individual life its narrative significance in a larger whole." a) denial b) acceptance c) dread d) incarceration
Acceptance
The people who shaped George Marshall's world tended to believe that great individuals are made through training (rather than born), that change happens from the outside in, that _________ precedes virtue. a) religion b) youth c) act/action d) oatmeal
Act/Action
Solomon writes that "fate and fatalism are distinct notions. The first refers to some sort of quasi-________ that actually determines the way things have to be." a) modo b) agency c) experiment d) ocean
Agency
According to Brooks, Day became an avid reader, especially of ______________ and ____________. a) Bert/Ernie b) Catholics/Protestants c) Tolstoy/Dostoyevsky c) Hume/Locke
Tolstoy/Dostoyevsky
Brooks writes that the "counterculture" of the 1960s, as much as the commerce culture of the 1980s, was a culture of the Big Me." Both encouraged people to measure their lives by how they were able to achieve self-gratification. Day's life, by contrast, was about surrender of self, and ultimately the ________________ of self. a) destruction b) transcendence c) entitlement d) reincarnation
Transcendence
True or False According to Brooks, even as a young boy, Augustine was caught between the competing ideals of the classical world and the Judeo-Christian world.
True
True or False Brooks writes that "people who see themselves as the center of their solar system often get enraptured by their own terrible but also delicious suffering. People who see themselves as a piece of a larger universe and a longer story rarely do."
True
True or False David Chappell argues that there are two civil rights movements, one comprised largely of highly educated moral optimists and another comprised mostly of moral realists. According to the realists, if there is to be any progress, it is necessary not to just be engaged, one must utterly "surrender to the movement, at the cost of one's own happiness and fulfillment and possibly life."
True
True or False Mindfulness is a path, a work in progress, rather than an endpoint or achievement.
True
True or False Solomon concludes that death is significant only because our lives are significant, and the significance of our lives is wrapped up in other people.
True
True or False Solomon writes that sometimes bad things "just happen", and adopting a tragic sense of life is accepting this reality.
True
True or False Solomon's interest in questions about the meaning of life were not considered "serious" among those trained in analytic philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s.
True
True or False Solomon's view of spirituality contrasts markedly with other forms of non-theistic spirituality in that he viewed the spiritual life as one marked by a strong attachment.
True
True or False The privacy code, which Marshall shared with Francis Perkins, is based on the idea that there is a zone of intimacy which should be breached only gradually, after long reciprocity and trust.
True
True or False Thomas Aquinas argued that in order to lead a good life, it is necessary to focus more on our exemplars than on ourselves, imitating their actions as much as possible.
True
True or False. Brooks states that Eisenhower was not an authentic man. He was a passionate man who lived under a system of artificial restrains.
True
True or False. Perkins was one of the only two aides to work with Franklin Roosevelt for his entire term as president. In reflecting on how polio shaped his character, Perkins wrote he only "began to approach the stature of humility and inner integrity which made him truly great" by learning to make "accommodations to necessity".
True
True or False. Solomon sought a spirituality that is, among other things, nonreligious, non-institutional, non-theological, non-scriptural and non-exclusive.
True
True or False. According to Solomon, what distinguishes emotions from understanding is their motivational and personal nature rather than the lack of intelligence.
True
True or False. In noting the difference between the different kinds of virtues, Brooks follows the distinction between "Adam 1" and "Adam 2" drawn by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik in his 1965 work lonely man of faith.
True
What is good for humans, is what helps them become __________. a) Roman Catholic b) theistic c) truly human d) religious
Truly human
Robert Solomon wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on ___________. a) unconscious motivation b) the passions c) happiness after death d) Socratic mindfulness
Unconscious Motivation
Paul Tillich wrote that people who endure suffering are taken beneath the routine business of life and find they are not who they believed themselves to be. The pain.....smashes through a floor they thought was the bottom floor of their soul, revealing a cavity below, and so on and so on. The person in pain descends to ________________. a) unknown ground b) earth c) total nothingness d) middle management
Unknown ground
__________ belong to our emotional life; they are rather like habits of feeling. a) Rules b) Virtues c) Questions d) Scallions
Virtues
John Bishop notes that the passions Solomon emphasized are all related to one's connectedness to something larger than oneself and the recognition of one's ____________ and lack of control. a) vocation b) superiority c) vulnerability d) sinfulness
Vulnerability
Solomon had a part in the animated film, ___________, starring Ethan Hawke. a) Spirited Away b) Waking Life c) Fantasia d) Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Waking Life
In distinguishing career from vocation, Brooks relies on a distinction Dorothy Sayers made between serving the community and serving the ____________. a) ball b) meals c) work d) lord
Work
According to Solomon, fatalism should be distinguished from what philosophers call determinism. Fatalism insists only on necessity, no matter what the causes may be. Determinism, by contrast, insists on the sufficiency of ___________ but gives no particular meaning to how things actually turn out. a) mechanical solidarity b) divine foreknowledge c) hard work d) antecedent causation
Antecedent Causation
_______________ wrote that "in deepest solitude there is a road out of the self, a commerce with something which, by refusing to identify itself with any object of the senses, or anything imagined, or any state of our minds, proclaims itself purely objective." a) Augustine b) C.S. Lewis c) G.K. Chesterson d) Reinhold Niebuhr
C.S. Lewis
Brooks suggests that we live in a society that encourages us to think about how to have a great _________ but leaves many of us inarticulate about how to cultivate the inner life.
Career
In Homeric ethics, the mode of one's death was considered a definitive mark of one's _____________. a) character b) wealth c) height d) marital status
Character
According to ___________, ours is a "culture of authenticity," a culture based on the romantic idea that each of us has a Golden Figure in the core of our self, that there is an innately good True Self, which can be trusted, consulted, and gotten in touch with, and that our personal feelings are the best guide for what is right and wrong. a) Charles Taylor b) Joel Osteen c) St. Paul d) Lacey Sturm
Charles Taylor
Solomon contends that spirituality involves subjective and selective vision. He argues, in other words, that spirituality is the subjective ________________ to see the world as beautiful or sublime rather than as something else. a) state c) choice b) pattern d) absurd
Choice
Solomon, following Miguel de Unamuno and other existentialists, contends that "whether or not life has a meaning -- whatever that is taken to mean --- we make meaning by way of our _____________." a) doctrines b) commitments c) parties d) money
Commitments
Eliot believed that society is held together by a million constraints on individual will, which enmesh the individual within a _________. a) common moral world b) war of all against all c) collective unconscious d) hall of mirrors
Common Moral World
Perkins found purpose in life not by asking," What do I want from life?" but rather "What does life want from me?" and "What are my circumstances calling me to do?" This perspective, Brooks notes, begins not with the autonomous self, but with the ______________ within which the self is embedded. a) imaginary friend b) grated community c) willful ignorance d) concrete circumstances
Concrete Circumstances
According to Solomon, at least part of the "problem of evil" is that we have unrealistic expectations and demands. In order to challenge this "problem", we need to remind ourselves of the _____________ of our good fortune and how unreasonable we are to deny the inevitability of misfortune and the finitude of our lives." a) contingency (non-necessity) b) Ecclesiastes c) vegetarian d) deservedness
Contingency (non-necessity)
The only way Kung found firm ground under his feet and was able to take a stance toward life was to ______________. a) dare basic trust b) join the circus c) become an atheist d) learn to swim
Dare Basic Trust
Brooks writes that the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and its aftershocks left a deep mark on Francis Perkins. Until the fire, she had lobbied for worker rights and on behalf of the poor, but she had been on a conventional trajectory.......After the fire, what had been a career, became a vocation. Moral indignation set her on a different course. Her own ____________ and her own ____________ became less central and the cause itself became more central to the structure of her life. a) desires,ego b) angels, demons c) breakfast, lunch d) laughter, tears
Desires, Ego
A. Phillip Randolph's father was "guided by the values of civility, humility, and decency, inspired by religious and social service, and utterly devoted to the idea of _________." a) fun b) dignity c) moral evolution d) self-interest
Dignity
Brooks notes that the moral ecology within which Dwight Eisenhower lived was one in which "the essential drama of life is to construct character, which is an engraved set of disciplined habits, a settled disposition to ___________ ." a) do good b) find happiness c) be popular d) pursue fame
Do good
According to Brooks, Johnson stands as an example of human wisdom. From his scattered youth, his diverse faculties cohered into a single faculty-a mode of seeing and judging the world that was as much ________ as ____________. a) emotional/intellectual b) plant/animal c) individual/social
Emotional/Intellectual
Solomon writes that "the most important part of self-knowledge is our understanding and appreciation of our ____________, which are, after all, what make life worth living." a) stock options b) pets c) emotions d) beliefs
Emotions
Solomon's exploration of comparative philosophy impacted his work in many areas, perhaps most strikingly in his philosophy of __________ and his account of spirituality. a) heaven b) mind c) emotions d) science
Emotions
Solomon writes that "insofar as our trust in the world is based on a sense of ______________, it is the very opposite of the trust that is involved in spirituality." a) absurd b) realism c) entitlement d) passion
Entitlement
_________________'s thesis in The Denial of Death was that we Americans had so busied ourselves in the everyday world that we had purposely denied the basic facts of life, death in particular. a) Jean-Jacques Rousseau b) Bertrand Russell c) Ernest Becker d) Mike Portnoy
Ernest Becker
Brooks begins by noting the difference between two kinds of virtues, resume virtues and _____________ virtues.
Euology
After seven years of intense study in Rome, Hans Kung felt as though he had found intellectual clarity, but ___________ uncertainly remained. a) moral b) existential c) theological d) linguistic
Existential
_______________ trust is earned, cultivated and worked at, rather than given. a) Special b) Yellow c) Existential d) Pessimistic
Existential
Solomon rejected the idea that rational criteria are the ________ standards by which emotions and their appropriateness may be judged. a) external b) nominal c) internal d) indeterminate
External
True or False "Philosophical accounts of human nature have tended to reduce all of the richness of spiritual life to a single feature, economics."
False
True or False According to Brooks, the traditions of moral realism and moral romanticism lived side by side in society, in creative tension and conversation until the late 1960s and 1970s, when moral realism collapsed.
False
True or False According to Kung, a global ethic must be based on a passively received system of eternal, rigid, unchangeable norms.
False
True or False Brooks writes that the shift from the Little Me culture to the Big Me culture was illegitimate.
False
True or False Johnson wrote that the primary human problems have political solutions.
False
True or False. According to Soloveitchik, the two aspects of human nature depicted by the two Adams are fully reconcilable.
False
The good news of Brooks' book is that it is okay to be __________, since everyone is. a) Kantian b) flawed c) emotivist d) sleepy
Flawed
Reinhold Neibuhr wrote "nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is _______________". a) religion b) forgiveness c) getting what you want d) ESPN
Forgiveness
As an existentialist, Solomon takes it that "one of the most important messages that philosophy has to give is the importance of individual _________ and _________, not as a matter of metaphysics, but as a matter of practical necessity." a) life/death b) sin/redemption c) freedom/responsibility d) frog/toad
Freedom/Responsibility
In Spirituality for the Skeptic, Solomon wrote that ___________ is not only the best answer to the tragedies of life, it is the best approach to life itself. a) Jesus b) thrift c) gratitude d) fun
Gratitude
In many of his talks and writings on grief, Solomon ended by considering __________. If grief is an emotional response to great loss, __________ is, as he saw it, the best response to grief. Ultimately, __________ is the essence of the spiritual life. a) religion b) life after death c) free will d) gratitude
Gratitude
The reintroduction of luck and fate into philosophy brings with it at least one very important consequence, and that is a renewal sense of ___________. a) gratitude b) pride c) entitlement d) mediocrity
Gratitude
Solomon wrote that his view of the "enlargement of the self" owes very much to __________ and before him to a hundred generations of mystics and Asian thinkers who saw quite clearly that our routine conception of the individual self is in fact quite tenuous and fragile. a) Hegel b) Picasso c) Elvis d) Kant
Hegel
In one of his last articles, Solomon referred to _____________ and ____________ as "the grand old Mr. Cranky and Mr. Grumpy of German and French existentialism." a) Hegel/Foucault b) Bultmann/de Saussure c) Buber/Bengson d) Heidegger/Sartre
Heidegger/Sartre
For Eliot, ___________ isn't in the next world, but embedded in a mundane thing life a marriage, which ties one down but gives one concrete and daily opportunities for self-sacrifice and service. a) PSM b) holiness c) the answer d) Camelot
Holiness
According to ____________ people don't need to combat themselves, they only need to open up, to liberate their inner selves, so that their internalized drive to self-actualize can take over. a) biblical religion b) common sense c) humanistic psychology d) moral realism
Humanistic Psychology
Brooks notes that "for people in this striving culture, in the Adam 1 world where everything is won by effort, exertion, and control, suffering teaches dependence. It teaches that life is unpredictable and that the meritocrat's efforts at total control are an ______________." a) achievement b) ideal c) illusion d) indifference
Illusion
Spirituality is a mode of being in-the-world. It begins with our knowing our place in the world. To be sure, spirituality requires a large dose of ontological humility, which is wrongly interpreted as a sense of our ultimate _______________. a) concern b) exit c) insignificance d) game
Insignificance
President Truman's secretary of state Dean Acheson said that "the thing that stands out in everybody's recollection of General Marshall is the immensity of his _____________." a) popularity b) ego c) integrity d) estate
Integrity
According to Solomon, trust in the world ______________ motivated by our hopes and desires. a) is b) is not
Is not
After outlining a broad history of the notion that there are souls that are independent of and dwell deep within bodies, Solomon suggests that we should reject this notion in favor of a concept of soul as that which ____________. a) joins us with other people and the world b) enabled L. Ron Hubbard to solve age-old problem of good and evil c) is the nutritional value of noodles d) produces melatonin
Joins us with other people and the world
Kung writes to those whose motto is " The Pursuit of Happiness" that is not the enjoyment, but an ethos of __________ that leads to a sense of purpose and satisfaction. a) rationality b) entitlement c) life d) scientism
Life
Solomon writes that reverence is a passionate sense of one's ______________ and ________________. a) crime, punishment b) limits, limitations c) sense, sensibility d) god(s), goddess(es)
Limits/Limitations
Dorothy Day's memoir, The Long Loneliness, reprints a letter she wrote at age 15 which Brooks suggests "displays some of the features that would eventually make Day one of the most inspiring religious figures and social workers of the twentieth century: her hunger to be pure, her capacity for intense self-criticism, her desire to dedicate herself to something _____________," etc. a) complex b) round c) lofty d) profitable
Lofty
Brooks writes, "sin is not some demonic thing. It's just our perverse tendency to f*** things up, to favor the short term over the long term, the lower over the higher. Sin, when it is committed over and over again, hardens into loyalty to a lower _______________." a) heart rate b) GPA c) pain threshold d) love
Love
Stating this thesis in greater detail, Solomon claims that reverence, trust, and ____________ are the very essence of spirituality.
Love
According to Augustine, knowledge isn't enough for tranquility and goodness, because it doesn't contain the motivation to be good. Only _________ impels action. We don't become better because we acquire new information. We become better because we acquire better ________. a) money/jobs b) love/loves c) dreaming/dreams d) religion/doctrine
Love/Loves
As a young man, Augustine belonged to a strict philosophical sect called the _________. a) Ministry b) Monastics c) Monophysites d) Manichees
Manichees
According to Solomon, the place to look for ___________ is right here in our lives and in our world, not elsewhere.
Meaning
According to Brooks, without a rigorous focus on the Adam 2 side of our nature, it is easier to slip into a self-satisfied moral _________.
Mediocrity
______________ is knowledge that pulls the mind and heart of a knower toward a connection with the way things are in all their exciting particularity. a) Omniscience b) Mindfulness c) Cognition d) Gnosticism
Mindfulness
According to Brooks, some concept of sin is in a necessary piece of our mental furniture, because it reminds us that life is a __________ affair. a) love b) crunchy c) moral d) seasonal
Moral
The core question Goodenough and Woodruff consider in their essay is: How does one talk about ____________ and __________ as a religious naturalist. a) heaven/hell b) religion/science c) space/time d) moral thought/moral action
Moral Thought/Moral Action
Solomon notes that both Hegel and Nietzsche tried to ________ spirituality and to re-enchant everyday life.
Naturalize
Spirituality's narrative project involves an objective, what Nietzsche calls "carrying over into __________ what is fragment and riddle and dreadful accident." a) subtraction b) nothingness c) dry land d) one
One
In a letter to Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin wrote that _________ rests on two pillars, the first of which is resistance, and the second of which is the projection of good-will against ill-will. a) pacifism b) communism c) literalism d) existentialism
Pacifism
Solomon opens Chapter 2 with the thesis that "whatever else it may be, spirituality is _____________.
Passion
Solomon writes that "thinking of soul as selflessness, or a metaphysical eternal nugget, leaves out what is most important to soul as spirituality and that is ___________." a) religion b) democracy c) the Galactic Confederacy d) passion
Passion
Brooks writes that in the era of the Big Me, we put the individual first, whereas people with an institutional mindset view society as the basic reality and think of individuals as "born into a collection of _____________." a) whole grains b) noble acts c) permanent institutions d) muscle cars
Permanent Institutions
______________ is building your happiness around your accomplishments, using your work as the measure of your worth. It is believing you can arrive at fulfillment on your own, driven by your own individual efforts.
Pride
Solomon argues that we should think of "______________ and thus of ________________ too as having the right emotions, or caring about the right sorts of things." a) night/day b) rationality/spirituality c) reindeer/snow leopards d) Hegel/Kierkegaard
Rationality/Spirituality
Denying tragedy begins in the seemingly innocent thesis that whatever happens, happens for a ______________. a) pony b) punishment c) cause d) reason
Reason
Brooks notes that realist civil rights leaders, such as Randolph, Rustin, and King, were influenced by ___________. a) Nikita Khrushchev b) Dr. Phil c) Reinhold Niebuhr d) Maynard Keenan
Reinhold Niebuhr
Eliot _____________ because she loved life with such a passion that she had trouble accepting the idea that this world was subsidiary to some other world that obeyed different laws. a) attended medical school b) joined the circus c) embraced Scientology d) rejected Christianity
Rejected Christianity
According to Nietzsche, "reason is a state of the ____________ between different passions and desires." a) relations b) play c) liquid d) idea
Relations
The so-called mind-body problem is usually traced back to the musings and mediations of _______________. a) Stuart Kauffman b) Rene Descartes c) Humpty Dumpty d) Henri Bergson
Rene Descartes
Trust as a way of being in the world, is the _____________ to conceive of the world as trustworthy. a) belief b) attitude c) feeling d) resolution
Resolution
_____________ is the capacity to carry the sense that there is something larger than a human being, and hence something larger than one's self, a something that possesses one or more of the following properties: (1) it cannot be changed or controlled by humans, (2) it is not fully understood by experts, (3) it is not created by humans, and (4) it can be described as transcendent. a) Reverence b) Religion c) Nihilism d) Mimetics
Reverence
The phrase, "magical transformation of the world", which refers to the idea that trusting changes both the one who trusts and the one who is trusted, originated with _____________. a) Kant b) Mary c) Sartre d) Bill
Sartre
Brooks writes that ___________ was Johnson's path to redemption. a) the four noble truths b) the ten commandments c) self-combat d) self-deception
Self-combat
According to Brooks, civil rights leaders like Randolph were filled with _____________, feeling they had to be on the lookout for their own laxity, their own sinfulness, feeling that even in the midst of fighting injustice it is still possible to do horrible wrong. a) self-hatred b) self-absorption c) self-suspicion d) self-aggrandizement
Self-suspicion
According to Solomon, it was ______________ who transformed the idea of a soul that survives a person's death into a philosophical phenomenon, as he fantasized about being freed from the body to do nothing but think for all eternity. a) Jesus b) St. Paul c) Moses d) Socrates
Socrates
By taking the question of whether life is meaningful seriously, existentialists such as Unamuno, Camus, and Sartre provoke an irresolvable tension between our passionate commitments and our awareness that our lives are ultimately not in our hands. Solomon argues that __________ is found in recognizing this tension. a) God b) spirituality c) Nietzsche d) right
Spirituality
According to Brooks, Johnson was a tenderhearted moralist whose awareness of permanent ___________ made him sympathetic to others' failings. a) waves b) struggle c) press d) employment
Struggle
Samuel Johnson believed that the complexities of real life are best captured in _______________. a) metaphysical systems b) logical syllogisms c) tensions, paradoxes, ironies d) blind faith
Tensions, Paradoxes, and Ironies
