Quiz: Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences

15 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. 1. In what does the cunning of reason consist?

   In hiding its true aims from the finite understanding In letting objects act on one another while its own aims are realised through them In overpowering objects directly by force applied from outside In abandoning its aims whenever objects resist them
2. 2. Whom does Hegel cite for the claim that a hand cut off from the body is a hand in name only?

   Aristotle Gottfried Leibniz Immanuel Kant Baruch Spinoza
3. 3. How does Hegel distinguish the sign from the symbol?

   A sign is always written, while a symbol is always spoken Signs belong to animals, while symbols belong only to humans A sign’s natural look has nothing to do with what it means A symbol is arbitrary, while a sign resembles its meaning
4. 4. Which illustration of Kant’s does Hegel say won general acceptance for the critique of the ontological proof?

   Two purses of shillings of unequal weight A hundred sovereigns, real or only possible A circle made of infinitely small straight lines A piece of sugar that is hard, white and sweet
5. 5. What does § 384 give as “the supreme definition of the Absolute”?

   The Absolute is Substance The Absolute is pure Being The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) The Absolute is the unknowable thing-in-itself
6. 6. What does Hegel's example of rain and wetness show about cause and effect?

   The cause must always come before the effect in time Cause and effect can be linked only by the custom of the mind They share one content, the same water, differing only in form The effect always contains more than was in the cause
7. 7. How does Hegel answer the charge that Spinoza’s system is atheism?

   It is acosmism: it denies the reality of the world, not of God It is deism: God made the world and then withdrew from it It is scepticism: it denies that any knowledge of God is possible It is dualism: God and nature are two distinct substances
8. 8. How does Hegel define the Philosophy of Nature in the division of the system?

   The science of mechanical laws and experiments The science of the Idea in its otherness The science of the Idea come back to itself The science of the Idea in and for itself
9. 9. Why, according to § 410, is habit rightly called a “second nature”?

   It is the nature of the body as opposed to the soul It is the second stage of the ages of life It is inherited from parents along with temperament It is an immediate being of the soul, but one created by the soul itself
10. 10. Which text does Hegel quote as the fullest expression of so-called pantheism?

    The Rig Veda hymns Spinoza’s Ethics, Part One The Koran of Muhammad The Bhagavad Gita
11. 11. Which example does Hegel give of a quantitative change that suddenly alters quality?

    A red that is made brighter or darker by degrees A meadow surveyed and found to be three acres A house enlarged by the addition of a new wing Water heated or cooled into steam or ice
12. 12. What was the first part of the old metaphysics in its systematic form?

    Rational Psychology Natural Theology Cosmology Ontology
13. 13. Which example does Hegel use to show that positive and negative are “at bottom the same”?

    Light and darkness Profit and wages Hot and cold Debts and assets
14. 14. Which form of judgment does Hegel see objectively exemplified in crime?

    The apodictic judgment The hypothetical judgment The negatively-infinite judgment The simple negative judgment
15. 15. What does Hegel say about our knowledge of Kant’s Thing-in-itself?

    It will be known once the natural sciences are complete It can be reached by faith and feeling, though never by the understanding It is known only through the moral law of practical reason Nothing is easier to know, since it is mere empty abstraction