How well do you know your philosophers? Here is a set of questions to test your knowledge. Each question describes an influential philosopher – all you have to do is decide which of the alternatives on offer fits the bill!
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Question of
He lived c428-348 BC, mostly in Athens, and introduced the Theory of Forms. His works were written as dialogues and included The Republic, Phaedo and The Apology
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Socrates
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Plato
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Aristotle
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Zeno
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Question of
Lived in England 1632-1704. Considered to be the first of the English empiricists. Wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
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John Locke
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George Berkeley
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David Hume
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Thomas Hobbes
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Question of
Lived in France 1596-1650. Best known for his “method of doubt” and his phrase “I think, therefore I am”.
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Blaise Pascal
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Benedictus de Spinoza
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Rene Descartes
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Question of
Lived in East Prussia 1724-1804. In moral philosophy he wrote about the “categorical imperative”. His greatest work in metaphysics was The Critique of Pure Reason in which he distinguished phenomena from noumena.
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Georg Hegel
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Soren Kierkegaard
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Gottlob Frege
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Immanuel Kant
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Question of
Lived in England 1588-1679. In his best-known work Leviathan he described human life in a state of nature as “nasty, brutish and short”.
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George Berkeley
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Thomas Hobbes
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Isaac Newton
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George Herbert
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Question of
Lived in Germany 1818-83. Believed that Capitalism was bound to be overthrown, leading to Communism. Wrote Das Kapital.
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Friedrich Engels
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V I Lenin
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Karl Marx
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Question of
Lived in France 1905-80. The best-known existentialist philosopher. Said that man is condemned to be free. Wrote Being and Nothingness
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Simone de Beauvoir
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Jean-Paul Sartre
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty
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Hannah Arendt
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Question of
Austrian. Lived 1889-1951. Wrote about private and public language. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was the only major work published during his lifetime.
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Martin Heidegger
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Edmund Husserl
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Karl Popper
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Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Question of
British. Lived 1806-73. An exponent of Utilitarianism, he believed that some pleasures were more worthy than others. Wrote “On Liberty” as well as “Utilitarianism”.
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Jeremy Bentham
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John Stuart Mill
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Gilbert Ryle
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Bertrand Russell
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Question of
Lived from 1844 to 1900. German. Explored the roots of Christian morality. Has been unjustly linked with Nazism and anti-Semitism. Wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Friedrich Engels
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Gottlob Frege
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Edmund Husserl
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4/10 bad, some of the things I really don’t know.
I got 8/10, I’m still beating my finger for missing John Stuart Mill. I so got it wrong by thinking it was Jeremy Bentham.
The second one I missed I guessed anyway, I didn’t have any clue about that question 8.
The clues on Mill versus Bentham were the dates, the book titles, and the fact that Bentham notoriously did not see that some pleasures were more worthy than others – he concentrated on quantity rather than quality. As for Wittgenstein – if you haven’t heard of him it’s down to guesswork!
True what you say about Mill and Bentham. I some how didn’t look at it as I should, just did a cursory look and picked.
For Wittgenstein, unfortunately, I’ve never heard of him till your quiz, so it was totally guesswork. I’ll do a little read up on him though.
9 out of 10.
Got 6 correct and learned a lot!
You got 7 out of 10 right!
Great.
Great quiz.
got 7 out of 10 right!
I got 5/10.
7 out of 10, a bit better than I expected. Very nice quiz 🙂
Nice. ^_^
3/10 because I know nothing. Ha ha! But the quiz was fun. Good job making it! =)
4/10!
7/10 Awesome quiz!
only 8/10 so I’m disappointed with myself
Seem to me here. I got 8 but I’m so disappointed with myself.
I got 7, Sir