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Students Zone / Questions / Chapter 19: Freedom in Context

1. Explain and discuss Sartre’s view of the extent of human freedom.

2. What does Sartre mean by arguing that man ‘in choosing for himself … chooses for all men.’ Is he right?

3. Marx and Kierkegaard both analyse the plight of the individual caught up in the mass production and industrialisation of the nineteenth century. Describe the similarities and differences between these two accounts. Critically evaluate each one.

4. Explain and discuss the ways in which Marx turned Hegel upside down.

5. Discuss the significance of Marx’s claims that ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.’

6. How can it be said that Kant ‘centred the subject’?

7. Explain and discuss the various ways in which the subject can be said to have been decentred.

8. What do you understand by ‘historicism’? How does this compare with the approach adopted by the philosophers of the Enlightenment?

9. What is ‘hermeneutics’? How does it compare with positivism and scientific understanding?