Ten questions on the people and ideas behind phrases everyone quotes, each explained without the jargon.
Philosophy is mostly encountered secondhand, as a quotation on a poster or a term used loosely in an argument. This quiz restores the context: who said the famous line, what the branches are actually studying, and what a categorical imperative or a utilitarian calculation involves in practice. It runs from Socrates through Kant to the existentialists, and steps outside Europe where the tradition does. The explanations put each idea in a sentence of plain English, which is usually all that stood in the way.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: B. Rene Descartes
Why: Descartes reached it by doubting everything he could, and finding that the doubting itself proved a thinker existed. It appears in his Discourse on the Method of 1637.
Answer: C. Plato
Why: Plato recorded Socrates in dialogue form, since Socrates wrote nothing himself. Plato in turn taught Aristotle.
Answer: A. Aristotle
Why: Aristotle was hired by Philip II of Macedon to teach his son. He later founded his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens.
Answer: D. Its consequences
Why: It asks whether an act produces the greatest wellbeing overall. This puts it in direct contrast with duty-based ethics.
Answer: C. Immanuel Kant
Why: Kant argued you should act only on a principle you could will everyone to follow. It judges the rule behind the act rather than the outcome.
Answer: D. Epistemology
Why: Epistemology asks what knowledge is and how belief can be justified. Metaphysics, often confused with it, asks what exists.
Answer: C. China
Why: Confucius taught in China around the fifth century BC, focusing on duty, family and good government. His recorded sayings are collected in the Analects.
Answer: B. Asking questions
Why: It exposes contradictions in someone's position through persistent questioning. It is still the standard teaching approach in many law schools.
Answer: D. Jean-Paul Sartre
Why: Sartre argued that existence precedes essence, meaning people define themselves through their choices. He declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964.
Answer: B. The Republic
Why: The Republic sets out an ideal city as a way of examining justice, and contains the allegory of the cave. The Prince and Leviathan are much later works by Machiavelli and Hobbes.
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Trolleys, caves, veils and demons — the imagined cases philosophers argue through.
The trolley problem asks whether a person should do what?
Straw men, red herrings and false dilemmas — the recurring faults in everyday reasoning.
Attacking the person making a claim rather than the claim itself is which fallacy?
The paintings, novels and figures worth knowing by name.
Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?