CLEP Humanities : Nonfiction and Philosophy
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for CLEP Humanities
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Example Questions
Example Question #301 : Literature
Who is famous for stating that the human mind is a tabula rasa or a "blank slate"?
Seneca
Martin Heidegger
Jeremy Bentham
Plato
John Locke
John Locke
The most famous account of the mind as a blank slate is that which is expressed by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. There, he emphasizes that everything in the mind must be derived from experience. We are born without any experiences, thus meaning that we are a kind of slate or tablet waiting to be "informed" by our experiences. Locke was no great innovator in this regard. He was taking over an old theme from Medieval and late-scholastic philosophy that was ultimately found in Aristotle. Nevertheless, for many modern thinkers, Locke's theory of knowledge was very influential—even long after it was questioned by many philosophers. (Indeed, it remained influential on the official French curriculum through the early 20th century!)
Example Question #302 : Literature
Which of the following philosophers is the best candidate for having added the qualification, "Except for the intellect itself," to the adage, "Nothing was in the intellect which was not first in the senses."
John Locke
David Hume
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
George Berkeley
Immanuel Kant
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote a work New Essays on Human Understanding as a response to the work of John Locke. It was not published until many years after the death of both men. In the essay, there is a famous line where Leibniz quotes a so-called maxim of empiricism: Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu—Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses. He then adds a qualifier: excipe, nisi intellectus ipse—except for the intellect itself. The idea is that while all knowledge must be derived from our sense experience, still, in order for there to be intellectual knowledge, there must be an intellect to integrate our experience. Hence, Leibniz hoped to maintain the insights of the general school of thought known as rationalism, which emphasized the direct and pre-experiential role of the human mind in the shaping of our knowledge.
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