Final Exam

Posted: Mon, Dec 1, 2025

Logistics

  • The final exam will be of the same format as the midterm, except we will have more time:
    • Sec. 002 (morning section): Wednesday, December 17, 10am–noon, Milbank Hall 302.
    • Sec. 003 (afternoon section): Monday, December 15, 4:10–6:10pm, Barnard Hall 302.
  • A comprehensive version of your course lexicon is due in hard copy at the end of the exam.
  • If you have accessibility needs, please don’t be afraid to discuss them with me. You are also welcome to take the exam with CARDS or Columbia’s disability services, and please reach out if you need help with the logistics.

Topics it would make sense to review

Existentialist ethics

  • The slogan: “Existence precedes essence.”
  • The existentialist problems of abandonment, anguish, and despair, and the existentialist response to them.
  • The tension between philosophy/reason and religion/God that resurfaces in this.
  • Beauvoir’s application of “existence precedes essence” to womanhood.
  • The social constructivist vs. existentialist readings of Beauvoir’s famous sentence.
  • Bell’s development of the existentialist project into an account of how gender can be authentic to us yet constructed/not innate.
  • The issue of pursuing authenticity/freedom in an unjust world: What does each of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Bell think we should do?

Political philosophy

  • The idea and significance of the “state of nature” thought experiment.
  • Hobbes vs. Locke on the justification and limits of government.
  • Locke vs. Marx on the origin, nature, and accumulation of private property.
  • Marx’s analysis of alienated labor under capitalism.
  • Lorde on the necessity of poetry for liberation, and how this could be read as a critique of Marx.
  • Lorde on the power of the erotic.
  • Lorde as a poet vs. philosopher.

Possible Essay Prompts

Two of the following prompts will be selected to appear on the exam, and you will be asked to answer one of the two. An excellent essay will build on but go beyond our class discussions in some significant way. Aim for 500–700 words.

  1. “Existentialism is not so much an atheism in the sense that it would exhaust itself attempting to demonstrate the nonexistence of God; rather, it affirms that even if God were to exist, it would make no difference” (Sartre, “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” p. 53). Explain and discuss.
  2. Unpack Marx’s argument that “private property is the result of the analysis of the concept of externalized labour” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 93). How well does the argument speak to our present day?
  3. Answer either or both of these questions as you see fit: Is poetry a luxury? Is the erotic powerful?
  4. “In addition to the public goods bound up with citizenship and service to community, philosophy also provides students with excellent market value. It teaches rigorous thought, creative problem solving, and clear communication—skills highly valued by employers and transferrable to a wide variety of job contexts” (American Philosophical Association letter to Portland State University on proposed cuts to its philosophy department, January 2025). Looking back at this argument a full semester later, what do you think of it?

It wasn't that viral on Twitter, but to this day, philosophy meme accounts share the screenshot, and then people inform me I am famous and I say, "Oh ok cool"

[image or embed]

— Emily Herring (@emilyherring.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 12:10 PM