Magus 8 quiz answers (philosophers)

1. Who thought, "I think, therefore I am", and wrote it in Latin - "cogito ergo sum" - although he was French?

René Descartes (1596-1650).

2. Who wrote (in German) more or less "What does not kill me makes me strong" (as well as Donald Trump)?

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.

3. Who thought human life was "dull, nasty, brutish, and short"?

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), in Leviathan (1651).

4. Who conceived the idea of the "categorical imperative"?

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

5. Who thought that "everything flows" (Πάντα ῥεῖ) and that one "cannot step twice into the same river"?

Heraclitus (fl. c. 500 BCE).

6. Who thought you had to take a "leap of faith"?

Søren Kierkegaard.

7. Who advocated wagering that there is a god?

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) in his Pensées, published posthumously in 1670.

8. Who wrote, "That whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent"?

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published in both German and English in 1922. In German: "Worüber wir nicht sprechen können, darüber müssen wir schweigen".

9. Who is thought to have said, "The unexamined life is not worth living"?

Socrates.

10. Who wrote, in both Latin and English: "esse is percipi (to be is to be perceived)"?

Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). He got the Latin a bit wrong, and should have written "esse est percipi".

Garry Gillard | New: 24 December, 2022 | Now: 26 April, 2023