Poets & Philosophers — Set 5

Correct Answer: B. Sun Tzu

• **Sun Tzu** = The author of 'The Art of War', an ancient Chinese treatise on military strategy and philosophy. • **Deception** — His strategy emphasized this, along with avoiding direct conflict, making the book a standard for military studies. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Laozi]: An ancient Chinese philosopher, traditionally credited with founding Taoism and writing the 'Tao Te Ching'; [Confucius]: An ancient Chinese philosopher and politician, founder of Confucianism; [Han Fei]: A Chinese Legalist philosopher during the Warring States period.

Correct Answer: C. Adi Shankara

• **Adi Shankara** = The Indian philosopher who founded the Advaita Vedanta school of thought. • **Four major monasteries** — He established these at the four corners of India to unify and restore Vedic teachings. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Ramanuja]: A philosopher who founded the Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism) school of Vedanta; [Madhvacharya]: A philosopher who founded the Dvaita (dualism) school of Vedanta; [Chaitanya Mahaprabhu]: A 15th-century Indian saint and founder of the Gaudiya Vaishnavism tradition.

Correct Answer: B. Albert Camus

• **Albert Camus** = The Existentialist philosopher who wrote 'The Myth of Sisyphus'. • **1957** — The year he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his important literary production. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Jean-Paul Sartre]: A leading figure in existentialism, known for 'Being and Nothingness'; [Simone de Beauvoir]: A French existentialist philosopher, feminist, and author of 'The Second Sex'; [Franz Kafka]: A German-speaking Bohemian novelist whose works explored themes of absurdism and alienation.

Correct Answer: B. John Keats

• **John Keats** = The poet of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and 'Endymion'. • **'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'** — This famous line is from his 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', encapsulating his poetic philosophy. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [William Wordsworth]: A major Romantic poet, but not the author of these specific odes; [Percy Bysshe Shelley]: A prominent Romantic poet, known for 'Ode to the West Wind' and 'Prometheus Unbound'; [Robert Browning]: A Victorian poet, known for his dramatic monologues.

Correct Answer: B. Aristotle

• **Aristotle** = The Greek philosopher who was a student of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great. • **Lyceum** — He founded this peripatetic school in Athens, where he taught his philosophy. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Epicurus]: An ancient Greek philosopher who founded Epicureanism; [Zeno]: The founder of Stoicism, a school of Hellenistic philosophy; [Pythagoras]: An ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and mathematician, known for the Pythagorean theorem.

Correct Answer: A. Hafiz

• **Hafiz** = He is the Persian poet known for the 'Divan-e-Hafiz' and his poetry blending love, wine, and spiritual mysticism. • **'Divan-e-Hafiz'** — This collection of poems is often used for bibliomancy, a form of divination, in Persian culture. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Rumi]: Famous for 'Masnavi' and Sufi teachings, not 'Divan-e-Hafiz'; [Nizami]: Known for his 'Khamsa' (Quintet) of narrative poems; [Ferdowsi]: Author of the epic poem 'Shahnameh', the national epic of Iran.

Correct Answer: B. Thomas Aquinas

• **Thomas Aquinas** = He was a medieval theologian who authored 'Summa Theologica', a work attempting to reconcile faith and reason. • **'Five Ways'** — These are five logical arguments formulated by Aquinas in 'Summa Theologica' to demonstrate the existence of God. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Saint Augustine]: Author of 'Confessions' and 'City of God', an influential early Christian theologian; [Anselm of Canterbury]: Known for his ontological argument for God's existence, not 'Summa Theologica'; [Peter Abelard]: A medieval French scholastic philosopher, known for 'Sic et Non' and his dialectical method.

Correct Answer: B. Rene Descartes

• **Rene Descartes** = He was a French philosopher who wrote 'A Discourse on Method' and developed the Cartesian coordinate system, foundational to analytic geometry. • **Cartesian coordinate system** — This system, developed by Descartes, allowed algebraic equations to be represented geometrically, linking algebra and geometry. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Blaise Pascal]: A French mathematician and philosopher, known for Pascal's Wager and contributions to probability theory; [Gottfried Leibniz]: German polymath who co-invented calculus and developed the binary system; [Isaac Newton]: English physicist and mathematician, known for his laws of motion and universal gravitation.

Correct Answer: B. Heraclitus

• **Heraclitus** = He was an ancient Greek philosopher who argued that 'change' or 'flux' is the fundamental essence of the universe. • **'No man ever steps in the same river twice'** — This famous quote by Heraclitus encapsulates his philosophy of constant change and flux in the universe. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Parmenides]: Argued that reality is unchanging and eternal, directly opposing Heraclitus's view of change; [Anaximander]: Proposed the 'apeiron' (the boundless) as the fundamental principle of the universe; [Empedocles]: Known for his theory of four classical elements driven by Love and Strife.

Correct Answer: A. Simone de Beauvoir

• **Simone de Beauvoir** = She was a French existentialist philosopher who wrote 'The Second Sex', a foundational text of modern feminism. • **'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'** — This seminal statement from 'The Second Sex' highlights de Beauvoir's core argument about the social construction of gender. • 💡 Wrong-option analysis: [Virginia Woolf]: An English writer known for 'A Room of One's Own' and 'Mrs Dalloway', a different foundational feminist writer; [Hannah Arendt]: A political theorist known for her works on totalitarianism and political philosophy; [Rosa Luxemburg]: A Marxist theorist and revolutionary socialist, not primarily known for a foundational feminist text like 'The Second Sex'.