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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What problem does Burke see with the contemporary notion of "taste?"
(a) The concept of taste is misunderstood and badly defined.
(b) Everyone pays too much attention to taste and not enough attention to reason.
(c) Nobody Burke knows seems to have taste.
(d) It's principles have not been made uniform.

2. What large part of text has Burke added between the First and Second editions?
(a) An Afterword on Terror.
(b) An Autobiographical Epilogue.
(c) A Publisher's Foreword.
(d) An Introduction on Taste.

3. What does Burke note about youth, as related to taste?
(a) That youth is the province of true wisdom.
(b) That innocence does not equal ignorance.
(c) That although judgments may not be sound, taste is excellent.
(d) That sensory pleasure is great while judgment is inaccurate.

4. What natural powers in man does Burke say relate to external objects?
(a) The senses, passions, and the will.
(b) The senses, imagination, and judgment.
(c) The judgment, emotions, and the will.
(d) The imagination, passions, and the senses.

5. Why, as Burke argues, are humans "more inclined to belief than to incredulity?"
(a) Because God is born in all of us, so we have a natural inclination to believe in him.
(b) Because belief engages the imagination pleasantly, while incredulity is naturally negative.
(c) Because believing something is easy, whereas not believing is more difficult.
(d) Because believing makes it easier to get along with others in the social-contract model of society.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Burke mean by the word "Taste?"

2. Which method of teaching does Burke think best?

3. What will be Burke's focus in "A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful"?

4. What is the main manifestation of infinity Burke mentions?

5. What colors appropriately represent the sublime?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Burke identify as the central tension between the imagination and the judgment?

2. What does Burke argue about tastes that deviate from causes other than habit or use?

3. According to Burke, why can grief be considered pleasurable?

4. What significance do obscurity and clarity have to the sublime?

5. Briefly describe the significance of human judgment to the faculty of taste.

6. What is the significance of the imagination, to Burke?

7. What types of colors are productive of the sublime, and which colors are not, according to Burke?

8. What is "magnificence," according to Burke?

9. How does Burke describe sympathy?

10. Describe Burke's definition of the sublime.

(see the answer keys)

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