DIRECTIONS for the question 1 & 2: Read the passage and answer the question based on it.
Passage 1
I teach an undergraduate class on Nietzsche, a philosopher who has a reputation for captivating young minds. After one class, a student came to see me. There was something bothering her. “Is it OK to be changed by reading a philosopher?” she asked. “I mean, do you get inspired by Nietzsche—do you use him in your life?”You have to be careful about questions like this, and not only because the number of murderers claiming Nietzsche as their inspiration is higher than I would like. What the student usually means is: “Nietzsche mocks careful scholarship: Can I, in his spirit, write my paper however the hell I want and still get a good grade?” In this case, though, the student knew perfectly well how to write a scholarly paper. She wanted to do something else too: be Nietzschean!
Here’s my line, for what it’s worth: you can do whatever you want in life— take inspiration from The Smurfs for all I care—but I’m here to teach you how to read a philosopher, slowly and carefully, which is not an easy thing to do. If you want to be inspired by Nietzsche, you have to read him precisely, to make sure that it is Nietzsche who inspires you—not a preconception or a misappropriation or a scholarly reading, mine or anybody else’s, which is vulnerable to the interpreter’s peculiar agenda or the fashions of the hour. And what if, when you read him carefully, you find that he actually wrote things you think are false, wrong-headed, racist or sexist? It’s not a case of inspiration or careful scholarship, I say: choose both.
Notice: I am implying that if you get inspired by misreading someone, or by swallowing their false claims, then you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. Of course, you might get inspired to do great things by ideas that are wrong or questionable. (Nietzsche could have told you that.) Notice too: I work in an intellectual environment in which young people think that applying philosophy to their own lives is something unusual. It is an oft-repeated idea that philosophy in its modern, professional form has become detached from what was, in ancient times, a founding ideal: to teach people how to live well. In today’s university, the emphasis is on the search for the truth about whichever subject lies at hand, regardless of how, if at all, such truths change what you do when you leave the classroom. So while students often report finding philosophy “therapeutic,” they do so in passing, somewhat guiltily. Perhaps they worry that the moment I hear they’re an emotional Nietzsche-user rather than a cold Nietzsche-scrutinizer my opinion of them will fall. Perhaps, against my better judgment, and in spite of being a user myself, they are right.
Professional philosophers don’t present themselves as particularly wise or as people to turn to for advice about how to live. And why should we? That’s not what we were trained for when we were students and it’s not what we promise in the prospectus. I remember, as a student, asking a philosophy professor something about what I should do the following year— whether I should continue with my studies or move on to something else. “That’s not a philosophy question,” she said. “That’s a life question! I can’t answer that.” I know what she meant, now more than ever, having faced such questions myself: you can’t expect a knowledge of philosophy to guide you through the big decisions about what to do with your life. But I can’t help wondering whether something has gone astray when “philosophy” questions and “life” questions are so easy to pull apart.
A) Self-recrimination B) Self-critique C) Self-insecurity D) Self-immiseration
Now this leaves us with answer options: self-critique and self-doubt.
Critique means a serious examination and judgment of something. In the given case, even the though the author expresses a doubt, his approach is one where he is evaluating something very carefully.
Option 3 refers a state of anxiety and vulnerability, something that can be inferred in the given case.
DIRECTIONS for the question 3 to 5: Out of the four options given choose the word or phrase that is most nearly opposite in meaning to the word in capital letters.
A) stupidity B) simplicity C) deceitfulness D) deference
A) superficial B) courteous C) complex D) vibrant
A) sumptuous B) timidity C) success D) informal
DIRECTION for the question 6: Choose the option which can be a suitable one word substitute for the given question.
A) contagious B) epidemic C) infectious D) endemic
DIRECTIONS for the question 7 & 8: The passage given contains blanks, choose the best choice in each case from the words in the options and mark your answer accordingly.
A) ensured B) provided C) enabled D) deprived
DIRECTIONS for the question 9 & 10: Complete the sentence by filling in the appropriate blank/blanks from the options provided.
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