Baltic Sea Philosophy Essay Event 2020

Time: 120 min
Language: The essay must be written in English. However, students are not allowed use their
mother tongue.
Aid: Students may use English dictionaries only. The use of any other aid, such as a
philosophical encyclopaedia or the Internet, is forbidden.
Format: The answer should be saved as a Word document. The name of the student and the
school should be written both in the header of the text and in the name of the document.

TOPICS – CHOOSE ONE OUT OF THE FOUR

1. “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.”
Craig Mazin: Chernobyl, TV mini-series (2019)
HBO, season 1, episode 5, 52:15–52:22

2. “[F]irst and foremost, […] nothing exists; second, […] even if it exists it is
inapprehensible to man; third, […] even if it is apprehensible, still it is without a
doubt incapable of being expressed or explained to the next man.”
Gorgias of Leonti (483–375 BCE): On the Nonexistent or On Nature
In The Older Sophists (2001), Rosamond Kent Sprague (ed.), Hackett Publishing Company, p. 42

3. “Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something
we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel
satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may
actually possess.”
Alain de Botton: Status Anxiety (2004)
Hamish Hamilton, p. 62

4. “A free society is a community of free beings, bound by the laws of sympathy and by
the obligations of family love. It is not a society of people released from all moral
constraint–for that is precisely the opposite of a society. Without moral constraint
there can be no cooperation, no family commitment, no long-term prospects, no
hope of economic, let alone social, order.”
Roger Scruton: “The Limits of Liberty” (2008)
The American Spectator, https://spectator.org/ (Dec. 2008)