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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. By what means, according to Aristotle in V.5, does a community or a city stay together?

2. About what good and aim of politics do people commonly dispute, according to Aristotle?

3. In Aristotle's view, what virtue necessarily accompanies or is within the virtue of magnificence?

4. Where is the source of a willing act located, according to Aristotle?

5. What is a suitable category, in Aristotle's view, in which to place the feeling of shame?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain what is meant by Aristotle in saying that youth should not be involved in the study or practice of politics.

2. What is the relationship of virtues to extremes of excess and deficiency in the philosophy of Aristotle?

3. What does Aristotle mean by saying that a virtue is an active condition or state of the soul?

4. What sort of ruler becomes a tyrant, according to Aristotle's observations?

5. What characterizes Aristotle's notion of the generous person?

6. What is the proper distinction Aristotle makes between things that are good in themselves and things that are good only in a derivative sense? Illustrate this distinction by means of an example.

7. The magnanimous man is concerned with what things and in what manner, according to Aristotle?

8. What characterizes Aristotle's distinction between "willing" and "choice"?

9. From what difficulty, according to Aristotle, does the dispute concerning the nature of happiness, as the end of all actions, arise?

10. How does Aristotle characterize those who are rash?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Near the end of his Ethics, Aristotle states that perfect happiness comes through the act of contemplation, the only activity that man does entirely for its own sake. Analyze this postulation in a very insightful and carefully planned essay. Why is contemplation considered a perfect action? Does this claim seem justified? Why or why not? Why does Aristotle state that the act of contemplation is that in which perfect happiness and perfect pleasure exist?

Essay Topic 2

Of the intellectual virtues, art is the only one inherently ordained for some other end and not at all for itself, for it is concerned entirely with making. Discuss the virtue of art in a thoroughly well-reasoned analytical essay. Why is art a virtue? With what sort of things is art concerned, in particular? What are some specific examples of art as a virtue? Why is art in some way lesser than the other intellectual virtues? Why is art a necessary virtue?

Essay Topic 3

Truly vicious men are rare, though not so rare as truly virtuous men. Most men exist in one or another state of struggle. Examine this struggle, that which is experienced by both the man of self-restraint and the unrestrained man, in regards to the pleasures with which all men are concerned, in a thoughtful and well-organized critical essay. Why are only these two states of character truly states of struggle? How do they confront these struggles? What emotions, feelings, and reactions accompany these struggles? With what do these men struggle? What characterizes the pleasures that are most likely to cause a man to struggle?

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