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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. What is the virtuous disposition most directly concerned, for Aristotle, with playfulness and humor?

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

3. Which of the following is NOT characteristic of Aristotle's magnanimous man?

4. What, according to Aristotle in the beginning of V.6, makes an act unjust without necessarily making the person who commits it unjust?

5. How many sorts of political justice are there by the count of Aristotle?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Aristotle say that the things deliberated about are not ends?

2. What is the relationship that Aristotle claims exists between the virtues of courage and temperance?

3. According to Aristotle, in what way is justice reciprocal, and why?

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

5. To which of the vicious extremes is the truthful man closer in disposition and why, according to Aristotle?

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

7. What is Aristotle's distinction between the sort of injustice that is unlawful and the sort of injustice that is inequitable?

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

9. What is the content of the suggestion of Aristotle regarding overcompensation and the acquisition of personal virtue?

10. 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.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What good is understanding a particular virtue if the concept of virtue itself is not understood? Compose an analytical essay which examines the very roots of virtuosity itself, starting with the relationship between particular virtues and Aristotle's conception of it as a mean condition between two extremes. To what does virtue relate? How is that to which virtue is related suspect to extremes of excess and deficiency? What is the essence of virtue itself? What are some particular examples by which this essence is demonstrated?

Essay Topic 2

The virtue of courage is given significant consideration in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Analyze this consideration in a thoughtful essay. What are the extremes opposed to courage? To which of these extremes is courage closer, and why? What does this indicate about the nature of virtue as a whole? How does the courageous man react to fearful situations? In what way is courage relative to the individual man?

Essay Topic 3

As that which rightly governs man's being, it can be reasonably stated that practical judgment is the most important of all virtues. Compose an essay which analyzes the virtue of practical judgment. In what does it consist? Why is it a virtue? What other virtues are entailed in its being possessed? How is it superior to other virtues? What is its end?

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