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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 virtue does Aristotle state is concerned with the same things, and is present in the same things, as friendship?

2. With what is the second part of the reasoning part of the soul concerned in the view of Aristotle?

3. With the beginnings of what consideration does Aristotle end the Ethics?

4. How many powers of the soul does Aristotle claim disclose truth by discursive reasoning?

5. In what status of life is having good friends considered beautiful by Aristotle in IX.11?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain the distinction, and its significance, between Socrates and Aristotle on the relationship between knowledge and moral action.

2. What would it mean, for Aristotle, to describe a sort of friendship as being a hybrid?

3. Why does Aristotle state that there is a virtue connected with art, but that practical judgment is itself an end?

4. Why does Aristotle state that pleasure is not a motion?

5. Explain the relationship Aristotle makes note of between affirming and denying in thinking and pursuing, and avoiding in desiring.

6. What is the essential unity that Aristotle claims between knowledge and action in the person possessed of practical judgment?

7. Through the possession of what virtue, according to Aristotle, is man said to have possession of all the intellectual virtues, at least to some degree, and why?

8. According to Aristotle, why ought a good person be a lover of himself and a bad person not?

9. Why is it that having friends in a time of one's good fortune is, in the philosophy of Aristotle, more beautiful than in other times?

10. Why do friendships of utility quickly come about and subsequently dissolve, according to Aristotle?

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

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?

Essay Topic 3

Of the five intellectual virtues, wisdom receives almost as much attention as practical judgment, but is simultaneously put somewhat out of the reach of human beings. In an analytical essay, examine the nature of wisdom as a virtue: its ends and objects, its purpose, and its position as an excellence or perfection as an intellectual virtue. How is it distinct from the other intellectual virtues? Why is it difficult, or perhaps even impossible, for human beings to attain? Answering this question will take some consideration of the whole of the Ethics.

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