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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. With what sort of friendship is VIII.14 concerned?

2. Which power of the soul does Aristotle describe in VI.11 as being concerned with both the beginning and the end?

3. In what city alone does Aristotle say that the lawgiver has taken care for upbringing and virtuous exercises?

4. What determines the proper level of affection that one ought to give another, according to Aristotle?

5. Whom does Aristotle reference as taking in payment whatever his student desired to pay for the knowledge he would learn?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

2. Explain Aristotle's distinction between affection and friendship.

3. Why does Aristotle state that words concerning feelings and actions are less believable than actions themselves?

4. What is the Aristotelian relationship between happiness, the gods, human beings, and animals, as discussed in X.8?

5. Why does Aristotle state that mothers have greater love for their children than children for their parents?

6. Why does Aristotle state that politics and practical judgment cannot be the highest or most serious things for man's consideration?

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. Give an example of something affirmed by knowledge, as that which cannot be otherwise than it is.

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

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

Analyze in a comparative essay the three archetypal kinds of friends--utility, pleasure, and virtue--as they relate to man and to man's happiness. Which is the most perfect and truest kind of friendship, and why? What does true friendship do for man's moral character? What does true friendship have to do with happiness? What is the relationship between happiness and the lesser levels of friendship? What is the principal lesson that one ought to take away from Aristotle's extensive discussion of the topic of friendship?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

Compose an analytical essay which presents a clear thesis on some aspect of justice as Aristotle discusses it in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics. Be sure to answer the following:

-What is justice?

-Why is justice a virtue?

-What is unique about justice as a virtue?

(see the answer keys)

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