View a FREE sample

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

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Aristotle, what is the mean condition between the vices of wastefulness and stinginess?

2. According to the Pythagoreans, the good belongs to what?

3. The irrational part of the soul is said by Aristotle to be how many fold?

4. Which of the following words least accurately describes the virtue that is the topic of IV.5?

5. What sort of person is he who brings food fit for a wedding to a small dinner, according to Aristotle?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. What does it mean to say, as Aristotle explains it, that nothing can be habituated to be other than it is by nature?

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

6. What is the significance of the quasi-virtues mentioned by Aristotle in the last part of II.7?

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

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

9. What is the tripartite distinction in the soul that Aristotle makes in Chapter 13 of the first book?

10. What does Aristotle mean by saying that every art, inquiry, action, and choice aims at some good?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Oftentimes, a true friend is considered to be, in a certain sense, a second self. Compose an essay which considers this claim in the context of Aristotle's examination of friendship. What would it mean for someone to be a second self? How is true friendship related to others? How is friendship related to the self? In what sort of acts does one treat another as though a second self? What characterizes these acts?

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

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,163 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample