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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 the beginnings of what consideration does Aristotle end the Ethics?

2. What sort of person is opposite, in the opinion of Aristotle, the person who is soft?

3. Which of the powers of the soul that Aristotle claims is used to disclose truth is directed at the sources of truth?

4. For what does Aristotle blame people when it comes to money, honor, victory, and gain?

5. About what, concerning the virtues, might one raise a problem, as Aristotle states in VI.12?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. Explain the distinction of Aristotle between having goodwill and having friendship that Aristotle points to in IX.5.

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

6. In what way does Aristotle agree with Socrates concerning knowledge and moral action?

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. What is the significance of Aristotle saying that the active conditions of the soul that are the intellectual virtues produce something, not as medicine produces health, but as health produces health?

9. Why is it said by Aristotle that the lesser types of friendship are called friendship only insofar as they resemble the highest?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

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?

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