Second Exam Study Guide (answers available in lecture notes on Canvas)
Plato’s Republic Book I
1.) What is the first definition offered for the concept in question, and what counter- example does Socrates provide against it? (331c-e).
2.) What is the second definition offered for the concept in question, which is further qualified by an appeal to the status between the subject and their relationships, and what counter-example does Socrates provide against it?
3.) What is Socrates’ position on retributive harms, and what argument does he provide from the nature and end of a thing, using the example of a racehorse? What is Thrasymachus’ contrary view concerning the definition of the concept that is at the heart of this dialogue and what are some of Socrates’ arguments against this view? (name at least one).
Plato’s Republic Book IV
4.) What are the four virtues that were commonly-acknowledged in ancient Greece (and continued through the medieval period)?
5.) *What are the three classes of citizens in Plato’s ideal Republic, and the corresponding virtues in each?
6.) Which of the four virtues are left over and why are they not localized in one particular class like the rest?
7.) *What is justice in Plato’s ideal Republic? 8.) Why is the ‘division of labor’ so important to Plato? 9.) *How is the organizational structure of the Republic connected to the human
soul? What arguments does Socrates provide for this connection?
Plato’s Republic Book VI*
10.) Explain Plato’s ‘Simile of the sun.’ What does it claim about perception, knowledge, existence and the other forms?
11.) Be able to draw Plato’s ‘divided line’ that illustrates the relation between his epistemology and metaphysics, as well as the relation of those two disciplines to the material and sensible realm.
Plato’s Republic Book VII*
12.) Explain Plato’s ‘simile (or allegory/analogy) of the cave.’ What does it claim about perception, knowledge, existence and the forms? Who escapes from it, how do they do so, and what ethical obligation is placed upon those who escape?
Aristotle’s Categories
13.) *List Aristotle’s ten categories of being and provide a short explanation of what these categories are, as well as how the total set of ten can be understood to be divided into two more primary divisions.
14.) What is ‘predication’ and what is the difference between ‘essential’ and ‘accidental’ predication?
15.) What are ‘universals’ as opposed to ‘particulars’? 16.) *Be able to draw a ‘category tree’ (Porphyrian tree) in order to illustrate
your knowledge of how particulars are divided into genera, species and differentia. (Remember my examples on the board in class.)
17.) Be able to provide some examples of universal secondary substances, particular primary substances, universal accidents, and particular accidents.
18.) *How are substances used by Aristotle to answer the primary Pre-Socratic question of “What is change and what permanent element survives through change?
Aristotle’s De Anima (On the Soul)
19.) What are first and second potentialities and actualities? Describe the difference and provide an example of each.
20.) *What is Aristotle’s definition of a soul? What kind of soul does a human being have, which defines the sort of species that a human being is?
21.) *Describe and explain the three degrees of soul that all exist in a ‘nested hierarchy’ in the highest kind of soul.
22.) *What is Aristotle’s view of the relationship between the soul and the body in a human being? Can the human soul live without the body?
Aristotle’s Physics (The Four Causes)
23.) *Name, explain and give examples of Aristotle’s four causes. 24.) How do the four causes exist in biological species?
Aristotle’s De Anima (On the soul)
25.) What is Aristotle’s definition of the human soul?