Unit 3 - Aristotle

Posterior Analytics 1.1–3 and Physics 1.1

1. Aristotle says that we have knowledge through demonstrations, and that demonstrations are deductions expressing knowledge. What is a deduction? What further conditions must a deduction meet in order to count as a demonstration, i.e., as “expressing knowledge”?

2. Give an example of a deduction with true premises that are explanatory of the conclusion, and an example of a deduction with true premises that are not explanatory of the conclusion.

3. Explain Aristotle’s distinction between what is better known (or prior) by nature and what is better known (or prior) to us. Give some examples.

4. Give an example of a deduction with true premises that are explanatory of the conclusion but not primary and immediate. What kind of premises are primary and immediate?

5. Explain the dilemma about knowledge Aristotle poses at the beginning of Posterior Analytics 1.3. How does he resolve the dilemma?

Nicomachean Ethics I

1. Why does Aristotle say that adequate students of ethics must have been brought up well, with good habits? Does he think that his book alone can make someone good? If not, what is it supposed to accomplish?

2. (*) Is Aristotle’s methodology too conservative? Wouldn’t a well brought-up young man in eighteenth-century Georgia think that it’s right for black people to be slaves to white people, and that men are superior to women? Will Aristotle’s method in ethics inevitably justify the accepted morality? (You’ll want to return to this question once you’ve read the whole book.)

3. What is an end? What is it for one end to be “higher” than another, that is, for the second to be “subordinate” to the first? Give some examples. What is meant by “the highest end”?

4. How does Aristotle argue that the human good is the highest end (if there is one) of human actions?

5. How does Aristotle argue that happiness is the highest end of human actions? What does he mean when he says that happiness is “complete” and “self-sufficient”?

6. How does Aristotle argue that the human good is the good performance of the human function? What is the human function? How does Aristotle get to the conclusion that the human good is “the soul’s activity that expresses virtue”?

7. (*) Aristotle seems to assume that the notion of good that connects with an agent’s ends the same as the notion of good that connects with well functioning. Is this legitimate? Discuss.

Nicomachean Ethics II

1. How, according to Aristotle, do we become virtuous?

2. What is the difference between doing a virtuous action and doing a virtuously action virtuously?

3. What does Aristotle mean when he says that the virtues (of character) are states? What is a state? How does Aristotle argue that the virtues are not feelings or capacities?

4. True or false? For Aristotle, being virtuous is a matter of being strong enough to overcome your emotions and feelings when they tempt you to do something inappropriate. Explain.

5. What kind of state of character is a virtue? What does Aristotle mean when he says that virtue is a state “<consisting> in a mean”? (Does this mean that our actions and feelings should always be “medium-strength”?) What does he mean when he says that this mean is “relative to us”? How is the mean determined?

Nicomachean Ethics III

1. When, on Aristotle’s view, is something we do voluntary?

2. Suppose someone threatens to kill my family if I don’t confess to a crime I didn’t do, and I confess. Is this voluntary?

3. Oedipus killed an old man at a crossroads. The old man turned out to be his father—though he did not know this, and had no way of knowing. Would Aristotle say that Oedipus killed his father voluntarily? Explain. Would Aristotle says that Oedipus killed the old man voluntarily?

4. Aristotle agrees with Socrates that “every vicious person is ignorant,” but he doesn’t think it follows that all wrongdoing is involuntary. Why not?

5. Give some examples of voluntary actions not done from decision. What is required for a voluntary action to be done from decision?

6. What is deliberation? Give some examples.

7. In order for an virtuous action to be done virtuously, it must be decided on for itself, not for some ulterior motive. But how can virtuous actions be decided on for themselves (1105a33) if decision must be the product of deliberation, and deliberation consists in figuring out how we can secure some end?

8. Some people think that wish is for the real good, others that wish is for the apparent good. What does Aristotle think?

9. Why is it important for Aristotle that virtue and vice be in our power?

10. It may be nearly impossible for a vicious person to do virtuous actions. So how can we hold the vicious person responsible for her vicious actions?

11. How does Aristotle argue that we are responsible for our own states of character? Is his argument persuasive?

Nicomachean Ethics VI

1. Explain Aristotle’s distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge. (How is Aristotle departing from Plato here?) Explain the distinction between intelligence and craft knowledge. (How is Aristotle departing from the Socrates of the Protagoras here?)

2. Aristotle says that virtue makes the goal correct, intelligence what promotes the goal" (1144a10). Explain. What is the role of intelligence in deliberation?

In what sense is intelligence concerned with particulars?

Why does Aristotle think that one cannot have full virtue unless one is intelligent? Why does he think that one cannot be intelligent unless one has full virtue?

5. What are natural virtue and cleverness, and how do they relate to full virtue and intelligence?

Nicomachean Ethics VII

1. Describe Aristotle’s method in his examination of incontinence.

2. Aristotle agrees with Socrates that incontinence is a kind of ignorance. He also agrees with ordinary people that an incontinent person knows (or believes) what is best but does something else. How can he have it both ways? In what way does the incontinent person have knowledge, and in what way does she lack knowledge? Pay careful attention to Aristotle’s distinctions.

3. Try to reconstruct Aristotle’s example at 1147a25-b5.

4. What is the difference between incontinence and intemperance, and between continence and temperance? Does Plato have analogous distinctions?

Nicomachean Ethics VIII-IX

1. Compare Aristotle’s discussion of what’s loveable in VIII.2 to his discussion of what’s wished for in III.4: explain what work the addition of the category “good for X” is doing in VIII.2.

2. What are the three kinds of friendship? Why does Aristotle think that only good men can have the best kind of friendship?

3. Does Aristotle think that self-love is good or bad? What distinction does the answer to that question depend on?

Nicomachean Ethics X

1. Why does Aristotle think that the happiest life cannot be a life devoted to pleasant amusements?

2. Why does Aristotle think that the happiest human activity is study (or contemplation)? Of what virtue is study the exercise? What makes study superior to exercises of the “civic virtues” like courage and justice?

Categories

1. What are the ten categories? What is a category?

2. How would Aristotle distinguish between the relation between subject and predicate in “Socrates is pale” and the relation between subject and predicate in “Socrates is human”? How would Plato understand these two sentences?

3. What is the difference between being SAID OF and being IN (i.e., between IZZING and HAZZING)?

4. True or false? (Explain your choices.)

   1. When P is SAID OF S, P and S are in different categories.
   2. When P is IN S, P and S are in different categories.
   3. When P is SAID OF S and Q is SAID OF P, Q is SAID OF S.
   4. When P is IN S and Q is SAID OF P, Q is SAID OF S.
   5. When P is SAID OF S, the definition of P is SAID OF S.
   6. When P is IN S, the definition of P is SAID OF S.

5. Give an example of…

   1. Something that is SAID OF a subject and IN a (different) subject.
   2. Something that is SAID OF a subject but not IN any subject.
   3. Something that is IN a subject but not SAID OF any subject.
   4. Something that is neither SAID OF nor IN any subject.

6. In which of the above four categories are primary substances? In which of them are secondary substances?

7. Why does Aristotle think that primary substances are ontologically prior to secondary substances and non-substances? What do you think of his argument?

Physics II.1–2

1. How does Aristotle define a “nature”? Explain what work is done by each part of the definition.

2. Aristotle says that among the natural things are “the simple bodies, such as earth, fire, air and water.” What “principle of motion and stability” do these simple bodies have?

3. How does Antiphon argue that the nature of a bed is not its shape, but the material (wood) of which it is made? What does Aristotle think of this argument?

4. Materialist philosophers take the nature of a thing to be the matter of which it is composed (e.g., the elements air, earth, fire, and water). How does Aristotle argue that a thing’s form is also the nature, and in fact “is the nature more than the matter is”?

5. Aristotle says that shapes, solids, lengths, and points are the concern of both the mathematician and the natural scientist. What is the difference between the way the mathematician studies them and the way the natural scientist studies them?

6. What does Aristotle think is wrong with the Platonists’ approach to natural science? (The Platonists are “those who say there are Ideas.”)

Physics II.3–7

1. Aristotle says that four different things might be meant by “cause.” What are they? What are the four causes of a door?

2. It clearly makes sense to talk about the purpose or end of an artifact like a lectern or teapot or door. But does it make sense to talk about the purpose or end of a living creature—a tree, a dog, or a human being?

3. Why does Aristotle say that in the case of living organisms, the formal, efficient, and final causes “amount to one” (198a25)?

4. What does Aristotle mean by a “coincidental cause”? Give an example.

5. What is luck, according to Aristotle? In what way is it a coincidental cause? Give an example.

6. Use Aristotle’s analysis of luck to explain how it can be true both that everything can be referred to some cause (i.e. nothing happens for no reason) and that some things are due to luck.

Physics II.8–9, Parts of Animals I.1

1. Aristotle says that according to materialist philosophers like Empedocles, nature acts “not for something, but by necessity.” What does he mean? How do these philosophers account for the features of organisms?

2. How does Aristotle argue that the arrangement of teeth in the mouth (sharp ones in front, flat ones in back) is “for an end”? Are his premises plausible? How might a philosopher like Empedocles reply?

3. Materialists try to explain the features of things by appealing to features of their matter. How does Aristotle use the example of a wall to show that this is implausible? In what way is the example of a wall (an artifact) relevant to the kinds of cases Aristotle is really interested in (e.g. an eye)?

4. What does Aristotle think is the proper way to think about the relation between the form of a wall (or an eye) and its matter? What does he mean by “hypothetical necessity”?

5. (*) Was it reasonable for Aristotle to hold that substantial forms (i.e. the form of a dog or a human being) are fundamental entities in the natural world? Would it be reasonable for us to think this? What has changed?

Metaphysics XII

1. What is a “first mover” (Physics VIII.5)? What is an “unmoved mover”?

2. Why must there be an unmoved mover?

3. How can something that doesn’t change cause change in something else?

4. What does the unmoved mover do? What does it think about?

Hellenistic philosophy

Epicureanism

1. What was highest end, according to the Epicureans? How did they argue for this conclusion?

2. Our word “Epicurean” is used for people who seek out fine wines and fancy meals. In what ways is this usage accurate (to the original Epicurean school), and in what ways is it misleading?

3. Contrast Epicurean views on (a) the value of justice and (b) the nature of pleasure with Plato’s views in the Republic.

Stoicism

1. What was the highest end, according to the Stoics? How did they argue for this conclusion?

2. Discuss some ways in which Stoic ethics, as represented in Epictetus’s Handbook, resembles Socratic ethics.

3. Explain what Epictetus is getting at in this passage:

   If someone turned your body over to just any person who happened to meet you, you would be angry. But are you not ashamed that you turn over your own faculty of judgment to whoever happens along, so that if he abuses you it is upset and confused?