Study Guide for Mid-Term Exam

This study guide is meant to aid you in preparing for the mid-term exam. Because this is a study guide, it is your responsibility to find the answers to the questions. Obviously if you have any questions after making a "good faith" effort to develop your own answers, I will offer some suggestions. The exam questions will not necessarily follow the exact wording of the questions here, but I assure you that if you know the answers to the questions below, you will do well on the written part of the exam. I wish you well in your studies.

1. Slavery in Aristotle
2. Aristotle on Women
3. Gyges’s Ring
4. Sophists
5. Cave Metaphor
6. Politics as Rectificatory (Aristotle)
7. Household Management
8. Cephalus
9. Peloponnesian War
10. Polis
11. Hemlock
12. Golden Mean
13. Happiness in Aristotle
14. Origin of the State in Aristotle
15. Ship of State Metaphor in Plato
16. The Beast in Plato
17. Divided Line
18. Chairness and Goodness
19. Censorship in Plato
20. Eugenics in Plato
21. Citizenship in Aristotle

1. Differentiate between Aristotle and Plato’s conception of justice. What do they each mean by justice? What is your reaction, your assessment of these two conceptions of justice?
2. In the Republic Plato offers a theory of the state and justice yet he spends a considerable amount of time discussing education. Why?
3. What does Plato mean by the allegory of the cave? What do the various parts of the allegory symbolize? Does the allegory make any sense; can you apply it to contemporary life?
4. Differentiate between the arguments in the Apology and the Crito? Socrates seems to be saying, in the Apology, that he is not guilty of the charges brought against yet in the Crito he seems to accept the charges and refuses to escape. Are these two positions consistent?
5. What does Aristotle mean in saying that political science is a "practical science?" How is that conception different from Plato’s conception of the study of politics?
6. What is Thrasymachus’s view of justice and how does Plato argue against it?
7. Plato has a great fear of the arbitrary use of power. He is also quite critical of a democratic society. How does he design a state to assure order and to overcome the weaknesses of a democratic society?
8. What is the purpose of the "noble lie" in Plato?
9. How does Plato argue that women should be given and equal chance to become guardians? Why does he make such an argument?
10. Discuss Plato’s conception of human nature? (I mean human nature here in the sense of the traits and capacities that we are born with.) How does human nature constrain or expand human possibilities?
11. In the Ethics, Aristotle says at one point: "Our discussion will be adequate if its degree of clarity fits the subject matter, for we should not seek the same degree of exactness in all sorts of arguments alike, any more than in the products of different crafts." What does Aristotle mean by this"?
12. What does St. Augustine mean by his distinction between "The City of God" and the ‘City of Man."
13. What is St. Augustine’s conception of human nature?
14. Both Aristotle and Plato discuss the virtue of a profession or craft, what do they mean by that? How is this part of their political theories?
15. What does Aristotle mean in saying that Political Science is a "controlling science, the one more than any other; is the ruling science?"
16. Both Plato and Aristotle stress that a political leader should be older. Political leadership is not for the young. Differentiate between there discussions of the age and political leadership?
17. Glaucon and Adeimantus frequently challenge Plato to show how a life of justice is also a happy life? How does Plato answer this question?
18. Why does Aristotle believe that Politics is the attempt to foster good character?
19. Discuss and analyze Aristotle’s discussion of Plato’s theory of property and marriage in common.
20. Set out the main elements of Aristotle’s classification of states.
21. What does Aristotle mean in the Politics when he says: "since the nature of a state is to be a plurality, and in tending to greater unity, from being a state, it becomes a family, and from a being a family, an individual?" Why a plurality?
22. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the two political theories of Aristotle and Plato?
23. Aristotle feels that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions is quite crucial to ethical theory. What is the distinction, and why does he regard it as so vital?