SECTION A: Plato’s Republic
1 Either (a) How successfully does Plato argue that opinion ‘lies between’
knowledge and ignorance?
Or (b) ‘In the Republic Plato rightly rejects the definition of knowledge
as true belief bound by an explanatory account (aitias logismos).’
Discuss.
2 Does Plato succeed in answering Adeimantus’ charge that philosophers are not fit
to rule? Assess his arguments.
3 ‘Then we do them an injustice by making them live a worse life when they could
live a better one’ (Rep. 519d). Does Plato have good arguments for compelling
the philosophers to return to the cave?
4 How consistent are the images of the line and the cave?
5 Can one make sense of the notion that the Good is ‘beyond being’?
SECTION B: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
6 Is Aristotle’s account of virtue undermined by its dependence on the function
argument (NE 1.7)?
7 Does Aristotle grant too much influence to the role of fortune in his account of
eudaimonia?
8 ‘We must consider first, then, whether the acratic man acts knowingly or not’
(NE 1146). Does Aristotle give a satisfactory answer to this question?
9 Either (a) Why does Aristotle think that ‘justice is a kind of mean, but not
in the same way as the other excellences’ (NE 1133b)?
Is he justified in his assessment?
Or (b) ‘Virtue is a state that decides, consisting in the mean relative to
us, which is defined by reference to reason’ (NE 1106b).
Explain and assess Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean.
10 Is Aristotle’s account of friendship too exclusive?