SECTION A: Plato’s Republic
1 Is Plato’s distinction between knowledge and belief tenable?
2 Has Plato given convincing arguments for his claim that ‘knowledge is of what
wholly and truly is’?
3 Has Plato shown that the best rulers must be philosophers?
4 ‘Plato’s line image concerns education, his cave analogy is about politics.’ Is this
a fair assessment?
5 Why is mathematical training essential for Plato’s philosopher rulers?
SECTION B: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
6 ‘We do not altogether have the character of happiness if we look utterly repulsive
or are ill-born, solitary, or childless’ (NE 1099b3–4). Is Aristotle justified in
thinking this?
7 If Aristotle bases his account of eudaimonia on human nature, is he committed to
the claim that there is only one form of happiness for all humans?
8 Does Aristotle define friendship in such a way that it becomes attainable only by
a very few?
9 Does the interdependence of practical wisdom and moral virtue in Aristotle’s
theory make it wholly impractical?
10 Does the doctrine of the mean apply to some moral virtues better than to others?