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Lots of topics to choose from: Part II: Answer one and only one of the following topics in Part II (organized as you see fit):1.What does Aristotle mean by the following in the opening scene of Book One: “[w]ill not knowledge of this good … be very important to our lives … [and] equip us, like archers,who have a target to aim at, to hit the proper mark?” (1094a 20) Briefly explain the passage in its context. What does Aristotle mean when he says that “the common run of people and the most vulgar identify it [the good and happiness] with pleasure”? (1095b15) What does he mean when he says that “the cultivated and active … believe the good to be honor … [and] the end of political life”? (1095b 20) What does he mean when he says that “[i]n the third place there is the contemplative life, which we shall examine later on”? (1096a) When all is said and done what is the highest good to which the knowing archer aims according to Aristotle? And why is it that “[t]he pleasures of thought, in2
turn, are superior to the pleasures of the senses, and there are further differences with in each class.” (1176a) Explain these sentences in the context of the text in which they are found.How does Aristotle defend this surprising claim in Book Ten, which you will be happy to learn: “So happiness is coextensive with study, and the greater the opportunity for studying, the greater the happiness, not as an incidental effect but as inherent in study;for study is in itself worthy of honor. Consequently, happiness is some kind of study or contemplation.” (1178b 25-30) No surprise, Aristotle defended the philosophical life as the highest good. Where does Aristotle go wrong and where does he go right and why?Is the original analogy at the start of this topic misleading? Why or why not? 2.According to Aristotle, “it is … indispensable for a student of virtue to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary actions, and useful also for lawgivers, to help them in meting out honors and punishments.” (1109b 30)What is the difference between voluntary action and deliberative choice according to Aristotle, and why does it matter?According to Aristotle, “choice is either intelligence motivated by desire or desireoperating through thought, and it is as the combination of these two that man is a startingpoint of action.” (1139b 5) Illustrate Aristotle’s claim with an illustrative example. If itis a matter of choice, “virtue or excellence depends on ourselves, and so does vice.”(1113b 5) As characters, how do the self-controlled, morally strong, and morally weak differ according to Aristotle? How did they come to be that way? In other words, how does Aristotle argue that vice and virtue are voluntary? This seems to be a remarkableclaim. How does Aristotle defend it? Does the following demonstrate his point:“onceyou have thrown a stone and let it go, you can no longer recall it, even though the powerto throw it was yours, for the initiative was within you”? (1114a 15) Is it really so?Consider the following counter-argument to Aristotle’s position on deliberative choice:“All men seek what appears good to them, but they have no control over how things appear to them; the end appears different to different men.”” (1114b) What doesAristotle defend his position (see 1114b—1115a). What might be said against Aristotle’sposition from the side of the psychological and social sciences? What might Aristotle sayin reply if anything?3.Consider the following from Aristotle: “Is it then possible that while a carpenter and a shoemaker have their own proper functions of action, man as man has none, but was left by nature a good-for-nothing without a proper function? … Should we not assume that just as the eye, the hand, and the foot …
