Aristotle Questions and Answers
Aristotle
What is the method of teaching of Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher. He was mentored by Plato and went on to become the mentor and tutor of Alexander the Great. His philosophical foundations draw upon a variety of sources including...
Aristotle
Explain the role of catharsis in a tragedy?
Catharsis refers specifically to a purging of emotion for the audience, a purging that occurs when the truth finally comes out and the characters now understand everything that the audience does....
Aristotle
What are Aristotle's views on reality?
Aristotle's views of reality were enshrined in what he referred to as his "first philosophy," or what we today call metaphysics. This involved in-depth study of the universal principles and...
Aristotle
According to Aristotle, what is the most important element in tragedy and why? What makes tragedy different from the...
In much contemporary dramatic thought, stress is placed on the importance of the character in the drama. This is in keeping with the relatively modern tendency to see acting as an art form, and a...
Aristotle
How Does Aristotle Define Virtue?
For Aristotle, virtue involves the disposition to act in a certain way that is deemed by one's society to be morally excellent. Virtue is therefore related to how one behaves rather than to the...
Aristotle
Explain the role of hamartia and catharsis in tragedy
According to Wikipedia.com, hamartia is a term that was developed by Aristotle and: ...can simply be seen as a character’s flaw or error...hamartia is the tragic flaw of the protagonist in a given...
Aristotle
How did Aristotle view morality?
Aristotle was a proponent of what's called virtue ethics. This is a school of moral philosophy that locates morality in the attainment of virtue, or moral excellence. Examples of virtues would...
Aristotle
What is Aristotle’s conception of the soul?
Aristotle considers the soul to be the principle of life, which means that he holds that all living things have souls, not just human beings. His main work on psychology is called “De Anima,” which...
Aristotle
Aristotle believed that to be an effective speaker, one must be audience-centered. This philosophy still holds true...
Aristotle's model for communication focuses heavily on the importance of understanding one's audience. In order to employ effective audience-centered communication, the speaker must employ ethos to...
Aristotle
Aristotle said that "man is a political animal." What does that mean? Be specific: base your conclusions on the works...
Aristotle, judging by his writings, was extremely interested in contemplating the nature of man, that most intractable of subjects. Man’s role in society and the motivations that drive him to act...
Aristotle
What does Aristotle’s “sleep-test ethics” look like, and how does it differ from the common test?
"Sleep-test ethics" refers to a concept of ethical evaluation that is based on one's personal instincts, which could also be called one's "gut feelings" or "moral compass." The idea is that if...
Aristotle
Critically examine the Aristotelian concept of catharsis.
As mentioned in the previous post, Aristotle addresses the idea of catharsis in his text Poetics. Within the text, he describes catharsis as the purging of emotions, such as fear and pity....
Aristotle
What, according to Aristotle, is a primary substance?
In very basic terms, "primary substance" refers to individual things, whether they're individual human beings, dogs, cats, trees, rocks, or anything else. Primary substances are specific things...
Aristotle
How did Aristotle's work lay the groundwork for the scientific method to develop during the 1600s?
Although Aristotle did not really use the modern scientific method, his methods did set the stage for full-fledged science later on. Aristotle was organized in his approach to science. He would...
Aristotle
What is matter (as understood by Aristotle)? Explain the distinction between primary and secondary matter. Why did...
Examples of primary substances are animals, apples, trees, and mountains. Secondary matter is comparable to form. This is to say that secondary matter is "said of" or "inhering in" a primary...
Aristotle
When Jeffrey Skilling said he liked “guys with spikes," what does that phrase mean? What would Aristotle’s theory say...
Jeffrey Skilling said that he liked to employ "guys with spikes" when he was CEO of Enron. By this, Skilling seems to have meant people who were tough and aggressive, able to attack rivals and...
Aristotle
What are Aristotle's appeals?
Aristotle defined three main modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. Each of these allows a speaker to utilize a different method of persuasion, and frequently all three work together to...
Aristotle
For Aristotle, which part of being human does not perish? Explain.
This question has stimulated a good deal of philosophical debate among scholars down the centuries. Nevertheless, the general consensus seems to be that Aristotle believed that the intellect was...
Aristotle
How does one find truth according to Aristotle?
Aristotle ties truth to wisdom and knowledge and examines it as a part of metaphysics. The treatise Metaphysics lays his arguments forth. Aristotle's epistemology contends that finding knowledge...
Aristotle
What virtue would you not characterize by Aristotle's definition of “a mean between extremes”? How is it still an...
Wisdom is a virtue which is not a mean between extremes. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes a virtue as the "golden mean" between two extremes. This is a recognition that a virtue...
Aristotle
What is the very best life? Briefly explain what Aristotle's answer is and what his reasoning is, then describe what...
Aristotle emphasizes that the very best life is a life of eudaimonia, or happiness. Aristotle reasons that the kind of happiness that he is referring to is good and desirable without being...
Aristotle
What does Aristotle see as "the good" for man, and how does he defend this point? Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,...
Aristotle argues that the supreme good for man is happiness. His rationalization is that the supreme good will also be the highest end, the end we pursue only for its own sake. To arrive at the...
Aristotle
Compare and contrast artificial selection and natural selection.
Excellent question! First, definitions are in order: Artificial selection, sometimes called "selective breeding," is the process of manipulating genetics to bring out qualities that the breeders...
Aristotle
What importance does Aristotle accord to imitation? Elaborate.
It is important to start with Plato to answer this question. By far Plato's negative view of imitation (mimesis) is more common than Aristotle's view. Plato believed that imitation was bad, because...
Aristotle
Contrast Plato’s view on imitation (mimesis) with Aristotle’s.
Plato's disparagement of mimesis can only be understood in relation to his theory of Forms. Very briefly—and simply—put, Plato believed that what was ultimately real inhered in what he called...
Aristotle
Is Aristotle's definition of drama still relevant? Why? Why not?
When Aristotle divided “poetry” into epic, lyric, and dramatic, he was concerning himself with the kinds of narration that separated them. When he defined drama as “imitation of an action by...
Aristotle
What is an example of an emotional appeal?
Pathos is a rhetorical device used to persuade an audience by appealing to its emotions. As groups of people tend to be more emotionally suggestible than individuals, pathos is often used in...
Aristotle
Aristotle's theory of the mean has the advantage of considering the context of most of our moral decisions. Most...
Aristotle's theory of the mean emphasizes that virtue is often found between the extremes of excess and deficiency—that is, that courage can be found as the mean of cowardice (a deficiency of...
Aristotle
According to Aristotle, what is a virtue? What is Aristotle’s position on how we acquire virtue, and how we know that...
Aristotle defines two types of virtue. Moral virtue is an inclination to act in the right manner and is defined as having just enough. Intellectual virtue is acquired through benefaction and...
Aristotle
According to Aristotle, what is the relationship between a thing's excellence and its good?
The concepts of moral excellence and the good are closely related in the works of Aristotle. For Aristotle, the supreme good is happiness. Most of the good things in life are a means to an end, but...
Aristotle
According to Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics, what are the virtues and vices associated with "feelings about...
Aristotle is renowned for various works including his Nicomachean Ethics. In studying the basis of what makes a person strive towards his or her goals, Aristotle maintains that performing "good"...
Aristotle
Choose some virtue not discussed by Aristotle and present an Aristotellan analysis. The virtue cannot be...
According to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, ideal ethics were understood by finding the mean of two extreme positions. For example, "courage," a virtue, was the mean between rashness and...
Aristotle
How does Aristotle's theory of the four causes, as laid out in Metaphysics, differ from Plato's causality theories as...
In Metaphysics, Aristotle lays out his four causes as answers to "why" questions. In other words, if we were to ask why something is as it is, we would want to answer it with respect to the...
Aristotle
In Aristotle’s virtue theory, moral value is defined in terms of the Good Life, or eudaemonia. What exactly is the...
For Aristotle, an understanding of how to live the good life did not rely on an inductive contemplation of natural laws—as was the case in science—but rather the application of practical reason to...
Aristotle
Name and explain the Four Causes that Aristotle thought explained the world. Explain which of these causes a hammer's...
Aristotle discusses the four causes (Greek: aitia) in the Physics and Metaphysics. These are the four types of explanation concerning why and, to a degree, how objects come into being. This theory...
Aristotle
How can character traits be defined using Aristotle's Golden Mean?
According to the Golden Mean principle, all character traits have two extremes—excess and deficiency. Aristotle further states that character traits cannot be distinguished from technical...
Aristotle
What are Aristotle's contributions to the metaphysics of realism?
Realism claims that the physical world exists outside of one’s own perception. Think about the words you are reading on this page. The page is filled with lines that your mind then recognizes as...
Aristotle
Aristotle's theory has the advantage of considering the context of most of our moral decisions. Most famously, he...
Aristotle has a very good reason to make the claim that some actions are always wrong—namely, that by their very nature, they are vices. That is why, when we speak of theft or murder, we use...
Aristotle
What is the meaning of the following quote from Aristotle's De Anima: "By transparent I mean that which is visible,...
This quote can be tough to parse because Aristotle links two different ideas to each other very quickly and without any explanation as to why he jumped from one to the other. The first idea is...
Aristotle
Why could Aristotle's Virtue Ethics be said to make the world a better place?
Aristotle, as did and have many others, defined “virtue” as “excellence” in whatever activity in which one is engaged (a concept that Machiavelli would later refine in a more ruthless context)....
Aristotle
What are the most significant differences between Plato and Aristotle on the notion of "how should human life be...
The object of ethics is the distinction between good and evil. According to Plato, there is an absolute good which belongs to the transcendental realm of Forms, whereas Aristotle thinks that good...
Aristotle
What, according to you, does Aristotle mean by "pleasure proper to tragedy"?
In Aristotle's Poetics, he says: Those who employ spectacular means to create a sense not of the terrible but only of the monstrous, are strangers to the purpose of Tragedy; for we must not demand...
Aristotle
According to Aristotle, what kind of thing is most real and why?
Aristotle calls the things he considers to be the most real "substances". Substances are the things that the universe is made out of. Today, western science teaches that subatomic particles make up...
Aristotle
How were animals grouped together in Aristotle's system of classification?
Aristotle divided animals into "those without blood" and "those with blood," a dichotomy that roughly corresponds to the modern classifications of vertebrates and invertebrates. He divided animals...
Aristotle
For Aristotle the poet is at the same time an imitator and a creator. Discuss?
For Aristotle as well as most classical writers, mimesis was a central concept, meaning "to copy" or "to imitate." The Classicists saw the world as a reflection. While Plato disapproved of poets...
Aristotle
What would Aristotle's answer be to the opening of Plato's Meno: "Can you tell me Meno, can virtue be taught? Or is...
This is an excellent question. Some preliminary information is necessary to answer your question. First, the Greeks defined virtue (arete) as excellence. So, a virtuous builder would be an...
Aristotle
Please help me understand the concept of the classification of propositions.
Aristotle classified propositions into four types, which are still used today. These classifications are universal affirmative, universal negative, particular affirmative, and particular negative....
Aristotle
Based on the ethics books 1 and 10, how does Aristotle understand happiness? What kind of life is a happy one?
Both of Aristotle’s treatises on Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachaen Ethics, begin with a discussion of happiness, which Aristotle regards as the supreme good, since it is an end in...
Aristotle
Provide one example of the usefulness of studying Aristotle’s philosophy. Either select some aspect of Aristotle’s...
Studying Aristotle's philosophy can be very useful. Aristotle famously philosophized about a variety of subjects, from ethics to natural science. His works can encourage us to consistently search...
Aristotle
Explain Aristotle’s account of human virtue. Generally, what are virtues? How are they obtained?
Aristotle addresses the concept of virtue in his written works, the “Nicomachean Ethics” and the “Eudemian Ethics.” For the ancient Greeks, virtue (called “arete”) meant excellence, and could be...
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