Review Exam #1

HRS/PHL 403: Aristotle Review Guide for Exam #1 Dr Stephens Fall 2003

Emphasized items are in red.
"Identify" means "be able to pick in a multiple choice question."
"Describe" means "present in detail as accurately as you can", not "identify verbatim as if it were a foreign language you don't understand."
"State" means "give verbatim."
"Explain" means "write an accurate, to the point, shortish answer in complete sentences."
"Essay" means "an extended answer in an organized response of at least four or five paragraphs."
Many of the "what is/does" items can become simple true/false questions.

Essay Candidates

A. What does Aristotle think is most real and WHY? Write a long, detailed, comprehensive essay.
B. Explain Aristotle's conception of nature as teleological at length and in detail, illustrating with examples and analyzing each one.
C. Explain how Aristotle's scheme of the Four 'Reasons Why' can provide a comprehensive understanding of just about anything.
D. Describe the reasons (contained in the Argument from Two Parts that Are Not [217b35–218a4; p.126] and The Neither is Now a Part of Time Argument [218a5–8; p.127]) for thinking that time is not at all. Then explain Aristotle's view of the relationship between time and change, and his Argument that Time is Motion's Number (219b3–9; p.130).

Introduction

1. Describe in detail Aristotle's biography, including where and when he was born, his family, the rulers of his kingdom, who he tutored, where he was educated, by whom, when and where he founded his own school, its name, and all the major events of his life.
2. Describe the different types of writings Aristotle is credited with, i.e. his surviving corpus. How are his writings typically grouped? How many pages does the nearly complete modern English translation of Aristotle (in ROT) fill?
3. Name the titles of Aristotle's major works. What are Bekker numbers?

Categories

1. Explain what is meant by homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy. Give examples of each.
2. What are examples of things without combination? Of things with combination?
3. Explain the difference, citing examples, of (a) something said OF a subject that is not IN any subject, (b) something IN a subject that is not said OF any subject, (c) something both said OF a subject that is also IN a subject, (d) and something that is neither IN a subject nor is said OF a subject.
4. Draw a diagram displaying the taxonomical relation of genus, species, and individual/primary substance (specimen) for several animals and several plants.
5. Explain the concepts of genus, species, universal, individual, differentia, contraries.
6. Explain the Ten things "said without any combination", i.e. Categories. Give two examples of each.
7. Explain the concepts of primary substance and secondary substance, giving examples of each.
8. Why does A. think primary substances are substances most strictly? (3 reasons)
9. What does every primary substance signify?
10. Of what two Categories is there no contrary?
11. What does it mean to say a substance does not admit of a more or a less?
12. Explain the relationship between primary substances and contraries (using an example).
13. State the five (four different?) sorts of priority described in Ch. 12. Give examples of each. Which is the least strict sort of priority?
14. State the three sorts of simultaneity described in Ch. 13. Why are genera always prior to species?

De Interpretatione

1. Ch. 1: Explain the concepts of spoken sounds, written marks, the primary things signified.
2. Ch. 2: What is a name by nature? When is something a name? What are the inarticulate noises of beasts? (p.14)
3. Ch. 4: What is the definition of a sentence?
4. Ch. 7: Give examples of affirmations, negations, and contradictions. Give examples of particular statements and universal statements. On Aristotle's Square of Opposition, what pair are contradictories, what pair are contraries, and what pair are subcontraries?
Chapter 9
5. Describe the Argument for Fatalism (18a34–18b9).
6. Describe the Argument from Past Truth to Necessity of the Past.
7. Describe The Counterargument from Deliberation (19a8).
8. Describe The Counterargument from Possibility (19a12–19).

Physics
Book 1
1. What does the Greek word physis mean?
2. Ch. 1: What does A. say is "the natural path"? (184a16–21; p.83)?
3. Ch. 5: What does A. mean by saying that all things that come to be naturally are either contraries or from contraries?
4. Ch. 6: Why must there be a subject that is a principle, and prior to, pale, dark, hold, cold, etc.?
5. Ch. 7: What things come to be without qualification?
6. State the five kinds of coming to be without qualification, citing examples of each.
7. Explain the relations of subject/matter, form/essence/account, and privation. Give examples.
8. Ch. 8: Explain Aristotle's reply to Parmenides' challenge that becoming is impossible.
9. Ch. 9: Describe the Argument that Matter neither comes to be nor perishes.
Book 2
1. Ch. 1: What exists by nature? How are artifacts different than these natural things?
2. State the two different senses of nature at 193a29–30 and 193b4.
3. Why is the form of a thing more its nature than the matter?
4. Ch. 2: Explain the concept of telos. What is the telos of an acorn? Why?
5. Ch. 3: To have knowledge of a thing is to grasp...what?
6. Explain in detail the Four 'Reasons Why' (Causes), giving multiple examples of each.
7. Explain the causal relation of fitness and hard work, the presence of a pilot and the safety of a ship, and similar examples.
8. Explain the concept of coincident. Explain how the concepts of potential and actual apply to each of the Four Causes.
9. What is the cause of the house being built? potentially? actually? Present the priority of causes.
10. Ch. 5: What things always come about in the same way? What things usually? What things happen by luck or chance?
11. Describe the Argument that Luck is Contrary to Reason (197a19–21; p.109).
12. Ch. 6: What is the logical relation between lucky events and chance events?
13. What beings does luck pertain to? How does good fortune relate to happiness?
14. What sort of thing is being happy? (197b5–6; p.110)
15. Describe the Argument that Chance and Luck are Posterior to Mind and Nature (198a6–11; p.112).
16. Ch. 7: What is Aristotle's example of the formal cause, the efficient cause and the final cause all coinciding?
17. What three sorts of inquiry does A. distinguish in Chapter 7? What two principles initiate motion?
Chapter 8
18. Describe The Rain Argument against Teleology (198b17–22).
19. Describe The Teeth Argument against Teleology (198b23–26).
20. Describe The Chance Coming to Be of the Fittest Argument against Teleology (198b27–33).
21. Describe A's Argument Replying to Anti-Teleology (198b34–199a7).
22. Describe the Argument from Craft to Nature (199a8–13).
23. Describe the Argument that an Organism's Form is its Nature (199a20–33).
24. Describe the Argument that Nature is like a Doctor Doctoring Herself (199b27–32; p.117).
25. Explain the relation between the end (telos), the cause of the matter, the definition, and the form.
Book 3
1. Ch. 1: State the Four sorts of Change identified in this chapter.
2. Identify the definition of change (motion) given at 201a28.
3. Identify the definition of change (motion) given at 201b5.
4. Ch. 2: What sort of actuality does A. say motion seems to be? (201b32–33; p.123)
5. Ch. 3: How are the road from Thebes to Athens the same, and how are they different?
6. Identify the definition of change (motion) given at 202b26.
Book 4
1. Ch. 10: Describe how Aristotle divides Time into three parts in order to explain suggestions that time is not at all.
2. Describe the Argument that Time is Not Change (218b11–20; p.128).
Chapter 11
3. Describe the Argument that Time is Not Independent of Change (218b21–219a1; p.129).
4. Describe the Argument that Time is Some Feature of Motion (219a3–10; p.129).
5. Describe the Argument that Before and After Belong to Time (219a12–19; p.129–130).
6. State Aristotle's definition of time given at 219b1–2; p.130).
7. What is the logical relation between time and the now?