Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State UniversityMid – La Union Campus

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCESHumanities and Social Sciences Department

City of San Fernando, La Union

PHILOSOPHY OF MANPhilo 102

Midterm ExaminationJanuary 20 – 22, 2016

Student ID No. ___________________________________ BS Psych Section: ________

Direction:

Check with them for details.

The point of the exam is to give you a chance to review and synthesize the material we’ve covered in this course. You won’t need to know any dates or other historical trivia. You will need to know what philosophical positions Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius and Christian Philosophy took, and how they argued for these positions.

The exam will have three parts.

Part I. Quotations. (12% of total)

You will be asked to answer a series of questions about quotations taken from the texts we have read. Briefly explain about the passage and its meaning.

1. The unexamined life is not worth living. —Socrates2. Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all

practical activities whatever … Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue. —Aristotle

3. "He who conquers others is strong He who conquers himself is the greatest victor".

4. Man is the apex of earthly Creation

Part II. Short answer questions. (48% of total)

You will be asked to answer four (multi-part) questions, one from each of the following categories:

1. Socrates

2. Plato

3. Aristotle

4. Plato or Aristotle

Each question may have several related parts. You should answer each part fully but concisely: sometimes one sentence will do; sometimes several will be required. The questions will be drawn mostly from the study questions that I have posted.

Questions:

(a) Explain Aristotle’s distinction between doing a virtuous action and acting virtuously.

(b) Why doesn’t Aristotle think that the virtues are capacities to have certain feelings?

(c) True or false? For Aristotle, being virtuous is a matter of being strong enough to overcome your emotions and feelings when they tempt you to do something inappropriate. Explain.

(d) What does Aristotle mean when he says that virtue is a state consisting in a mean?

(e) What or who determines the mean?

Part III. Essay. (40% of total)

A. Socrates seems to have held the following three theses:

1. Virtue is knowledge.

2. Incontinence is impossible.

3. One cannot have one of the virtues without having them all.

Write a connected essay in which you do the following:

• Explain the connection between these three theses in Socrates’ thought, as best you can determine it.(That is, how are these theses related? How do they all fit together?)

B. Explain why in philosophy the questions are more important than the answers. In what sense is philosophy a subversive activity?

End of the TestGOOD LUCK!!!!

Prepared by: Noted by: Approved by:

ARVELLA M. ALBAY MA. ATHENA PIMENTEL MELCHOR D. SALOMProfessor Chair, HUMSS Dept Dean, CAS