Exam 1

Question 1

Why does Socrates refuse to be the one who provides answers in the dialogue (39)? What is Socrates’ purpose in being the only questioner?

Answer 1

Socrates does not proclaim to know the answers, he doesn’t think he knows anything to be able to speak on the topic. Instead he asks questions and dissect their arguments in order to learn.

Question 2

What is it that Glaucon wants Socrates to do (52)?

Answer 2

Glaucon would like Socrates to prove that justice is not only desirable, but that it belongs to the highest class of desirable things: those desired both for their own sake and their consequences.

Question 3

How is the speech of Adeimantus meant to supplement that of Glaucon (55)?

Answer 3

Adeimantus, breaks in and bolsters Glaucon’s arguments by claiming that no one praises justice for its own sake, but only for the rewards it allows you to reap in both this life and the afterlife. He reiterates Glaucon’s request that Socrates show justice to be desirable in the absence of any external rewards: that justice is desirable for its own sake, like joy, health, and knowledge.

Question 4

What reason does Socrates give for the need for a military in the luxurious city (63)?

Answer 4

The people within the city are not sufficient to defend their property. War is considered craft and there must be people who are masters of this craft.

Question 5

Why does Aristotle say that man is a political animal (167L-R)?

Answer 5

Man is not self sufficient, he must rely on family and village to fulfill some of his needs but most of all man relies on the city, or state, to be sufficient. Man who does not rely on the state is not man but rather a beast or God. Man in nature is a political animal because the city is the only way he can remain sufficient.

Question 6

How does Aristotle distinguish production (poesis) from action (praxis) 169L)?

Answer 6

He talks about ‘instruments’ such can be people performing a specific task like steering a boat which is production. Action is property that belongs to man for the purpose of life.

Question 7

How does Aristotle distinguish the city from a military alliance (175L)?

Answer 7

A city cannot be composed of people who are like one another whereas the military is very uniform where everyone thinks alike and is forced to do so.

Question 8

What two virtues does Aristotle claim that people in an “excessively unified” (in this instance meaning no private property) city are unable to display and why (179L)?

Answer 8

Temperance and generosity. Those who own common property, and share in its management, are far more often at variance (conflict) with one another than those who have property separately.

Question 9

What is Hobbes’ purpose in describing the state as an artificial person (312L)?

Answer 9

All of the different components work together in making up a man. The state, like man, needs all of the characteristics (memory, strength, health) which he uses with analogies of the state to emphasize how these things work together to produce a functioning entity.

Question 10

Explain Hobbes’ remark that the “value or worth of a man is his price (316L).”

Answer 10

Other people determine your value. For example, an uncorrupt judge would be valuable to many in a time of peace but in war he would not. You can esteem yourself to the highest value however your true value is deemed by others.

Question 11

Why does Hobbes believe that “felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another” (315L)?

Answer 11

Life is but motion, felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another. Man desires to enjoy something not for a moment or for an instant, but a continual progress of the desire.

Question 12

What does Hobbes identify as the three causes of conflict among people (320L)?

Answer 12

Competition, diffidence, and glory

Question 13

How does Hobbes understand war (320R)?

Answer 13

War is not just battle or the act of fighting,war is absence of peace.

Question 14

What is the only condition under which Hobbes believes that men will enjoy each others’ company, and why (320L)?

Answer 14

When man sees no other power great enough to endanger him.

Question 15

What is amour-propre and what produces it (432)?

Answer 15

A sense of one’s own worth based off other people. Competition is what increases awareness of your own talents and abilities.

Question 16

Why does Rousseau believe that the strong would not oppress the weak in a state of nature (427R-428L)?

Answer 16

A man cannot be a slave unless he is first reduced to a situation in which he cannot do without the help of others, this situation does not exist in nature however, therefore everyone is their own master. The bonds of servitude are formed by the mutual dependence of men on one another.

Question 17

What stage of society introduced the “first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice” (431R-432L)?

Answer 17

Permanent neighborhood, civilization develops and organized society is developing

Question 18

What does Rousseau take to be the “happiest and most stable of epochs,“ and why (432R)?

Answer 18

Only when human beings begin to form social relationships with one another will they begin to take notice of what others think of them. In the earliest human societies, those marked by small groups of families, amour-propre becomes part of the human experience. However, it is relatively benign, and Rousseau called this era the happiest in human history.

Question 19

Why does Rousseau claim that it wasn’t gold and silver, but iron and corn (wheat) “which first civilized men, and ruined humanity” (433R)?

Answer 19

The corn became valuable as there were increasing mouths to feed and the iron created as tools. Man began to cultivate and claim what was natural to be his own. Property no longer came from just manual labor but from what man could add to things that he did not originally create and still claim them as his own.

Question 20

How did a “new intelligence” result from the increase in numbers of people, according to Rousseau’s anthropological speculations (429R)?

Answer 20

A demand arose of industry, competition drove innovation and discovery of what man was capable of. Man became aware of his superiority to other animals and the emotion of pride emerged.