Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle, provide written answers to the following questions.
1. What two types of virtue does Aristotle mention, and which type is more specifically ethical? Give an example of a virtue of each type.
2. In what sense is virtue natural, and in what sense is it not natural?
3. What is the significance of habituation for virtue theory?
4. What do excess and deficiency have in common for Aristotle?
5. According to Aristotle, how are pleasure and pain related to the virtues, and what do pleasure and pain have to do with moral education? What are the “three objects of choice” for Aristotle, and how are they relevant to the issue?
6. What is the distinction between acting in accordance with virtue and having a virtuous character?
7. Give an example of an Aristotelian triad of virtue-as-mean, vice of excess, and vice of deficiency, providing a brief explanation of each.
8. According to Aristotle, how can one extreme be worse than another? What does aiming at a lesser of two evils have to do with the cultivation of virtue?
9. Identify a particular quality or type of action that you would consider an example of moral virtue or as morally virtuous. Then, explain how it fits Aristotle’s concept of virtue as a “mean between two vices” — in other words, show how this virtue is an “intermediate state” between “excess and defect.” This will require not only naming the specific virtue you’ve chosen but giving a detailed description of it as well as each of its corresponding vices.
