Reference no: EM132051016

Question: 1) Briefly and in your own words, what is the difference between eternal law and natural law in Aquinas?(Do not answer by just defining each one!)

2) The ‘human' is a special kind of being (as distinguished from non-human beings) in Aquinas' ‘natural law ethical theory'. Why is that?

3) For Aristotle and Aquinas, nature is ‘rational'. In what way is nature rational? How is that fact related to morality /ethics? (There are two questions here.)

4) When Aquinas spoke about doing what is ‘good ‘he is not imposing an article of faith from his own religious tradition. What is he talking about then from a purely philosophical standpoint? (By ‘purely philosophical' I mean ‘without assuming divine revelation and faith.')

5) This is an exercise in application: What sort of public policies/laws would Aquinas support or pursue if he were an American citizen today?

6) Discuss one strength and one weakness of classical natural law.

7) Discuss two objections to John Locke's Natural Rights theory.

8) Aquinas and Aristotle share the belief that nature is teleological. What does that mean?

9) How are aretai (plural form of the Greek ‘arete') formed?

10) How is virtue ethics different from other normative ethical theories that we studied (utilitarianism, deontologism, natural law)?

11) One objection to virtue ethics is it overemphasizes the purity of the virtuous character and is naïve about how political and economic forces influence good and evil in the world. What does that mean?

12) How is ‘virtue ethics' both open (sensitive to different contexts) and yet vague, imprecise, and not action-guiding enough?