Human Person Final Study Guide
Section 1: Short Answer
Answer 3 (Just answer the question. No need to explain the answer.)
1. What is Aristotle’s definition of the soul in
De Anima 2.1?
4. What are the criteria for a proper
definition?
2. What does Descartes’ include in his clear
and distinct idea of himself as a thinking
thing in Meditations 2?
5. What are the three types of necessity
that Aquinas identifies?
3. What is Hobbes’ definition of free will/
freedom?
6. What is Aristotle’s definition of nature in
Physics 2.1?
Section 2: Short Essay
There will be two groups of short essays. You will have to answer one from group A and
one from Group B (Approx. 1 page each)
1. What are the stages of Plato’s dialectical
method of teaching (or, as he calls it,
“recollecting”) presented in the Meno?
3. What is Meno’s Paradox? How do Plato
and Aristotle respond to Meno?
2. Present a formal analysis of one of
Plato’s arguments for the immorality of
the soul.
4. How does Aristotle use the musical man
example in Physics 1.7 to establish the
doctrine that substances are composed
from substantial form and prime matter/
protomatter?
5. Why does Aquinas hold that essence is
distinct from power/capacity? Why is this
important?
7. Present and explain one of Hume’s
arguments against the immorality of the
soul.
6. Present Aquinas’s argument that humans
have free decision/free will?
8. Explain the differences between the three
materialist theories of personal identity
we studied (Parfit, Olson, and Baker).
Section 3: Long Essay
Answer one (At least 3 pages)
1. Write an critical essay in which you compare and contrast the dualist, hylomorphist, and
and materialist theories of what the human person is and explain why it matters which
theory is correct.
2. Write an essay explaining the similarities and differences between Plato’s arguments for the
incorruptibility of the soul (in Phaedo) and Aquinas’s arguments for the subsistence and
incorruptibility of the human soul (ST Ia, Q. 75, aa. 2 and 6).
3. Write an argumentative essay explaining and defending of one of the the different theories
of knowledge/learning that we studied (Plato, Aristotle/Aquinas, Descartes, Hobbes). The
essay should also point out the flaws in the other thinkers’ theories.