Tutor profile: Derek D.

What is a perfect passive participle?

A perfect passive participle is usually intended to explain a noun. For example, take the following Latin sentence: "Monstra venta terram ad meum domum pugnauerunt." This sentence literally says: "The monsters having come to earth attacked my house." The perfect passive participle is "venta" which agrees in gender, number, and case with "monstra", and it takes a direct object "terram". Thus, in this case, the perfect passive participle explains more about subject of the sentence.

What's the first step in writing a well-formulated paper?

The thesis, because the remainder of the paper is for developing your arguments. I tend to deal with academic writing, so my papers have quite a bit of logos. However, I'm happy to work with less academic writing that would have more ethos and pathos in them.

Why is Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean Theory more applicable than Plato's Divided Line Theory? Why?

Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean Theory because it directly relates to the method of how people ought to act. He believes that one's tendency to indulge in the excesses leads people to an incompatible lifestyle, and that if we grow up with these indulgences then we habituate towards them. Whereas Plato's Divided Line Theory constitutes a great deal of his metaphysics and not his ethics. I argue that because ethics is more applicable to our daily life, due to freedom of will and the choices that we make, then ethics is more applicable than metaphysics.