Unit 3 set texts and key concepts: VCE Philosophy

What this dot point is asking

Unit 3 asks you to discuss what it is to live well. You do this by working through eight general questions, four about the individual (Area of Study 1) and four about the individual and others (Area of Study 2), using viewpoints and arguments from the set texts, plus your own examples. This page is the map: which texts exist, which questions they feed, and the vocabulary that ties it all together.

The prescribed texts

The VCAA prescribes the set texts each year in the VCAA Bulletin. For 2026 and 2027 the Unit 3 list consists of extracts from these works:

• Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers (extracts on what justice is and achieves, and on equitable self-interest)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Book I chapters 1 to 5 and 7, Book II chapter 2, Book IX chapter 9; Ross translation)
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
• Cicero, On the Good Life (Penguin selection; the prescribed extracts come from the dialogue Laelius: On Friendship)
• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (the introductory extract)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (sections 199, 201, 203, 225, 260 and 284)
• Plato, Gorgias (the exchanges with Callicles)
• Peter Singer, 'Famine, Affluence and Morality' (pp. 229 to 235)
• Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (the opening extract)
• Susan Wolf, 'Moral Saints'

Always check the VCAA document for your year, including the exact editions and page ranges. The exam does not use the extracts alone. In Section A, Questions 1, 2 and 4 give you an extract from one set text, Question 3 gives you an unseen stimulus about an issue of contemporary living (so it is not taken from a set text), and Section B is an essay that must use a case study you have studied. You cannot predict which extract will appear, and all the key knowledge and skills in Units 3 and 4 are examinable.

Which text speaks to which question

Most texts can be used for more than one question, which is why comparison is rewarded. A useful starting grid:

• Pleasure and self-discipline: Plato's Gorgias (Callicles against Socrates), Aristotle on moderation, Nietzsche on discipline and suffering.
• Happiness: Aristotle on the highest good, Wolf on what else matters.
• Love and friendship: Aristotle on why the happy person needs friends, Cicero on friendship (the Laelius extracts), Allen on trust among citizens.
• Freedom and authenticity: de Beauvoir, Nietzsche, Mill on individuality.
• Obligations to others: Singer, Weil, and Cicero on what friends owe each other.
• Rights and justice: Allen, Weil, Mill on liberty and harm.
• Being morally good: Wolf, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche.
• Individual good and the good of others: Allen, Aristotle, Singer, Wolf.

Core concepts, in plain words

• Happiness: a life going well, either a feeling (pleasant states) or a way of living (flourishing). Which of these is meant is often the whole dispute.
• Hedonism: the view that pleasure is the good, and pain the bad.
• Virtue: a stable trait of character, such as courage or justice, that makes someone good at living.
• Teleology: explaining something by its purpose or end, as when Aristotle asks what the human function is.
• Authenticity: living in a way that is genuinely your own rather than borrowed from the crowd.
• Egoism and altruism: acting for your own good versus acting for the good of others.
• Duty and obligation: what you are bound to do whether or not you feel like it.
• Rights and justice: claims people hold against others, and what fairness requires in how benefits and burdens are shared.
• The common good: goods that benefit the community as a whole.
• Meaningfulness: a life that matters or has significance, which may differ from a life that is pleasant.

A worked example of linking texts

Question: how do Aristotle and Callicles differ about the role of desire in a good life?

Callicles holds that the best life lets appetites grow large and then satisfies them, so restraint is weakness. Aristotle holds that the good life is activity expressing virtue, with desires governed by reason, so that excess and deficiency both damage a person. The connection: both treat the good life as tied to human nature, but they disagree about what that nature calls for. The contrast gives you a ready structure for a comparison paragraph: shared concern (what suits human nature), point of difference (whether unlimited desire is natural flourishing or a defect), and a judgement about which premise is more plausible.

Practice questions

1. Name two set texts that discuss friendship (or relationships with others) and say what question each answers.

   Model answer: Aristotle argues the happy person needs friends because we cannot flourish alone, so friendship answers the question of what role love and friendship play in the good life. Cicero's Laelius extracts are devoted to friendship, grounding it in virtue and goodwill, so they answer the same question from a Roman standpoint. Allen's work on trust and equitable self-interest among citizens extends the theme of relationships to strangers, which connects to the individual and others.

2. Explain one reason to compare two texts instead of describing each in turn.

   Model answer: Comparison forces you to find the exact premise where two views part, which shows understanding rather than recall, and it is directly named as a key skill in the study design.