The Golden Mean

At the center of Aristotle's ethics lies the doctrine of the mean (mesotēs): moral virtue is a settled disposition to choose the middle course between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency. Courage stands between recklessness and cowardice, generosity between extravagance and stinginess, proper pride between vanity and meanness.

Not a mere average

The mean is no fixed arithmetical midpoint but the right amount 'relative to us' — the fitting response in the right measure, at the right time, toward the right people, for the right reason. To find it is the work of practical wisdom, and it is as demanding as hitting a target: there are many ways to miss and only one to strike true. Some acts, Aristotle adds, admit no mean at all, being base in themselves.

Measure and the Greeks

The doctrine gives systematic form to a deep Greek intuition, voiced in the Delphic 'nothing in excess' and in the praise of measure throughout poetry and philosophy. Virtue, on this view, is a kind of equilibrium — the beauty of a soul that has found its proper proportion, close kin to temperance.