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Aristotle on the Ethical Mean

In Book II, chapter 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses the nature of virtue, or moral excellence, indicating that such excellence is concerned with passions and actions, in which there is excess, defect and the intermediate (1106 b16-18). The philosopher labels this intermediate quality the ethical mean. After stating that his purpose in writing is to help people become good by living a good life (1103b26-28), he immediately adds that complete precision in the subject of how to direct one’s actions in order to become good is impossible. Yet human agents can act in a morally excellent manner if they avoid the extremes of excessive and deficient action within a given situational context.

Aristotle explains that as bodily virtues such as strength and health are destroyed by deficiency and excess (e.g., too much or too little exercise, too much or too little eating), so in similar fashion are the virtues affected. The idea, then, is that there is not only one absolutely correct display of emotion or action in any given context. On the contrary, when one aims at the ethical mean one aims at something that is for that person neither too great nor too little; it must be the appropriate amount of anger, fear or appetite at that particular time in relation to that particular person and his or her circumstances (1106b18-24). For example, to be courageous, one must not fear everything and avoid every danger, nor must one be totally without fear and accept every risk; furthermore, to be temperate, a person must not pursue every pleasure, nor must he or she go to the opposite extreme of pursuing no pleasure at all. Aristotle returns to this theme in Book II, chapter 6, where he points out that the mean for one individual in a particular situation will differ from the mean for someone else in a different situation. (1106a26-b7). Indeed, achieving the mean in one’s actions and feelings is a task that requires practical reason. Therefore, when Aristotle defines ethical virtue, he describes it thus:

A state or disposition concerned with choice, being in a way that is intermediate relative to us, as determined by reason -- the reason by which the practically wise person would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on deficit; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and action while excellence both finds and chooses that which is intermediate (1106 b36-1107 a6).

In this passage, Aristotle states that excellence is a state that can be classified as occupying a midpoint between a vice of excess and a vice of defect. He then says that it is a mean because, by contrast with the vices, it finds and chooses that which is intermediate. This state of excellence that is the mean is expressed in a particular response consisting in feeling, action or judgment.

In Nicomachean Ethics II, chapter 6, which is concerned with excellence as the source of good actions, Aristotle states that every excellence both brings into good condition the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well (1106 a 17). On this view, excellence is both the appropriate feelings and actions within a given context, and the disposition that gives rise to such ethically intermediate responses. Furthermore, the philosopher suggests that excellence of character is the result of habitually practiced intermediate actions, feeling or judgments. He concludes that an agent’s excellent character derives from the intermediate behavior that generates and sustains it.