Aristotle Doctrine of Mean: Teachings About the Importance of Balance

To live a good life, it is important to have everything in balance, which is the concept of “All things in Moderation”. Aristotle used the Doctrine of Mean to explain the course of action. Aristotle’s argued that virtues are the mean between two vices, one is excess and one is deficiency, om the scale of emotion of a characteristic.

The mean of Doctrine says that the virtues lies in the middle of the spectrum of various emotions and activities. This means that if we do too much there is excess and too little it is deficiency but if we just do it in right amount, we are in the middle which is virtuous. So, for example the spectrum of fear on the high extreme end which is you do not fear anything it is Brashness, you do things irrationally. while the low extreme when you have too much fear it is cowardness.

The center is courage, which is having right amount of fear and being afraid in the right situation and not being brash, but also not being too afraid to be considered coward. Let’s take an example of spectrum of Kindness, there is cruelty on one end and spoiling on the other. For example, a lot of parents they struggle between being too harsh or too gentle on their children. If they are too harsh and they control their children a lot it turns out that they might be sacred and are always worried that what will their parents say.

While if you are too gentle on them and do not tell them anything, they not going to obey you and or are undisciplined. So, there should always be in between of hard and gentle, the parents need to be harsh sometimes to explain things which the kids are doing wrong, and other times they have to handle them with love and care.

I believe that Aristotle’s argument I correct because I guess that’s what I was taught. Everything should be in a limit there should be not like extreme cases of anything because either end of extreme is going to be harmful of anyone. That is the case for everything like balance is really important in one’s life. Let’s take the example of honesty, if someone asks you how do they look you are not going to be insulting them by saying they look too bad instead you might say it in a polite way.

While you should also not lie and say that your looking great it might be that the person is going for a really important meeting or something. In the case of honesty depending on the situation you might lie but that’s just because for a good reason. So, it is like once in a while it is okay to be on the either end of the virtue (i.e. excess or deficiency) if that action is going to help a person or is for a noble cause.