Law of the Golden Mean

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papa-dunkel
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Law of the Golden Mean

Post by papa-dunkel »

Hi everyone. My name is G. Kritikos, I live in Athens and I am new here. On what argument do you think Aristotle bases his Law of the Golden Middle (not phi)? How can one seeing some instances of Superior=Middle generalize so much in a world where choice spectrums may be 200 or may be 125.676.445.838.034 in number? Thanks!
Steve3007
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean

Post by Steve3007 »

Presumably common sense based on everyday experiences.

As you've said, not to be confused with the golden ratio.
Nick_A
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean

Post by Nick_A »

papa-dunkel wrote: September 14th, 2021, 6:29 pm Hi everyone. My name is G. Kritikos, I live in Athens and I am new here. On what argument do you think Aristotle bases his Law of the Golden Middle (not phi)? How can one seeing some instances of Superior=Middle generalize so much in a world where choice spectrums may be 200 or may be 125.676.445.838.034 in number? Thanks!
There has to be more to this than meets the eye. I ask myself if I enjoy a hot bath and sometimes need a cold shower? I know I don't want the middle which is a luke-warm bath. So the happy middle is not so happy. Yet what is the middle which reconciles hot and cold into ONE from a higher perspective? That would be a necessary middle.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
maril123
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean

Post by maril123 »

There is a fairy tale about this. There was this princess and she didn't want to marry anyone because she was proud. Do you want to marry this one? No. The other one? No. And she kept denying marriage proposals. Then one of those whom she also denied goes through an ordeal and she marries him. The point is not that she marries him, but in that the marriage was a compromise and an indicator of maturation to her former overly proud and demanding ways. So the golden mean, or generally temperance, is a wider policing tool for middle class women whose desire may set the beyond the.limits of acceptable femininity. The golden mean here does not come as a mediator of excellence, but as one that hides a patriarchal conflict about a woman who is seen ( by whose eyes?) as "overly proud".
Alan Masterman
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean

Post by Alan Masterman »

Hi Papadunkel, welcome to the forum, and hope you enjoy it.

I'm not intimately familiar with Aristotle's philosophy, but I do know that his concept of the Golden Mean should not be taken too seriously! Aristotle, you know, was a great classifier. He would have made a wonderful librarian; he loved to place things in nice, neat categories. His concept of the Golden Mean is an example of this. But, if you examine it in detail, it contains serious difficulties. For example, what is the mean between "honesty" and "dishonesty"? Or between "partiality" and "impartiality"?

A particular moral difficulty of Aristotle's doctrine is that many actions which we would classify as "courageous", it classifies as "rash". He holds that an action is courageous only to the extent that we understand its full consequences; if we don't foresee the consequences, the action must be considered "rash". From Aristotle's point of view, if you jump into the water without a second thought to save a drowning child, it is automatically an act of rashness. One can see how, in a certain sense, he is right; but it is not the kind of 'rightness' we admire.

Since we can never know in advance ALL of the consequences of our actions, and we often can foresee very few of them, it follows that any act of bravery is, by default, primarily an act of rashness.

There is a lot to be said for following the middle way, in life, but don't take Aristotle as your guide. Like the dinosaurs, he has left a lot of interesting fossils...
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papa-dunkel
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean

Post by papa-dunkel »

perhaps impartiality is a middle ground between partiality and an opposite partiality
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