Law of the Golden Mean
- papa-dunkel
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Law of the Golden Mean
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean
As you've said, not to be confused with the golden ratio.
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean
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.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!
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean
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...
- papa-dunkel
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Re: Law of the Golden Mean
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023