Extract 2: the Golden Mean is not the same as moderation.

Here is an extract from Robert Arrington’s masterful chapter (chapter 3 of Western Philosophy) on Aristotle.

The Doctrine of the Mean has frequently been misinterpreted to suggest that Aristotle is putting forward a doctrine of moderation. According to this view, he is recommending that we always strive to feel neither too much nor too little but rather the moderate amount: hence a little fear but not too much, a little pleasure but not too much, a little anger but not too much. This view of the matter is mistaken. For one thing, according to Aristotle, there are situations, for example situations embodying injustice, which should provoke extreme anger in us, juts as there are situations which rightly prompt us to feel extreme fear. While the amount of a feeling will on occasion be a factor in determining the mean, much more than quantity is involved in doing so. The mean, the intermediate, is a matter of having feelings of anger, pity, confidence (and so on) “at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way” (NE, 1106b20). Assessed in these various dimensions, reason might well determine that on specific occasions the mean relative to the agent requires extreme confidence, great pity, or great anger. This, then, is no doctrine of moderation.

The truly virtuous person, however, is not just the one who achieves the relative mean in her feelings and actions. She must also receive pleasure in doing so. Aristotle goes so far as to say that someone who is “grieved” by (unhappy about) abstaining from bodily pleasures (on the right occasions, in the right amount, etc.) is actually intemperate even if she does abstain (NE, 1104b5). A person who finds it painful to stand firm in terrifying situations, even if she succeeds in doing so, is nevertheless cowardly. Thus acting virtuously is something that must be done, as it were, in the right spirit.”

(Western Philosophy, 1998, page 75).