What is Aristotles Doctrine of the Mean?

According to the doctrine of the mean, virtue is a

mean state between extremes of excess and
deficiency. Aristotle describes this mean state as
an intermediate relative to us. To find the mean
relative to us is to find the state of character that
correct reason requires.

In what ways is it different from the Christian

conception of virtue?

The Doctrine of the Mean maintains that virtue

is a mean state between the vicious extremes
of excess and deficiency. While this does not
provide us with a strict formulation, it does
make clear that finding the virtuous path is a
matter of steering a middle course between
the vices of too much and too little. Because
both excess and deficiency are vices,
Aristotles virtues and vices are listed in
threes: a vice of excess and a vice of
deficiency to accompany each virtue.
By contrast, Christian conceptions of virtue
are generally based on polar oppositions and
are classed in pairs. For instance, the virtue of
humility is contrasted with the vice of pride.
The marked difference between Aristotles and
the Christian beliefs, then, is that for Aristotle,
vice and virtue are intimately connected. The
virtuous disposition that might lead a person to
be courageous can be taken just a little too far
and become the vice of rashness. A Christian
virtue cannot be taken too far and become a
vice, since vice is an opposite to virtue in the
Christian view.

>Define Ethics

Ethics Summary
All human actions and choices aim at some
good, which may be defined as the end or
object of that action or choice. There are as
many kinds of ends as there are kinds of
activity and the ends may vary, depending on
the particular activity being studied (e.g., the
end of medical science is good health, the end
of military science is victory). Some ends are
subordinate to other ends, because the latter
provide the motive for pursuing the former
(e.g., the activity of bridle-making is
subordinate to the more important activity of
horsemanship, which is in turn subordinate to
the activity of military science). The major
ends for the sake of which minor ends are
pursued are superior and ought to be preferred.

Main Points of Aristotle's Ethical Philosophy

1 The highest good and the end toward which

all human activity is directed is happiness,
which can be defined as continuous
contemplation of eternal and universal
truth.
2
3 One attains happiness by a virtuous life and
the development of reason and the faculty
of theoretical wisdom. For this one requires
sufficient external goods to ensure health,
leisure, and the opportunity for virtuous
action.
4
5 Moral virtue is a relative mean between
extremes of excess and deficiency, and in
general the moral life is one of moderation
in all things except virtue. No human
appetite or desire is bad if it is controlled
 by reason according to a moral principle.
Moral virtue is acquired by a combination
of knowledge, habituation, and self-
discipline.
6
7 Virtuous acts require conscious choice and
moral purpose or motivation. Man has
personal moral responsibility for his
actions.
8
9 Moral virtue cannot be achieved abstractly
it requires moral action in a social
environment. Ethics and politics are closely
related, for politics is the science of
creating a society in which men can live
the good life and develop their full
potential.

For Aristotle, what is virtue and how do we

acquire it?
Virtue, for Aristotle, is the developed ability to
recognize the right or good thing to do. In many
situations, no rulebook can tell us exactly how
to act. Thus a virtuous person must possess
the appropriate disposition that can recognize
as if by instinctthe correct course of action.
This skill is not, however, simply innate. Rather,
we acquire virtue by the development of good
habits, and in turn, habit is developed by the
appropriate exercise of reason in past choices.
In practice, virtue generally meant the
appropriate medium between the two extremes
of excess and defect. For example, brashness
is an excess of courage, while cowardice is a
result of the lack of courage. Courage itself, in
this case, is the term used for the proper
medium. Finally we might also ask, what is the
purpose of virtue? Aristotle believed it was the
means to happiness. He considers and
dismisses alternatives like pleasure and honor:
only a life of virtue can bring about happiness
for human beings.

Eudaimonia: Virtue
What are Aristotelian ethics? A modern work on
ethics may include discussion on rights,
obligations, and duties. However, Aristotle and
other ancient Greek philosophers were primarily
concerned with the good life for humans, or
happiness. Therefore, with Aristotelian ethics the
question became what should or ought one seek in
life in order to achieve this happiness? The answer
was a total life lived well or eudaimonia.
The term, eudaimonia, is derived from eu, meaning
well or good, and daimon, meaning fortune or lot in
life, thus suggesting living a life well (Kraut, 1989).
This can be loosely translated in English to
happiness. However, this translation is somewhat
misleading. Eudaimonia is the complete end or
total good satisfying a persons correct rational
desire. Adler (1991) writes of the right end or the
complete good as totum bonum. The complete
good is considered to be complete for happiness
does not lack anything, but is self-sufficient
(Aristotle, 1984, p 1853). In conjunction with the
idea of happiness, the terms totum bonum and
eudaimonia will be used interchangeably
throughout this critique.
<Eudaimonia Sheet> illustrates the elements that
were deemed essential by Aristotle in order to
attain eudaimonia, or a total life lived well. A
correlation will be drawn between the essential
elements and the humanistic shape of the figure.
Holistically, eudaimonia is represented by the
figure in its entirety: a sense of well-being.
Aristotelian ethics implies that the use of ones
highest faculty -- contemplation or speculative
intellect -- is necessary to pursue eudaimonia. The
partial goods comprise the head and body of the
model and consist of summum bonum (leisure),
social goods, goods of pleasure, goods of the body,
and external goods. Summum bonum (leisure) is at
the top or head of the figure; indisputably, the
human mind harbors the capacity for knowledge,
which is considered paramount for success in
modern times. When in balance and met without
excess throughout ones whole life they make up
totum bonum, or a total life lived well. It is this
combination of all partial goods that leads a person
to eudaimonia under the Aristotelian ethics of
happiness. Finally, according to Aristotelian ethics
of happiness, the driving forces for eudaimonia are
moral virtue and good fortune, thus providing the
foundation, or proverbial feet, of the model.

>Conflict between virtues:

Can we show justice and mercy or do we have to
choose?
Could loyalty to a friend ever require you to be
dishonest?
Is there a mean amount of murder that is virtuous?

A third issue relates to Aristotles accounts of virtuous

action and the virtuous person. A simple reading, which
causes the problem, is this:
1. an act is virtuous if it is an act that would be done by
a virtuous person in this situation;
2. a virtuous person is a person who is disposed to do
virtuous acts.
The difficulty with these definitions is that, taken
together, we are no clearer on what a virtuous act is or
what a virtuous person is. For instance, if we substitute
the definition of a virtuous person in (1), we get an act
is virtuous if it is an act that would be done by a person
who is disposed to do virtuous acts in this situation. The
definition is circular, because we have used the term
virtuous act to define what a virtuous act is! We get the
same problem if we substitute the definition of a
virtuous act in (2): a virtuous person is a person who is
disposed to do acts that would be done by a virtuous
person.
The problem is solved by paying closer attention to
Aristotles definitions. A (fully) virtuous act is indeed an
act that a virtuous person does, when they know what
they are doing and choose the act for its own sake.
However, a virtuous person is not simply someone who
does virtuous actions. A virtuous person has the virtues,
which are traits, including states of character and
excellences of reason, that enable them to achieve
eudaimonia. States of character relate to our choices and
actions, but they are equally concerned with our passions
and with what we find pleasure in. And eudaimonia is
defined not in terms of virtuous actions, but in terms of
many activities of the soul, including feeling, thinking,
and choosing. So while (1) is correct, (2) is too simple.
We could press the objection a different way. We cant
tell whether an act is virtuous without knowing whether
a virtuous person would do it. And we cant tell whether
someone is virtuous without seeing whether they do
virtuous acts.
In reply, first, it is true that the criterion for an act being
virtuous is that it is an act that a virtuous person would
do. But we have a good idea of what a virtuous person is
without being able to name particular individuals as
virtuous or not. When considering what the virtuous
person would do, we need not have any specific virtuous
person in mind. So to judge whether an act is virtuous,
we dont need to first judge that person a is virtuous and
then figure out what a would do.
Second, it is true that we infer that someone is virtuous
from what they do. But again, this is not the only
evidence we have. Virtue is also expressed in emotional
responses and pleasure, as well as the quality of
someones thinking. So there is no circularity in
establishing whether an act or a person is virtuous.
Hedonism is a school of thought that argues
that pleasure and happiness are the primary or
most important intrinsic goods and the proper
aim of human life.[1]

>Explain why Aristotle was not a follower of

Hedonism

1. Aristotle looks for the function of human beings,

but why assume there is a function, and why
assume there is a unique one? What is the
function of paper [writing, wrapping, lining, etc.]?
2. In his Inventing Right and Wrong, J.L. Mackie
contends that:
as guidance about what is the good life, what precisely one
ought to do, or even by what standard one should try to decide
what one ought to do, this is too circular to be very helpful. And
though Aristotles account is filled out with detailed descriptions
of many of the virtues, moral as well as intellectual, the air of
indeterminacy persists. We learn the names of the pairs of
contrary vices that contrast with each of the virtues, but very
little about where or how to draw the dividing lines, where or
how to fix the mean. As Sidgwick says, he only indicates the
whereabouts of virtue.[1]
This critique is echoed by many. Robert Louden, in
his Some Vices of Virtue Ethics, for example,
contends that while Aristotle tells us that right acts
are those which are means between extremes, it is
almost impossible to determine how to apply this
conception in actual situations:
...virtues are not simply dispositions to behave in specified
ways, for which rules and principles can always be cited. In
addition, they involve skills of perception and articulation,
situation-specific know-how, all of which are developed only
through recognizing and acting on what is relevant in concrete
moral contexts as they arise. These skills of moral perception
and practical reason are not completely routinizable, and so
cannot be transferred from agent to agent as any sort of decision
procedure....Due to the very nature of the moral virtues, there is
thus a very limited amount of advice on moral quandaries that
one can reasonably expect from the virtue-oriented approach.[2]
He concludes that virtue-based ethics can not be of
any use in applied ethics or in casuistry.
3. Robert Louden also offers the following criticisms
of Aristotles sort of virtue-based ethical theory:
another reason for making sure that our ethical theory allows us
to talk about features of acts and their results in abstraction from
the agent is his conception of what he is doing is that sometimes
even the best person can make the wrong choices. There are
cases in which a mans choice is grounded in the best possible
information, his motives honorable, and his action not at all out
of character. And yet his best laid plans may go sour. Aristotle,
in his Poetics, suggests that here lies the source of
tragedy....Virtue ethics, however, since its conceptual scheme is
rooted in the notion of a good person, is unable to assess
correctly the occasional (inevitable) tragic outcomes of human
action.[3]
A third reason for insisting that our moral theory
enable us to assess acts in abstraction from agents
is that we need to be able to identify certain types
of action which produce harms of such magnitude
that they destroy the bonds of community and
render (at least temporarily) the achievement of
moral goods impossible.[4]
A fourth reason for insisting that a moral theory be
able to assess acts in abstraction from agents and
their conception of what theyre doing is that
peoples moral characters may sometimes change.
[5]

...the focus on good and bad agents rather than on

right and wrong actions may lead to a peculiar sort
of moral backsliding. Because the emphasis in
agent ethics is on long-term, characteristic
patterns of behavior, its advocates run the risk of
overlooking occasional lies or acts of selfishness on
the ground that such performances are mere
temporary aberrationsacts out of character.[6]
...we do not seem to be able to know with any degree of
certainty who really is virtuous and who vicious.[7] This means
that moral skepticism is a serious problem for a virtue-based
ethical system.
4. In her The Therapy of Desire, Martha Nussbaum
offers the following criticisms of Aristotles ethical
theory:
Aristotelian dialectic...makes several controversial assumptions
about the nature of the ordinary persons ethical beliefs. It
assumes that these beliefs are essentially healthy: truth is in
there, along with whatever is false, and in such a way that, in the
process of scrutiny, the true beliefs will turn out to be the
greatest number and the most basic. Since the beliefs in
question are for the most part socially taught, the procedure also
assumes the relative health of the surrounding society.
Moreover, the method assumes that the most important beliefs
lie close to the surface of the interlocutors reason in such a way
that they can be elicited by calm dialectical questioning. And
finally, the method appears to assume that everyone who ought
to be helped by the dialectical process can be so helped: it points
to no troublesome gap between the availability of rational
therapy and the needs of its intended recipients.
Such assumptions seem to Epicurus at best naive, at worst
obtuse and callous. He invites us to look at ourselves, at
our friends, at the society in which we live. What do we
see when we look, and look honestly?[8]
Nussbaum continues this discussion by questioning
each of these assumptions in turn: people with
unhealthy beliefs (victims of false social
advertising), a sick society (whose sick teachings
about love and sex turn half of its members into
possessions), people who are profoundly ignorant
of what they believe and what motivates them,
and a process which helps only those who are
already well off and have a liberal education.
She concludes the passage by maintaining:
Epicurus challenges us, then, to recognize that Aristotelian
dialectic may be powerless to help where help is most urgently
needed, powerless to criticize where the need for philosophical
critique is greatest. A philosophy that stops here is not only
impotent but also callous: a tool of exploitation, an accomplice
of misery. The powerful challenge compels us: can we
recognize both the depth of social ills and the delicate
complexity of the human psyche and still remain believers in the
calm give-and-take of Aristotelian ethical argument?[9]
Nussbaum also maintains that:
Aristotle cares too much about self-sufficiency and rational
control to admit love in all its terribleness. He permits many
risks, but he despises slavery too much to admit to intrinsic
value a kind of relation in which we are so completely within the
power of another, inhabited, intertwined, with no hard core to
our natures. The Stoic remedy is a contraction of boundaries.
But if we refuse this remedy, we must, it seems, learn to imagine
ourselves with new images: not as safe house-dwellers in the
solid edifice of our own virtue, but as beings soft and sinuous,
weaving in and out of the world, in and out of one another.[10]
5. In his Natural Affection and Responsibility for
Character, Gregory Trianosky maintains that:
...although ones attitudes, emotions, reactive capacities, and
skills are or can to some extent be developed by will, no effort
of will, however sustained, is sufficient for their development.
Character is the product not only of voluntary action but also of
the activity of temperament, along with upbringing, childhood
experiences, social environment, peer expectations, and pure
happenstance. And not only temperament but all of these things
are not themselves the product of some exercise of agency,
whether voluntary or nonvoluntary. Hence, no Aristotelian
account of responsibility for character can succeed.[11]
6. In her Aristotle and the Politicization of the
Soul, Elizabeth Spelman maintains that:
...Aristotle does not try to justify his view about the natural rule
of men over women by reference to a general principle about
ruling and subject elements, for he quite explicitly refers us in
particular to the constitution of the soul. There we find ruling
and subject elements, but they are highly personalized entities
whose relationships are described in terms of political
relationships among human beings. In light of this, we must
conclude that Aristotles argument for the natural rule of men
over women is circular. He argues for the position that men by
nature rule women. How do we know that they do? We know
this because the rational element of the soul by nature rules the
irrational element. And how do we know this? This is where
we come full circle: Because men rule women (and also because
masters rule slaves, because tutors rule children). In fact the
rule of men over women provides us with a means of
understanding the kind of relationship among parts of the soul;
and, coupled with the assumption that men represent the rational
element and women represent the irrational element, it provides
us with a means of establishing that in the soul the rational
element rules the irrational.[12]

History knows nothing about the early life and

training of the Greek philosophers and this is true
not only of the pre-Socratic philosophers: but also
of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who appear in
history about the age of eighteen and begin to
teach at forty.
As a body of men they were undesirable to the
state, (personae non gratae) and were
consequently persecuted and driven into hiding
and secrecy. Under such circumstances they kept
no records of their activities and this was done in
order to conceal their identity. After the conquest of
Egypt by Alexander the Great, and the seizure and
looting of the Royal Library at Alexandria,
Aristotle's plan to usurp Egyptian philosophy, was
subsequently carried out by members of his school:
Theophrastus, Andronicus of Rhodes and Eudemus,
who soon found themselves confronted with the
problem of a chronology for a history of philosophy.
(Introduction of Zeller's Hist. of Phil. p. 13).

Consequently, history makes it clear that the

surrounding neighbours of Egypt had all become
familiar with the teachings of Egyptian Mysteries
many centuries before the Athenians,
p. 10
who in 399 B.C. sentenced Socrates to death
(Zeller's Hist. of Phil., p. 112; 127; 170172) and
subsequently caused Plato and Aristotle to flee for
their lives from Athens, because philosophy was
something foreign and unknown to them. For this
same reason, we would expect either the Ionians or
the Italians to exert their prior claim to philosophy,
since it made contact with them long before it did
with the Athenians, who were always its greatest
enemies, until Alexander's conquest of Egypt,
which provided for Aristotle free access to the
Library of Alexandria.
The Ionians and Italians made no attempt to claim
the authorship of philosophy, because they were
well aware that the Egyptians were the true
authors. On the other hand, after the death of
Aristotle, his Athenian pupils, without the authority
of the state, undertook to compile a history of
philosophy, recognized at that time as the Sophia
or Wisdom of the Egyptians, which had become
current and traditional in the ancient world, which
compilation, because it was produced by pupils
who had belonged to Aristotle's school, later
history has erroneously called Greek philosophy, in
spite of the fact that the Greeks were its greatest
enemies and persecutors, and had persistently
treated it as a foreign innovation. For this reason,
the so-called Greek philosophy is stolen Egyptian
philosophy, which first spread to Ionia, thence to
Italy and thence to Athens. And it must be
remembered that at this remote period of Greek
history, i.e., Thales to Aristotle 640 B.C.322 B.C.,
the Ionians were not Greek citizens, but at first
Egyptian subjects and later Persian subjects.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE), spent some twenty

years advancing his education in Egypt until
the invasion of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE,
when Aristotle got the opportunity he had been
praying for, to ransack leading Egyptian
libraries and carry off all the books he wanted,
to found his academy in Athens called
'Peripatetic Lyceum.'
Aristotle himself claimed to have written a few
books in his lifetime. By 200 BCE, this small
list had been inflated by the Greeks to 400
books, and by the first century CE, Arabian
sources compiled at Alexandria, were saying a
thousand books.
In other words, the Greeks had put Aristotle's
name on as many Egyptian books and
manuscripts as they could lay their hands on in
the Alexandrine library. All the doctrines
associated with Aristotle were stolen from the
Egyptian Mysteries.
His doctrine of Being in the metaphysical
realm, he explained as the relationship
between potentiality and actuality acting
according to the principles of opposites. The
source of this doctrine is the principle of
duality in nature, which Egyptian scientists
represented by male and female Gods and
pairs of pillars in front of their temples.
In the proof of the existence of God, Aristotle
used two doctrines: (a) Teleology, showing
purpose and design in nature as the work of an
Intelligence and (b) The Unmoved Mover. Both
of which, are doctrines of the Memphite
Theology in which creation moved from chaos
to order.
Demiurge or Logos, while sitting unmoved upon
the Primaeval Hill, projected eight Gods from
various parts of his body, thus becoming the
Unmoved Mover. His doctrine of the origin of
the world is that the world is eternal because
matter, motion and time, are eternal.
This same view was expressed by Democritus
in 400 BCE, in the dictum exnihillo nihil fit (out
of nothing, nothing comes), indicating that
matter is eternal. This is the same as the
creation story of the Memphite Theology of the
Egyptians' Primaeval Ocean Nun, out of which
arose the Primaeval Hill, representing chaos or
primitive matter. Aristotle's doctrine was that
nature consists of motion and rest and that the
motion moves from the less perfect to the
more perfect by a definite law of evolution.
This is the Egyptian creation story of the
Memphite Theology, with nature moving from
chaos by gradual steps to order. The doctrine
of the soul in which Aristotle states that the
soul is a radical principle of life which is
identical with the body, and possesses five
attributes; sensitive, rational, nutritive,
appetitive and locomotive.
Other philosophers have defined the soul as:
(a) material and composed of fire atom, (b) a
harmony of the body through the blending of
opposites and (c) as the breath of life in the
creation story of Genesis.
All these definitions are stolen from the
Egyptian Memphite Theology already
discussed, and from the Book of the Dead,
where the soul is explained as a unity of nine
inseparable souls in one, just like the Ennead
Godhead of Nine in One, with necessary
bodies.
Aristotle, like Heracleitus before him,
described dualism as separating the mental
(mind) operations from the changeless
timelessness (matter). Aristotle preached what
he described as the Golden mean i.e., that
courage is a mean between timidity and
recklessness.
The ideal situation is to balance extremes
against each other. He insisted that mind is
inside and not outside matter because mind is
the formative principle. Both need each other
and even in matter's lowest form, mind exists
in degrees.
Aristotle's death in 322 BCE terminated the
development of philosophy among the Greeks
who
lacked the natural ability to advance such a
science. Instead, the Greeks took up the study
of 'Ethics,' which they also borrowed from the
Egyptians' 'Summum Bonum,' or the Greatest
Good.
NAIWU OSAHON, Hon. Khu Mkuu (Leader)
World Pan-African Movement); Spiritual Prince
of the African race; MSc. (Salford); Dip.M.S;
G.I.P.M; Dip.I.A (Liv.); D. Inst. M; G. Inst. M;
G.I.W.M; A.M.N.I.M.Poet, Author of the magnum
opus: 'The end of knowledge'. One of the
world's leading authors of children's books;
Awarded; key to the city of Memphis,
Tennessee, USA; Honourary Councilmanship,
Memphis City Council; Honourary Citizenship,
County of Shelby; Honourary
Commissionership, County of Shelby,
Tennessee; and a silver shield trophy by
Morehouse College, USA, for activities to unite
and uplift the African race.
Naiwu Osahon, renowned author, philosopher
of science, mystique,
leader of the world Pan-African Movement

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