Question

What does Aristotle mean by the idea of "aiming at the mean?" Be detailed.

Answer 1

Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is sometimes dismissed as an unhelpful and unfortunate mistake in what would otherwise be -- or perhaps, in spite of this lapse, still is -- a worthwhile enterprise. Bernard Williams, for example, clearly regards it thus:

Aristotle's...views on [virtue] are bound up with one of the most celebrated and least useful parts of his system, the doctrine of the Mean, according to which every virtue of character lies between two correlative faults or vices..., which consist respectively of the excess and the deficiency of something of which the attribute represents the right amount. The theory oscillates between an unhelpful analytical model (which Aristotle himself does not consistently follow) and a substantively depressing doctrine in favor of moderation. The principle of the Mean is better forgotten.[1]

Williams's remark strikes me as both unfair to Aristotle and, perhaps as a result, blind to precise ethical insights of which Aristotle is keenly aware. In this essay, I shall offer a more charitable interpretation of the doctrine of the mean. In sections I-III I bring together various things Aristotle says in developing his view that virtue or excellence lies in the observance of away. In part IV, I turn to the undeniable fact that as I have interpreted it the doctrine of the mean does not provide detailed and unambiguous guidance to agents deliberating in particular situations. I suggest that it was not intended to provide such advice, and argue that this does not mean that it is not a useful part of Aristotle's ethical theory worth the attention of moral philosophers.

I

Aristotle develops the doctrine of the mean in the course of his discussion of aretê, excellence or virtue, in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics (see also Eudemian Ethics, Book II, chapters 3 and 5).[2] There, he writes that

all excellence makes what has it good, and also enables it to perform its function well. For instance, the excellence of an eye makes the eye good and enables it to function well as an eye; having good eyes means being able to see well. Likewise, the excellence of a horse makes it a good horse, and so good at galloping, carrying its rider, and facing the enemy. If this is true in all cases, then, the excellence of a human being will be that disposition which makes him a good human being and which enables him to perform his function well. (1106a16-25)

The function or specific activity of human beings, Aristotle has argued in Book I, is "a way of living... consisting in the exercise of the psyche's capacities by reason, or at any rate not in opposition to reason"; a good person "exercises these capacities and performs these activities well." Excellence, then, is that condition which best suits us to perform those activities which are distinctively human. Hence the best life for a human being will involve "the active exercise of his psyche's capacities by excellence" (1098a12-18).

But where does the mean come in? Aristotle summarizes his account of excellence in Book II, chapter 6:

excellence... is a settled disposition determining choice, involving the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by reason, as the practically wise person would determine it. (1106b36-1107a2; cf. EE II.5, 1222a6-10)

But why should excellence or virtue involve the observance of a mean?

The notion of the mean, and that of the observance of the way, would have been familiar to those who attended Aristotle's lectures. They were at the conceptual center of the most advanced and sophisticated science of the day, medicine. Aristotle's father was a physician, and medical concepts and examples played a critical and widely-recognized role in the philosophizing of Aristotle's day. Health was believed to lie in a balance of powers, in a mixture so constituted that none of its constituent elements eclipsed the others. The author of the Hippocratic treatise On Breaths writes that "opposites are cures for opposites. Medicine is addition and subtraction, subtraction of what is in excess, the addition of what is wanting."[3] Aristotle himself expresses this view, e.g., in the Topics (139b21, 145b7-10). Proper balance or proportion makes for health, lack of it for disease (On the Generation of Animals 767a20-35; cf. Physics 246b3-20).

Aristotle imports this way of thinking into his account of ethical excellence or excellence of character. Bodily strength and health are destroyed by excess and deficiency. Too much food, or too much exercise, is bad for health, just as too little food or exercise is. The same holds in ethical matters. Here too, excellence is

so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and deficiency ... (here we must explain what is invisible employing visible illustrations). (1104a12-13)

Bodily health is a matter of observing a mean between extremes of excess and deficiency. Further, Aristotle says, this provides an apt visible illustration of an invisible truth about ethical health. The excellence of any kind, Aristotle says,

aims at the mean [tou messed... stochastikê: I discuss the importance of this construction below]. The excellence of character is concerned with emotions and acts, in which there can be excess or deficiency or a mean. For example, one can be frightened or bold, feel desire or anger or pity, and experience pleasure and pain generally, either more or less than is right, and in both cases wrongly; while to have these feelings at the right time, on the right occasion, toward the right people, for the right purpose and in the right manner, is to feel the best amount of them, which is the mean amount -- and the best amount is, of course, the mark of excellence. Likewise, in acts, there can be an excess, deficiency and a mean... Hence excellence is a mean state in the sense that it aims at the mean. (1106b15-29; cf. EE II.3, 1220b22-34)

In this important passage, to which I shall return shortly, we are invited to compare excellence of character -- or the person who has such excellence -- to a skilled archer able to hit a target. Aristotle begins the NE with this simile (1094a23-24), and he returns to it throughout. I shall argue that it can shed a good deal of light on the idea that virtue or excellence lies in a mean.