The Golden Mean
Aristotle on virtue and flourishing
The Golden Mean
Aristotle saw virtue as a balance between extremes. Courage sits between cowardice and recklessness; generosity between stinginess and waste. This 'golden mean' isn't a fixed midpoint but the right response for the situation, found through practice and good judgment. Living this way, he argued, leads to eudaimonia, a flourishing, well-lived life.
“Virtue is a mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.”
Where this sits in the course
“The Golden Mean” is lesson 3 of 5 in How Should We Act?, a course about turn from what is true to what should be done.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.
How Should We Act? is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.
More from Aristotle
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
In the app this lesson is followed by 4 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.