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Single Idea 5161

[filed under theme 23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / f. The Mean ]

Full Idea

It is easy to get angry - anyone can do that - but to feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way - that is not easy, and it is not everyone that can do it.

Gist of Idea

To make one's anger exactly appropriate to a situation is very difficult

Source

Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1109a26)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'Ethics (Nicomachean)', ed/tr. ThomsonJ A K/TredennickH [Penguin 1976], p.109

A Reaction

This shows clearly that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is NOT the same as the virtue of temperance (as Nietzsche seemed to think). Appropriate anger could be very forceful indeed, and bravery might be quite extreme in a particular crisis.

The 26 ideas with the same theme [virtues as appropriate route between evils]:

7359 Excess and deficiency are equally at fault [Kongzi (Confucius)]
20917 Contentment comes from moderation and proportion in life [Democritus, by Stobaeus]
305 Something which lies midway between two evils is better than either of them [Plato]
281 The arts produce good and beautiful things by preserving the mean [Plato]
3545 The mean implies that vices are opposed to one another, not to virtue [Aristotle, by Annas]
47 Virtues are destroyed by the excess and preserved by the mean [Aristotle]
4406 Aristotle aims at happiness by depressing emotions to a harmless mean [Nietzsche on Aristotle]
60 The mean is relative to the individual (diet, for example) [Aristotle]
61 Skills are only well performed if they observe the mean [Aristotle]
4388 One drink a day is moderation, but very drunk once a week could exhibit the mean [Urmson on Aristotle]
4387 In most normal situations it is not appropriate to have any feelings at all [Urmson on Aristotle]
62 We must tune our feelings to be right in every way [Aristotle]
5159 The mean is always right, and the extremes are always wrong [Aristotle]
65 The vices to which we are most strongly pulled are most opposed to the mean [Aristotle]
5161 To make one's anger exactly appropriate to a situation is very difficult [Aristotle]
5235 Patient people are indignant, but only appropriately, as their reason prescribes [Aristotle]
5238 The sincere man is praiseworthy, because truth is the mean between boasting and irony [Aristotle]
23914 People sometimes exhibit both extremes together, but the mean is contrary to both of them [Aristotle]
2829 The law is the mean [Aristotle]
21395 One of Zeno's books was 'That Which is Appropriate' [Zeno of Citium, by Long]
3049 The chief good is indifference to what lies midway between virtue and vice [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius]
20848 An appropriate action is one that can be defended, perhaps by its consistency. [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]
7453 Galen's medicine followed the mean; each illness was balanced by opposite treatment [Galen, by Hacking]
21417 How do we distinguish a mean? The extremes can involve quite different maxims [Kant]
21420 If virtue is the mean between vices, then virtue is just the vanishing of vice [Kant]
20372 The instinct of the herd, the majority, aims for the mean, in the middle [Nietzsche]