Aristotle's Golden Mean

Golden mean (philosophy)

     Appearing in Greek thought at least as early as the Delphic Maxim nothing to excess and emphasized in later Aristotelian philosophy, the golden mean or golden middle way is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency.

    For example, in the Aristotelian view, courage is a virtue, but if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness, and, in deficiency, cowardice.

     To the Greek mentality, it was an attribute of beauty. Ancient Greeks believed that there is a close association in mathematics between beauty and truth. The Greeks believed there to be three "ingredients" to beauty: symmetry, proportion, and harmony. Beauty was an object of love and something that was to be imitated and reproduced in their lives, architecture, education (paideia), and politics. They judged life by this mentality.

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