Aristotle's Function Argument Against The Golden Mean Theory
This ideas of Aristotle being applied to our modern world has been challenged though and the main points against it are his function argument that I explained before and the most damaging of all, the failure of the golden mean theory. To start the function argument is repeated time and time again to show the linkage between the build-up ideas to the base of the virtuous character but it is a flawed idea. Using the fact that animals are observed to not be as smart as humans and what separates us is reason Apostle then applies his belief of a person of the intellectual person is virtuous. This is an example of an is-ought problem where a description is followed by the writer's personal ideals. The problem with it is that it tries to make it so
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When explaining the golden mean he describes the two vices of extremes but their problem with it, each extreme really isn’t extreme. An example provided by Aristotle is courage, where he uses coherence and rashness as the two extremes. While cowardice is definitely too little courage “rashness is not really too much courage, it instead is a synonymy of courage with negative connotations rather than too much courage”. One might believe this example is an outlier and a failed translation from ancient Greek to English but the same problem still continues. Really using the openness of “extremes being bad and means being good” anything can be labelled as virtuous by finding a lower extreme and a higher extreme and saying the action is really in the middle of the two as it is not as bad as the others. For example say if someone rounded up a bunch of criminals and shot them in the back of the neck, an extreme action, he could simply just make express the 2 extremes as letting wreak havoc on the world or torturing them to death. By simply making the 2 extremes be worse than the action he can simply use his human function and reason that he is really virtuous as his action was better than the extremes even though there were better options. The problem with the golden mean idea is that it is simply a grandiose idea but inside it really it’s really too good to be
When explaining the golden mean he describes the two vices of extremes but their problem with it, each extreme really isn’t extreme. An example provided by Aristotle is courage, where he uses coherence and rashness as the two extremes. While cowardice is definitely too little courage “rashness is not really too much courage, it instead is a synonymy of courage with negative connotations rather than too much courage”. One might believe this example is an outlier and a failed translation from ancient Greek to English but the same problem still continues. Really using the openness of “extremes being bad and means being good” anything can be labelled as virtuous by finding a lower extreme and a higher extreme and saying the action is really in the middle of the two as it is not as bad as the others. For example say if someone rounded up a bunch of criminals and shot them in the back of the neck, an extreme action, he could simply just make express the 2 extremes as letting wreak havoc on the world or torturing them to death. By simply making the 2 extremes be worse than the action he can simply use his human function and reason that he is really virtuous as his action was better than the extremes even though there were better options. The problem with the golden mean idea is that it is simply a grandiose idea but inside it really it’s really too good to be