Aristotle's Doctrine Of The Mean

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics provided a valuable framework based on his theories of achieving happiness and which life is the most worthy of fulfilling in life. One of his foundational beliefs in his system of beliefs is that happiness can be achieved on an individual level with the embracement of virtue. Determining what the virtue is, there exists two vices that set parameters as excessive or deficient, and what is in between is considered the virtue, or ‘mean state’, for which one should relate towards when using “good reason” to make an action. The ‘Doctrine of the Mean’ explains that a virtue is a mean between excessive and deficient, and the doctrine’s intentions were to push one towards achieving Eudaimonia, a Greek phrase that roughly

To define the aretê, it is the overall excellence of something that is good and possesses the ability to function well at its role. For example, if one claims the excellence of an eye, it automatically attributes that the eye is both good and that of its work, the characteristic to have immaculate vision. Using such rationale, the excellence of a man would be defined as a state of character which makes a man good and that which makes him do his own work well. According to Aristotle, anything in this case can be virtuous, even inanimate objects like dry-erase markers for a whiteboard, can achieve its function, or Ergos, in the marker’s case, to have provided enough marker fluid to perform the action of scribing the information in question. The Doctrine of the Mean was in design a framework for defining what the virtues of man are. In turn, the framework provided a foundation for the aretê, the virtue or excellence itself, playing an essential part in the quest to achieving Eudaimonia. This doctrine contains precise steps for a precise path towards Eudaimonia and Aristotle demonstrates why such precision is needed, quoted that, “It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far that as the nature of the subject