You may have heard of a guy named Aristotle. Even though he’s been dead a long time, some of his ideas were so good that we still study them today.
One of the ideas he proposed is that every activity we do points towards some good. For example when we work, we do it to accomplish some other purpose. Usually this is to make money. The money that we make pays for activities that support another good, for example buying food or shelter. Aristotle suggests that the ultimate end of every good is happiness or joy.
He then examines what brings the most happiness. Aristotle proposes that real happiness comes from living a virtuous life, or a life of excellence. He defines this as a disposition to behave in the right manner. (The exact translation is a bit more nuanced, but this will suffice for our purposes here.) While living a life of excellence doesn’t guarantee happiness, it is impossible to be truly happy without it.
He then explores several virtues. He acknowledges that this is not an exact science. The ideal of a virtue can vary by person and situation. Rather, this is a general guideline to help us in living a virtuous, and thus happy, life.
Let’s look at cowardice as an example.
What is the opposite of cowardice?
Go ahead, say it to clarify it in your mind.
What is the opposite of cowardice?
If you’re like most folks (and pretty much everyone I’ve ever had this conversation with), you will have said “bravery” or “courage.” That’s what my response was when I was first introduced to this idea.
But Aristotle points out that the opposite of cowardice is, in fact, rashness or foolhardiness. Courage actually lies between these two extremes. It may resemble foolhardiness more than cowardice, but it is neither of these and is found in between.
You may have heard that the opposite of love is not hate, but rather apathy. Using Aristotle's approach, I would suggest that the opposite of apathy is actually obsession, and the ideal -- love -- lies between apathy and obsession.
In virtue after virtue, the ideal lies between the extremes of excess and deficiency.
This concept is often referred to as the Doctrine of the Mean, or the Aristotle’s Golden Mean.
This philosophy has had a profound effect on the way I live my life, and the way I strive to live by these virtues.
And now the big question in this essay: If living an excellent life means adopting the ideal between two extremes, what if we look at the solutions to political problems through the same lens?
What if the ideal solution to our vexing social and political problems is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes that keep pulling against each other?
We can look at examples of macro government to give us some idea whether there is any use to this approach. Just as every action we take aims at achieving some good, all politics points toward some perceived or intended good. History shows us that, in general, society and civilization prosper most with government in place to help protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of its citizens.
At one extreme, with no government there is no rule of law greater than the violence one person can impose on another.
At the other extreme, a totalitarian government crushes the Liberties of the people under the weight of a nameless, faceless, emotionless entity.
The ideal of government, then, lies somewhere between these two extremes. In the United States, we adopted a representative republic. Other democratic nations have their own variation between the two extremes.
Expanding the idea into not just governmental systems, but the policies that system implements, where else might we find the ideal somewhere in the middle?
- Economic policy?
- Taxes?
- Gun control?
- Abortion?
What if, instead of approaching policies as a “winner take all” or “all or nothing” game, we started with the assumption that the ideal solution is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes?