A philosophy webcomic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also Jokes

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Aristotle's Golden Mean



Aristotle: "Yes, my friends, courage is a virtue. But as with all things, we cannot take courage too far." Aristotle: "Just as the coward flees from all danger, the rash man judges all danger to be worth facing, and so has no fear at all." Aristotle: "True virtuous courage lies somewhere in the middle - in being able to stand up to danger but also in knowing when to flee. This is my principle of the golden mean." Zeno of Elea: "What about the virtue of following the golden mean, Aristotle?" Aristotle: "What do you mean, Zeno?" Zeno: "Well, by your own logic we shouldn't follow the golden mean itself to its extreme." Zeno: "Just like the rash person with courage, that would be too much golden mean!" Aristotle: "Zeno, that's not how..." Zeno: "So the true virtuous golden mean is to only halfway follow the golden mean." Zeno: "Ugh.." Zeno: "But! If this is the true golden mean, should we not only halfway follow it as well? Which means we should be only one quarter virtuous...and so on until we must only have an infinitely small amount of courage." Aristotle: "Here's a virtuous golden mean for you Zeno: a good philosopher should not come up with NO paradoxes, but neither should a philosopher base their entire career off more or less rephrasing the same paradox in slightly different ways. That makes one a complete hack." Zeno: "Actually, i think you'll find that no one can ever reach becoming a “complete” hack..."
True virtue is to only bother Aristotle with asinine objections to his theories about half the time.

For Aristotle, virtue was often a sort of disposition between to unhealthy extremes, sometimes referred to as a "golden mean".

Zeno is best knows for his paradoxes, which often involved the difficulty in conceptualizing infinite regresses. If we applied the type of logic Zeno uses to Aristotle's concept in a rather stupid way, it would cancel itself out.

For Aristotle, virtue was often a sort of disposition between to unhealthy extremes, sometimes referred to as a "golden mean".

Zeno is best knows for his paradoxes, which often involved the difficulty in conceptualizing infinite regresses. If we applied the type of logic Zeno uses to Aristotle's concept in a rather stupid way, it would cancel itself out.

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