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Old Sun Apr 19, 2009, 11:01am
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Rich Rich is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BillyMac View Post
From this we can draw a lesson from Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean. Virtue consists of finding an appropriate middle ground between two extremes. As such, each virtue has not one opposite but two. The opposite of courage is both cowardice and rashness, for example. This idea that there are two opposites for every virtue goes against much of the received wisdom of Aristotle's time, including Plato's writings on virtue. It also emphasizes the importance of moderation: we achieve virtue by finding a middle ground, not by aiming for an extreme.
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