Aristotle’s Mean in Politics and Religion

In this paper, we investigate the political and religious projection of Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean. According to Aristotle and his virtue ethics theory, humans succeed the mean when they acknowledge in what they are physically inclined to. If someone knows towards where she is deviating, either in terms of exaggeration or understatement, then she can, at some point, achieve the mean as the end goal of ethical virtue. But what if these moral evaluations refer to collective processes, such as politics, culture and religion? In this case, the notion of “intermediate” could be paralleled with the notion of ‘optimized’. A way of locating the optimized point on the political or cultural public sphere is to acknowledge in what people are politically or culturally inclined to. This seems to be guided by their cultural traditions, political history and aims. In politics and modern democracies, the doctrine may be applied in virtues, such as justice. Excess in the administration of justice causes "witch hunts" and deficiency lawlessness. Respectively, in today’s religious-oriented societies - countries that could be ranked according to their religiosity – where there is little tolerance in their permissible cultural patterns, the application of Aristotle’s mean reveals interesting findings. More specifically, in the case of the virtue of honor, the excess may lead to honor crimes and deficiency to contempt.

Perfect Duties to Oneself Merely as a Moral Being

This chapter considers Kant’s arguments for the claims that lying, miserliness, and servility are violations of duties to oneself. Although his argument against lying appeals to natural teleology, namely, that the purpose of one’s power of communication is to accurately convey one’s thoughts, this chapter argues that the argument is fallacious and that the wrongness of lying is better explained by relating it to the duties of conscience and self-scrutiny—duties partly constitutive of the duty of moral self-perfection. In addressing the duty to avoid miserliness, the chapter considers how Kant’s conception of virtue and vice contrasts with his understanding of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. The chapter continues with the duty to avoid servility and its relation to Kant’s conception of ‘true noble pride’ to be found in the earlier lecture notes on ethics. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Kant’s so-called moral rigorism.

Target Centred Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics in its contemporary manifestation is dominated by neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics primarily developed by Rosalind Hursthouse. This version of eudaimonistic virtue ethics was groundbreaking but by now has been subject to considerable critical attention. The time is ripe for new developments and alternatives. The target centred virtue ethics proposed in this book (TVE) is opposed to orthodox virtue ethics in two major ways. First, it rejects the ‘natural goodness’ metaphysics of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics owed to Philippa Foot in favour of a ‘hermeneutic ontology’ of ethics inspired by the Continental tradition and McDowell. Second, it rejects the well-known ‘qualified agent’ account of right action made famous by Hursthouse in favour of a target-centred framework for assessing rightness of acts. The target-centred view, introduced in Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (VEP), is much more developed in TVE with discussions of Dancy’s particularism, default reasons and thick concepts, codifiability, and its relation to the Doctrine of the mean (suitably interpreted). TVE retains the pluralism of VEP but develops it further in relation to a pluralistic account of practical reason. Besides the pluralism TVE develops other substantive positions including the view that target centred virtue ethics is developmental, suitably embedded in an environmental ethics of “dwelling”; and incorporates a concept of differentiated virtue to allow for roles, narrativity, cultural and historical location, and stage of life.

The Intellectual Virtues

This chapter explores the nature of intellectual character virtues, as a way of preparing the reader for the rest of the book, which explores individual virtues in detail. After providing a list of important intellectual virtues and some examples of these virtues “in action,” the chapter proceeds to discuss the structure of virtues. It identifies intellectual virtues as excellent traits of character involving thought, behavior, and motivation in relation to knowledge. The chapter then introduces a model for understanding intellectual virtues that parallels Aristotle’s account of the moral virtues. Specifically, many intellectual virtues stand as a mean between vices of deficiency and excess. After applying Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean to several intellectual virtues, the chapter closes by applying Aristotle’s metaphor of virtue as hitting a target. It suggests that our intellectual actions “hit the target” insofar as they involve our doing the right intellectual acts, at the right times, in the right ways, and for the right reasons.

Be on Guard for Networking Failures in a Public System

Networks and networking tend to be regarded as beneficial for individuals and organizations. However, embeddedness in networking efforts can be counterproductive and bring unexpected negative consequences - networking failures. Many studies have been concentrated on technical breakdowns in addressing networking failures. They paid little attention to other factors or mechanisms. This technical-oriented approach hinders system managers from foreseeing the formation and changes of a system, particularly a public system, in due course. This article employs a deductive approach to study the facade of networking and its failures. By proposing a network typology, it scrutinizes the fundamental building blocks of any networks and standard functionalities, explores the laws governing any networks' operations, and traces the possible dysfunctions of networks in static and dynamic environments. Based on the explorations, this research introduces a new tool. It argues that by borrowing the principles embedded in the Doctrine of the Mean, it could help prevent disaster seeds from growing in a functional network.

Is Neo-Aristotelian Supererogation Even Possible?

This chapter considers and responds to five objections to the internal coherence of a neo-Aristotelian account of supererogation. I particular, it considers the objections that the account is incompatible with the doctrine of the mean, that it makes virtue optional, that supererogation requires a logical relation among ethical concepts that Aristotelians cannot make sense of, that it is problematically non-action-guiding, and that it is incompatible with Aristotle’s claim that the virtuous person is the measure of right action. In each case, it argues that the most plausible interpretation of the Aristotelian claim under discussion is compatible with the neo-Aristotelian account of supererogation defended in the book.

Aristotle and Moral Scepticism

This chapter continues to look for evidence of moral reinforcement in the NE. My attention focuses initially on the function argument of NE I 7, which shows remarkable similarities to an argument used at the end of Republic I to convince the moral sceptic Thrasymachus that justice is necessary for happiness. I show how Aristotle synthesized this argument with the doctrine of the mean to provide a new argument that what we intuitively think of as virtues are indeed the qualities required for eudaimonia. Again, he is not attempting to convert an actual sceptic, but targeting the sceptical position in order to reinforce the moral convictions of his audience. In the second part of the chapter, I contrast the approach of the NE with Politics VII, where Aristotle does appear interested in the more ambitious task of converting the sceptic.

Liu Zongzhou

Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (personal name Xianzhang 憲章, courtesy name Qidong 起東, literary names Niantai 念台, Jishan 蕺山; b. 1578–d. 1645) was an important Neo-Confucian thinker in the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) of China. Born as a posthumous child in Shanyin (Shaoxing) of the Zhejiang province, he was brought up by his mother, educated by his maternal grandfather and became a successful candidate of the metropolitan and palace examination in 1601. In 1621, as the Supplementary Secretary in the Ministry of Rites, he began to impeach the corrupt but powerful eunuch Wei Zongxian. In 1624, he declined the offer to be Junior Vice Commissioner of the Office of Transmission, and his status was reduced to that of a commoner. In 1629, he resumed office as the governor of Shuntian Prefecture, and resigned the next year to establish the Zhengren 證人 Association and to lecture at the Shigui 石匱 Academy. In 1636, he became Senior Vice Minister of Works. Yet he soon resigned to criticize the Senior Grand Secretary Wen Tiren 溫體仁, and this led to the degradation of his status to a commoner again. In 1642, he was promoted to Censor-in-chief, but he was relieved of his office when he antagonized the emperor by trying to save two censorial officials. During the fall of Beijing, he resumed his office as Censor-in-chief. He attacked the corrupt officials Ma Shiying 馬士英 and Ruan Dacheng 阮大鋮 and finally left his office. His official career lasted for forty-five years, during which he had held office six and a half years, was in active service at court only four years, and had been degraded to the status of commoner three times. With the fall of Nanjing and Hangzhou in succession to the Manchus and his decision to express his loyalty and patriotism to the country, he ended his life by fasting for twenty days. Liu distinguished himself as a Neo-Confucian philosopher and scholar. The main doctrines of his teaching are “vigilance in solitude” (shendu慎獨) and “sincerity of will” (chengyi誠意), which originate from the two Confucian classics Doctrine of the Mean and Great Learning. Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (b. 1610–d. 1695), his important disciple and a well-known intellectual historian, placed him and his school of thought in the last part of Huang’s influential work, The Records of Ming Scholars. Huang not only compared him to the most significant Neo-Confucian philosophers, but also hinted that his philosophy signified the final summation of the Neo-Confucian tradition from the Song to Ming dynasties. He is commonly regarded as one of the most important Song-Ming Neo-Confucian thinkers. It is the creativity and depth of his philosophy that deserves scholars’ attention.

Open-mindedness in Three Dimensions

In this programmatic essay, I approach the question "What is open-mindedness?" through three more specific questions, each designed to foreground a distinct dimension along which the analysis of open-mindedness might proceed: When is open-mindedness? What is not open-mindedness? and, Where is open-mindedness? The first question refers to the temporal dimension of open-mindedness, which I analyze in terms of Dewey’s distinction between recognition and perception and the psychoanalytic concept of disavowal. The second question refers to the dialectical dimension of open-mindedness, to what the many aspects of closed-mindedness reveal about open-mindedness. Here I recall Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. The third question refers to the dimension of scale, asking what open- and closed-mindedness look like on the interpersonal and social levels. To bring out this third dimension, I draw on Jonathan Lear's reading of the Republic and psychoanalytic group dynamics theory. Through these three related inquiries I show the range of this central intellectual virtue and bring out its connections to two central, related features of the moral life: the need for integration and the need for openness to newness and complexity.