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Excess should be avoided because it leads one away from t... — Carmelics

Home/Virtue Ethics

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Excess should be avoided because it leads one away from the path of virtue.

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1 reason for

2 reasons against

Reasons For

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Reason for

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1.Abandoning cautious moderation is itself an incautious withdrawal from the path of virtue.
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2.That which is excessive causes one to depart from virtue.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against 1 of 2

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1.Aristotle's doctrine of the mean locates virtue not at a fixed moderate point but at the contextually appropriate response, which sometimes demands excess by ordinary standards.
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2.Courage in battle, righteous anger at injustice, and magnanimity in great souls require intensities that superficially appear excessive but constitute virtuous extremity.
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3.A universal prohibition on excess conflates the mean relative to us with an arithmetic mean, committing precisely the error Aristotle warned against in Nicomachean Ethics II.6.
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Reason against 2 of 2

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1.Nietzsche argues in 'Beyond Good and Evil' that the morality of moderation is a slavish constraint that prevents the exceptional individual from realizing genuinely great virtue.
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2.If certain virtues like creative excellence or heroic self-overcoming require transgressing conventional limits, then excess relative to common standards is constitutive of those virtues, not a departure from them.
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Related

A universal prohibition on excess conflates the mean relative to us with an arit...Abandoning cautious moderation is itself an incautious withdrawal from the path ...Aristotle's doctrine of the mean locates virtue not at a fixed moderate point bu...Courage in battle, righteous anger at injustice, and magnanimity in great souls ...

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If certain virtues like creative excellence or heroic self-overcoming require tr...Nietzsche argues in 'Beyond Good and Evil' that the morality of moderation is a ...That which is excessive causes one to depart from virtue.

Similar

Health is not a virtue and does not contribute to virtue.82%That which is excessive causes one to depart from virtue.80%Abandoning cautious moderation is itself an incautious withdrawal from...80%Eudaimonia requires virtue.79%

Source

AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid

SEP: john-salisbury

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the philosopher says: Beware that which is excessive because if one abandons this cautious moderation itself, to that extent does one withdraw incautiously from the path of virtue … What, therefore is advanced by excess, if the queen of the virtues, justice, perishes in its excessiveness? (PC: 54)

Extraction notes

Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

Details

Type: claim

Perspectives

3 (1 for, 2 against)

Edits