Golden Mean (philosophy)
In philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, the golden mean is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. For example courage, a virtue, if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness and if deficient as cowardice.
To the Greek mentality, it was an attribute of beauty. Both ancients and moderns realized that there is a close association in mathematics between beauty and truth. The poet John Keats, in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, put it this way:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
The Greeks believed there to be three 'ingredients' to beauty: symmetry, proportion, and harmony. This triad of principles infused their life. They were very much attuned to beauty as an object of love and something that was to be imitated and reproduced in their lives, architecture, education (Paideia) and politics. They judged life by this mentality.
In Chinese philosophy, a similar concept, Doctrine of the Mean, was propounded by Confucius; Buddhist philosophy also includes the concept of the middle way.
Read more about Golden Mean (philosophy): Quotations
Famous quotes containing the word golden:
“But when the bowels of the earth were sought,
And men her golden entrails did espy,
This mischief then into the world was brought,
This framed the mint which coined our misery.
...
And thus began th’exordium of our woes,
The fatal dumb-show of our misery;
Here sprang the tree on which our mischief grows,
The dreary subject of world’s tragedy.”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)