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Anarchierkegaard's avatar

Your section charity seems obviously problematic to me (there is no obvious external difference between a "hand out" from a wealthy person to a beggar and from a parent to a child - they're both acts of charity, albeit differently internally), but you did remind me of Kierkegaard's commentary on lazy virtue theorists in that the equation of righteousness with the middle way [Midelvej] is a sign of the world's contentedness with mediocrity [Middelmaadighed] (Christian Discourses, p. 207).

Instead of principles or the middle way, we might consider "webs" of inter-related virtues. For S. K., this was love, faith, and hope (very Pauline) which are maximal values in the golden mean due to their "infinite passion". Then, all values flow from those.

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Brad Skow's avatar

I thought your view IS Aristotle’s? The courageous man experiences the amount of fear *the particular situation calls for* (accuracy). The mean stuff is just to say that there are two ways to depart from accuracy: too much fear (cowardice) and too little.

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