- Aristotle defines virtue as “a state apt to exercise deliberate choice, being in the relative mean, determined by reason” [1] — not a fixed universal midpoint, but the mean relative to the person and situation: “neither too much nor too little for the particular individual,” which “is not one nor the same to all” [2].
- The mean is worked out through paired vices, one of excess and one of deficiency, on either side of the virtue: courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness; self-mastery (temperance) the mean with total absence of self-control as its defect; liberality the mean between stinginess and prodigality [3].
- Aristotle is explicit that finding the mean is genuinely hard — “hard it is in each instance to find the mean” [4] — and gives a practical workaround: “force ourselves off in the contrary direction, because we shall find ourselves in the mean after we have removed ourselves far from the wrong side” — deliberately dragging yourself toward whichever extreme is furthest from your natural failure mode, since that’s more likely to land you near the center than doing nothing [4].
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle's foundational treatise on virtue ethics, written around 340 BCE; Book II's doctrine of the mean — each virtue a balance between a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency — is the direct ancestor of the over-doing/under-doing pattern used across Management Craft's competency levels.
- Author
- Published
- 340 BCE
- Purchase
- AmazonBookshop.org
- You’re building a rubric for what “good” looks like at a given level or role: without this book, “good” gets defined as a single fixed checklist. Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean — that virtue is relative to the person and situation [2], bounded by two failure modes rather than one [3] — is the direct ancestor of MC’s own over-doing/under-doing rubric pattern, including the Golden Mean.
- Someone corrects a bad habit and swings too far the other way (a micromanager becomes completely hands-off, an overly blunt manager goes silent instead): without this book, both states get evaluated separately instead of as two ends of the same failure. Aristotle is explicit that “both the excess and defect belong to Vice, and the mean state to Virtue” [2] — under- and over-correction are the same category of mistake, just on opposite sides.
- You genuinely can’t tell where the mean sits for a behavior you’re coaching: without this book, the uncertainty stalls the coaching conversation. Aristotle’s practical instruction — when in doubt, lean toward whichever extreme you’re least prone to [4] — gives a concrete tiebreaker instead of paralysis.
1
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. D. P. Chase, Book II, ch. VI, accessed July 27, 2026.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8438
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8438