Temporary Madness, by David Carlin

By David Carlin, The Catholic Thing, April 8, 2021

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

I was in college when I first learned about Aristotle’s famous dictum that virtue (or moral excellence) is a mean – I suppose we may call it a “golden” mean – between the two extremes of “too much” and “too little.”  Courage, for instance, is a mean between cowardice on the one hand and foolhardiness on the other.  And generosity is a mean between stinginess and profligacy.  And so on.

Well, my reaction on hearing this was not to admire Aristotle for his wisdom; rather it was to think less of him because, it seemed to me, he was doing no more than stating the obvious.  “Who doesn’t know this?” I thought to myself.  I had previously heard of Aristotle.  …