Study On The Middle Way Of Aristotle

As the core content of Aristotle’s moral philosophy, the Middle Way is stipulated as the supreme good. According to Aristotle, virtue is the Middle Way and the Middle Way has got profound connotations. Instead of simply being a compromise, it not only refers to virtue that determines our lives and methods that guide our practice but also is the criterion to direct our behaviors and a kind of action objective. With moderation as the principal, the Middle Way is very difficult to be realized. So, we need to constantly pursue it with the guidance of rationality. Meanwhile, the Middle Way is also a kind of extreme that is related to “good” but completely different from “evil”. Although it is hard to achieve the Middle Way, yet it can be slightly adjusted, which makes it possible for us to reach it. Aristotle also divided the life people are supposed to live into three types:Happy life, political life and contemplative life. How does the Middle Way works among the three types of life as a method? How does it realize the kind of perfect life advocated by Aristotle? A detailed inquiry of and answering of those questions are going to further clarify the ethical significance of the Middle Way, namely what the Middle Way really means in a generalized ethical and political sense. By exploring and analyzing the connotation and ethical implications of the Middle Way put forward by Aristotle, the paper is going to reveal the concrete meaning and ethical implications of the Middle Way.In the end, by analyzing the Middle Way, the paper tries to grasp the basic connotation of the Middle Way and proceed from the reality to comprehensively explain its practical impacts on realizing “good life” and cultivating the overall virtues of individuals and the society, and its enlightenment on ecological ethics and ethical education.