The Golden Mean and the Nature of the Good

(Hardback)

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What is it to say that a thing is good or valuable To answer this question, The Golden Mean and the Nature of the Good engages in conversation with ancient and recent thinkers, including Aristotle, the Cynics, and Immanuel Kant. Glen Koehn rejects several widely held ideas about value, instead offering a thoroughly end-relative theory in the spirit of modern pragmatism. Koehn suggests that certain dilemmas such as whether value is subjective or objective and whether things are good instrumentally or as ends in themselves are defective and discusses some consequences for aesthetic criticism and the relativity of taste in the final chapters.

An often-overlooked case of goal-oriented goodness is the virtuous Mean, understood along roughly Aristotelian lines. This ambitious and clearly written book explores Aristotles idea of an intermediate between deficiency and excess and argues that, suitably reinterpreted, it has an important place in contemporary moral and aesthetic debates.

Author Bio

Glen Koehn is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Huron University College in London, Ontario.