Seems like worrying about blockages is just another blockage.
The chief condition of happiness, then, barring certain physical
prerequisites, is the life of reason-the specific glory and power of
man. Virtue, or rather excellence,* will depend on clear judgment,
self-control, symmetry of desire, artistry of means; it is not the
possession of the simple man, nor the gift of innocent intent, but the
achievement of experience in the fully developed man. Yet there is a
road to it, a guide to excellence, which may save many detours and
delays: it is the middle way, the golden mean. The qualities of
character can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and
last qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a
virtue or an excellence. So between cowardice and rashness is courage;
between stinginess and extravagance is liberality; between sloth and
greed is ambition; between humility and pride is modesty; between
secrecy and loquacity, honesty; between moroseness and buffoonery,
good humor; between quarrelsomeness and flattery, friendship; between
Hamlet's indecisiveness and Quixote's impulsiveness is self-control.
"Right," then, in ethics or conduct, is not different from "right" in
mathematics or engineering; it means correct, fit, what works best to
the best result.
*The word excellence is probably the fittest translation of the Greek
arete, usually mistranslated virtue. The reader will avoid
misunderstanding Plato and Aristotle if, where translators write
virtue, he will substitute excellence, ability, or capacity. The Greek
arete is the Roman virtus; both imply a masculine sort of excellence
(Ares, god of war; vir, a male). Classical antiquity conceived virtue
in terms of man, just as medieval Christianity conceived it in terms
of woman.
The golden mean, however, is not, like the mathematical mean, an exact
average of two precisely calculable extremes; it fluctuates with the
collateral circumstances of each situation, and discovers itself only
to mature and flexible reason. Excellence is an art won by training
and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or
excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly;
"these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions" ; we are
what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit:
"the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in
a complete life ; . . . for as it is not one swallow or one fine day
that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a
man blessed and happy."
Youth is the age of extremes : "if the young commit a fault it is
always on the side of excess and exaggeration." The great difficulty
of youth (and of many of youth's elders) is to get out of one extreme
without falling into its opposite. For one extreme easily passes into
the other, whether through "over-correction" or elsewise: insincerity
doth protest too much, and humility hovers on the precipice of
conceit. Those who are consciously at one extreme will give the name
of virtue not to the mean but to the opposite extreme. Sometimes this
is well; for if we are conscious of erring in one extreme "we should
aim at the other, and so we may reach the middle position, ... as men
do in straightening bent timber." But unconscious extremists look upon
the golden mean as the greatest vice; they "expel towards each other
the man in the middle position; the brave man is called rash by the
coward, and cowardly by the rash man, and in other cases accordingly";
so in modern politics the "liberal" is called "conservative" and
"radical" by the radical and the conservative.
It is obvious that this doctrine of the mean is the formulation of a
characteristic attitude which appears in almost every system of Greek
philosophy. Plato had had it in mind when he called virtue harmonious
action; Socrates when he identified virtue with knowledge. The Seven
Wise Men had established the tradition by engraving, on the temple of
Apollo at Delphi, the motto meden agan,-nothing in excess. Perhaps, as
Nietzsche claims, all these were attempts of the Greeks to check their
own violence and impulsiveness of character; more truly, they
reflected the Greek feeling that passions are not of themselves vices,
but the raw material of both vice and virtue, according as they
function in excess and disproportion, or in measure and harmony.*
*a sociological formulation of the same idea: "Values are never
absolute, but only relative. ... A certain quality in human nature is
deemed to be less abundant than it ought to be; therefore we place a
value upon it, and . . . encourage and cultivate it. As a result of
this valuation we call it a virtue; but if the same quality should
become superabundant we should call it a vice and try to repres* it."-
Carver, Essays in Social Justice.
But the golden mean, says our matter-of-fact philosopher, is not all
of the secret of happiness. We must have, too, a fair degree of
worldly goods: poverty makes one stingy and grasping; while
possessions give one that freedom from care and greed which is the
source of artistocratic ease and charm. The noblest of these external
aids to happiness is friendship. Indeed, friendship is more necessary
to the happy than to the unhappy; for happiness is multiplied by being
shared. It is more important than justice: for "when men are friends,
justice is unnecessary; but when men are just, friendship is still a
boon." "A friend is one soul in two bodies." Yet friendship implies
few friends rather than many; "he who has many friends has no friend";
and "to be a friend to many people in the way of perfect friendship is
impossible." Fine friendship requires duration rather than fitful
intensity; and this implies stability of character; it is to altered
character that we must attribute the dissolving kaleidoscope of
friendship. And friendship requires equality; for gratitude gives it
at best a slippery basis. "Benefactors are commonly held to have more
friendship for the objects of their kindness than these for them. The
account of the matter which satisfies most persons is that the one are
debtors and the others creditors, . . . and that the debtors wish
their creditors out of the way, while the creditors are anxious that
their debtors should be preserved." Aristotle rejects this
interpretation; he prefers to believe that the greater tenderness of
the benefactor is to be explained on the analogy of the artist's
affection for his work, or the mother's for her child. We love that
which we have made.
And yet, though external goods and relationships are necessary to
happiness, its essence remains within us, in rounded knowledge and
clarity of soul. Surely sense pleasure is not the way: that road is a
circle: as Socrates phrased the coarser Epicurean idea, we scratch
that we may itch, and itch that we may scratch. Nor can a political
career be the way; for therein we walk subject to the whims of the
people; and nothing is so fickle as the crowd. No, happiness must be a
pleasure of the mind; and we may trust it only when it comes from the
pursuit or the capture of truth. "The operation of the intellect . . .
aims at no end beyond itself, and finds in itself the pleasure which
stimulates it to further operation; and since the attributes of self-
sufficiency, unweariedness, and capacity for rest, . . . plainly
belong to this occupation, in it must lie perfect happiness."
The Story of Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers of the Western World
by WILL DURANT
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671739166/
