Harmony and the mean in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Zhongyong

摘要

Aristotelians and Confucians stress virtue and the necessity of training torncultivate virtue. Aristotelians describe virtue as a disposition to achieve arnmean between extremes, a middle path between an excess and a defect in thernpossibilities of action and emotion. Something like this idea is also evident inrnConfucian traditions) Confucians, however, emphasize the idea of harmony.rnAristotelians have something like the idea of harmony in virtue's effects onrnone's internal and external relations, but it remains underemphasized. I writernto show that the Aristotelian mean and Confucian harmony (and the principlernof that harmony, the zhong rO or crux) are not only comparable but alsorncomplementary.