The Mean in Its Proper Place: Aristotle’s Doctrine in Book II

Where the Doctrine of the Mean in Nicomachean Ethics First Appears

There was no ancient work entitled “The Doctrine of the Mean.” The phrase is a later editorial and pedagogical label for Aristotle’s treatment of ethical virtue in Book II of Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια (Ethika Nikomacheia). Aristotle first distinguishes virtue from feelings and capacities in II.5, defines it as a chosen state concerned with an intermediate in II.6, maps individual virtues between excess and deficiency in II.7–8, and closes with practical advice for finding the intermediate in II.9. Reading only the famous definition severs it from the account of habituation that begins Book II.

The safest locator is therefore NE II.5–9, 1105b19–1109b26, with II.6, 1106b36–1107a8 as the central citation. Bekker numbers are stable across serious editions, while page numbers are not. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s account of Aristotle’s ethics also stresses that the “mean” is relative to the agent and circumstances, not an arithmetic midpoint or a prescription for mildness.

The treatise belongs to the fourth century BCE and is usually associated with Aristotle’s later teaching in Athens, although no exact composition date can be recovered. Its present title is itself post-Aristotelian: Aristotle refers to ethical writings, but does not call the two surviving treatises “Nicomachean” and “Eudemian.” The text is best understood as a school treatise shaped by lecture and editorial transmission, not as a short work first issued independently.

For publication history in the print era, the fifth volume of the Aldine Greek Aristotle of 1498 included the Nicomachean Ethics. The earliest complete English book-form version verified here is John Gillies’s two-volume Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics of 1797. Neither milestone created a separate “Doctrine of the Mean” text; both transmitted the passage within the whole ethics.

The Main English Collections and Editions

The choice is not between complete and incomplete editions so much as between translation philosophies and editorial apparatus. All four volumes below contain the full ten-book work. Irwin offers the strongest all-purpose reading edition; Bartlett and Collins make Greek terminology unusually visible; Crisp is compact and lucid; Ross, revised by Lesley Brown, preserves the most influential twentieth-century English lineage.

SCHOLARLY EDITION

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: Greek Terms Kept in View

Translators: Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins

Publisher and year: University of Chicago Press, 2011

ISBN: 9780226026749 (cloth)

Text location: Book II, especially chapters 5–9

Main advantage: Close lexical consistency, notes, interpretive essay, English–Greek glossary, and key Greek terms

Best for: Close reading and advanced seminar work; the prose is more demanding than Irwin or Crisp

ALTERNATIVE MODERN TRANSLATION

Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics: Compact and Readable

Editor and translator: Roger Crisp

Publisher and year: Cambridge University Press, second edition, 2014

ISBN: 9781107612235 (paperback)

Completeness: Complete, with introduction, glossary, index, and Greek line numbers

Main advantage: A readable yet deliberately literal translation in a concise course edition

Best for: First readings, undergraduate courses, and readers who want less apparatus

HISTORICALLY INFLUENTIAL TRANSLATION

The Nicomachean Ethics: The Ross Tradition, Lightly Revised

Translator: David Ross; revised with introduction and notes by Lesley Brown

Publisher and year: Oxford World’s Classics, 2009

ISBN: 9780199213610 (paperback)

Completeness: Complete ten-book text

Main advantage: Familiar Ross phrasing with selected terminology updated and modern notes added

Best for: Readers following scholarship or courses that cite the Ross translation

The publishers’ pages for Irwin, Bartlett and Collins, Crisp, and Ross–Brown confirm the distinctions in apparatus and format. Brown’s revision is usefully assessed in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

Why the English Title or Translation Changes

“Doctrine of the Mean,” “mean between extremes,” “intermediate,” and the popular “golden mean” usually point to the same Book II argument. None is the title of an Aristotelian subsection. Editors supply headings, and translators must decide how consistently to render meson (μέσον) and mesotēs (μεσότης). “Mean” preserves the historical English vocabulary; “intermediate” more clearly blocks the mistaken idea that virtue is mediocrity.

Other choices matter as much. Hexis may appear as “state,” “disposition,” “state of character,” or “active condition”; prohairesis as “choice,” “decision,” or “rational choice”; phronēsis as “practical wisdom” or “prudence.” Irwin uses glossary and notes to make a coherent philosophical vocabulary; Bartlett and Collins foreground lexical structure; Crisp balances literalness with readability. Ross remains familiar, while Brown updates selected key terms without replacing its recognizable voice. These are translation differences, not competing versions of the doctrine.

Legal Online and Library Access

The current Irwin, Crisp, Bartlett–Collins, and Ross–Brown editions remain copyrighted. No authorized free full text of those exact editions was located. Complete older translations are legally available, however, and they are adequate for locating the Doctrine of the Mean in Nicomachean Ethics. A catalogue entry identifies an edition; it does not by itself provide the text.

For downloadable public-domain reading, the Standard Ebooks edition of F. H. Peters is the cleanest modern digital presentation. For text-critical checking, use the Perseus Greek page at 1106b alongside a current translation.

Which Edition Should You Choose?

For most readers: Irwin’s third edition gives the best balance of current English, philosophical precision, notes, and navigability. For a compact first reading: Crisp is lighter to carry through a course and remains close to the Greek. For advanced close reading: Bartlett and Collins is the strongest English aid when terminology itself is under examination. For historically continuous citation: Ross–Brown is the sensible choice when a syllabus or secondary literature uses Ross.

Academic work should identify translator, edition, book, chapter, and Bekker number—for example, NE II.6, 1106b36–1107a8. Scholars making an argument from a single Greek term should consult the Greek text as well as at least two translations. No modern English edition makes page numbers transferable to another printing.

What Else Is in the Recommended Collection?

Irwin’s volume is worth obtaining because Book II is only the architecture of character virtue. Book I establishes happiness and the human function; Book III examines voluntariness, responsibility, and decision; Book VI explains practical wisdom, without which the mean cannot be intelligently found. Books VIII–IX treat friendship as a condition of flourishing, while Book X returns to pleasure and the contemplative life.

The third edition also expands Irwin’s introduction, notes, and glossary and adds translated selections from related Aristotelian texts. That apparatus helps the reader follow recurring terms rather than treating the mean as a detachable maxim. The chief value of the collection is continuity: it shows how habituation, deliberate choice, practical judgment, friendship, and happiness belong to one ethical inquiry.

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