One of the things we talked about, "The Golden Mean", which means that there is a state between the vicious extremes of excess and deficiency. One of the examples that we had in class is the virtuous mean of courage stands between the vices of rashness and cowardice, which represent excess and deficiency respectively. What I thought was interesting was that the mean is not the same for everyone. When we had the scenario about someone coming in with a gun, the person that should act first is the person that feels like they have the most experience or feels like they can handle the situation. However, if you have just read about fighting techniques and never actually been in a fight then you probably shouldn't try to be the hero because that would be reckless. This would go with the teachings of Aristotle. We need to approach matters case by case, informed by inculcated virtue and a fair dose of practical wisdom. This would go against Plato's teachings that basically say that if you know what justice is then you know how to be just.
I completely agree that it is based off of individual people, which is something we spoke about in class. Someone who is just tends to do just things, but everyone is different. I personally feel I would charge at the gunholder so as to limit what harm could be done to the class, or the "greater good" but I know many others would not react the same way. I have experience in disarming attackers and martial arts, and even though I think of it as reckless I still believe it would be an action that should be taken.
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