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In general, Aristotle's Golden Mean privileges the space between the "extremes" of pleasure and pain. Epicurus privileges pleasure. Epicurus' pursuit of pleasure is distinguished from Aristotle's pursuit of excellence. Aristotle thought that an excellent person would necessarily enjoy happiness, whereas Epicurus recognized that an excellent person is only "happy" when enjoying the fruits of their excellence. Excellence, itself, is not the motivating goal. Pleasure is the goal. The "Epicurean Gol…

In Book II of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle identifies a number of virtues by name: "[Virtue] is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defects [...] With regard to feelings of fear and confidence courage is the mean; of the people who exceed, he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (many of the states have no name), while the man who exceeds in confidence is rash, and he who exceeds in fear and falls short in confidence is a coward. With regard to pl…

Epicurus recognized pleasure as including both katastematic ("static", "stable") pleasures as well as kinetic ("active") pleasures. Aristotle (as did most other ancient philosophers) saw pleasure as an excited state that deviates from a preferable state of "balance". Within this context, Epicurus partially saw pleasure as the preferable state of "balance". For Epicurus, virtue is an instrument to achieve the good. For Aristotle, virtue is the good. The good in Epicurean philosophy is not a balan…

(Quote from Cassius) I've been thinking of Goldilocks this entire time, Cassius.