Aristotle's Golden Mean: Its Implications for the Doping Debate

The ethics of drug-enhanced performance has been debated in the literature for a number of years. While bans and related enforcement efforts remain in place, scholars continue to disagree over the merits of the prohibitions themselves. Because this debate has been waged for over 40 years, it might seem that little more could be helpfully offered on this issue. We believe, however, that moral guidelines provided by Aristotle allow us to move this discussion forward. We attempt to use golden mean logic to examine two questions. First, how would Aristotle likely regard current attempts by some athletes to use drugs and avoid detection? Second, what implications do Aristotle's notions of virtues and vices have for the merits of the ban itself? We argue that the second question is the one on which Aristotelian thinking can provide the most help. Based on that assistance, we draw conclusions about the merits of current prohibitions.