The Goods That Cannot Be Excessive

A Defense Against the Universal Doctrine of Moderation

“There is nothing that in excess is good.” This claim has a ring of wisdom to it. It echoes Aristotle, invokes common sense, and seems confirmed by everyday experience. Too much food makes us sick. Too much confidence becomes arrogance. Too much caution becomes paralysis. Moderation in all things — what could be more reasonable?

But I want to argue that this principle, despite its intuitive appeal, is not universally true. There exists a class of concepts that cannot, by their very nature, be excessive. For these goods, the notion of “too much” is not merely unlikely but incoherent. And understanding why this is so reveals something important about the structure of value itself.

The Case for Universal Moderation

First, let us give the opposing view its due. The doctrine of moderation has ancient pedigree and considerable force.

Aristotle built his entire ethics around the idea that virtue is a mean between extremes. Courage lies between cowardice and rashness. Generosity lies between miserliness and prodigality. Even truthfulness lies between self-deprecation and boastfulness. On this view, every good quality can curdle into vice when taken too far. The task of the virtuous person is calibration — finding the right amount for each situation.

Experience seems to confirm this. We have all encountered confidence that became arrogance, honesty that became cruelty, love that became possessiveness, devotion that became fanaticism. The graveyard of good intentions is filled with qualities that were pushed past their proper limits.

So the universal doctrine of moderation seems both philosophically grounded and empirically supported. How could it be wrong?

The Counter-Argument: Self-Limiting Goods

The key insight is this: some concepts are defined in such a way that they already contain proper measure within themselves. For these concepts, excess is not a risk to be managed but a logical impossibility.

Consider courage. On the surface, it seems possible to have too much — we have words like “rashness” and “foolhardiness” to describe the excess. But look closer. What is courage, properly understood? It is not merely willingness to face danger. It is willingness to face danger for worthy ends, with sound judgment about means. The moment judgment fails — the moment someone charges into peril for no good reason — we are no longer describing courage. We are describing something else: recklessness, poor judgment, perhaps a death wish. These are not courage-plus-something. They are courage-minus-something, namely the wisdom that makes courage a virtue.

This pattern repeats across many concepts that initially seem susceptible to excess:

Love. Can you love too much? The claim seems plausible until we examine what “excessive love” actually describes: possessiveness, jealousy, control, obsession. But these are not love in abundance. They are love corrupted or love’s absence wearing love’s mask. True love includes respect for the beloved’s autonomy and wellbeing. The moment “love” begins to harm or suffocate, it has ceased to be love and become something else.

Generosity. Surely you can be too generous — giving until you destroy yourself, enabling destructive behavior, giving inappropriately. But generosity, properly understood, includes wisdom about what genuinely helps others. Giving that harms the giver or the recipient is not excessive generosity; it is foolishness, people-pleasing, or self-destruction. Real generosity cannot damage because care for genuine flourishing is built into its definition.

Justice. Can there be too much justice? What would that even mean? Punishing the innocent? Demanding impossible standards? These are not justice in excess — they are injustice by another name. Justice inherently includes proportionality and fairness. “Excessive justice” is a contradiction in terms.

Honesty. This seems like a clear case where excess is possible — brutal honesty, hurtful truths delivered without care. But is cruelty really honest? Honesty in its fullest sense involves truth in service of genuine communication and relationship. Weaponized truth-telling is not honesty pushed too far; it is honesty corrupted by malice, honesty severed from its purpose.

Wisdom. Perhaps the clearest case. Can you be too wise? The very idea is absurd. Wisdom is precisely the quality that knows proper limits. Excessive wisdom would be wisdom that lacked wisdom — a flat contradiction.

Two Categories of Goods

What emerges from this analysis is a distinction between two types of goods:

Simple goods are qualities that can indeed become harmful in excess. Speed, strength, pleasure, wealth, even intelligence — these are genuine goods that nonetheless can be taken too far or applied poorly. They are raw materials that require wisdom to deploy well. A person can be too fast for the situation, too strong for delicacy, too clever for their own good.

Complete goods are qualities that already contain wisdom within their definition. They are not raw materials but finished products, so to speak. Courage, love, generosity, justice, honesty, wisdom itself — these concepts, when fully and properly understood, include the judgment necessary for their right application. They cannot be excessive because the moment they would become harmful, they transform into something else entirely.

The confusion arises because we use the same words for both the simple and complete versions. “Courage” can mean mere willingness to face danger (a simple good, susceptible to excess) or it can mean the full virtue including proper judgment (a complete good, immune to excess). “Love” can mean mere intense feeling (simple) or the full virtue of caring for another’s genuine flourishing (complete). The doctrine of universal moderation is true for simple goods but commits a category error when applied to complete goods.

The Vicious Impostors

If complete goods cannot be excessive, what do we make of the apparent excesses we observe? What is rashness if not excessive courage? What is obsession if not excessive love?

The answer is that these are not excesses at all. They are different vices that superficially resemble the corresponding virtues. Rashness shares courage’s willingness to act but lacks its wisdom. Obsession shares love’s intensity but lacks its respect. Prodigality shares generosity’s open-handedness but lacks its discernment.

This reframing matters. When we call rashness “excessive courage,” we imply that the rash person has a virtue and simply needs to moderate it. But this misdiagnoses the problem. The rash person does not need less of what they have; they need more of what they lack. They do not need to suppress their willingness to act; they need to develop the judgment that would make their action genuinely courageous.

The same applies across all complete goods. The obsessive lover does not need to love less; they need to learn what love actually requires. The person whose “honesty” causes needless harm does not need to be less truthful; they need to understand that truth-telling in service of cruelty was never really honesty at all.

Implications

This analysis has practical implications for how we pursue virtue and advise others.

If we accept the universal doctrine of moderation, our advice to someone who acts rashly is: “Restrain yourself. You have too much courage. Dial it back.” This advice may produce timidity without producing wisdom. The person learns to hesitate but not to judge well.

If we accept that complete goods cannot be excessive, our advice changes: “What you have is not yet courage. Courage includes the wisdom you are missing. Do not suppress your spirit — develop your judgment. Add what is lacking rather than subtracting what you have.”

The first approach treats virtue as a matter of quantity — finding the right dose. The second approach treats virtue as a matter of quality — achieving a complete state that includes its own proper limits.

Conclusion

“There is nothing that in excess is good.” This principle is half true. For simple goods — raw capacities and qualities that require wisdom to deploy — excess is a genuine risk. But for complete goods — virtues that already include wisdom in their definition — excess is impossible. What appears to be excess is always, on closer examination, a deficiency in disguise.

This means something profound: genuine virtue is one of the rare things in life of which you truly cannot have too much. The courageous person cannot be too courageous. The loving person cannot love too much. The just person cannot be excessively just. For these qualities, properly understood, already contain within themselves the knowledge of their proper limits.

The doctrine of moderation is wise counsel for managing our raw capacities. But it is a category error when applied to the highest goods. Some things are so thoroughly good that they cannot curdle into vice — because the moment they would become harmful, they simply cease to be what they were. The cup of genuine virtue has no rim to overflow.