There is a big difference between the Middle Way and the Aristotle's idea of the mean, actually. The Middle Way primarily addresses Siddharta's experience with extreme asceticism, and his realization that that too was a form of attachment, by over- emphasizing the importance of the material world. Since Nirvana is achieved through the cessation of passion, one should strive for equilibrium and non- attachment on the Eight- fold Path:
Eightfold Path
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
Pali Atthangika-magga, Sanskrit Astangika-marga, doctrine taught by Gautama Buddha in his first sermon at the deer park near Benares (Varanasi), in India. Together with the Four Noble Truths, of which it forms a part, it sums up the whole of Buddhist teaching. It is also called the Middle Path, as it steers a course between the sensual pleasures of the materialists and the self-mortification of the ascetics. Those who follow the noble Eightfold Path are freed from the suffering that is an essential part of human existence and are led ultimately to Nirvana, or Enlightenment. Some Buddhist teachings have held that to enter this path in itself implies an experience of Nirvana.
The Eightfold Path consists of: (1) right understanding—faith in the Buddhist view of the nature of existence in terms of the Four Noble Truths; (2) right thought—the resolve to practice the faith; (3) right speech—avoidance of falsehoods, slander, or abusive speech; (4) right action—abstention from taking life, stealing, and improper sexual behaviour; (5) right livelihood—rejection of occupations not in keeping with Buddhist principles; (6) right effort—avoidance of bad and development of good mental states; (7) right mindfulness—awareness of the body, feelings, and thought; and (8) right concentration—meditation.
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Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, on the other hand, is a way of seeking to define virtuous disposition. Since virtue is a habit imposing the rule of reason on the passions, it seeks to avoid both excess and deficiency. For example, courage is not only distinguished from timidity in facing danger, but also from bravado, since irrational exuberance in the face of danger is also a vice. Additionally, the doctrine of the mean can be applied in a manner of speaking to the calculus of justice, not in seeking a mid- point between excess and deficiency, but in seeking proportionality in calculating what is deserved, when there is no explicit enumeration available. Instead of leading to non- attachment and Nirvana, the doctrine of the mean is supposed to lead to happiness in this life (to the extent it is achievable, that is, discounting fortune), and a sound political order, in which man may fulfill himself as a social animal.
The most direct influence on Aristotle is Plato, who enumerates the theory of the parts of the soul and their proper relations, and who invokes the already formed tradition of the Cardinal Virtues, in the Republic. If there were a cross- cultural influence, it was highly attenuated and hard to trace.
As far as Dasein goes, it is used as a phenomenological descriptor of the human being in his "thrownness" into the world, and his encounter with Being. Being- there, we discover our condition through our relationship to Being, in part mediated by others with whom we enter into an inter- subjective community. Heidegger is ambiguous: starting out as an atheist, there is a pantheistic cast to his thought as it develops. In either case, Being is that which lies beyond the horizon of consciousness, out of which the human world is formed in the encounter with Dasein. Since the encounter is fresh in each instance, despite the communal aspect of the human world, there is a "nothingness" to Dasein which emerges from its temporality: it can transcend the present and its inertia in selecting among an array of possibilities, through which it not only defines itself, but contributes to the definition of the human world shared with others. As time goes on, Heidegger becomes more interested in how Being may be revealed in the encounter with Dasein, and therefore with the way that Dasein orients itself, either imposing itself or allowing itself to discover Being (although, be it noted, only insofar as what is beyond consciousness manifests itself in consciousness).
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