Τὸ Μέσον and the Crisis of Limit: Aristotle, Neoliberal Subjectivity, and the Metaphysics of Excess

Abstract

Purpose: This article examines when economic and technological expansion ceases to serve worthwhile human purposes. It develops a critical reconstruction of Aristotle’s account of practical wisdom, flourishing, and purposive acquisition to evaluate contemporary imperatives of continuous optimisation. Design/methodology/approach: The article combines close interpretation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics with conceptual reconstruction and critical engagement with contemporary accounts of neoliberal subjectivity, social acceleration, and digital mediation. It distinguishes Aristotle’s explicit claims from the contemporary normative framework developed from them. Findings: Aristotle’s distinction between context-sensitive practical judgment and potentially unlimited wealth acquisition supports a qualified criterion of proportionality: further expansion requires justification by the human ends it serves. This does not entail opposition to growth, technology, or persistent desire. The framework also requires attention to deprivation, agency, distributive justice, and the possibility that some limits are oppressive. Practical implications: The framework invites institutions and technology designers to evaluate performance metrics in relation to substantive user and social goals, rather than treating increased activity, engagement, or accumulation as inherently beneficial. Originality/value: The contribution is a philosophical - anthropological synthesis of Aristotelian practical judgment and purposive acquisition with existing critiques of indefinite optimisation. Ontological claims are presented as qualified interpretations, not as empirical findings or a universal theory of capitalism.

1. Introduction: Capitalism as Ontological De-Limitation

Contemporary capitalism is increasingly characterised by pressures toward continuous economic expansion, technological acceleration, and individual optimisation that raise fundamental questions about the place of limits in human life. Ecological thresholds are exceeded, temporal rhythms accelerate, and boundaries between work, consumption, communication, and personal experience become increasingly permeable [1,2,3,4,5]. These developments raise a philosophical question extending beyond the economic consequences of growth: under what conditions does continued expansion cease to contribute to the human purposes that make it worthwhile?

The significance of this question becomes apparent when expansion is understood not merely as an economic process but as an increasingly pervasive orientation toward human activity. Contemporary economic and technological systems encourage continuous growth, permanent connectivity, accelerated innovation, heightened visibility, and intensified performance [6,7]. Within such arrangements, activities traditionally evaluated in relation to particular purposes become subject to expectations of indefinite improvement. Productivity, consumption, connectivity, and personal achievement may consequently acquire a self-reinforcing character, in which the possibility of further optimisation increasingly serves as its own justification.

This development raises important questions about the relationship between capitalism and human flourishing. Economic and technological expansion can improve material conditions, enhance human capabilities, and extend opportunities for individual and collective well-being. Nevertheless, its benefits cannot be established solely by demonstrating that additional growth, efficiency, or performance is possible. The more fundamental question concerns whether such developments remain proportionate to the purposes they are intended to serve. Where expansion becomes detached from considered human ends, what initially functions as a means of improving life risks becoming an objective in itself.

Existing critical scholarship illuminates different dimensions of this transformation. Boltanski and Chiapello [8] demonstrate how flexibility, mobility, and permanent innovation became incorporated into the normative expectations of contemporary capitalism. Foucault [9] and Brown [10] examine the extension of economic rationality into neoliberal subjectivity, while Han [3] and Berardi [11] explore the psychological consequences of persistent performance demands. Rosa’s [1] account of social acceleration further reveals the temporal pressures generated by institutions dependent upon continuous dynamisation. Together, these perspectives suggest that capitalism must be examined not only through production and accumulation but also through the forms of subjectivity and practical orientation it encourages.

Digital capitalism intensifies these concerns by extending economic rationality into attention, communication, cognition, and everyday decision-making. Platform infrastructures and algorithmic systems increasingly transform human experience into economically valuable data, creating new opportunities for behavioural prediction, influence, and extraction [6,7]. Emerging artificial intelligence technologies further complicate the relationship between technological capability and human autonomy by enabling forms of delegated judgment and automated decision-making. Although such developments may enhance human possibilities, their contribution to flourishing cannot be inferred from technological sophistication or operational efficiency alone.

The article uses the expression ontological de-limitation in a deliberately restricted, philosophical - anthropological sense: it designates a historically situated orientation in which diverse activities are presented as open to indefinite expansion or optimisation, even when the goods served by further expansion are unclear. It is not a thesis about a transformation in being as such. Likewise, the title’s ‘metaphysics of excess’ names the often-unexamined presupposition that more is presumptively better, not a comprehensive metaphysical system or a universal claim about capitalism. This distinction allows the argument to interrogate justificatory assumptions without displacing economic, political, or psychological explanations.

This interpretation also draws attention to the conditions that sustain meaningful human activity, including ecological boundaries, bodily rhythms, contemplative time, institutional restraint, and opportunities for reflective judgment. These conditions need not be understood as fixed or universally predetermined restrictions. Their significance lies in their contribution to forms of agency and flourishing that cannot be adequately assessed through quantitative expansion alone. Fraser’s [4] analysis of cannibal capitalism, for example, highlights how processes of accumulation may undermine the social and ecological conditions upon which they depend. The present inquiry extends this concern to the philosophical relationship between expansion and the purposes that render it worthwhile.

The importance of limits, however, has already been extensively examined within sustainability studies, post-growth scholarship, and critical social theory. Several authors [12,13,14,15] have explored the relationships between growth, sufficiency, ecological sustainability, and well-being. Accordingly, the contribution of this article does not rest upon the claim that existing scholarship has neglected the problem of unlimited expansion. Its distinctive objective is to develop a philosophical criterion through which the appropriateness of further expansion can be evaluated in relation to the human purposes it serves.

To pursue this objective, the article returns to Aristotle’s account of τὸ μέσον (to meson), practical wisdom (phronesis), human flourishing (eudaimonia), and purposive acquisition. Aristotle’s practical philosophy provides resources for examining the relationship between activities and their ends, the contextual character of appropriate judgment, and the distinction between acquisition directed toward worthwhile purposes and acquisition pursued without an intrinsic limit. These resources offer a basis for evaluating contemporary imperatives of indefinite optimisation without reducing the problem to an individual recommendation for moderation or restraint.

The argument does not suggest that Aristotle anticipated contemporary capitalism or that his doctrine of the mean can be transferred directly into modern economic and technological contexts. Instead, it develops a critical reconstruction of Aristotelian practical philosophy centred upon purposive proportionality: the principle that the justification of expansion depends upon its relationship to worthwhile ends and the circumstances of those affected. This criterion distinguishes the possibility of further expansion from its normative justification. Importantly, it does not imply that existing levels of provision are necessarily sufficient. Under conditions of deprivation or unmet human needs, additional resources and technological development may be essential to flourishing. Conversely, where further acquisition or optimisation no longer serves considered human purposes, its continuation may become difficult to justify.

Against this background, the article addresses the following research question: How can a critical reconstruction of Aristotle’s practical wisdom, flourishing, and purposive acquisition provide a normative basis for evaluating contemporary imperatives of indefinite optimisation? Its central proposition is that the capacity for continued expansion does not, by itself, establish that such expansion contributes to living well. The article’s contribution is therefore primarily philosophical - anthropological and normative: it connects contemporary critiques of neoliberal subjectivity, acceleration, and technological mediation with an Aristotelian reconstruction of the relationship between means, ends, and flourishing. Rather than offering a comprehensive empirical explanation of capitalism, it develops a context-sensitive framework for evaluating when expansion remains justified and when it becomes detached from the purposes it originally served. The distinctive contribution of purposive proportionality is not to explain why institutions pursue expansion, but to offer a normative test of when that expansion remains justified by the human purposes it serves. This connects institutional incentives and practical judgment without reducing them to one explanatory mechanism.

2. Philosophical Method and Scope

The article adopts a method of critical philosophical reconstruction, combining close textual interpretation, conceptual development, and critical application to selected features of contemporary economic and technological life. Its purpose is neither to recover an unrecognised doctrine in Aristotle nor to attribute contemporary concepts directly to his philosophy. Rather, it examines whether Aristotelian practical thought can provide resources for developing a coherent normative framework capable of illuminating problems arising under historically different conditions.

The inquiry proceeds through three interrelated stages. First, it interprets relevant passages from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics within their argumentative contexts, focusing on the doctrine of the mean, practical wisdom, human flourishing, and the distinction between purposive and unlimited acquisition. This establishes the textual foundations of the argument while recognising the historical and conceptual limits of applying Aristotelian ideas to contemporary institutions.

Second, the article reconstructs these philosophical resources into a criterion of purposive proportionality. According to this criterion, the justification of an activity, acquisition, or expansion depends not merely upon its feasibility but upon its contribution to worthwhile human purposes. Proportionality is therefore neither a fixed quantitative threshold nor an abstract preference for moderation. It is a context-sensitive relationship between means, ends, and practical judgment, accommodating circumstances in which additional provision is necessary as well as those in which continued expansion becomes excessive or counterproductive.

Third, the reconstructed framework is brought into dialogue with selected contemporary analyses of neoliberal subjectivity, social acceleration, digital capitalism, and sufficiency. These perspectives illuminate different pressures toward continuous optimisation without necessarily sharing a unified theoretical framework. Their relevance is assessed in relation to the specific philosophical questions under consideration, particularly whether further expansion advances or undermines the human purposes invoked to justify it.

The argument is evaluated according to five standards: fidelity to Aristotle’s texts, conceptual coherence, explanatory relevance, normative defensibility, and responsiveness to counterexamples. Particular attention is given to circumstances in which economic growth, technological innovation, or personal development may remain justified because they address deprivation, enhance substantive capabilities, or contribute to worthwhile human ends.

The article’s ontological terminology is employed in a deliberately restricted sense. Ontological de-limitation refers to an orientation through which human activities and capacities are increasingly understood as indefinitely expandable, rather than to a demonstrated transformation in the essential structure of being. The inquiry is therefore principally philosophical–anthropological and normative. It does not claim that Aristotle anticipated neoliberalism, that all forms of expansion are undesirable, or that philosophical analysis can replace empirical investigation. Its purpose is to establish whether a reconstructed Aristotelian account of practical judgment can provide a defensible basis for distinguishing expansion that serves human flourishing from expansion that has become detached from its justifying purposes. Its principal contribution belongs to philosophical anthropology and normative social philosophy, drawing on Aristotelian metaphysics without claiming to establish a universal ontology of capitalism.

3. Existing Scholarship and the Distinctive Philosophical Question

Contemporary sustainability scholarship has made an indispensable contribution to understanding the ecological consequences of economic expansion, particularly through its examination of planetary boundaries, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and the environmental pressures associated with growth-oriented economic systems [16,17,18]. Degrowth and post-growth scholarship has further questioned the compatibility of indefinite material expansion with ecological sustainability, while developing alternative accounts of prosperity, sufficiency, and human well-being [12,13,15,19]. Debates surrounding green growth, agrowth, and degrowth have consequently established the relationship between economic expansion, ecological constraints, and human flourishing as a central concern of contemporary political economy [20,21,22].

These contributions provide an essential foundation for the present inquiry. Nevertheless, the philosophical question pursued here is not identical to the empirical or institutional questions that frequently organise sustainability debates. Whereas ecological research investigates the consequences of exceeding biophysical thresholds, and political economy examines the institutions sustaining growth-dependent systems, the present article asks how the pursuit of further expansion can be evaluated in relation to the human purposes it is intended to serve. The distinction is not between scholarship that recognises limits and a philosophical approach that discovers their significance, but between different levels of analysis and forms of justification.

A first consideration concerns the relationship between economic structures and the formation of human purposes. Sustainability and degrowth scholarship have extensively examined production, consumption, energy systems, resource use, institutional design, and the possibilities of economic transformation [23,24,25,26]. These analyses increasingly incorporate questions of sufficiency, social relations, and non-expansionary forms of flourishing. Accordingly, it would be misleading to characterise the field as exclusively economistic or indifferent to human subjectivity. Nevertheless, an additional philosophical question remains: how should individuals and institutions distinguish between expansion that advances worthwhile purposes and expansion sustained primarily by established expectations of continued improvement?

This question becomes particularly significant when considered alongside analyses of neoliberal subjectivity. Dardot and Laval, Brown, and Han [3,10,27] examine how competition, performance, adaptability, and self-optimisation become incorporated into contemporary understandings of agency and personal responsibility. Such perspectives suggest that expansion may operate not only as an economic requirement but also as a normative expectation shaping how individuals interpret achievement, adequacy, and personal development. The concern is therefore not simply that individuals desire more, but that the possibility of further improvement may increasingly be treated as evidence that existing achievements are insufficient. An adequate philosophical assessment must consequently examine the relationship between socially constituted aspirations and the purposes through which their pursuit can be justified.

A second consideration concerns the role of optimisation within sustainability transitions themselves. Approaches emphasising resource efficiency, circular production, technological innovation, and digital transformation offer potentially valuable responses to ecological pressures [28,29,30,31]. Such approaches should not be dismissed merely because they employ managerial or technological forms of rationality. Improvements in efficiency and resource productivity may reduce environmental pressures and support legitimate human needs. Nevertheless, their normative significance depends upon whether these improvements contribute to ecological and human ends rather than simply enabling additional production or consumption.

This tension is evident in circular economy debates, where the environmental benefits of technological efficiency may be weakened by rebound effects, increased throughput, or the continued expansion of material demand [32,33,34]. The relevant philosophical issue is not whether optimisation is inherently objectionable, but whether it remains subordinate to independently defensible purposes. A system may become more efficient without becoming more sustainable, just as an individual may become more productive without necessarily living better. Efficiency, therefore, cannot by itself establish the desirability of the activities it enables.

A third consideration concerns desire and the formation of perceptions of sufficiency. Consumer culture, advertising, digital platforms, and contemporary practices of self-presentation can influence how individuals understand needs, aspirations, and personal achievement [35,36,37,38]. Research on platform capitalism and data-driven commercial infrastructures further demonstrates how attention, preferences, and behavioural expectations become objects of economic analysis and influence [6,7]. These developments raise questions about the extent to which judgments of adequacy are shaped by social comparison, commercial incentives, and expectations of continuous improvement.

However, the influence of economic institutions upon desire does not imply that all aspirations for improvement are artificially manufactured or that further acquisition necessarily reflects distorted preferences. Desires may express genuine needs, meaningful aspirations, and legitimate efforts to improve one’s circumstances. The philosophical problem is therefore to distinguish between desires whose fulfilment contributes to worthwhile human purposes and patterns of acquisition or optimisation whose continuation becomes increasingly detached from such purposes. This distinction requires an account of practical judgment rather than a general condemnation of consumption, technological development, or personal ambition.

A fourth and more fundamental consideration concerns the status of limits within evaluations of human activity. Planetary boundaries research demonstrates the importance of ecological constraints, while degrowth and sufficiency scholarship examines the social and institutional conditions under which human well-being may be sustained without indefinite material expansion. Critical theories of acceleration, subjectivation, and technological mediation illuminate how expectations of continuous development may also shape individual experience and collective institutions [1,3,9,10]. These traditions approach limits from different theoretical perspectives and should not be assumed to share a single account of capitalism or human flourishing.

The distinctive question pursued here concerns the normative significance of limits in relation to human purposes. A limit need not be understood exclusively as an externally imposed restriction upon otherwise desirable expansion. It may also emerge from the character of an activity and the purposes through which that activity becomes meaningful. The appropriate extent of acquisition, technological intervention, or personal development cannot always be determined independently of what these activities are intended to accomplish. Consequently, the recognition of limits need not signify the rejection of improvement; it may instead express the judgment that further expansion would no longer contribute proportionately to the relevant good.

This distinction provides the basis for the article’s engagement with Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics offers an account of practical wisdom and the mean in which appropriate action is determined through judgment concerning particular circumstances rather than adherence to a fixed quantitative midpoint. The Politics, particularly its discussion of acquisition, distinguishes forms of wealth-getting directed toward the requirements of household and political life from forms of acquisition whose pursuit becomes potentially unlimited. Although these arguments arise within historical and conceptual circumstances substantially different from those of contemporary capitalism, they provide resources for examining the relationship between means, ends, and the justification of further acquisition.

The present article develops these resources into the criterion of purposive proportionality, according to which the appropriateness of expansion depends upon its contribution to worthwhile human purposes and the circumstances of those affected. This reconstruction does not assume that limits are universally fixed, that existing conditions are sufficient, or that additional economic and technological development is inherently undesirable. Where deprivation, exclusion, or unmet needs restrict the possibility of flourishing, further provision may be necessary. Conversely, where continued expansion no longer advances defensible human ends, its technical feasibility or economic profitability cannot alone establish its normative justification.

The contribution can be tested against two established alternatives. In post-growth accounts, Kallis [12], Jackson [13], and Hickel [14] challenge the pursuit of aggregate expansion and articulate ecological, distributive, and welfare-based reasons for sufficiency. Their work already supplies substantive critiques of excess. The present argument neither supersedes those accounts nor claims to discover the value of limits. Its different object is the authority of a metric within a practice: why, for example, an institution should cease treating additional engagement, output, or efficiency as evidence of success when that metric no longer tracks the good it is meant to serve. A practice might remain within an ecological ceiling yet still be organised around a self-defeating measure of achievement; conversely, a just increase in provision may be warranted even where aggregate restraint is desirable. Purposive proportionality addresses these judgments at the level of particular practices and their ends, not by substituting a new aggregate target.

A second comparison concerns contemporary virtue ethics. Annas [39] already interprets virtue as intelligent, context-sensitive practical understanding; thus the present article cannot claim originality merely for rejecting crude moderation or fixed numerical thresholds. The additional move is to connect such practical understanding to the distinct analysis of potentially unlimited acquisition in Politics I.8–10 [40] and then to institutional design. Ordinary instrumental rationality asks how efficiently to realise an assumed objective. Purposive proportionality also asks whether the objective and its measure deserve authority, whether further intensification changes or damages the activity’s point, and whether those bearing its costs can reasonably contest its continuation. These are substantive questions of practical justification, not merely questions of choosing optimal means to a fixed end. This is a proposed synthesis of Aristotelian resources, not a doctrine attributed verbatim to Aristotle.

The article’s contribution should therefore be distinguished from an attempt to formulate a comprehensive ontology of capitalism or to replace existing ecological, economic, and critical theories. The concept of ontological de-limitation, introduced in Section 1, identifies a historically situated orientation in which heterogeneous activities are increasingly understood as indefinitely expandable or optimizable. It does not establish that all capitalist institutions share a single metaphysical structure, nor does it imply that the essential nature of human existence has been transformed. Rather, it provides an interpretive description of a tendency that the reconstructed Aristotelian framework makes possible to evaluate.

The resulting contribution is a second-order critical test of institutional aims and measures. It asks not only whether a chosen technique works but whether a purported success measure remains answerable to the human good that makes the activity intelligible. It thus complements, rather than replaces, empirical analysis, ecological sufficiency criteria, and existing virtue ethics. Its distinctiveness depends on making that test operational in particular cases, not on asserting a new universal ontology.

4. Aristotle Beyond Moderation: Practical Measure and Purposive Acquisition

Aristotle’s doctrine of τὸ μέσον (to meson) is frequently associated with moderation, restraint, and the avoidance of extremes. Although these interpretations capture certain aspects of his ethical thought, they become misleading when the mean is understood as a general preference for less rather than more, or as a quantitative compromise between opposing tendencies. Contemporary virtue ethics has developed considerably more sophisticated accounts of the relationship between character, practical wisdom, and human flourishing [39,41]. The present argument builds upon this broader understanding while examining whether Aristotle’s practical philosophy provides resources for evaluating the relationship between expansion, human purposes, and appropriate limits.

The textual foundation of this reconstruction lies principally in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics [40,42]. In Nicomachean Ethics II.6 (1106a26–1107a8) [42], Aristotle distinguishes the arithmetic midpoint from the intermediate relative to us. Whereas the former is determined quantitatively, the latter depends upon the circumstances of action and the judgment appropriate to them. Ethical virtue is described as a disposition concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, determined by reason as the practically wise person would determine it (1106b36–1107a2). Significantly, virtue is intermediate in relation to excess and deficiency but an extreme with respect to excellence (1107a6–8). The mean therefore does not prescribe mediocrity, compromise, or the suppression of ambition. Rather, it concerns the appropriateness of action in relation to circumstances, purposes, and practical judgment.

Several distinctions are essential to understanding this account. Τὸ μέσον denotes the appropriate intermediate, while μεσότης (mesotēs) refers to intermediacy as a characteristic of ethical virtue. Φρόνησις (phronēsis) designates the practical wisdom involved in deliberating well about matters concerning human life (Nicomachean Ethics VI.5, 1140a24–1140b30) [42], whereas εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia) refers to the overarching human good, understood in terms of activity in accordance with virtue (I.7, 1097b22–1098a20). These concepts are related but not interchangeable. Their significance for the present argument lies in the relationship they establish between practical judgment, the evaluation of action, and the pursuit of worthwhile ends.

Aristotle’s account consequently resists the reduction of ethical judgment to the application of universal quantitative standards. What constitutes an appropriate response cannot always be determined independently of the agent, the circumstances, and the relevant purpose. The same degree of expenditure, effort, ambition, or restraint may be appropriate in one situation and excessive or deficient in another. This contextual character of practical judgment is central to the present reconstruction. It suggests that the justification of an activity depends not simply upon the extent to which it can be intensified, but upon whether its development remains appropriate to the ends it is intended to realise.

This interpretation must nevertheless be distinguished from the stronger claim that Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean establishes a universal ontology of proportionality. The relevant passages in the Nicomachean Ethics primarily concern ethical virtue, practical judgment, and human flourishing. They do not independently demonstrate that all dimensions of existence are governed by a single principle of measure. The broader philosophical significance attributed to proportionality in this article is therefore a critical reconstruction informed by Aristotle’s practical philosophy, rather than an ontological doctrine directly recoverable from the text. Such a reconstruction is consistent with interpretations that emphasise the relationship between Aristotelian ethics, practical intelligibility, and the conditions of human flourishing [43,44].

The relationship between practical judgment and human purposes becomes especially significant when Aristotle’s ethical account is considered alongside his discussion of acquisition in Politics I.8–10 (1256a–1258b) [40]. Here, Aristotle distinguishes forms of acquisition directed toward the provision of resources necessary for household and political life from forms of money-making in which accumulation may become an end without an intrinsic limit. The distinction is not simply between economic activity and its absence, nor does Aristotle condemn every form of exchange. Rather, his analysis concerns the different purposes toward which acquisition may be directed and the implications of treating wealth as an end in itself.

Within this discussion, household management (oikonomia) concerns the organisation and provision of resources for the purposes of life, while forms of wealth-getting commonly associated with chrēmatistikē require further differentiation. Aristotle recognises forms of acquisition connected to necessary provision but criticises money-making practices in which the pursuit of monetary wealth becomes potentially unlimited (Politics I.8–10, especially 1256b26–1258a14) [40]. His concern arises from the possibility that wealth, originally valuable as a means of supporting human activities, may become detached from the purposes that justify its acquisition. The distinction is therefore teleological: the evaluation of acquisition depends upon the ends it serves rather than upon accumulation considered independently of those ends.

This interpretation is consistent with scholarship emphasising the relationship between Aristotle’s economic thought and his broader conception of human purposes [45,46]. Nevertheless, the political-economic discussion in the Politics should not be treated as a straightforward application of the ethical mean. The two arguments address different philosophical questions: the Nicomachean Ethics examines the formation of virtue and the exercise of practical judgment, whereas the Politics considers, among other matters, the purposes and limits of acquisition within household and political life. Their connection is developed here through a shared concern with the relationship between means and ends, rather than through the claim that Aristotle explicitly derived his account of acquisition from the doctrine of the mean.

The inferential bridge requires care. In Ethics II.6, [42], the contrast between the arithmetic midpoint and the mean relative to us rules out identifying excellence with a fixed quantity; it does not imply that all growth is vicious. In Ethics VI.5, [42], practical wisdom concerns what is good for human life as a whole, rather than skill at producing a stipulated output. In Ethics I.7, [42], the human good is described through the activity of living well, not simply the possession of external instruments. In Politics I.9 (1257b–1258a), [40], Aristotle contrasts acquisition whose end is provision for living with the pursuit of monetary increase that admits no internal stopping point. The conceptual reconstruction links these distinct arguments: where means are evaluated without regard to the human activities they enable, technical success can cease to count as practical success. This is an interpretative inference from the texts, not a claim that Aristotle formulated a general theory of digital optimisation.

The contemporary significance of this connection lies in the possibility of reconstructing a criterion of purposive proportionality. According to this criterion, the appropriateness of further acquisition, technological development, or personal optimisation depends upon whether it continues to advance worthwhile human purposes under the relevant circumstances. The criterion does not identify a universal quantitative threshold beyond which expansion becomes excessive. Nor does it establish a general preference for stability over development or restraint over ambition. Rather, it requires that the justification of further expansion remain connected to the goods it is intended to realise.

Purposive proportionality entails three linked but non-identical judgments. First, an evaluative judgment asks whether the activity’s end is defensible in relation to flourishing, justice, and the needs of those affected. Second, an interpretive judgment asks whether the selected indicator still represents that end or has begun to substitute for it: more measured activity need not mean better activity. Third, a comparative judgment asks whether additional intensity improves the relevant good sufficiently to justify its opportunity costs, unequal burdens, and possible displacement of other goods. Conventional means–ends calculation typically holds the objective fixed; this reconstruction makes the authority of both objective and indicator open to practical criticism. None of these judgments yields a universal numerical ceiling.

This distinction is particularly important in circumstances of material deprivation, restricted opportunity, or unmet human needs. Additional economic provision, technological innovation, and institutional development may be necessary to secure the conditions of flourishing. A context-sensitive account of proportionality must therefore remain responsive to differences in circumstances, capabilities, and access to resources. Conversely, where further acquisition or optimisation contributes little to worthwhile purposes, or undermines other goods necessary for flourishing, its continuation may become disproportionate even when it remains economically profitable or technologically feasible. The practical judgment of what constitutes enough is consequently revisable and dependent upon the purposes and circumstances involved, rather than a fixed ceiling imposed independently of human needs.

The distinction also offers a basis for critically examining contemporary imperatives of continuous optimisation. Analyses of technological mediation, social acceleration, and ecological transformation identify different pressures through which economic and technological development may become increasingly self-reinforcing [47,48,49]. These perspectives do not establish a single causal mechanism or a unified ontology of capitalism. They nevertheless raise questions about whether the continued intensification of productivity, connectivity, consumption, and technological capability remains appropriately related to the human purposes invoked in its justification.

Digital technologies illustrate the importance of this distinction. Algorithmic systems may enhance accessibility, support learning, improve coordination, and extend opportunities for meaningful participation. They may also encourage continuous engagement, behavioural prediction, and the extraction of economically valuable data. The relevant normative question is not whether technological mediation should be accepted or rejected in general, but whether particular forms of mediation support practical agency and worthwhile activities or increasingly subordinate them to objectives such as engagement, efficiency, and accumulation. Purposive proportionality provides a framework for articulating this question without presupposing that all technological development necessarily undermines human flourishing.

5. Neoliberal Subjectivity and the Internalisation of Infinitude

Foucault’s lectures on neoliberal governmentality provide an important starting point for understanding this transformation. In The Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault [9] examines how neoliberal rationality extends economic calculation beyond conventional market transactions and reconceives individuals as entrepreneurs of themselves. Rather than relying exclusively upon external prohibition or disciplinary regulation, neoliberal governmentality operates partly through the organisation of conditions under which individuals are encouraged to exercise freedom in economically intelligible ways. This does not imply the disappearance of coercion or disciplinary power. Rather, it identifies a distinctive mode of subject formation in which individuals increasingly evaluate their conduct, capacities, and future opportunities through entrepreneurial criteria.

Dardot and Laval [27] develop this insight by interpreting neoliberalism as a normative rationality that extends competition, performance, and entrepreneurial calculation into multiple domains of social existence. Brown [10] similarly examines how neoliberal reason recasts individuals as forms of human capital, potentially subordinating social, ethical, and political considerations to economic evaluation. Although these accounts differ in emphasis, they illuminate a common problem: activities previously understood through heterogeneous purposes may increasingly become subject to standards of investment, productivity, and competitive performance. Education may be evaluated primarily through employability, social relationships through networking opportunities, and personal development through measurable improvements in individual market value.

Such tendencies do not establish that all individuals internalise neoliberal expectations in the same way or that economic calculation exhausts the meaning of contemporary subjectivity. Individuals continue to pursue relationships, commitments, and activities that resist reduction to instrumental evaluation. Nevertheless, neoliberal forms of subject formation may encourage an understanding of the self as a continuing project of enhancement, in which existing achievements become provisional and further improvement appears perpetually necessary. Bröckling’s [50] analysis of the entrepreneurial self is particularly relevant here, identifying the normative expectation that individuals continually manage, evaluate, and develop their capacities in response to changing competitive demands.

The expression internalisation of infinitude is employed in the present article to characterise this orientation toward potentially indefinite self-improvement. It does not designate a literal transformation of human nature or an empirically universal psychological condition. Rather, it refers to a historically situated normative tendency in which personal adequacy becomes increasingly dependent upon the expectation of further achievement. The individual may consequently experience completion as temporary, accomplishment as a new benchmark, and existing capacities as resources requiring continued development. The problem arises when improvement becomes self-justifying, rather than when individuals pursue development in the service of considered human purposes.

Han’s account of the achievement society offers a complementary interpretation of this tendency. Han [3,51] argues that contemporary performance cultures increasingly encourage individuals to understand themselves through the imperative of possibility and achievement. The language of self-realisation and personal freedom may coexist with intensified expectations of productivity, adaptability, and continuous performance. His analysis suggests that forms of self-exploitation can emerge when individuals experience externally reinforced expectations as expressions of their own autonomous aspirations. However, this diagnosis should not be interpreted as establishing that every pursuit of achievement is coercive or that personal agency disappears under neoliberal conditions. Its relevance lies in identifying circumstances in which the distinction between worthwhile self-development and compulsive optimisation becomes difficult to sustain.

The relationship between these expectations and psychological well-being has also been explored in critical analyses of contemporary work and subjectivity. Berardi [11] and Ehrenberg [52] for example, examine connections between changing performance expectations, individual responsibility, and experiences of exhaustion or inadequacy. Such perspectives provide interpretive resources for understanding how persistent demands for achievement may contribute to psychological strain. They do not, however, establish that burnout, anxiety, or depression can be attributed to a single economic rationality. These experiences arise through multiple interacting personal, institutional, and social conditions. The philosophical issue pursued here is more specific: whether the continued intensification of performance remains justified when its contribution to worthwhile human purposes becomes uncertain or is outweighed by its consequences for other dimensions of flourishing.

Rosa’s [1] theory of social acceleration adds a temporal dimension to this analysis. His account of dynamic stabilisation suggests that modern institutions may depend upon continued growth, innovation, and acceleration to maintain their existing arrangements. Under such conditions, individuals can experience pressure to adapt continuously to changing technological, occupational, and social expectations. The resulting sense of insufficient time or perpetual adjustment may make opportunities for reflection, continuity, and meaningful engagement more difficult to sustain. Nevertheless, acceleration is not inherently detrimental, and technological improvements may release time, enhance accessibility, or support valuable activities. The normative question concerns whether increasing speed and responsiveness contribute to the purposes of human activity or become demands sustained primarily by institutional expectations of continued intensification.

A further dimension concerns the formation and persistence of desire. Consumer culture, advertising, and digitally mediated social comparison may influence how individuals interpret satisfaction, adequacy, and personal achievement [35,37] These influences do not imply that consumer preferences are wholly manufactured or that individuals lack the capacity for reflective judgment. They nevertheless raise questions about the relationship between socially encouraged aspirations and the goods that their fulfilment is expected to provide. Where consumption or achievement is repeatedly justified by the promise of future satisfaction, the pursuit of additional goods may continue without a corresponding reconsideration of whether further acquisition remains worthwhile.

Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a distinctive interpretation of the relationship between desire and incompletion. Within this tradition, desire cannot be understood simply as a finite set of needs that can be permanently satisfied through the acquisition of particular objects [53,54]. Critical accounts drawing upon this perspective explore how capitalist consumption may mobilise desire through recurring promises of fulfilment, novelty, and enjoyment. Such arguments illuminate why the acquisition of additional goods does not necessarily produce lasting satisfaction. However, the Lacanian conception of constitutive lack differs fundamentally from Aristotle’s teleological account of human flourishing. These approaches should not be assimilated into a unified philosophical anthropology.

The present reconstruction does not require the elimination of desire or the assumption that human aspirations can reach a condition of permanent completion. Instead, it distinguishes the persistence of desire from the practical justification of acting upon it. An individual may continue to desire additional possessions, recognition, experiences, or achievements while judging that their pursuit would contribute little to worthwhile purposes. Conversely, the desire for further development may be entirely appropriate where additional resources, opportunities, or capabilities support flourishing. Enoughness, in this sense, is neither psychological satiation nor the cessation of aspiration. It is a revisable practical judgment concerning whether further acquisition or optimisation remains justified in the circumstances.

Digital capitalism introduces additional mechanisms through which expectations of continued engagement and improvement may be encouraged. Platform infrastructures increasingly mediate communication, consumption, attention, and self-presentation through algorithmic recommendation, personalised content, and systems of behavioural measurement [6,7,55]. Certain commercial models derive economic value from sustained engagement and the collection of behavioural data, creating incentives to encourage repeated interaction. Features such as continuous content feeds, personalised recommendations, and quantified indicators of visibility may therefore reinforce patterns of comparison, anticipation, and responsiveness.

Zuboff’s [56] analysis of surveillance capitalism and Couldry and Mejias’s [7] account of data colonialism illuminate how aspects of human experience become resources for economic prediction and valorisation. Related analyses of algorithmic governance examine the ways predictive classifications and automated systems may shape the conditions under which individuals encounter opportunities, information, and institutional decisions [57,58,59]. These approaches identify important developments in the technological mediation of agency, although they differ in their explanatory frameworks and normative implications.

Such developments do not justify the conclusion that digital technologies necessarily eliminate autonomy or that all platforms are designed to prevent meaningful interruption. Digital infrastructures can facilitate learning, accessibility, communication, collective organisation, and reflective decision-making. Their normative significance depends upon their purposes, design, institutional arrangements, and consequences for those who use them. The relevant concern is whether particular systems support human agency and worthwhile activities or increasingly subordinate attention and participation to objectives such as engagement maximisation, behavioural prediction, and commercial extraction.

Crary’s [2] critique of continuous availability and Turkle’s [60] analysis of networked communication further illuminate tensions between connectivity, attention, and opportunities for reflective engagement. These accounts suggest that technological environments may alter the temporal and social conditions under which individuals sustain relationships, develop judgment, and experience continuity in everyday life. Yet the consequences of connectivity are neither uniform nor predetermined. Continuous access may be beneficial in some circumstances and burdensome in others. A context-sensitive assessment must therefore consider not merely the intensity of technological engagement but the purposes it serves and the alternative activities or capabilities it may support or displace.

The theoretical perspectives considered in this section should consequently be understood as complementary but distinct. Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberal governmentality, Brown’s critique of neoliberal reason, Han’s interpretation of achievement-oriented subjectivity, Rosa’s account of acceleration, Lacanian analyses of desire, and critical studies of digital mediation do not constitute a unified theory of capitalism. Their differences concern methodology, the formation of subjectivity, the interpretation of power, and the normative status of human flourishing. The present article draws selectively upon these perspectives to identify circumstances in which expectations of continued expansion may become detached from the purposes that originally justified them. Their convergence around particular concerns does not establish a single metaphysical structure underlying contemporary economic and technological life.

6. Continental Philosophy and the Crisis of Mediation

Continental philosophy provides important resources for examining how contemporary economic and technological arrangements influence the conditions under which human beings understand themselves, exercise judgment, and establish meaningful relationships with the world. Whereas political economy principally investigates accumulation, exploitation, production, and distribution, several continental traditions direct attention to transformations in temporality, subjectivity, technological mediation, and the intelligibility of human experience [47,61,62]. These approaches do not constitute a unified philosophical account of capitalism. Nevertheless, they illuminate different ways in which the organisation of contemporary life may affect the conditions necessary for reflective agency and human flourishing.

The concept of mediation is central to the present inquiry. It refers here to the temporal, practical, institutional, and interpretive conditions through which individuals relate their activities to purposes, evaluate alternatives, and exercise judgment. Mediation should not be understood as a fixed set of boundaries separating human beings from technological or social change. Rather, it concerns the processes through which experience becomes intelligible, and action can be directed toward considered ends. The philosophical problem arises when particular economic or technological arrangements weaken these processes by privileging immediacy, continuous responsiveness, or measurable performance over reflective evaluation.

Heidegger’s analysis of technological enframing (Gestell) offers one influential perspective on this problem. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger [61] argues that modern technology cannot be understood merely as an assemblage of instruments serving independently determined purposes. Technological revealing may disclose beings primarily as Bestand, or standing reserve, understood in terms of their availability for ordering and use. The significance of this argument lies in its identification of a possible reduction in the ways beings become intelligible when calculability, utility, and availability dominate their interpretation.

This analysis has relevance to contemporary economic and technological practices in which activities, capacities, and relationships are increasingly represented through measurable indicators of performance and value. Individuals may be evaluated through productivity metrics, employability profiles, behavioural data, or quantified measures of engagement. Nevertheless, Heidegger’s account does not establish that every form of technological mediation necessarily reduces human beings to resources, nor does it provide an empirical explanation of all capitalist institutions. Its contribution to the present argument is more specific: it draws attention to the danger that particular modes of calculation may become dominant criteria of evaluation, obscuring other ways of understanding the purposes and significance of human activity.

The point can be sharpened through Heidegger’s related inquiries into thinghood and thinking. In What Is a Thing? [63], the question of how things are encountered cautions against treating their calculable properties as the whole of their significance. What Is Called Thinking? [64] similarly resists the identification of thinking with efficient information processing. These texts are not accounts of neoliberal political economy, and their arguments cannot establish the empirical prevalence of a single capitalist worldview. They clarify a more modest philosophical concern: when calculative availability becomes the exclusive register of value, the plurality of ways in which things and human activities matter can become obscured.

Stiegler’s philosophy of technics provides a complementary but distinct perspective. Rather than treating technological mediation as external to human existence, Stiegler emphasises the constitutive relationship between technical systems, memory, knowledge, and processes of individuation. His analysis of hyper-industrial capitalism examines how the industrial organisation of attention and cultural experience may undermine the development and transmission of knowledge, judgment, and reflective capacities [47,65]. The concern is not technological mediation as such, but the conditions under which particular technical arrangements support or weaken the processes through which individuals develop meaningful relations to themselves and others.

This distinction is especially important for the present reconstruction. Digital technologies can extend memory, facilitate education, improve accessibility, and support collaborative inquiry. They may also encourage fragmented attention, repeated engagement, and dependence upon externally organised systems of evaluation. Their consequences cannot therefore be inferred from their technological character alone. What matters is whether their design and institutional organisation enable individuals to develop and exercise practical judgment or increasingly subordinate their activities to objectives determined independently of their considered purposes.

The relationship between mediation and practical judgment provides a point of connection with Aristotle. In the Nicomachean Ethics [42], phronēsis concerns deliberation about action in circumstances where appropriate judgment cannot be reduced to the mechanical application of universal rules (VI.5, 1140a24–1140b30). Such judgment requires attention to particular circumstances, relevant ends, and the consequences of possible actions. Although Aristotle does not develop a theory of contemporary technological mediation, his account provides resources for asking whether particular environments support the capacities through which individuals can evaluate their activities in relation to worthwhile purposes.

Rosa’s theory of social acceleration introduces a further dimension to the problem of mediation. His account of dynamic stabilisation describes how modern societies may become dependent upon continued growth, innovation, and acceleration to maintain their institutional arrangements [1]. Under such conditions, stability may require ongoing change, generating pressures upon individuals and organisations to increase productivity, responsiveness, and adaptability. The resulting temporal demands may affect opportunities for sustained attention, reflective engagement, and continuity in personal and social life.

Rosa’s later account of resonance offers a distinctive normative perspective on these developments [66]. Resonance concerns forms of relationship in which subjects and the world remain mutually responsive and capable of transformation without being fully available for instrumental control. This perspective draws attention to dimensions of human experience that cannot be adequately evaluated through speed, efficiency, or quantitative achievement alone. Nevertheless, resonance should not be equated directly with Aristotle’s eudaimonia or τὸ μέσον. Rosa’s relational account and Aristotle’s teleological practical philosophy arise from different theoretical commitments. Their relevance to one another lies in the questions they raise about the adequacy of instrumental evaluation, rather than in an assumed identity of their normative frameworks.

The relationship between acceleration and mediation is also illuminated by critical analyses of contemporary attention economies. Crary [2] examines the expansion of expectations of continuous availability, while Berardi [11] considers the pressures associated with intensified informational and communicative activity. Han [3,51] similarly explores how performance demands, transparency, and persistent connectivity may influence experiences of autonomy, exhaustion, and self-relation. These accounts differ in their interpretations of power, subjectivity, and technological modernity, but each identifies potential tensions between intensified activity and the conditions necessary for reflective engagement.

Such analyses should not be interpreted as demonstrating that acceleration necessarily destroys meaningful experience or that technological connectivity inevitably produces alienation. Rapid communication may support valuable relationships, and digital systems may create opportunities for learning, participation, and collective action that would otherwise be unavailable. The normative significance of acceleration and connectivity depends upon their purposes, institutional conditions, and consequences for those affected. The relevant distinction is therefore not between technological speed and an idealised condition of slowness, but between forms of intensification that contribute to worthwhile activities and those whose continuation becomes detached from their justifying ends.

This distinction also clarifies the relationship between mediation and the concept of ontological de-limitation introduced in Section 1. De-limitation does not imply that contemporary capitalism abolishes mediation or eliminates all boundaries. Indeed, digital infrastructures often introduce new forms of mediation through algorithms, classifications, institutional rules, and systems of technological governance. The concern is that particular arrangements may increasingly organise these mediations around objectives of continued expansion, prediction, efficiency, or engagement. Under such conditions, the question of whether an activity remains worthwhile may be displaced by the question of how its performance can be further intensified.

The word limit must consequently be differentiated. A biophysical threshold concerns material system functioning and is assessed with ecological evidence; bodily finitude includes vulnerability, dependency, and mortality, without making every remediable impairment normatively desirable; institutional boundaries concern rules and distributions of access, and may be enabling or exclusionary; temporal limits concern the finite attention and time available for competing commitments; symbolic or existential incompletion concerns the absence of final satisfaction or exhaustive self-definition. These phenomena are not instances of one demonstrated causal process. Their connection here is analogical and evaluative: each can be obscured when an increase in measurable capacity is treated as sufficient justification for itself. Different kinds of evidence and different forms of public judgment are needed in each case.

Technological enhancement provides a particularly instructive application. Interventions that restore function, reduce suffering, improve accessibility, or extend meaningful capabilities may be justified by compelling human purposes. The fact that such interventions overcome existing limitations does not make them inconsistent with purposive proportionality. Conversely, enhancement pursued solely because additional performance or capacity is technically achievable requires further justification. The relevant distinction is not between accepting natural limits and overcoming them, but between capability development directed toward worthwhile ends and expansion whose continuation has become self-legitimating.

This approach also avoids treating finitude as an absolute prohibition upon technological transformation. Human limitations differ in their character and significance. Ecological thresholds, biological vulnerabilities, institutional restrictions, and constraints upon individual capability cannot be reduced to a single philosophical category. Some limits protect conditions necessary for flourishing, while others may restrict agency or perpetuate deprivation. A defensible normative framework must therefore distinguish between limits that warrant recognition, limits that require institutional negotiation, and limitations that technological or social development may legitimately overcome.

7. Digital Platforms and the Pressures on Practical Judgment

Attention-based business models illustrate this tension. Where advertising revenue, behavioural data collection, or commercial visibility depends upon repeated interaction, platform operators may have incentives to encourage continued engagement beyond the immediate purposes of users. Features such as personalised recommendations, notifications, autoplay, and continuously updated content feeds can facilitate useful discovery and communication but may also encourage patterns of habitual responsiveness. Their normative significance cannot be determined solely by the amount of engagement they generate. Rather, it depends upon whether continued participation contributes to worthwhile activities or increasingly becomes an objective independent of those activities.

The relationship between digital engagement and emotional expression is particularly relevant. Dean’s [37] account of communicative capitalism examines how participation and circulation may acquire economic and political significance independently of deliberative outcomes. Empirical research provides more specific evidence concerning particular mechanisms. Cinelli et al. [67] identify differences in homophilous interaction and information diffusion across social media platforms, including variation in the segregation of news consumption. Brady et al. [68] demonstrate that social feedback and perceived network norms can influence the expression of moral outrage in online environments. These findings indicate that particular interaction structures may reinforce selective exposure or emotionally expressive behaviour. They do not, however, establish that all algorithms systematically amplify extremity or that digital platforms universally undermine deliberation.

Nevertheless, such mechanisms raise questions about the relationship between engagement incentives and the conditions of reflective judgment. Where visibility and interaction become dominant measures of communicative success, content that attracts immediate responses may receive greater attention than material requiring sustained interpretation or deliberation. Sunstein [69] similarly examines how selective exposure and personalised information environments may contribute to fragmentation and polarisation. The concern is not that emotionally expressive communication is inherently undesirable. Moral outrage, for example, may be appropriate in response to injustice. Rather, the issue arises when the intensity or frequency of emotional engagement becomes a measure of value independently of the purposes and circumstances that justify it.

This distinction is important for the present reconstruction of Aristotle’s τὸ μέσον. As established in Section 4, the Aristotelian mean does not prescribe emotional neutrality or a fixed midpoint between opposing responses. Appropriate judgment depends upon the circumstances, the relevant purposes, and the reasons supporting a particular action. Consequently, the philosophical concern with digitally mediated emotional intensity is not that strong reactions necessarily represent excess. It is that engagement-oriented systems may encourage the continuation or amplification of responses without adequately distinguishing between their immediate intensity and their contribution to worthwhile communicative or social ends.

A related concern involves the organisation of attention and time. Crary [2] examines the pressures associated with continuous availability, while Turkle [60] considers how persistent connectivity may influence solitude, communication, and interpersonal relationships. Citton [55] identifies attention as a significant dimension of contemporary economic and political organisation, and Stiegler [47] examines how industrialised systems of cultural and technological mediation may affect the development of knowledge and reflective capacities. These perspectives illuminate different ways in which the organisation of attention can influence opportunities for sustained engagement, deliberation, and meaningful participation.

Their arguments should not be interpreted as demonstrating that digital connectivity necessarily fragments consciousness or eliminates the possibility of reflection. Digital technologies can support sustained learning, intellectual collaboration, social inclusion, and access to information. Nevertheless, particular designs may privilege repeated interruption, rapid responsiveness, or continuous interaction over activities requiring extended concentration. The resulting tension concerns the relationship between technological affordances, institutional incentives, and the purposes of users rather than an inherent opposition between digital mediation and human flourishing.

This assessment requires more than an individual judgment about whether a user has spent sufficient time online. Platform design and governance can shape the available choices, incentives, and conditions under which participation occurs. Accordingly, purposive proportionality must also be applied at the institutional level. The relevant question concerns whether the objectives, performance measures, and design features of digital systems are justified by their contribution to worthwhile human purposes rather than by engagement or commercial returns considered independently of those purposes.

Five considerations are particularly important in developing this assessment. First, digital arrangements should be evaluated according to whether they support basic needs and substantive capabilities, including accessibility and meaningful participation. Second, the extent and character of engagement should remain proportionate to the purposes and circumstances involved. Third, users should retain meaningful agency, including opportunities to understand, question, and modify the conditions of their participation. Fourth, the benefits and burdens of digital systems should be assessed with attention to their distribution across individuals and social groups. Finally, institutional rules and restrictions should be open to justification through inclusive public reasoning, particularly where platform decisions affect collective communication or access to essential services.

These considerations do not follow directly from Aristotle’s historical account. Rather, they form part of the contemporary normative reconstruction developed in this article, incorporating commitments to equal moral standing, agency, and distributive fairness. They also clarify why limits cannot be regarded as intrinsically beneficial. A restriction that protects concentration, reduces manipulative engagement, or supports meaningful choice may enable flourishing, whereas one that limits accessibility, excludes disadvantaged users, or unnecessarily restricts communication may undermine it. The justification of a limit therefore depends upon its purposes, consequences, and the circumstances of those affected.

A digital learning platform provides an illustrative application. Consider a recommendation system that evaluates its success primarily through time spent online, repeated visits, or the frequency of user interaction. Increased engagement may be educationally valuable where it supports comprehension, practice, discussion, and sustained intellectual development. However, if additional notifications, autoplay functions, or reward mechanisms increase time spent without corresponding improvements in learning, the performance metric risks becoming detached from the educational purpose that originally justified it.

A proportionality-based evaluation would instead consider whether the system improves comprehension, learner autonomy, accessibility, and the capacity to apply acquired knowledge. Under some circumstances, this might justify recommending additional study, practice, or interaction. Under others, it might support opportunities for reflection, offline application, or the conclusion of a learning session. The relevant criterion is not the maximisation or minimisation of engagement, but its contribution to educationally worthwhile ends. This example is a normative illustration of the proposed framework rather than empirical evidence concerning the behaviour of all digital learning platforms.

The contrast is not merely between a longer and a shorter session. A conventional optimisation exercise may seek the highest engagement consistent with a preselected educational target; an ecological sufficiency test may ask whether the system’s resource use stays within an acceptable budget. Purposive proportionality asks the prior question of whether engagement itself has acquired unwarranted authority as a proxy for education. A defensible evaluation would specify comprehension, transfer of learning, accessibility, and learner autonomy; examine whether extra prompts or time online improve these outcomes; and allow teachers and learners to challenge the metric when it begins to reward dependency or distraction. If additional engagement improves learning for a student requiring extra support, expansion is justified. If it merely increases exposure without educational benefit, continued maximisation loses its justification. The distinction is conceptual; whether a particular design passes this test requires empirical evidence.

The example also demonstrates why judgments of enoughness must remain contextual and revisable. A learner encountering unfamiliar material may require additional time, guidance, or technological support, while another may benefit from concluding an activity once its educational purpose has been achieved. Similarly, users with accessibility requirements may depend upon forms of digital mediation that others do not need. A defensible account of proportionality must therefore remain sensitive to differences in capabilities, circumstances, and purposes rather than imposing uniform restrictions upon participation.

8. The Contemporary Relevance of Purposive Proportionality

In application, purposive proportionality is a sequence of publicly contestable judgments rather than a rule to minimise quantities: identify the good at stake; scrutinise whether the institution’s indicator faithfully represents it; evaluate the contribution of further intensification; compare the burdens and forgone alternatives; and revisit the judgment as needs and evidence change. This sequence makes visible a possible reversal between instrumental success and practical failure: a system can maximise its chosen metric while undermining the activity for which the metric was introduced.

An immediate implication concerns institutional performance measures. Universities may count publications, firms may count transactions, and digital services may count interactions. Such measures can provide useful information, but their relevance depends on the purposes for which institutions exist. A university’s publication output, for example, may support knowledge production, yet an additional publication is not automatically valuable if the incentives generating it diminish research quality, teaching, or intellectual independence. The point is not to abandon measurement but to make measures answerable to substantive ends, including their effects on those whose work they organise.

A second implication concerns the legitimacy of limits. Ecological thresholds can protect the material conditions of flourishing, while restrictions on access to education, assistive technologies, or essential services can perpetuate injustice. No limit is justified simply because it is established, traditional, or described as natural. A defensible judgment must consider basic needs and capabilities, individual agency, distribution of benefits and burdens, and opportunities for inclusive public contestation. These safeguards are contemporary normative commitments rather than propositions attributed to Aristotle’s historical political philosophy, whose hierarchical and exclusionary arrangements the reconstruction expressly rejects.

Technological enhancement provides a demanding test. Transhumanist proposals for cognitive enhancement or life extension invite consideration of capacities beyond existing biological conditions. A therapy that reduces suffering or an assistive technology that increases independence may have strong justificatory grounds. An elective enhancement may also be worthwhile where it supports freely chosen, meaningful projects. Yet enhancement pursued primarily to preserve competitive standing, or imposed through workplace expectations, raises different questions about autonomy, fairness, risk, and the displacement of other goods. Neither the naturalness of a limitation nor the technical possibility of overcoming it settles the issue. The appropriate judgment depends upon purposes, evidence, consequences, and the distribution of choice.

The framework must also distinguish the judgments of individuals from those of institutions. An individual may reasonably decide that further achievement is not worthwhile, while a public institution may have duties to expand provision to those whose basic needs remain unmet. Conversely, an individual’s preference for additional consumption does not by itself settle the legitimacy of institutional incentives that impose substantial ecological or social costs on others. Purposive proportionality therefore requires public justification where decisions have collective consequences, rather than treating personal satisfaction as an exhaustive measure of flourishing.

Its limits are equally important. The worth of human purposes is contestable; benefits and burdens may be difficult to compare; and empirical evidence is needed to determine whether particular innovations, business models, or restrictions achieve their claimed ends. The proposed criterion does not adjudicate these disputes mechanically. Its philosophical value is to make explicit the burden of justification often concealed when expansion, efficiency, or engagement is treated as an independent success. It directs deliberation toward the ends that matter, the persons affected, and the possibility that more may be necessary in one setting and counterproductive in another.

9. Conclusions: Practical Wisdom and the Limits of Expansion

This article has examined how a critical reconstruction of Aristotle’s practical wisdom, flourishing, and purposive acquisition can provide a normative basis for evaluating contemporary imperatives of indefinite optimisation. Its central argument is that the possibility of further economic, technological, or personal expansion does not, by itself, establish that such expansion contributes to living well. What matters is whether continued development remains appropriately related to worthwhile human purposes and the circumstances in which those purposes are pursued.

The analysis has proceeded through three interconnected stages. First, it has interpreted Aristotle’s account of τὸ μέσον in the Nicomachean Ethics as a context-sensitive conception of appropriate judgment rather than a general injunction to moderation. Second, it has examined the distinction in the Politics between acquisition directed toward substantive purposes and forms of wealth-getting that may become potentially unlimited. Third, it has brought these Aristotelian resources into critical dialogue with contemporary analyses of neoliberal subjectivity, social acceleration, technological mediation, and digital capitalism.

The principal contribution is a second-order criterion of purposive proportionality: an institution must justify not only the effectiveness of its means but also the authority of its ends and indicators. Unlike a fixed sufficiency threshold, this criterion does not determine how much development is universally appropriate. Unlike ordinary optimisation, it permits criticism of a metric even when the metric is successfully maximised. Unlike a general exhortation to virtue, it brings the distinction between practical judgment and unlimited acquisition to bear on the public justification of institutional arrangements. It therefore supports expansion where deprivation calls for increased capabilities while questioning intensification that has become detached from defensible goods.

The textual analysis supports a bounded claim: Aristotle distinguishes context-sensitive practical judgment from numerical averaging and identifies forms of acquisition lacking an intrinsic limit. The further claim that these resources yield a useful criterion for contemporary institutions is a defended philosophical proposal, not a deduction from the ancient texts. Whether that criterion produces better institutional decisions than established sufficiency, capability, or democratic-deliberative approaches remains open to comparative empirical and normative inquiry.

Important limitations remain. The relationship between institutional incentives, neoliberal rationality, technological design, and individual experiences of sufficiency requires further historical and empirical investigation. Moreover, judgments concerning worthwhile purposes are inevitably shaped by differences in material circumstances, capabilities, and social values. Their application must therefore remain open to revision, attentive to distributive justice, and subject to inclusive public reasoning.

Recovering τὸ μέσον does not require the rejection of technological progress, economic development, or human aspiration. It requires that these activities remain accountable to the purposes that make them valuable. The decisive philosophical question is not whether more can be achieved, but whether further achievement continues to contribute to living well. In this sense, purposive proportionality offers a framework for reconsidering the place of limits in contemporary life—not as universal prohibitions upon development, but as matters of practical judgment concerning the conditions of human flourishing.