August 25, 2013

Rational Religion: Gülen’s Middle Way

Howard Wettstein*

This paper explores “the middle way.” Talk of a middle way harkens back to Aristotle’s Golden Mean, and in my own Jewish tradition to Maimonides. I explore the synthesis, if that is the right word, between the extremes that the middle way represents. I delineate two models of integration, the first, theoretical compromise. The second way, which I prefer, leaves the extremes and the truths they emphasize in place.