Arete (excellence)

Arete (Greek: {{polytonic|ἀρετή}}) in its basic sense means "goodness" or "excellence" of any kind, especially "manly" qualities. In its earliest appearance in Greek this notion of excellence was bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function. The moral excellence or arete of a man was then ηθικη, αρετη or virtue.

Related Topics:
Goodness - Manly - Greek - Virtue

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"The root of the word is the same as 'aristos', the word which shows superlative ability and superiority, and 'aristos' was constantly used in the plural to denote the nobility." 1 (see Aristocracy) The Ancient Greeks applied the term to anything: for example, the excellence of a horse, the excellence of a bull to be bred, and the excellence of a man. The meaning of the word changes depending on what it describes, since everything has its own particular excellence; the arete of a man is different from the arete of a horse.

Related Topics:
Aristos - Superiority - Nobility - Aristocracy - Ancient Greeks - Horse - Bull - Bred - Man

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By the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.E., arete as applied to men had developed to include quieter virtues, such as dikaiosyne (justice) and sophrosyne (self-restraint). Plato attempted to produce a moral philosophy that incorporated this new usage (and in doing so developed ideas that played a central part in later Christian thought), but it was in the work of Aristotle that the doctrine of arete found its fullest flowering.

Related Topics:
Fourth - Fifth - Justice - Sophrosyne - Plato - Moral philosophy - Christian - Aristotle

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