"The Greek word arete (ἀρετή) is usually translated as "virtue," but its primary meaning is excellence - the full realization of a thing's potential or function. The arete of a knife is its sharpness. The arete of a racehorse is its speed. The arete of an eye is clear vision. And the arete of a human soul? That's what Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle spent their careers investigating."
"The crucial point is that arete was fundamentally a functional concept, not a moral one. It asked: Is this thing doing what it's meant to do? Is it reaching its highest capability? Applied to humans, the question becomes: Are you becoming what you're capable of being? This is a much more dynamic and demanding concept than passive rule-following. It's about active striving toward excellence, not merely avoiding wrongdoing."
The term virtue originates from Latin virtus (manliness) rather than the Greek arete (excellence). Greek arete meant the full realization of a thing's potential or function, applied to humans as becoming what one is capable of being. Examples include a knife's sharpness or a racehorse's speed. Arete was primarily a functional, demanding, and dynamic concept focused on active striving toward excellence rather than passive moral rule-following. Roman translators, notably Cicero, chose Latin vocabulary that shaped later Western understanding of virtue. Recovering the original meaning can transform approaches to character development.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]