Arete (Greek) in its basic sense, means "excellence of any kind".The term may also mean "moral virtue" In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential.
The Ancient Greeks applied the term to anything: for example, the excellence of a chimney, the excellence of a bull to be bred and the excellence of a man.
The term from Homeric times onwards is not gender specific. Homer applies the term of both the Greek and Trojan heroes as well as major female figures, such as Penelope, the wife of the Greek hero Odysseus. In the Homeric poems,
Arete is frequently associated with bravery, but more often with effectiveness. The man or woman of Arete is a person of the highest effectiveness; they use all their faculties—strength, bravery and wit—to achieve real results. In the Homeric world, then, Arete involves all of the abilities and potentialities available to humans. The concept implies a human-centered universe in which human actions are of paramount importance; the world is a place of conflict and difficulty, and human value and meaning is measured against an individual effectiveness in the world.
In some contexts, Arete is explicitly linked with human knowledge, where the expressions "virtue is knowledge" and "Arete is knowledge" are used interchangeably. The highest human potential is knowledge and all other human abilities are derived from this central capacity. If Arete is knowledge and study, the highest human knowledge is knowledge about knowledge itself; in this light, the theoretical study of human knowledge, which Aristotle called "contemplation," is the highest human ability and happiness."[2]
Ancient Greek people thought of arete as meaning something like the US Army's old slogan, "Be all that you can be." It meant that you were being the best person you could be. So arete would mean different things for different people. In the Odyssey, Penelope has arete, because she is the best wife that a woman can be. But Achilles in the Iliad also has arete, because he is the best warrior that a man can be, and Odysseus has arete because he is so clever, and thinks up effective plots, and athletes have arete when they win the foot-race.
Not only people could have arete - a well-built house, a beautiful piece of pottery, and a strong horse all had arete too. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the ideal form of a thing is its arete, the goal that everything is trying to get to. As Plato says, arete is something you are always trying to achieve.
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