What Is Arete? About This Greek Term

What Is Arete? About This Greek Term

ARETE – In this topic, we are going to know and learn about the Greek term which is called Arete ( ἀρετή).

ARETE

Basically, this Greek term means “excellence” of any kind and it also may mean “moral virtue”.

In its early appearance, this notion was 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 this term to anything, from the excellence of a chimney to the excellence of man. It changes depending on what the term describes since everything has its own peculiar excellence. This would imply an example where the excellence of man is different from that of horse.

From the Homeric times onwards, this term is not gender specific since Homer applies this to both the Greek and Trojan heroes as well as major female figures like Penelope, who is the wife of the Greek hero Odysseus.

At the same time, this term is usually associated with bravery and even more frequent with effectiveness

Its person is of the highest effectiveness and utilizes all their strength, bravery, and wit to achieve real results.

This term is also explicitly linked with human knowledge and is where “virtue is knowledge” and “Arete is knowledge”, both of its expressions, are used interchangeably.

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