Arete
( "excellence" or "moral virtue" -- Wikipedia )
( A moral virtue according to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a disposition to behave in the right manner and as a mean between extremes of deficiency and excess, which are vices! In other words someone who is habitually virtuous (a good person) and strives for a 'Golden Mean' in society!
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle begins by saying that the highest good for humans, the highest aim of all human practical thinking, is eudaimonia, a Greek word often translated as well-being or happiness. Aristotle in turn argues that happiness is properly understood as an ongoing and stable dynamic, a way of being in action (energeia), specifically appropriate to the human "soul" (psuchē), at its most "excellent" or virtuous (virtue translates aretē in Greek). If there are several virtues then the best and most complete or perfect of them will be the happiest one. An excellent human will be a person good at living life, who does it well and beautifully (kalos). Aristotle says that such a person would also be a serious (spoudaios) human being, in the same sense of "serious" that one contrasts serious harpists with other harpists. He also asserts as part of this starting point that virtue for a human must involve reason in thought and speech (logos), as this is an aspect (an ergon, literally meaning a task or work) of human living.
Most stoics acknowledge both their best and their worst moral characteristics and work continuously at self-improvement. They try to develop habits of generosity, honesty, responsibility, integrity, fairness, kindness and good humor. The result is a comforting moral self-sufficiency that even bereavement, bankruptcy or sheer bad luck can’t take away.)
"The person of Arete is of the highest effectiveness; they use all their faculties—strength, bravery, and wit—to achieve real results."
This section is therefore:
A study of Virtue Ethics
Normative ethical theories which emphasize virtues of mind, character and sense of honesty. Virtue ethicists discuss the nature and definition of virtues and other related problems that focus on the consequences of action. These include how virtues are acquired, how they are applied in various life contexts, and whether they are rooted in a universal human nature or in a plurality of cultures.
12/18/2020
I stumbled upon this word as I was researching what Eudaimonia meant to the ancient Greeks like Socrates. And, I spent some time going through the Wikipedia entry for this word. The one thing that stood out about this right away was that it was relative to how the ancient Greek Sophists viewed governance, particularly Democracy. In particular, Aristotle and Plato felt that Greeks were better off being ruled by an Aristocracy if selected because they exhibited the ability to be morally virtuous.
However, these Sophists also felt that Hereditary rule (Primogeniture) should be outlawed as a corruptible form of government and consider this to be akin to an Oligarchy. A few hundreds of years after this philosophical dialogue, a group of enlightened idealists we commonly refer to as the founding fathers crafted a new National Democratic government and a value system coined American. And from the perspective of these ancient philosophers, this was a corruptible type of Democracy that would be no better than Mob Rule. Yet some twenty score and four years later, our enlightened system of democratic government was challenged by a sociopathic demagogue grifter with an attempted coup.
The failed coup is an appalling attempt to usurp an illegitimate throne by the despicably corrupted POTUS45. It is not just because our nation's constitutional framers found a brilliant compromise, addressed in Article II, Section 1, to form an electoral college that addressed the inequality that states with larger populations had over those with a smaller populous, acceptable. However, until July 6 of this year, a philosophical flaw existed, and our current president could have succeeded through the electoral college process. Still, a SCOTUS decision, Chiafalo v. Washington, persuading an elector to switch his vote against a state's populous is much more difficult due to the penalty under law.
Still, not all states have laws to prevent an elector from switching their vote. Washington was swift to change after the 2016 election when its electors chose not to vote for Hillary Clinton as they were expected to by their state legislators. But, now this election year, there is still a looming issue with persuading the electoral college by a despot to retain power. Although this fundamental flaw in our United States presidential selection process already existed, Washington state was the only one to enact legislation to prevent faithless electors in this year's election. Only 32 states have any form of 'faithless elector' law; of these laws, only 15 address this faithlessness to remove, penalize or cancel the errant electors' votes. []