Aretē—Greek 'excellence' or 'virtue'—occupies a foundational position in the depth-psychology corpus as the primary value-term through which ancient Greek culture organized its understanding of human achievement, social standing, and moral worth. The scholarship gathered here reveals not a single stable concept but a contested, historically shifting field. Adkins's landmark study demonstrates that Homeric aretē is rooted in competitive, results-oriented excellences—courage, strength, martial prowess—whose evaluative logic persists stubbornly into the fifth and fourth centuries, resisting philosophical redefinition. Sullivan's complementary work maps the pre-Socratic and poetic traditions: Homer's vulnerable, divinely contingent heroic excellence; Pindar's hereditary and inborn aretai requiring both nature and training; Theognis's aristocratic internalization of excellence as noble character independent of wealth; and Heraclitus's radical reinterpretation of aretē as intellectual activity aligned with the cosmic logos. The tension between competitive and co-operative excellences—between the warrior's aretē and dikaiosynē, between inherited capacity and teachable skill—runs through Plato's and Aristotle's attempts to rehabilitate the quieter virtues without surrendering the term's enormous emotive authority. That aretē could simultaneously denote social class, martial prowess, political skill, intellectual achievement, and moral virtue makes it one of antiquity's most contested conceptual sites.
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23 substantive passages
Heraclitus describes this form of thinking (sophronein) as arete. Excellence is summed up in an intellectual activity... It is this very capacity of 'thinking well' that sets humans apart from all other living creatures and at the same time constitutes, in Heraclitus' view, their highest achievement, arete.
Heraclitus radically redefines aretē as intellectual alignment with the cosmic logos, making 'thinking soundly' the summit of human excellence rather than martial or physical prowess.
Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
The word itself is probably related to aretao, meaning 'to thrive' or 'to flourish'... in practice the Greeks associated it more with areion, meaning 'better', and with aristos, meaning 'best'.
Sullivan traces the etymology and practical semantic field of aretē in Homer, establishing its foundational connection to competitive superiority and flourishing rather than moral virtue in the modern sense.
Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
Pindar believes in 'inborn aretai'... 'an individual has great power by inborn valour. But the one who has only teachings dwells ever in darkness... and never walks with a sure step. He tastes of countless forms of areti with an ineffectual noos'.
Pindar's doctrine of inborn aretai holds that genuine excellence requires hereditary capacity as its foundation, mere training without natural endowment producing only directionless imitation.
Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
'Many evil men are rich, and many good men are poor, but we will not exchange our arete for the wealth of these, since it is always enduring whereas different people at different times have wealth.'
Theognis redefines aretē as an enduring inner nobility of character categorically opposed to wealth, marking a crucial internalization of excellence in Greek ethical thought.
Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
not even if he had every ground for fame but fierce valour; for a man does not become agathos in war if he should not hold firm when he sees bloody carnage... This is arete.
Tyrtaeus's reduction of the complex Homeric aretē to martial steadfastness illustrates how external pressure forces a society to isolate and elevate one component of excellence above all others.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
Odysseus says that it is the gods who grant arete and that, instead of giving this, they may send things that are 'baneful'... Zeus removes 'half of someone's arete when the day of slavery overtakes him'.
The Homeric conception of aretē presents excellence as divinely contingent and therefore fragile, a vulnerability that intensifies heroic striving while subordinating it to divine dispensation.
Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
Human eudaimonia is evidently an activity of the psuche in accordance with arete, for the arete of anything is the condition in which it is functioning most efficiently, and hence its most satisfactory condition, its eudaimonia.
Adkins articulates Aristotle's functional definition of aretē as optimal actualization of any entity's characteristic activity, grounding eudaimonia directly in excellence of psychic function.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
Dikaiosune might become part (or even the whole) of arete, could it be realized that the quieter virtues are essential to the stability and prosperity of society... Homeric society was even calm enough to realize that other peoples in different circumstances might be suited by different aretai.
Adkins traces the conditions under which dikaiosynē could be absorbed into aretē, showing that excellence was always contextually defined by the type of man a given social order most urgently required.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
Since Aristotle's view of the arete of the whole man is founded like traditional arete, on practical necessities, he is able to justify it, not by any reference to ideals, or to idealistic phrases, but on pragmatic grounds.
Adkins argues that Aristotle's ethical standard of aretē, though philosophically elaborated, is ultimately grounded in the same practical social necessities that justified traditional competitive excellence.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
Dikaiosune is the condition in which each of the elements is performing its function perfectly, is displaying its arete, excellence, is agathos, a good specimen of its kind, eu prattei, is in a state of eudaimonia.
In Plato's Republic, Adkins shows, dikaiosynē is interpreted as each soul-part's aretē or excellence, making justice the condition of optimal psychic function and hence the ground of eudaimonia.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
This skill in budgeting and defence, in home and in state, is no more moral than the skills commended by traditional arete. Dikaiosune must be linked to it, if at all, as a means.
Adkins demonstrates that in Plato's Protagoras, politikē aretē remains a pragmatic techne oriented toward prosperity and survival, not an intrinsically moral condition.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
agathos and arete continue to commend courage in Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, and later writers... agathos and arete were reckoned by results rather than intentions, and reasons were given for this.
Adkins documents the tenacious persistence of results-oriented, courage-commending uses of aretē across fifth-century literature, demonstrating the failure of internalist moral reform to displace traditional valuations.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
The answer was found in the new skill of the sophists, the techne which gave a man the claim that he possessed political arete, the quality of a...
Adkins identifies the sophists' offering of political techne as a historically specific attempt by traditional agathoi to legitimate their social claims through a new form of excellence.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
the emergence of a new kind of arete—a use, that is, of the highest term of value to commend a new kind of activity, or even the promise of such an activity.
Adkins traces how aretē's semantic flexibility allowed it to be appropriated to commend novel political and administrative skills in fifth-century Athens, driven by changed social demands.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
A person may still be good, may 'conceal arete' in a difficult situation but the world will believe that in this individual arete is absent.
Theognis acknowledges the tragic gap between inner excellence and social recognition, a tension that forces aretē underground when adverse fortune makes its external marks invisible.
Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
it is not easy to provide a reason for this allocation of spheres of influence, should anyone attempt to question it. Accordingly this system, in the most literal sense, will not bear thinking about.
Adkins exposes the internal instability of the compromise that assigns active aretē to war and games while reserving civic life for dikaiosynē, noting it was precisely the sophists who exposed this contradiction.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
The co-operative excellences have become aretai, and hence desirable, without the necessity of adopting the 'logic' of words commending success and decrying failure.
Adkins charts the partial but significant fourth-century achievement whereby the co-operative virtues were elevated to the status of aretai through the influence of Plato and Aristotle, without fully displacing competitive valuations.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
at E.N. 1130a8, Aristotle can say that dikaiosune in the general sense... is 'the whole of arete'; and at 1129a9 he quotes Theognis' 'the whole of arete is summed up in dikaiosune'.
Adkins notes Aristotle's acknowledgment that dikaiosynē can be called the whole of aretē in one sense, while showing the Ethics and Politics overall prevent justice from actually assuming that paramount position.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Xenophanes feels those of the second are greater... if athletes win contests 'not for that reason would the city be in the state of good order' (eunomie). Xenophanes thus sees wisdom as contributing to 'good order'.
Xenophanes revalues aretē by arguing that sophia contributes to civic eunomia in ways that athletic prowess cannot, grounding the claim for intellectual excellence in its social utility.
Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
in the earlier Hippolytus arete was used to commend Hippolytus' chastity—for, Eur. frag. 446 Nauck, arete is equated with sophrosune, in explicit reference to Hippolytus.
Euripides' equation of aretē with sōphrosynē in Hippolytus represents a rare dramatic attempt to extend excellence to cover chastity, illustrating the expanding, contested semantic range of the term.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Homeric society does value most highly the class it needs most: men who are well-armed, strong, fleet of foot and skilled in war, counsel, and strategy... In comparison with the competitive excellences, the quieter co-operative excellences must take an inferior position.
Adkins establishes the social-functional basis of Homeric values: the hierarchy of excellences mirrors the hierarchy of social needs, with competitive aretē structurally privileged over co-operative virtues.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
to acknowledge past aretai as aretai, but claim that they are irrelevant, is much more fruitful than to say that other activities are more important aretai... arete is arete, and even if its claims might fail in this one instance, it is evident that
Adkins illustrates through forensic rhetoric the enormous residual authority of traditional aretē even in legal contexts where it was nominally being set aside, demonstrating its power as an evaluative absolute.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960aside
it was said of one man that he reached such a pitch of arete that he felt more anger at the wrongs done to the people than gratitude to those responsible for his return from exile.
Adkins documents a democratically inflected use of aretē in Athenian oratory where excellence is measured by civic feeling, illustrating the term's adaptability to new political contexts.
Arthur W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960aside