The concept of arete — excellence, virtue, the fullest realization of a being’s defining capacities — commands sustained and contested attention across the depth-psychology corpus, appearing wherever scholars interrogate the relationship between inner character and outward achievement in Greek thought. Sullivan’s comprehensive survey of early Greek psychological ideas traces arete from its probable etymological root in ‘thriving’ or ‘flourishing’ through Homer’s heroic code, Pindar’s doctrine of inborn excellences, Theognis’s aristocratic ethics, and Heraclitus’s startling reduction of arete to intellectual self-knowledge — sophronein. Adkins, working from a sociological and semantic vantage, pursues arete as a site of ideological contest: a term whose competitive valence — commending courage, birth, wealth, and results over intention — perpetually resists assimilation into cooperative moral categories such as dikaiosune. The central tension the corpus exposes is precisely this: whether arete names an achieved social and martial superiority judged by outcomes, or an inner excellence of character accessible through nature, training, or rational self-possession. Aristotle’s reformulation — distinguishing ‘natural’ arete from its completed, intelligence-directed form — and Plato’s identification of dikaiosune as the human arete represent the philosophical apex of this struggle. The term thus functions in the corpus as a diagnostic instrument for the entire developmental arc of Greek ethical psychology.
The word itself is probably related to aretao, meaning ‘to thrive’ or ‘to flourish’. The person exhibiting ‘excellence’ would clearly be thought to be someone ‘thriving’ or ‘flourishing’.
Sullivan establishes the etymological and conceptual foundations of arete, tracing its root to flourishing while noting that in practice Greeks associated it with ‘better’ and ‘best’.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
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.
Sullivan demonstrates how Heraclitus radically redefines arete as an intellectual achievement — the capacity to align individual thought with the ordering principle of the cosmos.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
Pindar believes in ‘inborn aretai’. He contrasts people having these with those who have only training: ‘an individual has great power by inborn valour. But the one who has only teachings dwells ever in darkness… He tastes of countless forms of areti with an ineffectual noos’.
Sullivan shows how Pindar grounds arete in inherited natural capacity, arguing that training alone, without an inborn foundation, produces only an unfocused and ultimately futile striving for excellence.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
Sparta is in a critical situation. Only courageous fighting can save her: hence the arete of the stable Homeric society must be shorn of its irrelevances. Agathos must be agathos in war: this is arete.
Adkins uses Tyrtaeus to demonstrate how social crisis forces a reduction of the complex Homeric arete to a single, politically urgent virtue — martial courage — revealing the essentially situational and competitive character of the term.
, 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’. Eumaeus tells him that Zeus removes ‘half of someone’s arete when the day of slavery overtakes him’.
Sullivan illustrates the Homeric conception of arete as a vulnerable gift subject to divine withdrawal and circumstantial diminishment, intensifying the hero’s drive to achieve while excellence remains within reach.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
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. Such a realization must result from a change in the conditions of life, for the Homeric arete or aretai suited the Homeric situation.
Adkins argues that the absorption of cooperative virtues like justice into arete was historically contingent, requiring a transformation in social conditions before the quieter excellences could claim the term’s full prestige.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
Arete, therefore, in Theognis’ view is very much a question of noble character that is in no way to be acquired with the arrival of wealth… ‘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’.
Sullivan shows how Theognis severs arete from material prosperity, relocating it in an enduring inner nobility of character that poverty cannot extinguish and wealth cannot confer.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
Agathos retains strongly the sense of ‘good at’ in all contexts; and 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 demonstrates the persistence of the results-oriented, competitive dimension of arete across classical authors, arguing it structurally resists the internalization of moral intention.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
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 presents Aristotle’s functional definition of arete — excellence as the optimal condition of a thing performing its characteristic activity — as the philosophical culmination of the Greek tradition.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
What is to be taught is a skill, a techne. This is inevitable: the state’s first function is to survive… This skill in budgeting and defence, in home and in state, is no more moral than the skills commended by traditional arete.
Adkins analyzes the Protagorean concept of political arete as a teachable techne, arguing it remains continuous with traditional arete’s pragmatic, survival-oriented logic rather than representing a genuine moral advance.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
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 arete, though philosophically elaborated, remains grounded in the same practical necessities that governed the traditional competitive standard.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
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.
Adkins reconstructs Plato’s argument in the Republic, showing how the identification of dikaiosune with the proper functioning — and thus the arete — of each psychic element is meant to demonstrate that justice constitutes eudaimonia.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
There is no reason to suppose that the Athenians solved their problems; but the very existence of such problems guaranteed the title of agathos to anyone who promised or seemed able to show them the means to a solution.
Adkins traces the emergence of a new form of arete in democratic Athens — political skill and administrative competence — as the social need for such qualities granted the highest honorific to those who possessed or promised them.
, 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 explains how the sophists offered traditional elites a new ideological resource — political arete as teachable techne — to justify their continued social primacy in a democratizing Athens.
, 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.
Sullivan highlights Theognis’s recognition that arete can be hidden by poverty, exposing the tension between an inner excellence and its socially legible, outwardly measurable expression.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
The system will work if two conditions are fulfilled: firstly, if men in general believe sufficiently strongly that their success depends on their dikaiosune; and secondly, if it is assumed that the proper field for displaying active arete is the field of battle and the games, leaving civic life as the field for dikaiosune.
Adkins identifies the structural precondition for any reconciliation of traditional arete with cooperative justice: a strict division of spheres that the sophists would soon render philosophically untenable.
, 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 citation of Theognis to equate dikaiosune with the totality of arete, while demonstrating that the rest of the Ethics and Politics structurally prevents justice from actually occupying this supreme position.
, 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. As yet, however, only a part of the range of these terms in such fourth-century writers has been considered.
Adkins assesses the partial success of fourth-century writers in elevating cooperative virtues to the status of aretai, while showing that the competitive, class-inflected core of the term was never fully displaced.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
Pindar consistently made the conventions of the victory ode his servant… To him the present triumph reveals an inherited strain of excellence that must have shone in earlier days and would be destined to shine again.
Sullivan shows how Pindar uses the epinician genre to construct arete as a trans-generational inheritance, with the present victory serving as evidence of a lineage of excellence reaching into myth and forward into futurity.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
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 provides the sociological rationale for Homeric arete’s competitive orientation, arguing that the community’s survival needs determined which qualities received the highest honorific.
, 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’.
Sullivan demonstrates how Xenophanes revalues arete by subordinating athletic prowess to sophia on the criterion of social utility — wisdom’s contribution to eunomia — anticipating later philosophical redefinitions.
, 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.
Adkins notes the exceptional Euripidean usage in which arete is extended to commend sexual self-restraint, marking a significant infiltration of ‘quiet’ virtues into a term traditionally reserved for competitive excellence.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960aside
Arete is arete, and even if its claims might fail in this one instance, it is evident that arete is still considered paramount in the Athenian courts.
Adkins illustrates the continued rhetorical dominance of arete in the forensic context, where past excellences retain near-irresistible persuasive force regardless of the specific charge under consideration.
, 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 cites a democratic-era usage in which arete commends civic loyalty and moral indignation on behalf of the demos, showing the term’s capacity for political adaptation without fully shedding its elite prestige.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960aside