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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear Bingley: I enjoyed the link, particularly the reference to "arete".
"Socrates's primary concern in life was arete 'excellence', not in the Sophistic
sense of practical efficiency in public life, but as moral excellence of soul,
that is, virtue."
I wish we saw more of it today.
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
wwh, there will be no verifiable connection here, but I find it whimsically interesting that arete and the French word arręter (to stop) bear resemblance.
I would think a person who is capable of stopping mentally to make moral considerations could be possessed of this quality of arete. On the other hand, fools rush in and all that jazz. Not too many angels tred the path I follow...
Dub
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Regrettably I have been unable to find a discussion of the qualities subsumed in "arete" But it bothers me to see so many ways in which virtue is mocked in our culture. I was reading TIME tonight, and could only shake my head at a review of three movies featuring human copulation, and contrasting the merits of the way the subject was handled in each of the three. A swamp Yankee farmer I knew said "There ain't no choice in a pig turd." I see no merit in trying to make pornography an art form. Without wanting to sound like an Islamic fundamentalist, I wonder about the future of a nation that scorns virtue, and enriches pornographers.
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