ARETE AND THE QUEST FOR HUMAN EXCELLENCY
NICOLAE SĂCĂLIŞ
Abstract: Once in Egypt, Alexander, the young Macedonian, entered the temple of
Zeus-Amon, and asked the Egyptian priests to give him an answer to an anguishing
question: was he or was not he the son of the great Zeus-Amon?
We do not know what the priests told him, but we do know for sure, that till the end
of his life he had behaved as a God.
Christianity has changed completely this `rational` of man, who struggled to become
like Gods, and instead, brought about the idea that man is, as Abraham says, only `dust
and ashes.
Keywords: mysterium fascinans, hybris, daimon, Arete.
Once in Egypt Alexander Makedon, the young hero, entered the temple of
Zeus-Amon and asked the priests to give him an answer to an anguishing
question: was he or was not he the son of great Zeus-Amon. We don’t know
what priest’s answer was, but it is certain that throughout his military campain
Alexander was hailed as a god and behaved as a god.
For the modern mind this scene, that was taking place in Egypt thousands of
years ago, sounds incredible or even fantastic. What human being would dare, in
nowadays, to claim a divine origin? If someone did, he or she would have been
looked upon as a fool or as a psychiatric case. Enclosed in our industrial societies,
in our well-oiled birocratic system, we have ceased, for a long time, to see our
ties with the realm of divine and sacred. The profane had invaded us, and after
the “Death of God was proclaimed, man has lost, or is on his way to lose, one of
his most precious ability: the ability to awe, to revere, to sense the presence of
“fascinating mystery” (mysterium fascinans), as Rudolf Otto would say.
In other words, in our desacralized world little room was left, for what
Mircea Eliade has called: “hierophany”. (1)
Professor Ph.D, Department of Education - „Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University,
Bucharest.

When Man Was Close to God
And yet, if we don’t feel at home in our industrial world, in spite of all the
Gods we have got, and a sense of frustration, of powerlessness, of artificiality, of
something missing is still hunting us, then a question is naturally emerging.
What is missing? Why man is failing to become a man? Didn’t our ancestors, the
Greeks have, somehow, a better understanding of human nature and of our
relationship with the universe? Before we answer to such a question let us go
back and try to depict, shortly, how our ancestors saw themselves in the world.
And what was their image about man and his relationship with the world and
Gods.
So, what strikes, from the beginning the modern man, as soon as he gets into
the world of Iliad, of Pericles or Plato, is the proximity between Gods and man,
between sacred and profane. The Greeks talked about Gods, as modern man
talks about molecules and microbes, and refers to Gods, as modern man refers to
weather forecast and to stock exchange. The Gods were in the world everywhere,
either in some anthropomorphic forms, for the common man, or in some
intellectual more abstract forms, for educated people.
But the Gods and the belief in Gods were there, as the market economy and
the belief in its forces are in here in nowadays. However, there is a difference;
although the Greek saw the Gods close to human being, he knew, all the time,
that between Gods and man lay a well-defined border. Gods were immortal and
eternal, man was mortal and perishable. Therefore, it was a terrible sin, a hybris,
to try, as a human being, to upset the Gods. Remember, for example, what had
happened to Prometheus, who dared upset the Gods.
Unlike modern man, who thinks he can intervene limitless in nature, the
Greek had an acute awareness that there were some superior forces in the
universe he had to respect and revere. Yet, in all other respects, his relationship
with God and sacred was still a humane one, all the time. God and sacred,
though, superior to man, communicates to man; Zeus comes down many times
and fools around with beautiful women. He does not hesitate, for example, to
change into a swan, and to make love to beautiful Leda, the wife of Tindar, the
King of Laconia. Or, to beautiful Alcmena, the wife of Amfitrion, the King of
Teba. And if Zeus behaves in this way so does Afrodita, Poseidon and other
gods. One of the most beautiful myths, the myth of Eros and Psyche springs,
also, from the same “cultural milieu”. (2)
Moreover, when mythology fails to raise the Greek to the realm of sacred
and to reveal the existence of Gods, he uses, instead, the art, the sciences and the
philosophy to get there. So, Pythagoras discovers, in the strange order of
numbers and musical notes, the revelation of a divine, a more subtle order,
which underlies the physical order. Eros, also, for the Greek mind goes far
beyond physical desire. For Parmenides it is the child of Necessity, for Euripides
it is the inspiring spirit of the arts, and for Plato it is the pursuit of noble ends.
And after a banquet Socrates, sometimes at a corner of a street, suddenly remains
motionless. It is the sacred hour when he talks with the “daimon”, when the
Gods reveal to man.
Thus, from the Greek wisdom remains the compelling idea that man is a
special creature, above all the other creatures in the universe, who has some
unusual spiritual power and gifts, that bring him close more to Gods than to the
animals.
“There are many strange wonders, but nothing/More wonderful than man”,
Sophocles would say revealing this wisdom.(3)
And Greek civilization, and to some extent our modern civilization, was
made possible due to this belief in the special worth of man. But whereas the
Greek mind saw the powers of man, as related to the sacred and divine, we have
tried to derive them entirely from natural and profane and, as a result, we have
downgraded them, and even have perverted them.
Arete: the Forgotten Inner God
But these special spiritual qualities that lie in man, and make man unique in
the universe, are the best proof of his link with the divine. That’s why the Greek
does not hesitate to call a man, who has some special qualities, in a more than
usual measure, theios, which means divine. And this status may be reached by
the winners of the Olympiads, as well as, by a beautiful woman or any other
talented or gifted human being. Even the androgynous was hailed by Greeks as a
divine creature.
But even the ordinary man has certain powers, certain in born qualities, that
he is expected to struggle to bring out and fully develop. Or, in Greek’s term,
every human being had his own arete and his humanity is close related to the
efforts he makes to develop its arete as far as possible. So, arete has less to do
with virtue, as sometimes it has been translated, under the influence of
Christianity and more with valor, and quality and excellence of life and man.
“Always be the best and keep well ahead of the others”, Peleus would
advise Achilles, reminding the hero his value and his arete. (4) As a matter of fact
the Greek culture is so imbued with the idea of arete, and excellence, and love for
glory, that it is the first culture that lies under the stars of competition, of game,
of “agonistic ideal of life”, as J. Burckahardt has put it.
We can hardly explain the great achievements of Greek culture without this
formidable thrust of arete, which has made the Greek struggle all his life to
embody certain superior ideals, and reach certain absolute values of beauty and
good: his psychology was quite different of ours. While we, under influence of
behavioral sciences, see life as a chain or reactions of adjustment to a given
environment, the Greek, under the influence of art, and philosophy and religion,
saw it as a ceaseless effort to get into an ideal world. This more perfect world
was the world of heroes, the world of Iliad, of Gods, of absolute values. So,
deeply engrained was this belief in Greek mentality, that even in the fifth century
it was very common, for aristocratic families to claim the descent from some
great heroes. Needless to say that this practice today is only a feeble reflex of
what was in the past a powerful spiritual instrument of raising the man.
And education was the main mean by which the young were reared in this
spirit. We use the term education, but for the Greek education was not only
acquisition of knowledge, of behavioral modification, as it is for us, but rather
paideia, which may be translated by the idea of a fully development of a man. A
man of paideia has become truly a man; a man who fully has cultivated his body
and his mind, and who has grasped the unique meaning of human life; the
search for superior values, for excellence, for heroic deeds, for arete. This kind of
education has been called heroic or aristocratic. We call it simply humanistic, as
Romans did, when they translated paideia by the word humanitas.
Christianity and the End of Midsummer-Night’s Dream
The coming of Christianity changes entirely the man, the world, the Gods
and what is more important, the relationship between man and God. First, the
splendor of Greek pantheon with its colorful gallery Gods, demi-gods, is brought
to a halt. Instead One all-mighty God is enthroned. And in spite of all the efforts,
made later, to extend the realm of sacred, by the development of the cult of
Christ, of angels, of Virgin Mary, and other saints, still under the influence of the
pagan pantheon, Christianity remains a religion far more austere and detached
than Greek mythology. We are here, far away from the Zeus who plays games
with young beautiful women.
Thus, with the advent of Christianity we may say that “A MidsummerNight’s Dream” comes to an end. And, of course, the relationship of man with
God changes, too. Although the cult of Christ will try to retain something from
that pagan closeness between man and God, finally the main emphasis, in
Christianity, will be placed on the unworthy character of human life. And Man is
almost nothing in comparison with the divine. He is, as Abraham addressed the
Lord: “but dust and ashes”. Moreover, the influence of the old religion of the
Orient, Christianity introduces the idea of sin and guilt of man.
Thus, Christianity not only destroyed the Greek temples and beheaded the
Greek statues but, what is more important, destroyed the very idea of the worth
of man and arete. In the name of the new God, man was supposed more to
repent than enjoy the life, and more to repress his nature than to seek its full
development and glory. God was almost all, and man almost nothing. The joyful,
playful agnostic Spring of Greek culture was, thus, replaced by the ascetic vision
of an old religion, overwhelmed by the power of God and time and history.
We talk today about totalitarism and about totalitarian regimes. But this is
only a new term to name all old human mentality and ways of life. Because the
very roots of totalitarism were set in motion far behind by two main ideas: the
idea that man and man’s life is unworthy and the idea that man is a sinful
creature.
Thus, the mob who killed Hipati, one of the most intelligent and beautiful
women of pagan world, a woman of arete and paideia, was not very different
from the fascist and communist mobs which would torture and kill people in our
century. And the slaughter of the children started by Irod was not different from
the killings ordered by Hitler and Stalin: the psychological mechanism was the
same – man was guilty, man was to be punished, and man’s life was unworthy.
To some extent, we may say, that the whole European civilization, together
with its extension on the other continents, from its dawn has been torn apart
between the pagan tradition and the Christian tradition, between the belief in the
worth of man and arete and the belief in the worthless and sinful character of
human life, between love and play and competition, and repression asceticism an
humility, between castle and monastery, knight and monk, between Renaissance
and Reform, Lorenzo and Savonarola, between classicism and romanticism,
between democracy and totalitarism etc.
Tolstoy used to talk, even, about a contradiction between the Old Testament
and the New Testament. And, indeed, Iisus is a “character” who has something
to do more with the Greek heroes than with his ancestors from the Old
Testament. He has the passionate belief in God and in his mission, as Alexander
the Great, and the gentleness of thought and action of a Socrates, and the tragic
noble end of an Achilles. And He is son of God as many Greek heroes are.
There is today an ungoing tendency to reduce justice to the use of the sheer
force, the good to comfort and material benefits, love to sexuality etc. And like at
the end of the Hellenistic world, we witness an upsurge of mysticism and all
kind of oriental rituals.
Therefore, we are faced with an old dilemma: Is Man worth? Has he certain
powers which make him a special creature in the universe? Can he grasp beyond
the natural and imperfect every-day existence a more subtle and perfect world of
values? Is he, in other words, a “wonder” and a son of God, as Greek thought us?
Or, he is only a corrupted, sinful creature, who contains in himself the seeds of
his own destruction, like all the other creatures in the universe. A “mere speck of
dust”, as an awesome wisdom of the Orient is trying to teach us. This is the
question. This is the choice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Mircea Eliade, (1959), “The Sacred and the Profane”, A Harnest Book,
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York.
[2] Alexandru Mitru, (1960), “Legendele Olimpului”, Editura Tineretului.
[3] C.M. Bowra, (1957) “The Greek Experience”, A Mentor Book.
[4] H.I. Marrou, (1956) “A History of Education in Antiquity”, A Mentor Book.