Page "Eudaimonia" Paragraph 6

As already noted, the Greek word areté is usually translated into English as virtue.

One problem with this is that we are inclined to understand virtue in a moral sense, which is not always what the ancients had in mind.

For a Greek, areté pertains to all sorts of qualities we would not regard as relevant to ethics, for example, physical beauty.

So it is important to bear in mind that the sense of ‘ virtue ’ operative in ancient ethics is not exclusively moral and includes more than states such as wisdom, courage and compassion.

The sense of virtue which areté connotes would include saying something like " speed is a virtue in a horse ", or " height is a virtue in a basketball player ".

Doing anything well requires virtue, and each characteristic activity ( such as carpentry, flute playing, etc.

) has its own set of virtues.

The alternative translation excellence ( or " a desirable quality ") might be helpful in conveying this general meaning of the term.

The moral virtues are simply a subset of the general sense in which a human being is capable of functioning well or excellently.