arete: one construct, many systems

In Greek ethics, arete is excellence, the quality by which a thing performs its characteristic function well, and in a human being the excellence of character and intellect that constitutes virtue. In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics arete of character is a settled disposition to feel and act in the right way, lying as a mean between excess and deficiency, and it is the condition of eudaimonia, a flourishing human life. The referent is excellence conceived as the full realisation of a thing's or person's proper function, argued philosophically, and it is the root of the same construct that positive psychology later tries to catalogue and measure as character strengths.[1]

Unit

Excellence as the full realisation of a thing's or person's characteristic function

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Not applicable; analysed philosophically through the doctrine of the mean, habituation, and the relation of virtue to flourishing

In positive psychology, the ancient idea of arete is operationalised as “character strengths”, positive traits such as courage, humanity, and wisdom thought to enable flourishing. Peterson and Seligman's Character Strengths and Virtues offers a classification of six broad virtues and twenty-four strengths, explicitly presented as a scientific counterpart to the Greek and other traditions' accounts of excellence, with proposed criteria and measures. The referent is a set of measurable positive dispositions linked to well-being, studied empirically, and it is the same excellence-of-character construct as philosophical arete, here turned into a taxonomy and assessment rather than a philosophical argument.[2]

Unit

Positive, measurable traits of character associated with flourishing

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed through self-report inventories and the classification's proposed criteria for identifying strengths and virtues