In Quest for Virtue: Learning From a Great Tradition

Abstract

The founding Greek vision on virtue / areté ( ά ρέτη ) offers a significant pathway to continuously reflect upon and understand, to activate and improve our own potential in promoting human well-being. It eventually leads to the value of wisdom in life, so much needed in tumultuous times of the current multilevel crisis; the moral one deeply affecting but also challenging to problem-solving the individual and society alike in the context of the axiological disarray we have to deal with. Highlighting the aretelogical approach as it has been developed from the Presocratics to the Hellenistic philosophers sustains the effort of comprehending the necessity of virtue in reaching and experiencing human well-being; hence the invitation to (re)learn from a great philosophical tradition focusing on the ethical nucleus-value articulated through the ancient “cardinal virtues” and that persisted over the centuries till the nowadays’ “technomoral virtues”. We aim to raise awareness about the royal way of virtue by exploring and appropriating its meaning worth to be constantly disclosed for an authentic human life enlightened by the ideal of eudaimonίa ( εύδαιμονία ).