It would be remiss of me of me if I was to write a series of blog posts on the elements of eudemonia and not have seven of them. Seven appears to be a thing in western consciousness, with seven deadly sins, seven days in a week, seven dwarves and it appears on the list of the most favourite lucky number whatever that means. If you ever find "Thursday, the sneezy dwarf of superbia", you will know why.
The seventh of seven is not really one thing but two parts which combine together; they are arete (ἀρετὴ) and epainos (ἔπαινος). Arete is in its broadest sense, a thing that is excellent. Epainos in its broadest sense, is praise or accolade of that which is excellent.
The Greek concept of arete was that a thing should fulfil the function for which it was intended, to its highest ability. A table should be good at being a table. A cat should be good at being a cat. A person should be good at being a person. Plato particularly thinks that everything has its own unique highest form of excellence; that a bull which is particularly good for breeding is the best bull, which is going to be different from the best kind of person and even then, the best slave is different to the best aristocrat who are already presumed to be the exemplary of arete. In fact the root of the word for 'arate' is the same as 'aristos', which describes superlatives, superiority, and in plural the 'aristocrats' who are the nobility.
The idea of arate is not necessarily limited to the usual masculine traits of strength and bravery either. In the Odyssey, while Odysseus is off doing his quite frankly stupid things, it is his wife Penelope who is at home who is waiting for him and also has to manage the household and property, who is seen as best expressing arate. Not only does she do so with humility and wit, but also economy as she has to hold off frequent attempts by idle suitors who want to marry her and thus claim the estate and who are literally eating her out of house and home.
Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" includes the virtues such as bravery, wit, strength and the quieter virtues of patience, justice, self-control, self-restraint, and even knowledge itself as included as arate. This is likely because as a philosopher, there's probably a degree of superbia going on, where of course someone engaged in the theoretical study of human knowledge is going to be considered among the virtues of highest human ability and happiness. Probably Aristotle's own name is derived from that same root word which 'arate' and 'aristos' are.
How does one be the best thing that they can be? Certainly education in the sciences, literature, the arts, languages and grammar will hopefully build someone suited to living in a society, which is why we have education in the first place but when it comes to arate, not only would we find violent disagreement between people who think that it is built up of different things but we'd also have violent disagreement about what kind of training should be done to build and acquire it. You might very well be able to say that there are common traits such as goodness, kindness, bravery, patience, the ability to take instruction, some kind of reverence for kin, kith and country, self-discipline and self-respect, but you definitely will not find agreement on the best ways to build and obtain arate in a person.
It is also something of a paradox, that not only do we not really know the best ways to build arate or even agree as to what those ways are, there isn't even a common agreement on deciding on what is praiseworthy. We can all agree that when training someone, some amount of praise or epainos is useful in encouraging the results and behaviour that we would like to see but again, what exactly those results and behaviours are is up for dispute.
We have very limited means of displaying public epainos for people. We have medals and trophies, rings and pennants for champions in sport. We have trophies for film, radio, television, painting, theatre, sculpture, journalism and writing. We have medals for valour. We even have titles which may appear before someone's name or after, such as Sir, Doctor, Professor, Dame, Lord, Lady, KC, OAM, LLB, B.Sc. B.A. et cetera.
The problem is that for the vast multitude of people, there is mostly nothing. You usually do not get a reward for displaying any virtue save for the immediate gratitude which someone might express. Granted that there are some kinds of rewards for people working in organisations and firms which may include increased rates of pay but that is because those organisations and firms mostly see this as a transactional set of conditions, where the issue of rewards is in expectation of future reciprocal benefits for those organisations and firms (which in a corporate sense is almost always with the expectation of future profits).
So where does this leave arate and epainos? If they are reduced to mere transactional tokens, which are based on the performance of action, then what is the inherent good of them at all? I do not think that arate and epainos are mere transactional tokens which are the moral equivalents of rent, profit, dividends or wages. I rather think that the expression of rate and epainos are themselves, inherently good in themselves.
The best expression of arate is to be brave, to be kind, to be self-controlled, to be curious and know and learn, to practice and fight for justice and perhaps most important of all, to be patient with everyone else because we are all little selfish idiots who are blinkered and very much think only of ourselves and what is in front of us.
The best expression of arate in community is when people work together to do a thing. This is why corporations exist, why partnerships exist, why marriages exist, why teams exist, why republics and commonwealths exist. We all sort of know that a thing built in community is bigger and better than things which are built by individuals because of things like specialisation and efficiencies due to economies of scale. We know that people have different abilities and strengths and weaknesses and the point of being brave and kind and self-controlled and curious and fighting for justice and being patient, is that working together, we share the surpluses together.
The best expression of epainos is when people are temporarily rewarded for being their best selves and then driven onwards to be better still. The best expression of epainos in community is when the group is driven together to be its best self. I think that this is the reason why when nations go to war and win, they are collectively relieved that it is over; why when national sporting teams win, the whole nation rejoices; when teams win, their legions of fans are also joyful.
But again, being brave, kind, self-controlled, curious, fighting for justice and being patient with people, and working hard at doing those things, is not only a good thing but a good thing to do because it is good.
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