Arete: The quest for Metaphysical Excellence

How would you describe the ideal human? Think of your favorite heroes. What are their most noble

qualities? What makes them heroic? Is the ideal the Olympic athlete, with his powerful body and remarkable

athletic ability – and the years of calculated training he endured to attain it? Or would it be the scientist, with a

seemingly limitless intelligence and capacity to understand the very inner workings of nature itself? Consider the

great leader, possessing an unimpeachable character and a lifelong commitment to dealing with others honestly –

with integrity and courage. Revere the valor and honor of a warrior who is willing to give his life in battle for the

values he has sworn to protect – values he would never consider living without. Or would you think of your best

friend, whose incredible humor, kindness, and benevolent sense of life you would gladly risk your life to defend?

Each of these descriptions offers the highest ideal with respect to some quality of man. But would each,

considered alone, be enough to qualify as the ideal? Of course not. The ideal would be an integration of these

qualities. It would be someone with a high level of physical fitness and athletic ability, intelligence, character, and

personality. Yet so many of us focus on only one or two of these values. But life requires them all. A great life

requires greatness in all aspects of it. By not focusing on all of these qualities we end up not living as fully and

robustly as we should.

Believe it or not, there was once an entire civilization that embraced this integrated ideal. Embracing it

with more passion than we give even one of these values today. Historians describe this culture as the “seat” of

Western Civilization. It is the culture from which the West first learned its most fundamental values. It was the first

truly rational, pro-reason culture, the first free society, and the civilization in which philosophy and bodybuilding

first began.

As a famous book on this culture begins, “Five hundred years before Christ in a little town on the far

western border of the settled and civilized world, a strange new power was at work. Something had awakened in the

minds and spirits of the men there which was to influence the world that the slow passage of long time, of century

upon century and the shattering changes they brought, would be powerless to wear away that deep impress.” That

city “had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of

spirit that our mind and spirit to-day are different.” i

Another work begins: “…in a part of the world that had for centuries been civilized, and quite highly

civilized, there gradually emerged a people, not very numerous, not very powerful, not very well organized, who

had a totally new conception of what human life was for and showed for the first time what the human mind was

for.”ii

The spirit of the West, the modern spirit, is first and foremost their discovery; and their place is not in the

midst of the more primitive cultures that surrounded them, but here, in the modern world.

What civilization could possibly have given rise to everything we enjoy as a value today? What was their

view of life, of happiness, of achievement? What culture could have given rise to two seemingly opposite

disciplines, bodybuilding and philosophy, and united them into one ideal? That culture was Ancient Greece.

The Greeks did not view man as merely a physical being. Nor did they consider him separately as a

spiritual or intellectual one. They could not fathom that the mind and the body could ever be separated. They lived

in an age and place where it took both intelligence and physical ability just to survive. Life was not sustained easily.

They knew that to live, one must use all the abilities one possessed; and that their most powerful ability was the

rational use of their mind. Their ideal was not a shriveled up professor at a blackboard, or an overweight church

choir member, or a piece of mindless beefcake. The intellectual, the spiritual, the physical were one. It should come

as no surprise that the phrase “a strong mind in a strong body” as signifying the ideal originated in ancient Greece.

The Greeks’ view of man is unique in history. Indeed, man was the standard of all that was good – as

opposed to the religious, environmental, and socialist viewpoints. As Sophocles so eloquently and reverently put it,

“Many are the world’s wonders, but none so wonderful as man.” Their overall view was of man the achiever, the

successful, the intelligent, the powerful, the beautiful. They believed that not only should man strive for the perfect,

but that the perfect was attainable. This is a view shared by only a handful out of billions on this earth today.

Naturally, the Greeks had a word that described the essence of this ideal: Areté

Areté simply put means “metaphysical excellence”. Metaphysics is the most fundamental branch of

philosophy and deals with the deepest of all questions: the nature of existence. So “metaphysical excellence” would

mean excellence in the deepest, most fundamental sense. In common terminology it would be described as a

“mastery of reality”. The Greeks’ highest value was life itself, and areté referred to the successful living of it – in

the most exalted sense. They knew that areté, to be properly sought, was a work in progress, something to be

developed. Their belief was, correctly, that man was born tabula rasa (meaning “blank slate”). Everything he

sought to attain had to be reached through productive work. This meant: exercise for the body, life long learning for

the mind (mental exercise and development, if you will), unrelenting work in the development of one’s own

character, and enjoying the company of others who share your same values.

But the Greeks did not extol areté as a means to an end, such as happiness or self-preservation, although it

would be appropriate to do so. They were not so far developed philosophically to see this point. To quote from a

talk given by philosopher Dr. Leonard Peikoff, “They sought it more like a child, who wants to develop his potential

– his mind, his body, his ability – precisely because he has such a great potential. A child which needs to grow to

his fullest height because everything in him is striving to grow, long before he appreciates the practical or biological

utility of doing so. Greece is man the awakening child glorying in his sheer capacity to function, with the

magnificence of his nature taken as a self-evident primary…..This child of the universe with his sensuous sculpture,

powerful body, animated by an ardent perceptual, perceiving mind, living a life drenched in sunlight and pleasure,

thoroughly at home in this the only world he knows – or ever wants to know.”

What a truly rare and precious quality this is in a person. Today areté is not only a lost word – it is a lost

concept. It is encouraging, however, that as a civilization we appear to be vacillating on the edge of discovering this

concept once more. Ideas are what drive history - and philosophy is the root of ideas. It is no wonder that

philosophy, science, and bodybuilding have been experiencing renewed interest over the past century - as all three

have their roots in the most rational, the most integrated of all civilizations – ancient Greece. “Except the blind

forces of nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin.” – a famous quote from Sir Henry

Maine. Greece was the prime mover of all the virtues, values, and ideas that shaped Western Civilization –

including our fascination with sports, recreation, and fitness. It is not a coincidence that the culture that produced

the philosophical greats of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle also produced the greatest of all sporting events: the

Olympic Games.

Bodybuilding since the Greeks had been lost for over 2,500 years. It has now returned, but without the

integration and philosophical base needed to give it widespread appeal in our culture as a powerful and healthy way

to live one’s life. One can see this both in the fact that an ever increasing percentage of our population are becoming

obese, and the majority of our health care woes stem from problems with lifestyle. For example: Colon cancer and

low fiber diets, massive simple carbohydrate consumption and Diabetes, cigarette use and lung cancer and

emphysema, high blood pressure and heart disease and stroke, lack of exercise (specifically resistance training) and

osteoporosis – the list is very long. The majority of these diseases have some sort of “sedentary lifestyle”

correlation as well. The Dynamorphic (my own version of being powerful and active) lifestyle integrates both aerobic and anaerobic exercise with nutrition – but if

you approach it the way I advocate, it will integrate all the other aspects of your life as well.