Chapter 1 - Aretē (Excellence, Virtue)

Summary

Aristotle’s notion of aretē provides a way of reading Shakespeare’s plays that unifies the characters’ actions in a manner parallel to how ethics unifies humanity. For Aristotle, moral virtue is determined by how completely an individual embodies human nature. As a result there is a sense in which Aristotelian virtue is a selfish endeavor; I strive to fulfill my nature, and in doing so I achieve happiness (eudaimonia). Yet for Aristotle, moral virtue is a political exercise, it is action that ties a person to others. An individual’s role in the state is necessary for the full cultivation of virtue, and hence a requirement for achieving their own selfish end. Shakespeare frequently plays with this tension in Aristotelian virtue: The way characters relate their own good to the good of the state is, by this reading, a way of interpreting the virtue of the characters. Virtuous judgment is not set over universal principles. It is thinking through objects and experience in all their vicissitudes, as characters in a drama have to do. This chapter uses King Lear to demonstrate how Aristotelian moral virtue, and its relation of the individual and the state, can serve as a structuring principle for understanding action.