Arete: Quality vs.pleasure/happiness

         The Ancient Greek culture is noted for being one of the most unique, yet influential cultures throughout human history. One of the main reasons that the Ancient Greeks were one of the most influential people were because of their beliefs and values. Arete was a very prevalent idea that the Ancient Greeks built their culture upon. Arete basically means the pursuit of excellence or virtuosity in everything that they do in their lives. In other words, Arete refers to trying to have very high quality in every aspect of one's life. However, in current American culture some parts of the still valued Arete philosophy are somewhat controversial. Specifically, one might ponder upon whether or not pursuing quality in your everyday life, is the same as pursuing happiness in your everyday life? Also, one might wonder whether or not doing things with the goal of high quality, was the same as doing things with the goal of feeling satisfied and happy with the end result. Most importantly, were the Greeks hinting at a bigger message than simply the pursuit of good quality with the term Arete?

  One side of this argument would claim that the Arete philosophy is really not hinting at anything more than good quality in everything you do, and is not the same philosophy as one which pursues happiness. They would argue that Arete is just the goal of completing a task well, not the goal of feeling happy with your accomplishment. After all, in current society, Arete can be distinguished from happiness in many ways: many students work very hard in high school, but only with the end goal of getting into college, not to make them feel a sense of pleasure; many people do certain jobs to the best of their ability so that they can get paid well, even though it might not be their dream job. In these examples, those people are pursuing excellent quality, but they are not pursuing happiness. They are just doing their best, so that they will get a valuable reward, or sense of accomplishment.  This side would claim that there is no "higher-level" virtues in Arete than just exhibiting quality in everything you do. However, there are always two sides to a controversial idea!
 
      The other side to this issue would argue that the Arete philosophy is hinting at more than excellent quality in every task you complete, and this philosophy is the same as one which pursues happiness. This side would argue that you simply cannot be happy without putting good quality into your work. Some examples of where this is the case include, if you try your best at a sporting event and do very well, then you will be happy; or if you study for hours for a test and earn an A, then you will be happy with the end result. In these two examples, this side would state that one has not completely followed the Arete principle if they do their best, but do not end up exhibiting a high quality performance. The controversy and irony to this statement is that quality is relative to whoever is assessing it, (e.g, your definition of quality might differ from other people's definitions of quality). In that case, one could assume that whenever someone tried their best at anything, their performance would be of very high quality, regardless of whether or not they completed the objective, at least in the performer's opinion.  

     If I had to take a side on this issue of whether or not the Arete philosophy is hinting at more than a high quality performance in every task you complete, I would have to side with the proponents of this subject matter. The main reason that I would side with the proponents of this subject matter is because of their point that good quality is not actually defined in the dictionary, and is truly a "relative" idea. After all, there are many situations in life in which the idea that quality is relative is observed. These include, but are not limited to, judges scoring contestants with different numeric values based off of how well they each believe that the contestant performed, people's diverse views of good quality clothes, and what people believe constitutes a well-made meal. Therefore, the pursuit of good quality (the Arete principle), and the pursuit of happiness are, in a sense, a unified idea. You just cannot have one without the other, at least in my opinion! This is probably one of the greater messages that the Greeks were trying to convey with the Arete principle: the definition of good quality depends on one's opinion, as there is no widely agreed upon explanation for what really makes something good quality. This is why I would have to side with the proponents on the matter over the opponents on the matter.