I think that's a reference to the Greek notion of Arete.
To be a good person didn't mean moral good, or excellence in one
area like art - it meant being a great as an "all round person who
lived their life to the full and exercised all human powers". The art
of being a great _person_. You didn't have to be amazing at any one
thing but, for a Greek citizen one should able to:
Farm, hunt and cook a good meal
Master a sword or bow
Sail a boat and run a race
Tell a good story, write a poem
Make love well
Climb a mountain
Do math or argue philosophy
Care for the old and young
Tell a convincing lie
You get the idea. Today we are highly specialised creatures, pallid by
comparison. We get others (services) to do most of our real living for
us, so we can concentrate on specialised wage slavery and use the
money to buy back vicarious living under the heading of "leisure".
Notice my last example - which illustrates the this excellence is
separate from any moral conceit of the "good person".
This is the Greek concept of a polymath. Also mentioned by Robert Heinlein in Time Enough For Love:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
TBH that kind of sounds like a notion that would have been held by somebody with a lot of leisure time. I can't imagine that your average dairy farmer would have been particularly good at swords, math, or poetry.
Unfortunately I don't have a direct reference for you, but I'm pretty sure Aristotle talks a bit about this sort of idea in The Nichomachean Ethics. Something like "be a good human in the sense that a tree or a machine is good". To him, contributing to ones community and participating in (Athenian) politics is the highest good for the learned person.
It has been rather long time since I studied philosophy but I remember somehow fuzzily that stoicism is what You are looking for. It has some good ideas about being good (or rather better because they did not believed in absolutes).
I think that's a reference to the Greek notion of Arete.
To be a good person didn't mean moral good, or excellence in one area like art - it meant being a great as an "all round person who lived their life to the full and exercised all human powers". The art of being a great _person_. You didn't have to be amazing at any one thing but, for a Greek citizen one should able to:
Farm, hunt and cook a good meal
Master a sword or bow
Sail a boat and run a race
Tell a good story, write a poem
Make love well
Climb a mountain
Do math or argue philosophy
Care for the old and young
Tell a convincing lie
You get the idea. Today we are highly specialised creatures, pallid by comparison. We get others (services) to do most of our real living for us, so we can concentrate on specialised wage slavery and use the money to buy back vicarious living under the heading of "leisure".
Notice my last example - which illustrates the this excellence is separate from any moral conceit of the "good person".
This is the Greek concept of a polymath. Also mentioned by Robert Heinlein in Time Enough For Love:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Is that a direct Heinlein quote? It's amazing!
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TBH that kind of sounds like a notion that would have been held by somebody with a lot of leisure time. I can't imagine that your average dairy farmer would have been particularly good at swords, math, or poetry.
Unfortunately I don't have a direct reference for you, but I'm pretty sure Aristotle talks a bit about this sort of idea in The Nichomachean Ethics. Something like "be a good human in the sense that a tree or a machine is good". To him, contributing to ones community and participating in (Athenian) politics is the highest good for the learned person.
It has been rather long time since I studied philosophy but I remember somehow fuzzily that stoicism is what You are looking for. It has some good ideas about being good (or rather better because they did not believed in absolutes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdzeSTCCdJo