ARETÉ: ARYAN ETHICS: “THAT MAN MAY SURPASS HIMSELF”
by Daniel Gurpide
(wonderful. gave me chills)
The tragic urge to self-overcoming (transcendence) may be identified as the only way man and his presence in the world may be ennobled, and this was the primary element of traditional Aryan ethics. It is what the ancient Greeks called areté, the quest for excellence: the act of living up to one’s full potential.
For Aristotle, the doctrine of areté included the following virtues: andreia (courage), dikaiosyne (justice), and sophrosyne (self-restraint). In Greek mythology, Sophrosyne was a Greek goddess. She was the spirit of moderation, self-control, temperance, restraint, and discretion. She was considered to be one of the good spirits that escaped from Pandora’s box and fled to Olympus after Pandora opened the lid. The complex meaning of sophrosyne, so important to the ancients, is very difficult to convey in English. It is perhaps best expressed by the two most famous sayings of the Oracle of Delphi: ‘nothing in excess’ and ‘know thyself.’
Since Propertarianism recovers and transfigures the founding myths of Indo-European culture, when it comes to specifying its particular tenets such features as the following might be listed: an eminently aristocratic conception of the human individual; the importance of honour (‘shame’ rather than ‘sin’); a heroic attitude towards life’s challenges; the exaltation and sacralisation of the world, beauty, the body, strength, and health; the rejection of any ‘worlds beyond’; and the inseparability of morality and aesthetics.
The highest value for an Aryan ethics undoubtedly lies not in a form of ‘justice’ whose purpose is essentially interpreted as flattening the social order in the name of equality, but in all that may allow man to surpass himself. Since to consider the implications of life’s basic framework as unjust would be palpably absurd, such classic antitheses as noble vs. base, courageous vs. cowardly, honourable vs. dishonourable, beautiful vs. deformed, sick vs. healthy come to replace the antitheses operative in a morality based on the concept of sin: good vs. evil, humble vs. vainglorious, submissive vs. proud, weak vs. arrogant, modest vs. boastful.