Kalokagathia

What does Philostratus' Gymnasticus have to offer modern students and scholars of sport?  To find out, we need a reading that considers historical context, Hellenic paideia, and the relationship between nature and culture.  To understand Philostratus’ Gymnasticus, we must get beyond surface appearances and attune ourselves to the symbols and meanings that underpin Greek athletics.  If we do this, we will learn that gymnastics is not just a form of healthy recreation, but a meaningful activity that demands education and develops a kind of ethical aesthetic.  We will discover that, beyond technical expertise, wisdom is needed to make the most of our experience with sport.  And, most of all, we will come to understand that those who practice and appreciate athletics constitute a community with a particular identity informed by a glorious history.

The Terme Boxer, a life-size naked bronze athlete, complete with bleeding cuts, a broken nose, and cauliflower ears, is, by any count, a striking piece of sculpture.  In it, some see the athletic embodiment of Hellenic aretē, others see an indictment of the brutality inherent in Roman games.  Understanding what this boxer represents depends on having a particular perspective, which was itself the subject of debate and cultivation in Greco-Roman literature and philosophy.  Dio Chrysostom’s encomium of Melancomas sets the boxer up as an example to be emulated—not just for his beauty, but for his virtue, which is the source of his beauty—a beauty which infuses his entire being and eschews both adornment and luxury.  Epictetus’ Discourses promote the same ethical aesthetic, ridiculing the Roman penchant for primping and plucking.  It is as if athletic statues incarnate Socrates’ ideally educated citizen in the Republic (402d).  “If someone’s soul has a fine and beautiful character and his body matches its beauty and is thus in harmony with it…wouldn’t that be the most beautiful sight for anyone who has eyes to see?”  Crucially, though, having “eyes to see” depends precisely on having a proper education, one that enables a person to love the beautiful youth without touching him, because his real love is for the “fine and beautiful.”(402d-403c).  Such love for the fine and beautiful depended on a Hellenic education, even for Romans. Melancomas’ eulogy ends with an exhortation: “Come then, train zealously and toil hard, the younger men in the belief that this man’s place has been left to them, the older in a way that befits their own achievements; yes, and take all the pride in these things that men should who live for praise and glory and are devotees of virtue.” (29.21).  Hellenic virtue is as much about discernment of beauty as it is about sweat and toil.  The kaloskagathos must be capable of appreciating and even loving athletic beauty—perhaps even the battered athletic beauty of a statue like the Terme Boxer.

This paper deals with kalokagathia, a specific Socratic virtue Xenophon focuses on in his Socratic as well as in his non-Socratic works. According to Xenophon, the most important feature of kalokagathia is reciprocity: it is the charismatic virtue of a leader (e.g. Socrates, Cyrus, Agesilaus) who is able to restrain himself and, thanks to his living example, to have his followers become better. Kalokagathia is closely linked to friendship (philia), as every proper friendship entails “making better” one’s own friend. Philia can therefore happen only among kaloikagathoi, and kalokagathia is the most important of all collective virtues: it applies not only to Socrates and his pupils (as in the Memorabilia), but also to every household (as in the Oeconomicus), and even to those in charge of the economy of a polis (as in the Poroi).

Nos ocupamos del problema de la recepción de los valores heroicos (codificados, de modo ejemplar, en la Ilíada) comparando las interpretaciones que de un mismo hecho histórico hicieron en su momento los griegos y la que hoy se propone mediante un medio de masas como el cine. La batalla de las Termópilas, entendida como símbolo ideológico de cierta política imperialista (símbolo enfrentado, característicamente, con la de Salamina) nos permitiría caracterizar los elementos pervivientes, en el mismo mundo griego, de la kalokagathía
épico-homérica. Por otro lado, en la película "300" podríamos identificar los mecanismos de apropiación de los valores de la Antigüedad por un sistema económico, político y cultural diferente al griego. A partir del dispar tratamiento que de la mutilación del cuerpo hacen la Ilíada y "300" y la respectiva consideración del Otro intentaremos mostrar el modo en que la recepción de los valores griegos se convierte en su perversión.

We deal the reception of heroic values (outstandingly codified in
Iliad) by comparing two interpretations of the same historic event. The battle of Thermopylae, seen as an ideologic symbol of imperialist politics (particularly oppossed to battle of Salamis) would allow us to characterize the surviving elements, in classical Greece, of homeric kalokagathia. On the other hand, we could find on the movie "300" the appropriation of values from Ancient Greece by an economic, political and cultural system very different from the greek’s. From the different use of mutilation in Iliad and "300", and the respective idea of the Other, we try to show the way the reception of greek values is transformed into its perversion.

L'harmonie du corps et de l'esprit est un concept qui fascine les hommes d'aujourd'hui et d'hier. On la recherche et on tente de la comprendre dans différents domaines scientifiques. Cet intérêt n'échappe pas aux questionnements des historiens qui ont souvent vu cette harmonie comme une caractéristique de l'athlète de la Grèce classique. Les historiens du sport antique, en particulier, voient l'athlète classique comme le modèle d'un idéal qui aurait été admiré en Grèce : celui d'un beau corps harmonisé à une beauté morale. C'est à cette problématique que s'intéresse notre travail. L'athlète grec a-t-il constitué un modèle
d'harmonie de corps et d'esprit pour les Grecs de l'époque classique? Pour répondre à cette question, nous enquêtons d'abord sur l'historiographie moderne et contemporaine qui a associé la figure de l'athlète au terme grec ancien kalokagathia interprété comme un idéal
d'harmonie de corps et d'esprit. Nous questionnons ensuite les sources de la Grèce classique en commençant par les poèmes épiniciques de Pindare et de Bacchylide pour voir si l'harmonie de corps et d'esprit se démarque parmi les qualités qu'ils ont attribuées aux champions des Jeux. Finalement, grâce à une variété d'extraits de sources classiques, nous cherchons à connaître le jugement de valeur que les Grecs ont posé sur la gumnastikê et sur l'athlète. À travers cette vue d'ensemble, nous découvrons que l'athlétisme de l'époque classique a été à la fois pensé et pratiqué pour des raisons bien distinctes.

Notre travail cherche ultimement à offrir une étude nuancée de l'athlète de la Grèce classique. En découvrant l'athlète par l'oeil des Anciens, nous souhaitons miner les croyances et préjugés contemporains que l'on entretient à l'égard de ce personnage. Pouvons-nous nous inspirer des athlètes de la Grèce classique pour, à notre tour, accéder à une harmonie de corps et d'esprit?

This essay argues that curating brought back a kind of leverage that redressed the otherwise imbalanced relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Curating lends out to art its innocent and aspirational belief in such a balance because the ethical concerns in art theory and art criticism have long been toned down while form was prioritized over content. Ever since the curatorial profession created its own niche in the art world—started, for example, in the West, in the late 1960s with curators such as Siegelaub, Szeemann, or Lippard—curating began to mediate this relationship, thus helping to activate the catalyst potential of art without having to compromise its formal aspects. More specifically, this essay explores the ways in which theories and practices of curating brought back to mind the ancient Greek notion of kalokagathia, the intertwinement of aesthetics and ethics and, with it, other ethical responsibilities, principles, and values that art forgot to address while giving ...

When Aristotle praises pentathletes' beauty at Rhetoric 1361b, it is not the idle observation of a sports fan. In fact, the balanced and harmonious beauty of athletes' bodies reflects Aristotle's ideal of a virtuous soul in the Nicomachean Ethics: one which discerns noble ends and means, then acts accordingly. At Eudemian Ethics 1248b, he takes it a step further, characterizing kalokagathia as 'the virtue (aretē) that arises from a combination' of virtues (aretai). These passages raise important questions about the relationship between ethics, athletics, and aesthetics. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle's ideal of kalokagathia is compatible not just with athletic training, but also with an ideal of citizenship that rejects traditional ideas about inborn virtue and superficial beauty. [Get full text at the https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MZMNNSHIWYEBHHTFM648/full?target=10.1080/00948705.2019.1691923]

After the collapse at the end of the Bronze Age, most parts of the eastern Mediterranean experienced the rise of new forms of statehood, for which new social identities were essential. Different threads of archaeological, visual and textual evidence especially from the Aegean, Cyprus and the Levant point to ritualised behaviours revolving around eating and drinking, body movement and music making, beauty maintenance, sport and sexuality as dynamic newcomers to established definitions of personal achievement and social status through warfare or the supernatural. In the same sources, uneasiness on the part of traditional elite groups over the assignment of social, cultural and ethical value to such delights is a recurring theme. The present paper explores how feasting practices and socio-political structures shaped one another in the rapidly changing world of the Mediterranean Early Iron Age. It is argued that the growing emphasis on luxurious leisure activities, during which exotica were also displayed and used, marks the emergence of new elite groups that based their claims to authority on the conspicuous consumption of wealth accumulated through commercial enterprises. It is argued, moreover, that contradistinctive representations of feasting and warfare or religion in the archaeological, visual and textual record of this world reflects the social tensions and ideological conflicts that punctuated the way to an entirely new social order and political geography in the eastern Mediterranean.

In 1906, Henry Stephens Salt published a short collection of essays that presented several rhetorically powerful, if formally deficient arguments for the vegetarian position. By interpreting Salt as a moral sentimentalist with ties to Aristotelian virtue ethics, I propose that his aesthetic argument deserves contemporary consideration. First, I connect ethics and aesthetics with the Greek concepts of kalon and kalokagathia that depend equally on beauty and morality before presenting Salt’s assertion: slaughterhouses are disgusting, therefore they should not be promoted. I suggest three areas of development since Salt’s death that could be fruitfully plumbed to rebuild this assertion into a contemporary argument: (1) an updated analysis of factory farm conditions, (2) insights from moral psychologists on the adaptive socio­biological benefits of disgust as a source of cognitive information, and (3) hermeneutical considerations about the role of the audience that allow blameworthiness for slaughterhouse atrocities to be laid upon the meat­eater.

Fairness is an important ethical concept, especially in sport where «fair play» seems to function as the universal arbiter of what is right and wrong. Some philosophers have argued that fairness as an ethical concept actually derives from sport. I believe that it comes from the criterion of to kalon (beauty) found in ancient Greek Philosophy. In this paper I argue, based on Aristotle’s use of to kalon in the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, that fairness is a disposition – an ethical-aesthetic sense characteristic of the kaloskagathos (good and beautiful person). In fact, I think the term «fairness» and its cognates may be better translations for Aristotle’s use of to kalon, because they reflect a connection between beauty and goodness. Fair actions on Aristotle’s account are voluntary, autotelic, and pleasant. This account may seem to be at odds with the more analytic and rule-based understanding of fairness current in ethics and philosophy of sport, but by incorporating an aesthetic dimension it better reflects the ideal and practice of fairness by athletes, officials, and even institutions.

ABSTRACT When Aristotle praises pentathletes’ beauty at Rhetoric 1361b, it is not the idle observation of a sports fan. In fact, the balanced and harmonious beauty of athletes’ bodies reflects Aristotle’s ideal of a virtuous soul in the Nicomachean Ethics: one which discerns noble ends and means, then acts accordingly. At Eudemian Ethics 1248b, he takes it a step further, characterizing kalokagathia as ‘the virtue (aretē) that arises from a combination’ of virtues (aretai). These passages raise important questions about the relationship between ethics, athletics, and aesthetics. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle’s ideal of kalokagathia is compatible not just with athletic training, but also with an ideal of citizenship that rejects traditional ideas about inborn virtue and superficial beauty.

A path from the discovery of the body to the idealistic overcoming of its concrete individuality in the developments of archaic and classical Hellenic culture, up to the patristic and medieval Christian pedagogy of Platonic imprint and the search for new balances in the sign of Christian 'realism' already in the humanistic era.

This essay argues that curating brought back a kind of leverage that redressed the otherwise imbalanced relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Curating lends out to art its innocent and aspirational belief in such a balance because the ethical concerns in art theory and art criticism have long been toned down while form was prioritized over content. Ever since the curatorial profession created its own niche in the art world-started, for example, in the West, in the late 1960s with curators such as Siegelaub, Szeemann, or Lippard-curating began to mediate this relationship, thus helping to activate the catalyst potential of art without having to compromise its formal aspects. More specifically, this essay explores the ways in which theories and practices of curating brought back to mind the ancient Greek notion of kalokagathia, the intertwinement of aesthetics and ethics and, with it, other ethical responsibilities, principles, and values that art forgot to address while giving privilege to its formal aspects.

Fairness is an important ethical concept, especially in sport where «fair play» seems to function as the universal arbiter of what is right and wrong. Some philosophers have argued that fairness as an ethical concept actually derives from sport. I believe that it comes from the criterion of to kalon (beauty) found in ancient Greek Philosophy. In this paper I argue, based on Aristotle’s use of to kalon in the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, that fairness is a disposition – an ethical-aesthetic sense characteristic of the kaloskagathos (good and beautiful person). In fact, I think the term «fairness» and its cognates may be better translations for Aristotle’s use of to kalon, because they reflect a connection between beauty and goodness. Fair actions on Aristotle’s account are voluntary, autotelic, and pleasant. This account may seem to be at odds with the more analytic and rule-based understanding of fairness current in ethics and philosophy of sport, but by incorporating an aesthetic dimension it better reflects the ideal and practice of fairness by athletes, officials, and even institutions.