ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a lesson in basic philology, leading to an explanation of the etymology of the term ‘virtue’ as ‘power’ and especially ‘manliness’. This is the classical ‘master morality’ that philosophers like Nietzsche spoke of. This understanding leads to a genealogy of the Greek term for virtue (aretê) as ‘bellicosity’ that may itself lend to a hauntology of human morality. In Plato’s dialogue Meno, it appears that Plato may himself have been haunted by the aretê/ares (i.e. God of War) relation. But, in that dialogue, we will find a treatment of virtue that attempts to overcome the virtue-as-power problematic, replacing it by an entirely novel aretology focusing on virtue as a kind of knowledge.
