The philosophical sense of Virtue that
I would like to bring about by calling the school:
The Virtue School
The Ancient Greek word
for 'virtue' is Ἀρετή
(areté)
which means "excellence"
-- excellence
in the sense of fulfilling one's nature, or one's highest possibility
of being.
It's tied into ethics
with the word for 'living well' - εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia) -
living well, however, is (was) related to living in harmonia with one's
δαιμον (daimon).
We can get the sense of this when we look at Heraclitus' statement
Ηθος
Ανθρωπος Δαιμων, (Ethos Anthropos Daimon)
which essentially means "Character
is Destiny"
(see http://geocities.ws/john_russey/philosophy/Ethos_Anthropos_Daimon.html).
To "know
thyself" is thus a philosophical notion that has to do
with discovering who you are in a process of striving for excellence,
i.e., fulfilling one's nature, or, you could even say, living your wisdom (philosophia).
Everything you need to know (i.e., the Truth) is within -- all you have
to do is (re)discover it; you know when you are doing this by the
"(moral) feeling" you get when you are "living well" (eudaimonia),
i.e., in harmony with your daimon.
In Plato's Symposium Love (Eros)
is referred to as a daimon
which
leads us to areté.
This is the sense of Virtue that
I would like to bring about by calling the school:
The Virtue School.