Greatness of Soul Across the Ages

That a virtue should be called magnanimity suggests that souls come in sizes. But what makes for this sizing? This chapter is framed between the Homeric heroic ideal embodied in the megalêtôr and the gentle but resolute American hero, the magnanimous Abraham Lincoln, interacting along the way with the other chapters in the volume. This chapter compares conceptions of greatness of soul (heart, spirit, mind), touching on Socrates, Aristotle, the New Testament, Stoicism, Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī and al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, the Scottish Enlightenment, Kant, and Nietzsche. The story is one of diversity, indeed in some cases mutual exclusion, with overlap and continuities. But in the end the chapter suggests a certain evolution of our conception of human greatness in which the virtues of strength and toughness are integrated with those of generosity and compassion.

The Kantian Sublime and Greatness of Mind

This chapter explores Kant’s discussion of the sublime in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), in which the aesthetic subject becomes aware of a certain kind of greatness of mind. Kant’s scheme emphasizes respect for the moral capacities of the self as part of humanity, as well as admiration for greatness in the natural world. More broadly, his views show how ideas about greatness—if not magnanimity in the narrower sense—flow into philosophical approaches that lie beyond virtue ethics, moral thought, and human exceptionalism. The chapter argues that a comparative relation between self and sublime phenomena is central to understanding greatness of mind. Drawing out this comparative relation supports a deeper understanding of how both self-regarding and other-regarding attitudes feature within sublime experience, and just how this greatness might express itself within an aesthetic context.

Magnanimity, Christian Ethics, and Paganism in the Latin Middle Ages

Magnanimity, especially as discussed by Aristotle, might seem to be one of the pagan virtues that would have been difficult to assimilate into a Christian ethical scheme. In fact, from the Fathers onwards, Christians welcomed magnanimitas into their classifications of the virtues, basing their understanding of it, up until the thirteenth century, on Stoic sources. When they came, from the mid-1200s onwards, to read Aristotle’s discussion of magnanimity in his Ethics, the theologians—Aquinas above all—managed ingeniously to combine Aristotle’s description with the version of magnanimity that was already at home in Christian thought. In the fourteenth century, Giraut Ott and John Buridan, in different ways, came closer to Aristotle’s discussion, without suggesting that magnanimity should be suspect as a virtue for Christians. The one medieval writer who does seem to have had a strong sense of magnanimity as an attractive, but distinctively pagan virtue, cultivated by the damned rather than those destined for heaven, was Dante.

Magnanimity and Modernity

This chapter chronicles the approaches to magnanimity taken by three key Enlightenment theorists, David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Witherspoon. United in their concern to defend the modern relevance of magnanimity, these thinkers differed in how they approached two central questions: the standard by which magnanimity is measured, and the need to ensure that goodness and greatness coincide. Hume’s relative understanding of greatness of mind created problems which Smith sought to redress by introducing the concept of ‘absolute perfection’ as the touchstone for judgements about magnanimity and moral judgements more broadly. Against the apparent tension between magnanimity and Christian values, John Witherspoon set out to recover the virtue on specifically Christian terms. Taking Smith’s solution one step further, he identified the standard of absolute perfection with God, with merit conceived as conformity with God’s will and the desire for worldly honour displaced by a desire for worthiness of God’s esteem.

Greatness of Spirit in the Arabic Tradition

This chapter explores the approaches taken to ‘the virtues of greatness’ in the Islamic world. There are in fact two Arabic concepts that can be identified as counterparts of the ancient virtue of megalopsychia. The focus of one (kibar al-nafs) was on the right attitude to the self and its merits, and it bore a strong affinity to Aristotle’s configuration of the virtue. The focus of the second (ʿiẓam al-himma) was on right desire or aspiration, and some of its key architects parsed it specifically as a foundational virtue of aspiration to virtue. Unlike the first concept, which failed to establish itself in Arabic-Islamic ethical culture, the second spread like wildfire through several genres of ethical writing. This reflects the roots this virtue strikes—more directly than in the Greek tradition—in the values of pre-Islamic Arab society and its heroic ethic, an ethic which it perpetuates but also transforms.

Nietzsche on Magnanimity, Greatness, and Greatness of Soul

This chapter brings Nietzsche into dialogue with the tradition of thinking about the virtue of magnanimity. In a few places in his work, Nietzsche uses the German Großmuth (magnanimity) to pick out a specific character trait. But the more important connection to this tradition of thought lies in his notion of human greatness (particularly greatness of ‘soul’, as he puts it in Beyond Good and Evil). The chapter works through, and comments on, what Nietzsche regards as some of the central marks of this greatness. It then turns to two further reflections: first, it looks at Nietzsche’s relation to Aristotle on this issue, and how similar the Aristotelian megalopsychos is to the Nietzschean great individual. Second, the chapter considers the tension that Nietzsche—unlike most figures in this tradition—apparently sees between greatness and moral goodness and how exactly this tension should be understood.

Twenty-First-Century Magnanimity

Aristotelianism is all the rage in contemporary virtue ethics. Yet given how anachronistic Aristotle’s account of the meta-virtue of megalopsychia seems to be, there is a tendency to pass over it in silence. This chapter argues against such a move and maintain that Aristotle’s ideal can help illuminate a number of contemporary debates. In moral psychology, megalopsychia helps mediate between realist and anti-realist conceptions of selfhood. In moral education, megalopsychia casts light on the levels of moral development to which we can aspire through the cultivation of character, as well as the necessary individualization of education in virtue. In moral philosophy, megalopsychia helps crystallize debates about role moralities and the demands of noblesse oblige; the relationship between objective and subjective well-being; and to what extent contemplation and self-transcendence enter into well-being. This chapter provides a whistle-stop tour of those topics and explains the lessons Aristotle’s account of megalopsychia can teach us about them.

A Composite Portrait of a True American Philosophy on Magnanimity

This chapter offers a composite portrait of the concept of magnanimity in nineteenth-century America, focusing on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. A composite portrait, as a method in the history of philosophy, is designed to bring out characteristic features of a group’s philosophizing in order to illuminate features that may still resonate in today’s philosophy. Compared to more standard methods in the historiography of philosophy, the construction of a composite portrait de-privileges the views of individual authors. These American philosophers saw the virtue of magnanimity as a remedy for a number of modern ills. They suggest that the best sort of magnanimity is acquired by adopting the correct relation to the natural world, including new forms of inquiry, or by adopting a life of voluntary poverty. Magnanimous individuals are critics of capitalism and offer themselves as exemplars of a better, experimental life.

Strengthening Hope for the Greatest Things

Aquinas reinterprets Aristotle with a view to showing that it is Jesus Christ who is the perfect exemplar of magnanimity, as of all the virtues. The acquired virtue of magnanimity, which strengthens persons in the hope of obtaining the greatest goods, is to be understood through the infused virtue of hope. Natural reason grasps virtue, rather than honour, as the greatest good, but the theological virtue of hope stretches out to nothing less than God. Just as Christ’s exemplary public benefaction is made possible by his perfect union with God, so ordinary Christian virtue is made possible by receiving a grace that likewise directs Christ’s followers beyond their own good to that of enemies and needy neighbours. Aristotle’s magnanimous man is thereby stretched almost beyond recognition, while remaining unequivocally the one worthy of the greatest honour.

Stoic Magnanimity

The Stoic treatment of magnanimity was formulated independently from Aristotle’s, though there are points of resemblance, considered at the end of this chapter. In early Stoic thought, magnanimity is presented as a subdivision of the cardinal virtue of courage, and is marked by an ability to rise above external circumstances, especially adversity. Stoic thinking on magnanimity is analysed here in terms of their theory of value, psychology, and worldview. The main later Stoic treatment of magnanimity comes in Cicero’s On Duties, a highly influential work in medieval and early modern Europe. Magnanimity here appears as one of the four cardinal virtues, defined both in terms of the ability to rise above misfortune and the readiness to undertake great actions on behalf of others; the relationship between magnanimity and honour also emerges as a new theme in Cicero’s treatment.