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Christianity, Magnanimity, and Statesmanship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Carson Holloway
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Extract

This article investigates whether Aristotelian magnanimity is compatible with Christianity. According to Aristotle, this virtue is displayed in claiming and deserving great honors and accompanied by a disdain for others, all of which looks remarkably like the Christian sin of pride. This article argues that in spite of these apparent difficulties Aristotelian magnanimity is compatible with Christian morality, that the deserving Christian may, without prejudice to the virtue of humility, claim great honors, recognize his own superiority, and look down on others. The article concludes with an account of the contemporary political importance of these issues. Responding to scholarship that argues that Christianity's undermining of magnanimity is responsible for modernity's lack of great statesmanship, it is contended on the contrary that in the modern world Christianity alone can make magnanimous statesmanship possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , Fall 1999 , pp. 581 - 604
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1999

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References

1. Nicomachean Ethics 1124al–4.Google ScholarI have generally followed the translation of Rackham, H. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar while occasionally supplying transliterations of certain key Greek terms.

2. Ibid., 1124b5–6.

3. Ibid., 1125a30–35.

4. Polity 16, no. 2 (Winter 1983): 263–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Arnharts argument seems so far to have received no comment in the scholarly literature.

5. I should note that I owe Professor Arnhart many thanks for what I have learned not only from his insightful article but also from his always stimulating seminars at Northern Illinois University.

6. Matthew, 11:30Google Scholar (emphasis mine). All Biblical references are to The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version, edited by May, Herbert G. and Metzger, Bruce M. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

7. Mark, 10:43–44.Google Scholar

8. Luke, 14:7–11.Google Scholar

9. Matt, . 18:4.Google Scholar

10. Luke, 19:37–40.Google Scholar

11 Of course, to say that Christians must imitate Christ is not to say that their behavior will be identical to his. Christian magnanimity obviously cannot manifest itself in the same way as Christ's magnanimity because no Christian can rightly claim the great honors that Christ claims for himself. Nevertheless, it may be that there are honors, less great than those claimed by Christ but still great according to human standards, that Christians may rightly, and without departing from the virtue of humility, claim for themselves. In so doing they would display magnanimity.

12. Nicomachean Ethics 1124a5–10.

13. The City of God, trans. Dods, Marcus (New York: The Modern Library, 1993), p. 511.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 510.

15. Ibid., pp. 167 and 164 (emphasis mine).

16. Summa Theologica II–II, q. 129, a. 1. I have followed the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1948).Google Scholar

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid. (emphasis mine).

19. It is worth noting in this connection that Aquinas, in his discussion of magnanimity in his famous commentary, makes no mention of any incompatibility between greatness of soul and Christian morality. See the Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Litzinger, C.I., O.P., (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993), pp. 237–51.Google Scholar

20. Summa Theologica II–II, q. 131, a. 1.

21. Ibid, II–II, q. 129, a. 2.

22. On this point see, for example, The City of God, p. 674.Google Scholar

23. Nicomachean Ethics 1125a25–33.

24. Arnhart, , “Statesmanship as Magnanimity,” p. 267.Google Scholar

25. Politics 1279a28. I have used Carnes Lord's translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).Google Scholar

26. In this light Aristotle's magnanimous man resembles less the man who takes the highest seat in Christ's parable of the wedding feast than the good servant who uses the talents given him to earn a great profit, and similarly the small-souled man resembles less the humble man who takes the lowest place than the worthless servant who buries his talent in the ground where it produces nothing good. On this point see Aquinas's Summa Theologica, II–II, q. 133, a. 1. Also, see. the Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, where Aquinas contends that the small-souled man “refuses to strive after great accomplishments and aims at certain petty undertakings” and that he does this “from a certain laziness,” pp. 238 and 251.

27. The City of God, p. 164.Google Scholar

28. Ibid.

29. One might also observe that the context of the parable in which Christ advises his listeners to take the lowest place (Luke, 14:1–11)Google Scholar indicates that his audience is a group of Pharisees, who are said repeatedly in the Gospels to have been much more concerned with their reputation for holiness than with holiness itself. Thus Christ may exaggerate the need to shun honor not only because of the general tendency of most human beings but also in view of the specific weakness of his immediate audience.

30. Luke, 14:26.Google Scholar

31. Nicomachean Ethics 1124b17–25 and 27–1125al.

32. See Summa Theologica II–II, q. 161, a. 1.

33. Aristotle says very little in the Nicomachean Ethics about man's relationship to the gods and therefore the Christian virtue of humility seems utterly alien to him. Nonetheless, that Aristotle's thought contains the basis for something not unlike humility is indicated by his comment that prudence, or wisdom about human affairs, cannot be the “loftiest kind of knowledge, inasmuch as man is not the highest thing” in the cosmos. See the Nicomachean Ethics, 1141a21–23.

34. Summa Theologica II–II, q. 161, a. 3.

35. Ibid.

36. This is in fact only the first of three distinct arguments advanced by Arnhart in support of his contention that Christianity undermines magnanimity. The other two are that Christianity does away with the need for magnanimous statesmanship by lowering the end of politics to the preservation of temporal peace and that it destroys the ground for magnanimity by undermining belief in nature as an autonomous order. In this article I respond only to Arnhart's first argument.

37. Arnhart, , “Statesmanship as Magnanimity,” pp. 263 and 272.Google Scholar

38. Quoted in ibid., p. 264.

39. Ibid., p. 269.

40. Ibid., pp. 266–67. Arnhart contends that there is, in addition to the political manifestation, also a philosophic version of magnanimity exemplified in Socrates.

41. Ibid., pp. 265–67 and 271. Harry Jaffa also presents the magnanimous man as being preoccupied with honor. See chapter six of Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).Google Scholar

42. Nicomachean Ethics 1124a5–10.

43. Ibid., 1124a12–20.

44. Arnhart, , “Statesmanship as Magnanimity,” p. 267.Google Scholar

45. Nicomachean Ethics 1124a5–13.

46. Ibid., 1115b13, 1116b31, and 1120a22.

47. Ibid., 1116a20 and 1116b3–4.

48. Ibid., 1124a5–20.

49. Ibid., 1119b21–22.

50. Ibid., 1177a12–18.

51. Ibid., 1177b30–1178al.

52. This interpretation of moral virtue as a participation in the eternal differs considerably from Harry Jaffa's contention that for Aristotle “morality is merely a human affair.” See Jaffa's, Thomism and Aristotelianism, p. 120.Google Scholar

53. Nichomachean Ethics 1099a7–21.

54. Ibid., 1179a3–8.

55. John, 14:21–23.Google Scholar

56. Summa Theologica, II–II, q. 129, a. 3.

57. Ibid., II–II, q. 131, a. 1.

58. Arnhart, , “Statesmanship as Magnanimity,” p. 273Google Scholar (emphasis mine).

59. Nicomachean Ethics. 1103b24–25.

60. Ibid., 1123bl–5.

61. Summa Theologica, II–II, q. 129, a. 2.

62. One might object that the argument of this article, in relying so heavily on the thought of Aquinas, is distinctly Thomist or Catholic while there are other versions of Christianity that might not so readily harmonize with Aristotelian magnanimity. My intention, however, has been to show that some reasonable interpretation of Christianity can be compatible with Aristotelian magnanimity, not that every interpretation can be. In any case, those who suspect that this harmonization of Christianity and Aristotle can be accomplished only within the Thomist or Catholic framework would have to come to grips with the arguments the article advances based on passages adduced not only from Augustine, who is regarded as a profound interpreter of Christianity by many non-Catholic Christians, but also from the New Testament itself.

63. Quoted in Arnhart's, “Statesmanship as Magnanimity,” p. 264.Google Scholar

64. Ibid., p. 264.

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid.

67. What, then, one may wonder, is Tocqueville thinking when he calls a “vice” the kind of pride necessary to democracy's elevation? It may be that Tocqueville simply misunderstands Christian morality, that he is speaking in light of what he mistakenly thinks is the Christian understanding. Alternatively—and, to my mind, more plausibly—it may be that such usage is forced on him not by Christianity but by democracy the egalitarian sensibilities of which are necessarily offended by any claims of superiority.

68. Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, trans. Lawrence, George (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 530.Google Scholar

69. Ibid., p. 531.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid., pp. 530 and 531.

74. Ibid., p. 534.

75. Ibid., p. 533.

76. Ibid., p. 546.

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid., p. 542.

79. Ibid., pp. 534–35.

80. Ibid., p. 545.

81. Ibid., p. 543.

82. Ibid., p. 546.

83. Ibid., p. 532.

84. Ibid., p. 247.

85. Ibid., p. 435.

86. Ibid., p. 255.

87. Ibid., pp. 255 and 258.

88. Nicomachean Ethics 1124a5–15.

89. Democracy in America, p. 198.Google Scholar

90. Nicomachean Ethics 1124b23–24.

91. Democracy in America, p. 199.Google Scholar

92. Ibid., p. 12.

93. Lewis, , The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: Collier Books, 1965), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

94. Matthew, 9:10–12.Google Scholar