Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:27:14.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Aristotle's Great-Souled Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Jacob Howland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Aristotle's discussion of the great-souled man (megalopsuchos) is crucial to any interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics. Yet there is no scholarly consensus about the nature and significance of the megalopsuchos. This article examines Aristotle's treatment of the great-souled man within the context of the Ethics as a whole and in connection with other relevant passages elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus. In particular, Aristotle's identification of Socrates as a great-souled man in the Posterior Analytics provides an interpretative key to his discussion of greatness of soul in the Ethics. Aristotle's presentation of the great-souled man reflects an ambiguity at the heart of virtue itself, and underscores the Socratic character of the fundamental lessons of the Ethics. According to Aristotle, the true megalopsuchos is Socrates.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , Winter 2002 , pp. 27 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I wish to thank the Editor and anonymous referees of the Review for their excellent critical suggestions, and Matthew Oberrieder for many good discussions about the megalopsuchos.

1. Unless otherwise indicated, all parenthetical citations refer to book, chapter, and line numbers in the Nicomachean Ethics (EN), and all translations are my own.

2. See Gauthier, R. A., Magnanimité (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1951).Google Scholar

3. EN 4.3 is the fourth longest of the book's 116 chapters (as measured by number of lines in the Bekker collation); only 10.9, 5.5, and 4.1 are longer.

4. Gauthier, , Magnanimité, pp. 10417Google Scholar, and Gauthier, R. A. and Jolif, J. Y.,L'Éthique à Nicomaque (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1970), vol. 2., pt. 1, pp. 272–98.Google Scholar Cf. Stewart, J. A., Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), 1: 334–46Google Scholar. Gauthier and Jolif follow an interpretative tradition going back to the Greek philosopher Aspasius (L'Éthique à Nicomaque, pp. 272–73Google Scholar).

5. Hardie, W. F. R., “‘Magnanimity’ in Aristotle's Ethics,” Phronesis 23 (1978): 63–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sherman, Nancy, “Common Sense and Uncommon Virtue,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1988): 97–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Aquinas, St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948), II–II.129–133Google Scholar, and Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Litzinger, C. I. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964), vol. 1, lectures 8–11Google Scholar; White, Steven, Sovereign Virtue: Aristotle on the Relation Between Happiness and Prosperity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 250–71Google Scholar; Alvis, John, “Coriolanus and Aristotle's Magnanimous Man Reconsidered,” Interpretation 7.3 (1978): 4–28Google Scholar; Holloway, Carson, “Christianity, Magnanimity, and Statesmanship,” Review of Politics 61 (1999): 581–604CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Holloway follows Thomas in arguing that Aristotelian megalopsuchia is not incompatible with Christianity (cf. Summa Theologica, II'II.129.3 with 161.2Google Scholar).

7. The former group includes Sherman, , Hardie, , and Jaffa, Harry V., Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952)Google Scholar. SirRoss, David, however, states that EN 4.3 “simply betrays somewhat nakedly the self-absorption which is the bad side of Aristotle's ethics” (Aristotle [London: Methuen and Co., 1977], p. 208)Google Scholar; cf. the critical remarks by Maclntyre and Russell cited by Hardie, , “Magnanimity,” p. 65Google Scholar.

8. Jaffa, , Thomism and Aristotelianism, p. 114Google Scholar.

9. Phronêsis, which makes its possessors “able to contemplate the good for themselves and for human beings in general” (1140b9–10), involves the capacity imaginatively to “re-enact the agent's point of view and to consider what it is like for the agent to do that action in that context” (Sherman, Nancy, The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989], p. 36Google Scholar).

10. An. Post. 97b16–25, trans. Barnes, Jonathan, Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), slightly modifiedGoogle Scholar.

11. 1328a8–16, translation of Lord, Carnes, Aristotle: The Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), slightly modifiedGoogle Scholar.

12. The first is from Euripides, and the second from an unknown author (Lord, , Politics, p. 267 n. 23Google Scholar).

13. White, , Sovereign Virtue, p. 262Google Scholar.

14. This consideration does not deter Neil Cooper, who proposes that Aristotle was engaged in “a vain attempt to produce an impossible unitary account of megalopsuchia” (“Aristotle's Crowning Virtue,” Apeiron 22 [1989]: 192)Google Scholar.

15. On his love of honor, see Plutarch, Lysander 18.1–5, 19.1, 23.5Google Scholar; on his intolerance of insult (hubris), 6.5–7Google Scholar; on his emulous nature, 34.3–5Google Scholar.

16. Plutarch, Lys. 30.1–2Google Scholar; cf. Plato, Apol. 23b-c, 31b-c, 36dGoogle Scholar, with Xenophon Mem. 1.6Google Scholar.

17. Cf. Plato's, Gorgias, where Socrates is criticized by Callicles for his lack of concern with what others think of him (484c–486d)Google Scholar. Socrates′ tolerance of insult becomes legendary in the later tradition; cf. Laertius, Diogenes, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, II.21, 35–36Google Scholar.

18. Ajax's duel with Hector in book 7 of the Iliad suggests that he would have been a match for the Trojan hero after the death of Achilles. At Sophocles′, Ajax 1340–1341Google Scholar, Odysseus calls Ajax “the best [ariston] of the Greeks who came to Troy, except Achilles.”

19. Plutarch, Alc. 36.4–5Google Scholar; Lys. 11.6–7Google Scholar. At Aegospotami, Lysander accomplished “the greatest deed [ergon megiston] with the least labor” (Lys. 11.6Google Scholar).

20. Axioun, “to deem oneself worthy,” implies both rating one's deserts high and asserting one's claims. Aristotle: Athenian Constitution, Eudemian Ethics, Virtuesand Vices, trans. Rackham, H. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 343Google Scholar, note on Eudetnian Ethics 1233a3.

21. Summa Theologica, II–II 129.4.1Google Scholar; White, , Sovereign Virtue, p. 256Google Scholar. This observation helps to connect megalopsuchia and mikropsuchia with our ordinary understanding of magnanimity and pusillanimity: the great-souled man unstintingly does what he can for the good of the whole, whereas the small-souled man ungenerously withholds himself in doing less than he can.

22. I am indebted here to Jaffa, , Thomism and Aristotelianism, pp. 116–23Google Scholar.

23. Cf. 4.3.1123b34–1124al: “And he would not be worthy of honor if he were worthless. For honor is the prize of virtue, and it is given as tribute to the good.”

24. Gauthier, , Magnanimité, pp. 63, 116–17Google Scholar. On this view, Aristotle's megalopsuchos directly anticipates the Stoic sage by achieving equanimity through theoretical perfection (Magnanimité, p. 118Google Scholar). While I shall argue below that Aristotle does regard Socrates as the true megalopsuchos, Gauthier and Jolif are able to identify Socrates with the great-souled man of EN 4.3 only by ignoring the ways in which they differ both from each other and from the sage or wise man.

25. Ibid., pp. 104–109. Gauthier and Jolif follow Aspasius in assimilating the godlike philosophers of the Republic and Theaetetus to the great-souled man (L'Éthique à Nicomaque, pp. 295–96Google Scholar).

26. For further discussion, see Howland, Jacob, The Paradox of Political Philosophy: Socrates′ Philosophic Trial (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 57–64Google Scholar.

27. Additional criticisms of Gauthier are advanced by Hardie, , “Magnanimity,” pp. 67–69Google Scholar. Jaffa maintains that “there is no suggestion of any philosophic attributes in the description of the magnanimous man” (Thomism and Aristotelianism, p. 121Google Scholar).

28. L'Éthique à Nicomaque, pp. 293–95Google Scholar.

29. Aristotle states that reason is “what is most of all [malista] a human being,” and that we ought to make ourselves immortal “as far as possible” (10.7.1178a7, 1177b33), thereby implying that theoretical reason “is not exclusively us, nor its activity exclusively our happiness,” and that “there are constraints on how contemplative activity must be pursued: not as a god would, but as a human would, within the boundaries of our social and moral lives” (Sherman, , Fabric of Character, p. 101Google Scholar).

30. The great-souled man's forgetfulness of his dependence on others argues against Holloway's claim that “both the magnanimous man and the Christian can recognize that their virtues are not simply due to themselves, that in fact their virtues are for the most part due to someone else” (“Christianity, Magnanimity, and Statesmanship,” p. 595Google Scholar).

31. Thus Davis, Michael writes in Aristotle's Poetics: The Poetry of Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992)Google Scholar that “the formula for a ‘tragic error’” is “to mistake a spurious whole for a whole” (p. 60). Davis's development of this idea is echoed in other recent scholarship on the Poetics; see Howland, Jacob, “Aristotle on Tragedy: Rediscovering the Poetics,” Interpretation 22 (1995): 359–403Google Scholar.

32. The reference to the Spartans is opaque; see Gauthier, and Jolif, , L'Éthique à Nicomaque, p. 287Google Scholar.

33. That this limitation is the flip side of the great-souled man's frankness is hinted at by Montaigne, who claims to follow the megalopsuchos in “speak[ing] with entire freedom” but subsequently admits that “there may be some touch of pride and self-will in holding oneself so without reserve and candid as I do” (The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, trans. Ives, George B. [New York: The Heritage Press, 1946], pp. 876, 878Google Scholar).

34. Translation of Fitzgerald, Robert, The Iliad (New York: Anchor Books, 1989)Google Scholar.

35. The question of whether one is a member of the first or the third Hesiodic class seems analogous to the question of whether he who is without a polis is a beast or a god (Pol. 1.1.1253a28–29). Cf. EN 7.1.1145a15–27, where Aristotle's observation that virtue and vice exist neither in beasts nor in gods is introduced immediately after he mentions Hector's heroic and godlike virtue.

36. Schmidt, Ernst A., “Ehre und Tugend: Zur Megalopsychia der aristotelischen Ethik,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 49 (1967): 149–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see esp. pp. 164–68.

37. Lord claims that the great-souled man's situation is “not inherently tragic,” insofar as “friendship affords the great-souled man the satisfaction of his need for honor and community without compromising his attachment to virtue.” “Aristotle,” in History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed., ed. Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. The latter qualification is necessary given the implied belief that to adjust one's life to an inferior is slavish, together with Aristotle's suggestion that friend is someone to whom the great-souled man is willing to adjust his life (4.3.1124b31–1125al).

39. Poetics 1448a26–27,1449b9–10. In the definition of tragic drama at 1449b24–28, tragedy is said to be “the imitation of a serious [spoudaias] action”; note also Aristotle's assertion that tragedy is an “imitation of men who are better than us” (1454b8–9).

40. At Iliad 7.302Google Scholar, Ajax and Hector, having dueled, part “in friendship.” Hector gives Ajax his sword, and receives a belt in exchange. In Sophocles′ Ajax, Ajax kills himself by falling on Hector's sword. This gesture points toward the death he should have died—death at the hands of his only equal, who is paradoxically both friend and enemy.

41. Gauthier, , Magnanimité, pp. 99–104Google Scholar.

42. He states explicitly that no friendship is possible between gods and men (8.7.1158b33–36, 1159a5–8). The plain implication of his argument that the sole activity of the gods is contemplation (10.8.1178b8–23) is that there is also no friendship between gods and gods.

43. Aristotle's references in this context to acting and to the sorrows of Niobe (7.3.1147a22–23,7.4.1147b33) suggest that tragedy may be a subtext of this discussion of hamartia. For further reflection on this passage see Howland, , “Aristotle on Tragedy,” p. 382Google Scholar.

44. David Bolotin notes that “no beings are friends simply because they are good,” for “our human friendships [are] a sign of neediness or imperfection as well as of our worth” (Plato's Dialogue on Friendship [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979], pp. 135, 134)Google Scholar. EN 9.9 obscures Aristotle's agreement with this point because it asks whether fully virtuous human beings need friends, but does not ask how such human beings could have become virtuous in the first place. So, too, Aristotle's silence about the origins of the great-souled man's virtue creates a misleading impression of his self-sufficiency.

45. I owe these observations to Mary Nichols. Cf. 1124b24, where the great-souled man is said to be “idle” and “given to delay.” His inflexibility is reminiscent of that of Ajax, who chooses suicide to preserve his nobility, and whose anger endures even after his death (cf. Odyssey 11.553–567Google Scholar).

46. Ronna Burger discerns a similar subtext in the Ethics. In “Health of Soul and Psychic Medicine: on the Psychology of Aristotle's Ethics,” an unpublished lecture delivered at St. John's College in April of 1997, Burger, argues that “the true peak of the argument of the Ethics” is the emergence in book 9 of the Socratic soul as “the dialogic self” (p. 18)Google Scholar.

47. This is not the only place in the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle follows Plato in suggesting that what appears to be second best absolutely is in fact best of all for human beings. Cf. his reference to a “second sailing” at 2.9.1109a34–35 with Plato, , Phaedo 99c-e and Statesman 300cGoogle Scholar.

48. Kierkegaard, S., Philosophical Fragments, in Philosophical Fragments, Johannes Climacus, ed. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 10, 11Google Scholar.