Virtues
Magnanimity
Aristotelian Virtues
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Origin 335 BCE to 322 BCE
Magnanimity, in Greek megalopsychia, greatness of soul, is the virtuous mean Aristotle names in the Nicomachean Ethics between vanity and undue self-deprecation: the disposition of a person who justly claims, and genuinely deserves, great honour, and who bears both good and ill fortune with a measured, unruffled dignity. Aristotle calls it a kind of crown of the virtues, since it presupposes and displays the others at their highest pitch. It stands in real tension with the Christian scheme's Humility, already catalogued in this atlas under Contrary Virtues, which values the opposite disposition, esteeming self and honour lowly rather than highly; the two systems disagree here rather than merely naming the same idea differently.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Place of OriginAthens, at Aristotle's Lyceum. 1 Origin of the NameGreek megalopsychia, greatness of soul; the term this atlas renders as magnanimity, the moral virtue Aristotle names in the Nicomachean Ethics. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerAristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerTreated by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae, question 129, as a virtue annexed to fortitude, concerned with hope of achieving great things through one's own effort. 2Tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 1 Doctrinal Status DetailAquinas relocates Aristotle's megalopsychia within the Christian virtue scheme as a virtue annexed to fortitude rather than a crowning virtue standing over the others, and reconciles it with Humility by distinguishing what each restrains: magnanimity checks a false smallness of ambition, humility checks a false greatness of self-estimation, so that rightly understood a Christian can hold both at once. 2Tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Doctrinal Status DetailAristotle's virtue of proper pride or greatness of soul, concerned with the right claim to great honor; vanity and undue humility, or pusillanimity, name the two vices of excess and deficiency it stands between. 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceGreatness of soul (megalopsychia), the virtuous mean Aristotle names between vanity and undue self-deprecation: the disposition of one who justly claims and genuinely deserves great honour. 1 Meaning in the Attesting SourceIn Aquinas's scholastic account, magnanimity is the virtue of stretching the mind toward great deeds within one's true capacity, subordinated to and consistent with humility rather than opposed to it as in Aristotle's original scheme, since both concern a right and honest estimation of oneself rather than an inflated or a deflated one. 2Tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Disputed
Origin PeriodNamed in Book Four of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, composed at his Lyceum in Athens and generally placed in his later career, the 330s to 320s BCE. The Ethics survives through the medieval manuscript tradition rather than as an autograph, and scholars continue to debate whether it reached its present form as Aristotle's own draft or as lecture notes edited after his death, so its precise date of composition is bounded only broadly. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Magnanimity is also treated within the Christian scholastic scheme by Thomas Aquinas, a systematic home beside its existing Aristotelian framing on this page.
Related To
Humility, Virtues Genuine point of tension: Aristotle values greatness of soul where the Christian scheme values Humility.
Liberality, Virtues Both are moral virtues from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics list catalogued under this heading.
Sincerity, Virtues Both are moral virtues from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics list catalogued under this heading.
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