CHAPTER SEVEN

Courage, Temperance, and Greatness of Soul

IN THE LAST CHAPTER I argued for a general account of the fine in action. Virtuous actions are fine when they are ordered, made proportionate, and bounded by the human good. This teleological arrangement must be visible and must gratify the agent’s sense of self-esteem. Now the human good, according to Aristotle, is the most excellent use of reason. And as we have seen, though practical wisdom is an excellence of reason, theoretical wisdom is more perfect. Thus, there is a sense in which all virtuous actions, insofar as they are fine, ought to show that the agent is oriented to the precision and truthfulness best exemplified in theoretical contemplation. The agent need not be aware of the true theoretical nature of human happiness, however. So long as he gauges the appropriateness of his actions with reference to the ideal of truthfulness, he need not be aware that theoretical reasoning is that standard in order to act finely. At least this is a possibility we can and should leave open.

Of course, the theoretical standard of rationality will be implicit in morally virtuous activity even if it goes unrecognized by the agent himself. Thus, it ought to be possible to be led by reflection on the nature of moral virtue to an understanding that theôria is the highest human good. In this chapter, I will attempt just such a task of reflection in order to show that Aristotle’s moral virtues are fine because they point to the superior value of the most perfect reasoning, which is contemplative.¹ I will examine three of the virtues Aristotle discusses—courage, temperance, and greatness of soul. I choose these virtues because their treatment in the NE is the most extensive, with the exception, of course, of justice. Also, at the end of his account, in NE X, Aristotle divides the virtues into the military and peacetime virtues (1177b6– 7).Courage is the quintessential military virtue, and temperance, along with justice, is especially important in peacetime (Pol. VII.15 1334a22–28).² In covering these virtues, then, we cover both aspects of the life of action.

The lacuna in my discussion, obviously, is justice. Aristotle’s account of justice is clearly concerned with proportionality. The just distribution of goods by the state is in proportion to the citizens’ merit (1131a20–26).In rectificatory justice the judge looks to arithmetical proportion in assigning penalties (1132a1–2).So we might expect Aristotle’s account of justice in NE V to be fertile ground for information about the fine in action. But in fact I have not found it to be useful for my purposes. Unlike his discussions of other moral virtues, Aristotle is more interested in mapping the structure of just actions themselves than in describing the psychology of the person who acts from justice. It is true that he contrasts the just person to the grasping, pleonectic person (1129b1 ff; 1136b21 ff.), putting one in mind of Plato’s unjust tyrannical soul. Are we to imagine that for Aristotle, too, the just person is attracted to just actions precisely because they produce order and harmony in the city and soul? If so, we would want to know whether Aristotle’s just person chooses just actions as one sort of order among many, or whether there is something about civic order in particular that appeals to him. Although I suspect we can develop an Aristotelian account of the just person’s motivation, we would have to travel deep into Aristotle’s political theory to do it. Thus, I will not pursue the possibility here.³ What follows are three studies of the fineness of Aristotelian moral virtues.

1.COURAGE: NE III.6–9

I begin with courage which, more than any of the other moral virtues, is defined in relation to the fine. Courage proper is displayed by determining which dangers are most fine to withstand (III.6); the courageous person is described as acting for the sake of the fine (1115b12, b20–24, 1116a11, a15, b3, b31, 1117a17, b9, b14);⁴ the state most like true courage, citizen’s courage, is similar because it, too, is chosen for the sake of the fine (1116a27–29); while the other apparent forms of courage fail to meet the standard of virtue because they are not chosen for the sake of the fine (1116b2–3, b22,5 1117a7–8, a15–17).Aristotle emphasizes the beauty of courageous actions not simply because they are traditionally considered to be the most glorious. More important, the fineness of courage explains how brave actions meet his requirement that virtuous actions be chosen for their own sakes. The circumstances of courageous action are so painful—terror, wounds, and possibly even death—that unless we bear in mind that the end at which the courageous person aims is kalon, and thus pleasant, it will seem psychologically impossible for a person both to be rational and to perform brave actions wholeheartedly (1117a35–b2).Although the circumstances of courage are painful, courageous actions are pleasant insofar as they are choiceworthy for the sake of the fine. When Aristotle talks about the fine goal of courage, he cannot mean only the fine victory and honors that, no doubt, the brave person hopes his actions will achieve. If these were the only respects in which the brave person enjoyed his behavior, that would indicate that he valued his actions only as means to an end. Rather , when Aristotle says the courageous person takes pleasure in the kalon end of his action, he must also mean that, insofar as a courageous action itself touches (ephaptetai) to kalon, then in that particular way it will be pleasant to the courageous person.⁶ The brave person is drawn to the beauty of his action, much as Plato’s noble lovers in the Symposium fall in love with images of to kalon realized in the changeable world.⁷

But what exactly attracts the brave person as fine? It would be absurd to suggest that brave actions always attract the morally virtuous person because they seem appropriate to the philosopher, and Aristotle does not do so. Indeed, the brave person, acting as he does under the pressures of battle, seems hardly to have the time to think of much beyond the importance of victory. Thus, courage provides a particularly difficult case for my claim that morally virtuous activity is fine because it is oriented toward the value of contemplation. Nevertheless, I believe Aristotle’s discussion in NE III.6–7 shows this much: that courageous actions are fine because, in being ordered, proportioned, and bounded just as they are, they make clear the agent’s commitment to the human good, which he conceives as the excellent, rational use of a peaceful, political life. The appropriateness of his actions to a person committed to the excellent rational use of a leisurely citizen’s life is what makes them fine. Once I have established this claim, I will explain how, from this point, we can see that the beauty of courageous actions depends on the value of contemplation.

Let me begin where Aristotle does, with the limitation of courage to the battlefield.⁸ Aristotle’s rationale is in part that the danger of death in battle is the greatest and most fine (1115a29–35).Thu s, reflecting on the context of courage may illuminate what, in Aristotle’s opinion, is the fineness peculiar to courage. I want to set aside one potentially appealing interpretation. We might guess that courage is amatter of being fearless in really scary situations. Aristotle’s claim that the danger of death in battle is the proper sphere of courage might seem to support that assumption. Af ter all, few things are likely to be more horrible than standing firm as you watch the enemy advance against you. Withstanding such horrors would be fine, in this account, because it reveals the superiority of the human spirit to the slings and arrows of fortune. Courage would be a sort of encounter with the sublime. But this will not do as an interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics .The dreadfulness of death alone is insufficient to explain why war is the proper sphere for courage. After all, even though Aristotle says there is an attitude toward death at sea or from disease that is characteristic of the courageous person (viz., fearlessness and irritation at losing his life in this way), death in these circumstances is not fine (though neither is it shameful), and thus it is not, properly speaking, courageous (1115a28–29, a35–b6).I do not mean to suggest that the magnitude of the threat posed by imminent death is irrelevant to the beauty of courageous actions. As we saw in the previous chapter, the bigger things are, consistent with the visibility of their order, symmetry, and boundedness, the finer (Poet.8 1451a10–11).My point is only that we cannot understand why courageous actions and their circumstances are fine solely by reference to the magnitude of the threat they tackle.⁹

In part, Aristotle’s rather restrictive definition of courage is due to his insistence that courage is a matter of being fearless (adeês) in a technical sense (1115a33).¹⁰ It is arguable that, in Aristotle’s account, fear involves both a belief that harm is immanent and a desire to avoid it. Now the courageous person can (and should) believe it would be a grave misfortune to suffer the harm he faces (1117b9–13), and he can idly wish that he did not have to endure it. But he cannot have a motivating desire to avoid the field of battle where suffering harm is a real possibility so long as he thinks it would be fine, to endure it. Otherwise he would be torn between remaining with his comrades and fleeing to safety. By contrast, someone trapped in a boat in a terrible storm in no way chooses his situation and would appropriately do everything he could to get away.¹¹ Thus, it is appropriate to be afraid in the technical sense when faced with such a death. This idea—that courage cannot properly be shown in the face of evils we ought to try to avoid—fits well with Aristotle’s claim that although disrepute, friendlessness, envy, and violence against one’s family are bad, it is not, strictly speaking, courage to face them well (1115a10–23).Acting appropriately with respect to the risk of harm to one’s family or with respect to the risk of disgrace does require trying to avoid those dangers. Thus Aristotle rules out the proper endurance of certain misfortunes as occasions for courage because it is not ignoble, and may even be fine, to fear them (1115a12–13, a22–23).On the other hand, the fearlessness of the soldier is fine because risking death in this context is in some sense worth choosing.

I suggest that enduring military dangers well is especially fine in part because they are not undertaken idly. The courageous person’s fearlessness in this particular context suggests that he protects something he correctly considers to be valuable.¹² Aristotle does not think that just any willingness to die counts as courage. A person who kills himself on account of his poverty, or for love, or to avoid any sort of pain is not courageous but cowardly (1116a12–14).Poverty is not a good reason to give up life altogether. So one reason truly courageous actions occur in battle must be that warriors fight over something genuinely worthwhile. Presumably this will be the political dominance or the autonomy of their own community. At least, according to Aristotle, war is for the sake of peace and the political freedom that makes leisure possible (Pol. 1333a30–b3, 1334a14–16; NE X.7 1177b4–12). (Although Aristotle does not mention it, surely slavery is one of the more terrifying risks of war. See Pol.1333b38–41. )

Now I said before that an action will be fine in part because it is oriented to the human good. It is important to see that insofar as warlike actions aim to preserve political autonomy and peace, they do aim at the human good. For as we saw in our discussion of self-sufficiency, human beings are by nature political animals. Thus the human good, the end which by nature we seek, must be realized in the context of a political community.(Notice that when Aristotle says that human beings are political animals, he is not offering a definition of our specific essence, excellence in which would constitute happiness.¹³ Rather, to say that we are political is to say that we as individuals seek our good in a communal way.“Political animals are ones which all have some one common function (ergon), and this property is not common to all gregarious animals” (History of Animals 488a7–9).Thus identifying our nature as political does not yet answer the question of our most final end. It does not, in other words, authorize the conclusion that excellent political activity is happiness. Instead, it reveals that whatever our highest good may be, we will realize it jointly with other members of our political community.) ¹⁴ In Aristotle’s account, then, wars that are fought for the sake of peace and political freedom are legitimate and undertaken for the sake of some thing genuinely worthwhile.¹⁵ They are undertaken for peaceful political community in which alone human happiness is possible.

So brave actions are fine in part because they aim to protect the peace and autonomy necessary for the good life. Now , it may look from the way I have described it so far as if the fineness of courage is a function of its instrumental value. But this cannot be correct. The fineness of an act of courage is not tarnished by its failure to achieve its end. It is not only the victors who are brave. Furthermore, as I said in the previous chapter, what makes something fine is the same as what makes it worth choosing for its own sake. Thus I do not mean to say that brave actions are fine because they play a certain instrumental role.Rather , the point is that actions aiming at peace and freedom at the risk of death are the expression of a certain character. Let me explain how this is so. According to Aristotle, death is the greatest misfortune because life is the condition of the possibility of having anything good at all (1115a26–27).Thus, if a person is willing to give up his life, that must mean that the possibility for good that life affords is significantly less valuable to him without the presence of that good thing he seeks to protect. So a person who chooses (and is not compelled) to endure military dangers shows that a life of peaceful freedom is more valuable to him than mere life itself. In fact, we can go further and say that the courageous soldier shows that life is precious to him not simply because it is the necessary condition of having any old good thing or other, but because it contains this good—the freedom of his family or state—for which he risks his life. It is the value of this life that makes the risk of death worth choosing and fine, rather than rash and foolish. Thus, the beauty of brave actions is not owed chiefly to their consequences, but to the fact that the soldier risks his life to secure those consequences. In the extremity of the choice, the agent makes his (good) character visible.

This is why, even though there is a characteristic way a brave person will face the threat of financial ruin, for example, such actions are called brave only by extension (1115a17–22).For though such “brave” actions reveal that the agent values a certain kind of behavior more than money (and this is certainly a fine thing to show), they do not reveal what is true of the genuinely brave person, namely, that a certain way of living is the very condition of his cherishing his life tout court. This may seem an extreme way of stating Aristotle’s conception of courage, but the point is made explicit in his discussion of the great-souled man’s courage: “He does not expose himself to trifling dangers, nor is he a lover of danger ... , but he will face great dangers, and when he is in danger he is unsparing of his life, because life is not worth living in any old way (hôs ouk axion on pantoŝ zên)” (NE IV.3 1124b6–9).

The same thought is probably also behind Aristotle’s claim that the happier a person is, the more distressed he is by the prospect of death in battle (1117b9–13).A happy person has more to lose but also, for the same reason, more to fight for. A willingness to risk death shows that for the sake of which the brave person thinks everything else is worth having.¹⁶ Since military courage appears to protect a specifically political way of life, the human good as he understands it ought to be connected to political freedom.¹⁷

A brief examination of two derivative forms of courage substantiates what we have so far discovered about the fineness of bravery.The state of habit most similar to true courage is what Aristotle calls political courage, or citizen’s courage (1116a15 ff.). Citizen’s courage, like true courage, springs from a desire for the fine (1116a28–29).And like the person of true courage, the citizen fights to protect his city. Why , then, does Aristotle withhold the title of full courage to the citizen? The problem with the citizen seems to be that although he acts for the sake of to kalon, his understanding of to kalon is undeveloped.¹⁸ He finds the kalon in the honors given by his community, and the shameful or aischron in their reproaches (1116a28–29). That is to say, he finds the kalon in what is honored, rather than in what is honorable. Thus the citizen fights for the sake of a fine goal that is entirely beyond the fighting itself.He wants the honor of his fellow citizens, but there is no need to think that he finds anything fine or pleasant in the standing firm itself. (Think of the warriors of the Iliad, and particularly of Achilles, who seem not to gain any reward from their actions beyond the glory and honor they elicit from others.) Presumably, though, the truly courageous person would choose and take the appropriate pleasure in resisting the enemy even if he knew his heroism would go unrecognized.That is because resisting the enemy in just the way that the brave person does makes clear what kind of person he is.¹⁹ This is why his action appeals to him as fine and worth choosing for its own sake. There is an immediacy to the brave person’s choice that seems not to be a part of civic courage.

In its immediacy, true courage resembles another derivative form of courage, thumos courage. (Thumos understood now not as the source of all spirited desires, but as a sort of bestial, instinctive rage.) The person who fights from thumos is like an animal who attacks because it has been wounded (1116b25).In the Rhetoric, Aristotle says that anger (orgê) involves the desire to take revenge for a wrong (II.2 1378a30–32). Thus, the person (or animal) who charges the enemy from thumos does not look to some future reward as the source of his motivation. He attacks because he wants to make the enemy suffer for the wrong they threaten; thus his reward, that is, the pleasure at which he aims, is entirely in the blows and wounds he inflicts (1117a5–7).Now if the thumos-brave person chose his action as, all things considered, the right one and chose it for the reason the brave person acts, then he too would be fully courageous (1117a4–5).But thumos courage is not full courage because it does not issue in actions chosen for the sake of the fine (1116b30–31). In other words, although the thumos-brave person runs risks without looking to any ulterior reward, his risk taking does not reflect his understanding that there is some good—presumably a life of political freedom—which is so precious that it is worth defending with his life itself, if necessary. The courageous person, on the other hand, like the person who acts from citizen’s courage, chooses his action because it does show what makes his life particularly precious.

Indeed, I would suggest that Aristotle considers actions from thumos to be inferior to true courage not only because they are not chosen for the sake of the fine but also because they could not possibly, in themselves, express the value of political life to the agent. This is so for two reasons: first because animal actions do not express self-understanding at all, but second because actions from thumos are also experienced by nonpolitical animals (1116b24–26). ²⁰ Actions from thumos do not spring from a sense of the dignity of life in a free community; they are reactions to a kind of animal pain (1116b31–32). Aristotle believes this is true even for human acts of courage from thumos. When a person charges into battle from thumos, he is spurred only by the pain of fear, not by any sense that his action is noble (1116b30–35). In this respect, his action is not essentially any different from other actions from thumos performed in the service of sexual desires, hunger, and other appetites and pains we suffer in common with animals (1116b34– 1117a2). According to Aristotle, a human action from thumos courage, however much we may be glad to see it on the battlefield, says nothing more about the agent’s values than does a mule’s stubborn refusal to move from the feed trough even when beaten, or than does a libertine’s willingness to risk death for an affair (1116b35–1117a2). In Aristotle’s account, all these agents act from pain, rather than from any positive conception of what makes life worth living. Or, perhaps more precisely, to the extent that thumos courage reveals anything about the agent’s values, it is not the life of political freedom that is shown to be most important to him.

Actions from citizen’s courage, on the other hand, although they are not chosen with the immediacy of genuinely courageous and thumos-courageous actions, do reflect the agent’s partial grasp of the importance of life in a free community. He acts for the sake of fine honors, already implying that he cares about his place in his community. Furthermore, if such a person lives in a community that honors courageous actions—that is, endurance in battle—his sense of the kalon will be headed in the right direction. In particular, he will understand that physical safety is not valuable on just any terms whatsoever. For this reason, citizen’s courage is superior to the courage of a mercenary. The mercenary’s tendency to stand firm in the face of the enemy does not reveal anything about his values (except, perhaps, that he wants money). Rather , he acts as he does because he is skilled in fighting battles (1116b9–12). Consequently , when a mercenary realizes that he has lost the advantage over the enemy, he will flee; the citizen, on the other hand, will remain and die (1116b15–19). The reason for the citizen’s action is that he, like the truly courageous person, prefers death to shameful safety (1116b19– 23). In other words, life is valuable for him because it is lived under certain conditions. The importance of those conditions—in the citizen’s case, being an honored member of his community—makes it worthwhile to risk life itself in order to protect them.²¹

Courageous actions are fine in part because they manifest the importance to the soldier of his political nature.²² In a moment I will explain why this is only part of the story. (In brief, peace and freedom are valuable only to the extent they are used well. Thus, true courage must manifest commitment to the worthwhile use of political freedom in order to be fine.) Now, however, I want to point out that Aristotle’s notion of the fineness of courage corresponds to our sense—both ours today and that of the ancient Greeks—of what makes courageous actions so admirable.

Pericles makes this explicit in his funeral oration. He praises the Athenian dead because the city they fought to protect was worth dying for.²³ Consider also the Spartans’ heroic stand at Thermopylae, for example, where (according to Herodotus) four thousand Greeks defended a narrow mountain pass against three million Persians.²⁴ (Whether or not Aristotle approved of contemporary Sparta, the battle of Thermopylae was popularly considered a triumph of Spartan courage.) For three days Xerxes sent waves of fresh warriors from the various lands of the Persian empire to attack the Greeks. The Greeks managed to survive for a while by dividing into units based on nationality and taking turns defending the pass. In the end, however, the Greeks found themselves surrounded by the massive Persian army. Except for the Spartans and the Thespians, all the Greeks retreated or surrendered. In the final hours, fewer than three hundred men closed ranks against the Persians, first fighting with spears, then with swords, and finally “the Greeks defended themselves with knives, if they still had them, and otherwise with their hands and teeth, while the Persians buried them in a hail of missiles, some charging them head on and demolishing the wall, while the rest surrounded them on all sides” (Herodotus, VII.225). Every Greek was killed. This is, to me at any rate, a chilling but stirring scene, but only if we suppose that the Spartans were fighting for good reason. (Otherwise, Herodotus is describing the metamorphosis of proud men into cornered beasts.) The Spartans thought it was essential to protect the freedom of their city at all costs. Earlier, when asked by a Persian why they did not simply come to terms with Xerxes, the Spartans replied,

This recommendation of yours, Hydarnes, is not based on a balanced assessment of the situation. You have only half the picture. Although you know what it’s like to be a slave, you’ve never experienced freedom and you have no idea whether or not it’s a pleasant state. If you had experienced it, you’d be advising us to wield not spears, but even battleaxes in defense. (Herodotus, VII.135)

The actions of the Greeks at Thermopylae seem fine and thus courageous because they express the fact that these men preferred defending the free life—which we must assume is really valuable—to life itself. Their deaths express this in two ways. First, the Spartans and Thespians died to protect the integrity of their cities and the freedom of other Greek states, with whom they had bonds of friendship. Thus the objective of their fighting was the protection of a way of life. But furthermore, the very manner in which the Spartans and Thespians defended Thermopylae, their discipline in the face of terrible odds, their closing ranks in a circle, expressed the supreme value for them of political freedom.²⁵ The Greeks at Thermopylae died as political men, and not simply as individuals. The memorial erected to the Spartans at Thermopylae after the Persians were finally repulsed shows that this is precisely what the Greeks found to admire in the Spartans’ courage: “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”²⁶

Finally, to take a last, more recent example, the firemen who trudged up the stairs of the burning World Trade Center as office workers were streaming out have become icons of courage. We honor the valor of people who refuse to leave the wounded and endangered behind. How are we to explain the basis for our admiration for such behavior? Perhaps we admire it as an example of altruism, that is, as an example of someone placing the interests of others over his own. But I think there is another and more subtle explanation: Such action reveals the agent as having linked his sense of self-respect to the well-being of the rest of us citizens. When a fireman enters a burning building or a soldier risks his life to save a comrade, he reveals his commitment to a conception of his life as valuable as political (in Aristotle’s sense).He is the sort of person who has friends, who lives his life within the bonds of reciprocal goodwill, in a mutual pursuit of the good life. For him, it is better to die than to turn his back on his political nature and live as an individual. We admire these firemen, I believe, because in the face of the severest temptation, they kept their priorities in the right place.²⁷

So far I have argued that risk of death in battle is especially fine, according to Aristotle, because it is appropriate to one devoted to happiness realized in free and peaceful political community. But at the beginning of this discussion I claimed that the courageous person is committed to “the excellent rational use of a leisurely citizen’s life” (p.149). How do we get from the idea that the brave person is committed to the polis to the idea that he seeks happiness as rational activity?

I do not believe that anything in Aristotle’s discussion of courage points explicitly to the claim that the highest good is contemplation. There are two things to notice, however. First, bravery will not be truly virtuous if it is not, in fact, the case that running the risk of death is preferable to living without a free life of this sort. Thus, the choiceworthiness of courage depends on the value of political freedom and peace. The person who admires courage, as Aristotle’s students presumably do, can be led to ask why freedom is so extraordinarily valuable. What is freedom for? Today we might care about political freedom because it allows for the possibility of self-determination and self-expression. So for us, perhaps, political freedom is important as the condition of the possibility of the creative life. But this is not why Aristotle thinks political freedom is so important. War is for the sake of peace, he says, but the business of peace, once it has been achieved, is for the sake of leisure (Pol.1334a14–16; NE 1177b4–6). But leisure is possible for us needy human beings only in the context of community. Indeed, in Aristotle’s account the polis exists to satisfy a natural human desire for the satisfaction of more than our basic, physical needs (Pol.I. 2 1252b15–30).²⁸ The purpose of political organization, over and above the family, is to make possible the pursuit of leisure activities (Pol. VII.14 1333a35–36; 1334a4–5; VII.15 1334a14–16). Thus, for Aristotle, political freedom and peace are worth the risk of death because they allow for leisure.²⁹

But, of course, leisure is valuable only if it can be used well. (“If it is disgraceful in men not to be able to use the goods of life, it is particularly disgraceful not to be able to use them in time of leisure—to show excellent qualities in action and war, and when they have peace and leisure to be no better than slaves” [Pol. VII.15 1334a36–40]). Now according to Aristotle, happiness is found in leisure (NE X.7 1177b4). Indeed, as we saw before, the reason well-functioning cities aim to create the condition of leisure is that cities by nature aim at happiness for the citizens (Pol.VII. 14–15). So, since Aristotle believes that eudaimonia is excellent rational activity and, in particular, contemplation, we should not be surprised to learn that he thinks free citizens at leisure need philosophy (Pol.VII. 15 1334a22–25, a31–34;

Meta.A.1 981a22–25: philosophy requires leisure). Thus, in Aristotle’s complete account, the possibility of the most excellent expression of reason is what makes leisure worth wanting and worth dying for. All truly brave people express their commitment to free and peaceful political life as the place where rational excellence can flourish. Since this most excellent activity is theôria, the possibility of contemplation is what makes courageous actions worth undertaking. My point here is not to argue that the philosopher has reason to value the political aspect of his nature. (That argument will come in the next chapter.) My point, rather, is that people who admire courage and its commitment to political life have reason to value the best use of leisure, and this, according to Aristotle, is philosophical.

Let me summarize where we have come so far. I began with the principle that since things are fine when they are ordered to their good, we ought to be able to discover what Aristotle thinks is the good of human action by reflecting on what makes courageous actions fine. It turns out that courage on the battlefield is particularly fine because it makes evident the agent’s commitment to life in a peaceful and free political community. The brave person’s attachment to this way of life is so profound that he is willing to risk the loss of life itself in order to protect it. But according to Aristotle, peaceful political life is valuable because it makes possible the conditions of leisure in which alone happiness is to be found. Thus, if the brave person’s actions are to be genuinely fine (and not just apparently so), they must express his commitment to a political community that fosters the most excellent use of leisure. Aristotle has already argued in NE I.7 that excellent activity of reason is the good at which each individual and the whole polis should aim. But notice that if reflecting on the beauty of courage leads us to reflect on the value of a properly ordered political community, we will soon be led to ask: What are the excellent rational activities a community can support? Philosophical contemplation, Aristotle thinks, will emerge as the best. Thus, I conclude that courageous actions are fine because they show the agent’s ultimate commitment to a way of life in which the most excellent activity of reason is possible.

This interpretation finds confirmation when we notice that the rationality of the brave person himself is integral to his nobility, as Aristotle describes it. I mentioned before that the description of thumos courage suggests that the brave person conceives of himself as a political animal. It also suggests, I think, that this political nature, which the truly brave person esteems and expresses in the risks he takes, is an essentially rational form of life. Aristotle says wild beasts on the attack are not brave “because being driven by pain and thumos, they rush to danger without foreseeing the dangers” (1116b34– 35). The uncontrolled raging of an animal is the very opposite of the cool soldier who keeps his head. While the brave person can consider the consequences of various strategies, the soldier overtaken by thumos, as Aristotle describes him, cannot restrain himself from rash and pointless aggression. His inability to act on the basis of deliberation makes him no better than a senseless beast. So even if the courageous person, as Aristotle describes him, need not think of himself as a philosopher, he does need to take pride in himself as rational.³⁰

It is sufficient for courage, then, that the brave person orient his behavior with reference to the value of leisure, political freedom, and rationality. Nevertheless, the value of contemplation still provides the ultimate foundation for the choiceworthiness and beauty of his actions, whether he knows it or not. The courageous person will act precisely as he does for the sake of leisure in his community; it is his consciousness of the value of leisure that makes him risk his life when he does and in the manner that he does. But since leisure is valuable for the sake of contemplation, it is correct to say that the courageous person acts for the sake of theôria, not necessarily as a conscious aspiration, but as the source of value for his actions. In the same way, Plato’s lover in the Symposium loves to kalon itself when he loves a beautiful boy, even before he has completed the ascent to the form.

In conclusion, then, the exercise of courage approximates contemplation by being structurally similar to it, insofar as it is an exercise of practical reason and truthfulness. But when we examine what, on a particular occasion, the brave person takes to be truthful, we see that he chooses actions that—through their order, balance, symmetry, and ulterior goal—manifest his commitment to rational excellence in community as happiness. By acting just this way in the face of the dangers of war, the courageous person shows that he values the excellent use of leisure in community above mere life itself. And we have seen that this evident orientation of the courageous person to the value of leisure is what makes his actions fine. The value of leisure in a free community is the source of the actions’ intrinsic value, that is, of their being choiceworthy for their own sakes. But since the value of leisure in a free community depends on the value of rational excellence, and of contemplation in particular, we can conclude, although Aristotle does not do so in his discussion in NE III.6–9, that the activity of courage is ultimately choiceworthy for the sake of contemplation. That is to say, paradigmatic courageous actions have the form they do because the excellently rational life of a citizen in a free city is the best one. And as Aristotle argues in NE X.7–8, this life is contemplative.

2.TEMPERANCE: NE III.10–12

Aristotle’s discussion of temperance immediately follows his discussion of courage and is meant to be coordinate with it as the other “virtue of the irrational part” (1117b24). All the moral virtues are, in part, excellences of the part of the irrational soul having a share in reason. What Aristotle must mean is that temperance and courage are virtues concerned with feelings—pleasure and fear, respectively—that we experience in virtue of our animal, as opposed to our specifically human, nature. As we saw in the contrast between true courage and thumos courage, bravery is a matter of feeling fear as a human being—as a rational, political creature. In doing so, the brave person shows that he values his life as more than mere animal existence. As we shall see, the theme of experiencing animal passions as a human being becomes the focus of Aristotle’s discussion of temperance.³¹ “Intemperance” Aristotle says, “would seem to be justly a matter of reproach because it is present not insofar as we are human beings, but insofar as we are animals” (1118b2–3). Temperance concerns the pleasant pursuit of things that are necessary for our life insofar as we are animals. Insofar as we are animals, we need food, drink, and sexual intercourse. Indeed, we strongly desire them—so much so that, once we possess the luxury of relative leisure, we could easily give it over to their indulgence. It would be a shame to be willing to risk mere brute life in battle, for example, or to toil in business for the sake of a leisure lived for the sake of animal pleasures.³² The temperate person is someone whose attitude to animal pleasures reveals that he thinks of and values himself as a human animal—that is, as a rational, and specifically as a noninstrumentally rational, animal.³³ In taking enough to eat but no more, in accepting a moderate amount of condiments when available and appropriate but in not missing them when they are absent, Aristotle’s temperate person, I will argue, reveals that he loves the most excellent rational activity for its own sake as the highest human good. But of course Aristotle believes that the most excellent use of reason and one that is quintessentially noninstrumental is contemplative.³⁴ So although the temperate person himself may not be aware of this, temperate actions are fine and choiceworthy for their own sakes because they are determined—in their order, proportion, and shape—by contemplation.³⁵

As in the discussion of courage, Aristotle begins the discussion of temperance by determining its sphere: Which pleasures are the concern of temperance? (Not all pleasures are occasions for temperance, any more than all fears are occasions for courage.) After setting aside pleasures of the soul, such as the pleasures of learning and of gratified ambition, and what we might call cultural pleasures—listening to music, going to the theater—Aristotle says the scope of temperance is the pleasures we share with the beasts (1117b28–1118a1, 1118a23–25). This might lead us to believe that temperance is concerned with purely physical pleasures, but Aristotle explicitly denies this (1118a1–3). After all, there are many sensory pleasures in which a person may overindulge without being called intemperate. The delight we take in the smell of apples or of roses, for example, is not the concern of temperance, Aristotle says (1118a10–11). Rather , bestial pleasures are a subset of the physical pleasures experienced by human beings. So what is bestial pleasure, and what about it makes its right indulgence an occasion for virtue?

Aristotle says that animals experience only those pleasures that supervene on the upkeep of their physical being (1118a18–23).³⁶ These are the appetitive pleasures.³⁷ Primary among these are the pleasures of eating—that is, the pleasure of feeling the food fill an empty belly—and of sex. Thus, Aristotle argues, animal pleasure is pleasure associated with touch (1118a24– 27, b1). If animals delight in any of their senses, they do so only to the extent that those senses help them satisfy these basic nutritive desires (including here the sexual ones; see DA.II. 4).So, for instance, dogs do not enjoy the smell of rabbits simply because of the way they smell, but because it puts them in mind of eating rabbits (1118a18–20).³⁸ And Aristotle claims that when lions take pleasure in the lowing of the ox, that is only because they are anticipating a tasty meal (1118a20–22). Indeed, it would be more correct to say that, although a lion may become excited by the sound of a lowing ox, it does not take pleasure in that sound per se. Rather , the lowing is the cause of the lion’s anticipatory pleasure in devouring the ox. And this capacity of the lion’s to take anticipatory pleasure is quite useful to it, since it helps it to find its way to its dinner. Indeed, we can imagine that the lion becomes more and more excited as it gets closer to the ox. And the ox, for its part, delights in the smell of the pasture only insofar as it promises sufficient cud to chew.³⁹ Animal pleasure, then, is the physical pleasure that supervenes on nutritive and generative activities or on their anticipation.

Now, human beings can feel these physical pleasures as well. After all, we too have a share in nutritive soul. But unlike animals, we can take pleasure in the activity of our senses for its own sake. That is to say, we do not enjoy sights and sounds associated with eating and sex only because through them we anticipate these nutritive and generative pleasures. As Aristotle says at the beginning of the Metaphysics, “even apart from the usefulness of our senses, they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight” (980a22–24). The reason is that perception, and particularly seeing, is a matter of making distinctions and noticing differences and similarities. More important, in Aristotle’s theory, perception is a matter of receiving the form of the perceived object. Thus, perception is quasi knowledge and, according to Aristotle, we delight in it as such (DA III.3). Because we human beings are theoretically rational creatures, who desire knowledge simply for its own sake, we can delight in the activity of our senses not only insofar as it helps us to sustain our physical being but also insofar as it is the actualization of our rational nature. That is, we can delight in the lowing of the ox not only because we know it will make good eating but also because we recognize it as the sound that it is. We can take pleasure in this sound, in part, insofar as we say to ourselves, “There is the lowing of the ox.”⁴⁰ Indeed, according to Aristotle this is precisely the delight we take in watching drama. Even when tragedy terrifies us, we take pleasure in seeing that “this is a that” (Poet.4 1448b10–19).⁴¹

Aristotle limits the sphere of temperance to the pleasures of nutrition and generation, then, because they alone provide the opportunity for showing that the agent conceives of himself and the life worth leading as more than animal. Other physical pleasures, like the pleasure of watching tragedy, already presuppose our rational nature regardless of whether we indulge in them correctly. Likewise, Aristotle must exclude the pleasure of smelling apples and roses because these pleasures are not (or are not necessarily) connected to appetite. Even the pleasure of getting a back rub, which we today might consider the paradigm of sensual indulgence, is outside the sphere of temperance for Aristotle (1118b4–8). Back rubs, occurring for the Greeks in the context of the gymnasium, are the activity of someone who already has accepted a place in the polis. Thus, for Aristotle, back rubs, whether experienced rightly or not, are cultural pleasures, characteristic of a free person. The fact that these pleasures are not the concern of temperance does not mean that we cannot abuse them. Aristotle thinks people can either enjoy the specifically human pleasures as they ought or indulge in them excessively or insufficiently (1118a5–6). In other words, there are virtues and vices with respect to the human pleasures. But they are not fine (or aischron) in quite the same way, for the abuse of the human pleasures can never be utterly brutish, and so can never show that a person imagines happiness to be found in a life fit only for animals.⁴²

The virtue of temperance, then, is a matter of feeling physical pleasures connected to nutrition and generation in the right human way. Aristotle does not mean that we should not take pleasure in the raw physical sensation of getting full when we are hungry, or of quenching our thirst. After all, human beings are animals and therefore, Aristotle thinks, it is virtually inconceivable that any person could avoid these pleasures (1119a5–7). A flourishing human life cannot do without the animal pleasures (1119a9–10). But nor can a human being flourish unless he typically experiences those pleasures in a manner appropriate to his human nature.

In NE IV.11 Aristotle criticizes the intemperate person for eating too much. But it would be a mistake to think that the intemperate person goes wrong only or even primarily in the quantity of his sensual indulgence and not in his attitude toward those pleasures. Though both will take pleasure in food, Aristotle says the temperate person does not take pleasure in the same things the intemperate person enjoys (1119a12). Aristotle may have in mind that while, for example, the intemperate person gorges himself on foie gras, the temperate person will prefer a snack of, say, hummus. But this alone does not do justice to Aristotle’s memorable description of the gourmand as one who prays to god to extend his neck so that he can enjoy the sensation of ingesting food for longer (1118a32–33). The intemperate person does not simply eat more than a temperate person would. He attends to and delights in the most bestial aspect of eating: the way it feels (1118a29–32). The object of the intemperate person’s desire is the brutish pleasure of touch (1118b1– 4). Of course, he will take some delight in senses other than touch. But just like an animal, he will delight only in those sensations, such as the smell of food or of perfumes, that promise the satisfaction of his sensual appetites (1118a12–13). His mistaken evaluation of the pleasures of touch—he loves them above all others, Aristotle says—causes him to seek them out more than he ought.⁴³

This description of the intemperate person suggests that the temperate person will distinguish himself not only in how much he eats but in what he attends to while he is eating. He will feel no particularly strong attachment to the mere physical pleasures, for he will be able to see them as supervening on activities instrumental to something beyond themselves. We can imagine that if indulging his senses is what he is after, he would listen to music or look at paintings. Of course, the temperate person will recognize that he must eat for his health. When he does so, however, the manner of his eating will reflect his sense of what is fine, or at least not contradict it (1119a18). Unlike the self-indulgent person, he will discriminate among the various tastes and textures and make a judgment of their quality (1118a27–29). Of course, it would be wrong to imagine the temperate person differing only in what aspect of nutritive sensory pleasure he enjoys. Someone who doggedly pursued eating and sex so that he could experience their sights and tastes and sounds would perhaps be as misguided as the more ordinarily intemperate person. The temperate person recognizes these physical pleasures as ones that essentially supervene on the activity of what Aristotle calls the nutritive soul. Thus, it is rational to pursue them only to the extent of physical need and only insofar as they promote (or at least do not interfere with) health (1118b16–17, 1119a16–18). However , insofar as the temperate person naturally desires the bestial pleasures for their own sakes at all, he will value them as an occasion to use his senses as an expression of his rational nature.⁴⁴ When he pursues them well, he transforms a bestial activity into something fine, that is, oriented to the human good. Eating in just the way he does is appropriate to someone who finds happiness is excellent rational activity chosen for itself.

The temperate person manages to satisfy his animal nature, and thereby experience appetitive pleasures, in a way that expresses his human, rational nature. This is a difficult business. The physical pleasures are powerful seducers, tempting us to lead our lives for their sakes. When the temperate person finds it choiceworthy and fine to act in just this way in the presence of food and sex, he shows not only that he is more than an animal but that he conceives of himself and his life as more than animal. In particular, he shows that rational pleasure rather than sybaritic indulgence is the best use of leisure. (Temperance, remember, is one of the principal moral virtues of peacetime and leisure.) Now, the temperate person need not think of metaphysical spec determined ulation when he thinks of the appropriate use of leisure. He may well think that leisure is best spent watching a play, talking with friends after dinner, or worshiping the gods. But, as a matter of fact, all these activities are expressions of our theoretical nature.⁴⁵ Thus, if this is the vision of the good the temperate person’s actions express, he shows that he thinks of himself as theoretical, although this is perhaps not the word he himself would use. But even if a person has a specifically practical conception of the best use of reason, he may still be temperate. So long as he thinks happiness is the most excellent rational activity and responds to animal pleasures in a way appropriate to his rational nature, his actions will be fine and worth choosing for their own sakes. That is because, in being oriented to the best rational activity, they are oriented to contemplation, whether the temperate person understands this or not.

3.GREATNESS OF SOUL: NE IV.3

I will conclude my examination of the morally fine with a virtue that might seem an odd and uncharitable choice: megalopsychia, or greatness of soul.⁴⁶ Aristotle’s description of the great-souled person has been considered by many otherwise sympathetic readers of the Nicomachean Ethics as utterly repellent.⁴⁷ He seems to think he is a prize specimen of humanity and is, as a consequence, haughty in the extreme. I suspect that many admirers of Aristotle would like to pass over these pages of the Nicomachean Ethics in silence. But Aristotle thinks of the great-souled man as a paragon of spiritual beauty (1123b6–8). Thus, if we want a more detailed account of what makes virtuous actions fine in Aristotle’s view, we cannot ignore this virtue. In the course of my discussion I hope to show that greatness of soul as Aristotle describes it is after all an admirable trait of character. But my purpose is not to defend megalopsychia. Rather , I will argue that, once again, morally virtuous actions are fine because they are ordered, made symmetrical, and bounded by a specifically rational use of leisure as the highest good. In fact, the discussion of greatness of soul indicates more directly than do the discussions of courage and temperance that this highest form of rational activity is philosophical contemplation.

Greatness of soul is the disposition to want the right external goods in the right way as a reward for one’s excellence. But whereas the unnamed virtue with respect to honor discussed by Aristotle in the following chapter seems to be concerned with the regulation of the natural desire for honor per se, greatness of soul is focused more on one’s understanding of oneself as already worthy of honor. The vices of vanity and small-mindedness are opposed to the virtue because they incline the agent to think himself more or less worthy than he really is. It would be more accurate to say, then, that greatness of soul is the disposition to want the greatest honors as one ought to want them when one is, in fact, deserving of them. Or , as Aristotle puts it, “the great-souled person seems to be the one who, being worthy of great things, thinks himself worthy of great things” (1123b1–2). It is a prerequisite of this virtue, then, that one already possess and “be great in” each of the other moral virtues (1123b30).⁴⁸ This is so not simply because one must in fact be good in order to deserve the honors of the good. In addition, the great-souled person, when he reflects on his condition of moral goodness, correctly concludes that it entitles him to the greatest of external goods—honor. It is understandable, then, that Aristotle says, “greatness of soul seems to be a kind of ornament (kosmos tis) of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and does not come to be without them” (1124a1–3). Megalopsychia ornaments the other moral virtues because it is the virtue concerned with honoring and calling attention to the excellence of courage, temperance, generosity, and the like.⁴⁹

In this sense, then, greatness of soul takes its cue from and is dependent on the value of outstanding morally virtuous action. But it is interesting to notice that the great-souled person seems to be concerned above allwith the truthfulness of his claims. The great-souled person is justifiable in his disdain for others because he forms his opinions truthfully (1124b5–6). He makes his loves and hates evident because he cares more for the truth than for the opinion of others (1124b26–28). And he speaks and acts openly (phanerôs) not only because he disdains others but because he is by character inclined to truthfulness (alêtheutikos; 1124b29–30). Since the actions of both the small-minded and the vain reveal their ignorance of themselves (1125a19–22, a27– 28), we can assume that the great-souled person knows himself, as well. That is to say, he knows that he is, in truth, great (cf.1 123b29 and 1124a3, where Aristotle emphasizes that the great-souled are “in truth” great-souled) .Thus, although greatness of soul is a virtue that honors the value of the other moral virtues, it is fair to say that the agent with this virtue cares in particular for the truthfulness exhibited by his peculiar virtue and the activity of those other virtues. The great-souled person is, then, a lover of truth.

But just how good does the great-souled person think his morally virtuous actions are? Consider Aristotle’s description: He shrinks from action unless the deed is great and noteworthy (1124b25–26). He is idle (argon); the uncharitable might call him lazy (1124b24). In fact, his whole style is evocative of leisure; his way of walking, for instance, is slow and unhurried (1125a14– 16). Worthy of honor though the great-souled person considers his grand and good actions to be, it is hard not to get the impression that these statesmanlike actions are not at the center of his life.⁵⁰ As W.R.F. Hardie has remarked, Aristotle’s portrait of the great-souled person is mainly negative: “[T]he character of the megalopsychos is such that he does not seek danger, has few needs, is rarely moved to action, is not given to praise or admiration or the pursuit of grudges, eschews gossip or personal talk. Why tell us only what he does not talk about?” (1978, 66). What does the great-souled person do all day?

Gauthier has argued that he is a philosopher (1951, 104–117; Gauthier and Jolif 1970, 286–298).⁵¹ The great-souled person is leisurely (and Aristotle’s remarks in NE X.6 suggest that this leisure will not be passed in pleasant amusements), self-sufficient, remote from the world. The magnanimous person looks lazy, and Politics VII.3 suggests that this is how the philosopher looks to the politician.⁵² And in NE X.7–8 the contemplative life is said to embody these characteristics while the political life devoted to moral virtue does not. But in addition, according to Gauthier, Aristotle’s discussion of the great-souled man evokes Socrates. Both are indifferent to good and bad fortune, but both are willing to accept what honors can be given, as, for instance, when Socrates assesses his penalty at free meals in the Prytaneum at public expense (Apology 36b–e). Neit her Socrates nor Aristotle’s great-souled man thinks life is worth saving at any cost, consequently both are conspicuously brave. Both always speak the truth. And if all this were not enough, Aristotle actually says that the great-souled person is ironic (1124b30)! The upshot, if Gauthier is correct, is that the philosopher living for the sake of theoretical contemplation is also the most glorious in his practical wisdom.

However tempting this interpretation may be, it is overinterpretation to say at this point in the Nicomachean Ethics that this paragon of moral virtue is a philosopher. Aristotle never mentions theôria in this chapter on greatness of soul.⁵³ Instead, we should draw the more modest conclusion that the great-souled person lives his life for what he can achieve at leisure, whatever that may be.⁵⁴ We need not assume, nor should we yet, that this activity is definitely philosophical. However , Gauthier is surely right that Aristotle’s evocation of Socrates here is important, particularly when coupled with the great-souled person’s interest in the truthfulness of his actions. However the great-souled person spends his time, one possibility we are certainly being invited to consider is that this hero of moral greatness passes his time in philosophical conversation with his fellow citizens at leisure.⁵⁵

Although the great-souled person is at leisure and may be engaged in philosophy, his greatness of soul is expressed in his pursuit of honors and in his assessment of his practical performance.⁵⁶ So it is in Aristotle’s description of how he seeks honor for moral virtue that we will discover the fineness of this particular virtue. Roughly the first third of the chapter describes the great-souled person’s relationship to honor in very general terms: He measures his worth by his actual worth, and what he’s worthy of is honor. Butin 1124a5 Aristotle becomes more specific: “He will be moderately pleased by great honors given by upstanding people (spoudaioi) ... but he will completely disdain honor from chance people and for small things” (1124a5– 11). It is in the second half of this sentence that the great-souled person begins to seem unbearably haughty. In fact, as we read on, it emerges that in accepting the honors due him, the great-souled person wants to assert his superiority over others. In itself, honor is not particularly important (1124a16–20), but it is the mark of a superior. The great-souled person is ready to play the benefactor and delights in remembering the benefits he has conferred, since such behavior is characteristic of superiors. On the other hand, he is ashamed when he has to ask for help and doesn’t like to remember the help others have given him once the debt has been repaid, since this is the behavior of inferiors (1124b9–15).⁵⁷ What of beauty does Aristotle find here?

First, we should not imagine that the great-souled person flaunts his superiority everywhere. His attitude to people in the middle of the social scale is moderate and he would consider it boorish to assert his superiority over the humble and lowly (1124b19–22). Instead, he makes a point of being honored only by the upstanding (spoudaioi), people of distinguished rank (tous en axiômati), and the well-off (tous en eutuchiais) (1124a6, b18–19). In other words, the great-souled person asserts his superiority over those who are, or are generally considered to be, successful. Now since the magnanimous person is correct in his claims, his superiority is no doubt a considerable accomplishment (1124b20).⁵⁸ But furthermore, he wants to be recognized by the lesser great. Presumably , his life will be distinguished from theirs—will be visible—as superior only if those who generally take themselves to be superior recognize that he is better. So in developing an account of what makes greatness of soul fine, we must take into account that he is only animated to seek distinction when in the company of the truly or conventionally great.

Second, we should notice that though the great-souled person demands to be honored by the great, he does not seek the sort of honors such people usually pursue. In the line immediately following the ones I just discussed above, Aristotle says, “He does not seek things held in honor (entima), or that in which others excel” (1124b23–24). If Aristotle had stopped with the first clause, we would interpret him to mean that the great-souled person’s actions are not motivated by honor. But the second clause suggests that insofar as he is motivated to pursue honor, what he holds in honor is different from what others pursue.

If we put these two passages together, it begins to seem as if the great-souled man wants to distinguish himself from and assert his superiority over those who lead a political or statesman’s life, at least as that is conventionally understood. It is those of distinguished rank and the wealthy who have particular clout in the city. And it is marks of civic importance—sponsorship of civic events, political power, wealth, important family liaisons—that are generally held in honor and in which the distinguished and wealthy excel. But, as we saw, it is the things typically honored and in which others excel that do not attract the great-souled person’s attention. Thus, it might at first be thought that the great-souled person is superior to the rich and distinguished in virtue of having more of what they themselves possess. Just as it is appropriate for the strongest person to make a display of his strength against those who are themselves strong, so also the great-souled would display his greater power and good fortune against the powerful and fortunate civic movers and shakers. But if the great-souled person does not even join the competition where the rich and distinguished claim success, he cannot be superior to them on their own terms, so to speak.

If this is the situation, we can see some point to the great-souled man’s being great. On e does not need to be a student of Plato’s to think that the rich and powerful are always likely to think that they alone are happy. (Think, for example, of the story of Solon and Croesus.) If the great-souled man’s life is not a conventionally political one—and his apparent laziness indicates that it is not—then these people are likely not to recognize him as their equal in happiness, much less their superior. Thus, we ought not to imagine the great-souled man as swaggering when he is in the company of the rich and powerful. Rather, his being great is a matter of refusing to defer to or to be condescended to by those who have, at best, a secondary claim on happiness. And the great-souled man acts this way from the knowledge that his life is in fact the best. Aristotle’s depicts the great-souled man’s haughtiness as like that of a person devoted to the life of the mind or, to take an un-Aristotelian example, an artist, insisting on his dignity in the company of Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. So one reason greatness of soul is fine is that it shows the keenness of the agent’s understanding of the human good as exemplified by himself.

The point is not so much that the great-souled person succeeds in being honored by these pretenders to the best life. After all, even honor is a small thing to him (1124a19). Rather , Aristotle’s worry is that if the best person is not alive to his superiority over the conventionally successful, then he may neglect the fine responsibilities that typically fall to the best people in society. Aristotle’s claim that undue humility (mikropsychia ) is more opposed to greatness of soul than is vanity (1125a32–33) bears this out. The problem with the overly humble person is not that he is slow to toot his own horn; his fault lies in giving up respect to those whose claim to happiness is less than his own. He lacks an appropriate sense of self-respect. The result is that he does not undertake to do the noble and good things that it is appropriate for him to do.⁵⁹ (We can imagine a politically informed citizen who, in a time of national crisis, avoids taking a political stand on the grounds that his opinions on political matters are not important.)⁶⁰

This suggests another reason Aristotle might have considered greatness of soul fine. So far I have left open the possibility that the great-souled person devotes himself to moral virtue as his highest good, though granted not in any conventional sense. He does not rush to battle or the law courts or other places he might display his superior moral virtue, but lives for what he can accomplish at leisure. Now , greatness of soul, understood as the virtue that honors other moral virtues, is an important virtue for anyone who spends his time in leisure. Such a person may seem to have no regard for the business, the laboring over necessities, that makes up much of the life of the polis. In acting with greatness of soul, he shows his high regard for those great actions which themselves honor his political nature.⁶¹ But at this point it would be willful not to notice the similarities between the portrait of the great-souled man and Socrates. For although anyone who spends his time in leisure needs greatness of soul, it is particularly important for the philosopher, since the philosopher’s preferred use of leisure is entirely unconcerned with human beings and human affairs. But though the philosopher does not live for political involvement as a statesman, his idleness is not the result of alienation from or rejection of the city (or so I shall argue in the next chapter). Thus he above all needs to show that his remoteness from the world in which moral virtue is most gloriously exercised is not a disdain for moral virtue itself. Excellent action is also truthful. So greatness of soul is fine in part because it shows that the agent looks beyond conventional busyness to a happiness found in leisure. The echoes of Socrates in this chapter suggest that this leisure is spent in philosophical conversation. But as embodied by the philosopher, greatness of soul is fine also because it displays his understanding that something of the truthfulness he loves is to be found and cherished in practical excellence.

¹ Others have argued that the virtuous use of goods is the one that promotes contemplation, either directly or indirectly, by fostering a condition of the soul capable of prolonged philosophical study (Kraut 1989; Tuozzo 1995). My task in this chapter is different. I want to argue that virtuous actions are fine because they express the value of contemplation regardless of whether, on any particular occasion, they do promote contemplation.

² Actually, one of the most important peacetime virtues, according to the Politics, is philo-sophia (1334a23, a32). Whether this is a theoretical virtue or a practical attitude toward wisdom is unclear.

³ Kraut (2002, chap.4) presents an interesting discussion of the psychology of the just person. Another way to approach the problem of the fineness of justice would be to examine the fineness of the related virtue of friendship.

⁴ Aristotle’s formulations vary. At different times Aristotle describes the courageous person as acting, enduring, choosing, and being brave for the sake of the fine. ‘For the sake of’ translates toû kaloû heneka, dia to kalon, and hoti kalon.

⁵ Mercenaries fear death more than what is shameful, or aischron. The implication is that truly brave people are disposed to avoid the shameful more than death. Aischron is the opposite of kalon, and like kalon it blends ethical and aesthetic evaluation.

⁶ At 1117b15–16 Aristotle says courageous activity is pleasant insofar as it “touches” the telos. I assume that the telos is whatever the fine thing is for the sake of which the courageous person acts. (1) Aristotle says repeatedly that the brave person acts for the sake of the fine, and as we know from the previous chapter, the fine is pleasant. Thus the fine is an obvious candidate for the pleasant telos of courageous action.(2) At 1117b1–4 Aristotle says that brave people take pleasure in their end just as boxers take pleasure in honors. But honors, satisfying as they do our thumoeidic competitive desires, are pleasant because they are fine.

⁷ Dirlmeier (1964, 347) notices that Aristotle describes the courageous person “being in touch” with the fine using the same verb (ephaptetai) as Plato uses to describe the fully educated lover “touching” the beautiful or fine itself (Symp.2 12a). Notice that Diotima describes the brave, the temperate, and the just as lovers of the Beautiful (Symp.20 8c1–d2, 209a1–8, 212a2–7).

⁸ Aristotle’s limitation of courage to battle is not only strange to our ears; it stands in contradiction to Socrates’ assumption in the Laches (191c–e) that courage can be shown at sea, in illness, and in poverty.

⁹ Gauthier and Jolif (1970, not.ad 1115a23) argue that Aristotle limits the scope of courage to the risk of death in battle because he thinks the most proper object of fear is death. Actually , Aristotle believes that fear is of painful death, or indeed of any very painful harm (Rhet .II. 5). The scope of courage is limited to fear of death in battle not because this is most properly fear, but because this danger is the finest to endure.

¹⁰ This can be confusing when compared with Aristotle’s report at NE III.6 1115a9 that some define fear as the expectation of harm (kakos). The brave person is afraid in this sense of fear. He thinks death in battle is a serious misfortune and in no way seeks that danger (1117b7– 8, 1116a7–9). However , he does not avoid danger either, if it would be fine to endure it. And that shows that the brave person does not meet Aristotle’s considered definition of fear in Rhet . II.5 as the expectation of evil plus the desire to avoid it. (The fact that fear requires some hope of safety, however faint, indicates that it involves the desire to flee.) When Aristotle does call the brave person fearless (1115a33), we should assume he has the fuller Rhetoric definition in mind. Pears (1980, 174–175).

¹¹ Does not Aristotle say that the brave person will be fearless in the face of death at sea (1115a35–b2)? Yes, and insofar as he is hopeless, he will not try to flee. But my point is that the brave person does not choose death at sea as in any way good, whereas he does choose death in battle if necessary.

¹² As Pears (1980, 185) has argued, all courage, and certainly Aristotle’s courage, requires an external goal. Pears thinks that the external goal is always related to one’s own safety or survival. But unless we extend the external goals beyond these we face the problem Pears himself raises of explaining how Aristotle can think it possible to exhibit anything like courage in illness or hopeless situations.

¹³ At History of Animals 488a9–10 Aristotle says that bees, wasps, ants, and cranes are political too. At Pol.1253a7–9 he says that human beings are more political than other animals, but I agree with Kullman (1991, 101) that our being more political is explained by our specific essence as animals having reason.

¹⁴ Kraut (2002, 247–248) argues that by political animal Aristotle sometimes means only that human beings are naturally sociable as, for instance, at Pol.III. 6 1278b17–21: “It has been said in our first discourses ...that by nature human beings are political animals. That is why, even when they do not need assistance from each other, they have no less of a desire to live together.” But here Aristotle seems to be inferring our sociability from our political nature. This would be a reasonable inference since, if we are by nature the sort of thing that achieves its good only in the context of political community, then we ought by nature to have a desire to live together.

Kraut also argues that unless political animal can mean simply ‘sociable animal,’ Aristotle will have no reason to call women and slaves (who cannot be citizens) “political” (2002, 249). I agree that this is a more complicated problem, but there seem to be at least two responses. First, women and slaves are by nature parts of the household, which is an association for the sake of a common good (NE VIII.12 1162a16–29, re women; Pol.1252a34: masters and slaves have the same interest); thus women and slaves are at least as political as bees(!).Second, women and slaves are by nature part of the household, but the household is by nature fully realized only when it is a part of a polis (Pol.1252b30–1253a1); thus whatever good women and slaves are capable of achieving, they achieve it most fully in the context of political community. (See also Pol.1253a15–18 where the sense of good and bad, just and unjust qualifies human beings as members of the city and the household. And see Pol.1269b14–19, where the status of women as part of the household makes them part of the city and a proper object of the statesman’s craft.) Thus it seems to me that the phrase political animal as applied to human beings never means simply ‘sociable animal’ and always means ‘animal which by nature achieves its highest good jointly with others in the context of political community.’ But whatever the political status of women and slaves may be, when Aristotle calls free adult men “political animals,” one thing he has in mind is that their happiness is achieved in a political community that seeks happiness as a common good.

¹⁵ Unfortunately Aristotle also sometimes suggests that the enslavement of those naturally suited to servitude is also a legitimate purpose of war (Pol.1255b37–39). For our interpretive interests, though, we should see that even here war is being justified by reference to the political life it makes possible. Since Aristotle thinks that slaves are a necessary part of the household (1253b4; 1256b23–26), he also thinks they are a necessary part of the city.

¹⁶ This is not to say that the courageous person would commit suicide if he is defeated. Aristotle seems to think that, in general, suicide is an act of cowardice (1116a12–15). Perhaps we should put Aristotle’s point this way: The courageous person tries to protect the ideal conditions for his possession of the human good, but it may be possible for him to possess the good in less than ideal circumstances (indeed, this is quite likely since happiness is the exercise of rational virtue). Even when this is not possible, he may hope to possess the good again. The point remains that the courageous person risks his life in order to protect a life that is positively worth choosing.

¹⁷ Aquinas (III.xv.544) notices that brave actions are appropriate to the agent in another way, which I think we should not overlook. According to Aristotle, we fear things that we believe are superior to us in strength. Thus, when a person is able to master his fear, and is right to do so, that means that the feared object is not beyond his power to resist. It follows, then, that a weakling cannot be brave, for it will never be right for him to be hopeful in the face of the enemy. If, indeed, Aristotle believes this, he will be in the Homeric tradition of thinking about courage not simply as an attitude of mind but also as a form of physical excellence. Courage, at least on a grand scale, would require gifts of fortune. This fact will be relevant to the sufficiency of moral virtue.

¹⁸ It seems right to me to call the citizen’s conception of the fine undeveloped rather than simply wrong because there are signs that the citizen’s courage is the courage of one who is learning how to be fully brave. For instance, Aristotle says that such courage comes from virtue because it comes from a sense of shame (1116a27–28). Shame, as we saw in the previous chapter, is the “semivirtue of the learner” (Burnyeat 1980, 78). Furthermore, the sense of shame of the brave citizen, grounded as it is in the praise and blame of the citizenry, is characteristic of a less mature stage of development, before the source of judgment has been internalized.

¹⁹ Of course, the brave person is not only interested in expressing his priorities. He cares about protecting his city! My point is only that he finds the actions fine because acting for this end at risk of this cost makes evident how clearly he understands the human good.

²⁰ Some animals other than human beings are political (see note 13, above), though human beings are the most political of all (Pol.1253a7–9). But Aristotle’s reference to wounded animals in the woods suggests that in our passage he has in mind wild boar and other game animals, which he does not, in fact, think are political. I suppose he might be willing to say that bees attack from thumos ...in which case their attacks would approximate civic courage.

²¹ This characterization of a citizen’s courage as revealing his ultimate values is to be found in Pericles’ funeral oration (Thucydides, II.42): “[T]he present revolution of these men’s [the dead Athenians] lives seem[s] unto me an argument of their virtues ... there was none of these that preferring the further fruition of his wealth was thereby grown cowardly, or that for hope to overcome his poverty at length and to attain to riches did for that cause withdraw himself from danger. For their principal desire was not wealth but revenge on their enemies ...choosing rather to fight and die than to shrink and be saved, they fled from shame, but with their bodies they stood out the battle.”

²² Perhaps people have not always thought of courage as fine to the extent that it manifests the value of community to the agent. Homer’s heroes, particularly in the final showdown between Hector and Achilles, seem to manifest the value of individual prowess. More important to me is the claim that we and Aristotle’s contemporaries tend to think (though perhaps not exclusively) of courage as a particularly social virtue.

²³ “Such is the city for which these men, thinking it no reason to lose it, valiantly fighting have died. ” Pericles goes on to say that his encomium to Athens is in fact a praise of the dead (Thucydides, II.41–42).

²⁴ In fact, scholars now believe that the battle of Thermopylae pitted about 6,000–7,000 Greeks against a much smaller Persian army than Herodotus describes. (It is not clear how large Xerxes’ army was, but it probably was not larger than 100,000 ([Hornblower and Spaw-forth 1996].) I will stick to Herodotus’s story, however, because his telling of it gives a sense of what this story of courage meant to the Greeks. Information about the battle at Thermopylae and all translations of Herodotus are from Waterfield (1998).

²⁵ Recall my interpretation of the beauty of courage as described in Rhet. I.9 (pp. 134–136). I argued there that, according to Aristotle, people admire and praise courage and all other dispositions to act for the sake of another because they are marks of freedom. Now we can say that courageous actions are fine because they express the agent’s conception of himself as free and worthy to be free.

²⁶ Translation from Pressfield (1998).

²⁷ Let me be clear: I do not intend to imply that anyone who fled the World Trade Center had his priorities out of joint. Firemen occupy a special role that makes it appropriate for them to enter burning buildings and the rest of us (usually) to stay out of harm’s way. Nor do I intendto say that the firemen themselves who fled when they realized that the situation was hopeless acted against courage. In the account I am describing, it is central to courage that the brave person seek to protect his community. Thus, in a hopeless situation it is appropriate to seek to live to fight another day.

If I am right about the fineness of courage, then we do not admire courageous actions because they are altruistic, at least not if altruistic means “supportive of the well-being of others without thought to one’s own. ” In the Aristotelian account I have been articulating, we admire courage because it is characteristic of one who understands his own well-being as essentially political, and so intertwined with the well-being of his community. This is clearly something Aristotle believes (NE VI.8 1142a9–10, IX.8 1169a6–11).

²⁸ Aristotle believes that people join family units to satisfy their basic needs and join cities for the sake of the good life (Pol.I.2 1252b15–30).

²⁹ Thus, although the Spartans may appear brave, Aristotle thinks they are savage and brutal. Their lawmakers have misunderstood the value of peace and the proper use of leisure. This misunderstanding is reflected in their moral education, which seeks to inculcate only courage, but which has in fact given brutality the lead over the fine (Pol.13 33a41–1334a10, 1338b9–36).

³⁰ It is interesting to notice that the expression of rationality forms part of our own notion of a noble death as well. To take but one recent example, a soldier in Vietnam wrote home:

On the next day, our platoon was the lead. We had just started up the side of the mountain when we discovered that not everyone had left the camp. Someone in a bunker opened up on our point man, and all of us dropped to the ground. As we were crouching, our radiotelephone operator (the R.T.O.) happened to stroll down the path from the direction of the firing machine gun, stopping just above me. The R.T.O. dropped his radio and casually said to the lieutenant, “You’ll have to find another R.T.O. I’ve been shot.” He then continued strolling down the path. He must have been severely wounded, because he never returned. I was impressed by his casual approach, and hoped that I would act as well when I was wounded. (New Yorker 1999 & 2000, 97)

The appearance of sanity (although, no doubt, the soldier was in shock) raises this death above the merely pitiable.

³¹ Gauthier and Jolif (1970, not.ad 1118b1–4) say that according to Aristotle, to be temperate is to be a man rather than a beast.

³² This is one of Aristotle’s criticisms of hedonism (NE X.6 1176b30–1177a1).

³³ By noninstrumentally rational I mean that the exercise of reason is an end in itself. Aristotle sometimes calls bees and other animals phronimoi—practically wise—but the most he probably means is that they “deliberate” as a means to an end not involving reason (see chapter 5, note 53, above). Broadie (Broadie and Rowe 2002, 27) take temperance to affirm the value of our practical rationality.

³⁴ Thus, while Gauthier and Jolif (1970, 238) argue that temperate actions are determined by the demands of reason, they are thinking of practical rather than theoretical reason.

³⁵ A reader turning from Aristotle’s discussion of courage to his discussion of temperance may well notice that the insistence on the fineness of virtuous actions in the former is almost entirely absent in the latter. Only after nearly two chapters on temperance does Aristotle use the word kalon, and then he does so only to say that the temperate person avoids pleasures that are contrary to the fine (para to kalon), not to say that he acts for the sake of the fine (1119a18). This asymmetry is curious. Perhaps Aristotle emphasizes the fineness of courage because he is concerned to show that there is a respect in which the brave man’s very painful actions bring pleasure to him. We should not suppose, however, that in Aristotle’s account temperance does not positively aim at the fine. Aristotle concludes his discussion of temperance by saying that “the appetite (to epithumêtikon) of the temperate person harmonizes with his reason (tôi logôi); for the aim (skopos) of both is the fine (to kalon)” (1119b15–16).

³⁶ Aquinas, III.xix.611.

³⁷ Notice that when Aristotle says that temperance is not concerned with the psychic pleasures of philotimia (love of honor) and philomatheia (love of learning) (1117b28–29), he in effect rules out the pleasures of thumos and of reason, respectively.

³⁸ Stewart (1892, 308) and other British commentators have taken the part of dogs against Aristotle. “I agree with Grant in thinking that this view according to which ‘brutes have no pleasure of hearing or smell or sight except accidental ones, namely when sounds indicate to them their prey or food’ is questionable. Some animals seem to derive pleasure from music. A dog will sit for an hour at a time at a window looking with evident pleasure and interest at people and vehicles passing in the street.... That a dog experiences psychikai hêdonai, such as those of friendship, performance of duty, and vanity, is pretty obvious.”

³⁹ This unphilosophical view of cattle is given the lie in The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.

⁴⁰ This idea of Aristotle’s may seem odd. Surely we delight in certain sounds and sights as beautiful whether or not we recognize their source. (See Poet.1448b17–19, where Aristotle himself allows this.) As we saw in the last chapter, however, things are beautiful when they strike us as effectively organized for the sake of their good. Thus Aristotle ought to think that, even when we do not know what a beautiful object is, it seems beautiful because it seems to have effective teleological order (and symmetry, etc.). Furthermore, Aristotle seems to think that it is, in principle, possible to find all successful natural objects beautiful (PA 645a21–26). Their order, symmetry, and boundedness is visible for all who have eyes to see. To take a craft example, we may be greatly irritated by the sound of a power mower on a peaceful Sunday afternoon. But the same sound can be pleasant if we think of it as the sound of neighbors engaged in industrious, homey activity.

⁴¹ This is the pleasure we take in all mimetic art. When looking at a painting, we take pleasure in seeing that this set of lines and colors is a man. In poetry, presumably, we take pleasure in seeing that this is the sort of thing that kind of person would do in these circumstances (Poet . 9 1451a36–b7). However , see Halliwell (1986, 70–81, and chaps. 5–7) who argues that we learn far more complicated lessons from tragedy in Aristotle’s view.

⁴² Perhaps Plato’s cicadas in Phaedrus (Ferrari 1987, 27–28) or his lovers of sights and sounds (Rep.475d) are people who abuse human pleasures.

⁴³ Thus, in my reading, overindulgence is just one way of expressing a misconception of the human good common to all forms of intemperance. One might think, however, that Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean requires us to put the emphasis on the excessive amount of physical pleasure the intemperate person pursues. Hursthouse ([1980] 1999, 109–117) has argued that Aristotle illegitimately combines two ways of being intemperate: One may eat too much for health, and one may indulge, perhaps infrequently, in odious pleasures. While I agree with her that Aristotle presents his doctrine of the mean as being more self-evident than it is, I disagree that Aristotle has confused two kinds of interpretation. According to Aristotle, overeating, just as eating the wrong things, is a way of indulging in animal pleasure more than is kalon. Though the intermediate standard of the kalon is often health, the ultimate standard is contemplation. See Tuozzo (1995, 146–148) for a different way that temperance might be fine insofar as it isby the value of contemplation. Temperance, according to Tuozzo, is that disposition of the appetites that gives the soul “psychic leisure” for contemplation, while the associated vices disrupt and distract the soul. Whereas this general account of the fineness of virtue has some plausibility in the case of temperance (although his account of the vice of insensibility is a bit of a stretch), I find his application of it to courage and liberality to be ultimately unconvincing, but fascinating.

⁴⁴ He will enjoy the pleasure of eating for this reason. The eating itself he will value as necessary to his health.

⁴⁵ I have already explained how aesthetic enjoyment is an expression of theoretical reason. Conversation with friends will be a use of theoretical reason to the extent that it aims not at action but at understanding. Also, the happiest friends will spend their time in philosophical inquiry (1177a32–34), and all virtue friendships are good because they provide some sort of intellectual satisfaction (NE IX.9). Religious worship is perhaps more of a stretch, although it is not clear that Aristotle saw it as such, for in Greek theôria can refer to religious observance. The first definition for theôria in Liddell, Scott, and Jones (1968; hereafter LSJ) is “sending of theôroi or state ambassadors to the oracles or games”; the second definition is “being a spectator at the theatre or games. ” Dramatic productions and games had religious overtones. Think, for example, of Socrates coming from the races at the beginning of the Republic. See also EE 1249b17, where the happy life aims at the theôria of god.

⁴⁶ The name of this virtue is sometimes translated (by Ross, for instance) as ‘pride’. For reasons that will become apparent at the end of this section, I think this is a misleading translation. I agree with White (1992, 250 n.4) that ‘dignity’ is an appropriate translation, but I will use ‘greatness of soul’ as the more common one.

⁴⁷ For example, Hardie 1978; MacIntyre [1966] 1998, 78–80.

⁴⁸ Aristotle says here that the great-souled person is great in all of the other virtues, but the context suggests that he has in mind the practical, and not the theoretical, virtues. Or at least there is no reason at this time to think he includes theoretical virtue.

⁴⁹ Broadie in Broadie and Rowe 2002, 30.

⁵⁰ I grant Curzer’s (1991, 139) argument that the great-souled person’s engagement only in great virtuous actions is compatible with his spending most of his time on those actions. Arranging a public festival, for instance, though a single act of magnificent generosity (megaloprepeia) might well be time-consuming. However , this would not explain the impression Aristotle says people have that the magnanimous person is idle. Hardie (1978, 73) admits that the aloofness and (apparent) inactivity of the great-souled person is a difficulty for any interpretation that sees him as primarily involved in political affairs.

⁵¹ Stewart (1892, 335–336) also interprets the great-souled person as being devoted to theôria, although unlike Gauthier he does not see a portrait of Socrates here.

⁵² Gauthier does not note this connection to the Politics, but see Gauthier and Jolif (1970, not.ad 1124b24) for a detailed discussion of how the adjective argos was often associated in Athens with the philosophical life.

⁵³ Rees (1971, 242) and Hardie (1978), who reject Gauthier’s interpretation. Gauthier (1951, 105–106) admits the point but discounts it on the grounds that Aristotle often only hints at the superiority of contemplation.

⁵⁴ That is to say, he spends his days in the citizens’ agora of Aristotle’s ideal city. This is the part of the city from which all nonleisurely activities, including political activities such as the law courts and civic administration, are excluded (Pol.VII. 12). Though Aristotle does suggest that the highest magistrates will conduct their activities here (1331a35), the only activity proper to the citizens’ agora described at any length is gymnastic exercises for the old men who are beyond the age of active political rule.

⁵⁵ Hardie (1978, 77 n.10) argues that even though Aristotle cites Socrates, among others, as an example of greatness of soul in Post. An. 97b15–25, this does not support the case that the great-souled person in NE IV.3 is a philosopher, since “Socrates was known for his courage in military and political action and not only as a philosopher.” I agree that Posterior Analytics does not support Gauthier’s case. (Aristotle is simply using Socrates and others as examples of magnanimity his audience will be inclined to accept.) However, it is a mistake to divorce Socrates’ military exploits from his being a philosopher. Socrates’ temperance and courage are the effects of his silencing the demands of his body so that his soul may be unencumbered in its search for truth. The intuition that Socrates and the magnanimous person are not philosophers insofar as they honor moral virtue depends on a sense that the philosopher as such cannot care for excellence in practical life. But Plato’s Socrates suggests a different story. And I will argue in the next chapter that Aristotle believes commitment to practical excellence to be an integral part of the philosophical life.

⁵⁶ Contra Gauthier (1951, 113), who believes that philosophical contemplation is the only thing worthy of great honors. Aristotle says at 1123b29–32 that since the great-souled person is worthy of the greatest honors, he must be good and indeed great in each of the virtues. He then lists courage and justice as examples.

⁵⁷ I agree with Curzer (1991, 138) that there is no need to suppose that the great-souled person is slow to repay his debts. Rather , he doesn’t like to dwell on past circumstances of material inferiority. Thus I agree with Hanley (2002, 17–18) that there is little reason to paint the magnanimous person as altruistic.

⁵⁸ Aristotle says that his accomplishment is difficult. As I argued in the last chapter (p.131), the difficulty associated with hitting the mean is a mark of the fine.

⁵⁹ Aquinas (IV.xi.786) emphasizes this connection between lack of self-knowledge and failure to do good works in his discussion of mikropsychia (translated by Litzinger as ‘small-mindedness’) but attributes the ignorance to laziness.

⁶⁰ The vice opposed to greatness of soul should not really be called humility, then, when that is conceived in terms of the Christian virtue. Someone who has Christian humility is not marked by a sense of inferiority to others; he is conscious of his dependence for his worldly success on the grace of God. His humility is primarily before God, not his fellow men.

⁶¹ Hanley (2002, 17) argues for a similar conclusion from a rather different angle. According to him, Aristotle’s considered view is that greatness of soul is expressed not so much in heroism as in “the context of peaceful civic life. ” I agree that greatness of soul does have this civic face. But I would point out that this is compatible with the philosopher’s being great-souled, since Socrates, too, was loyal to his city. (It is not, however, compatible with Hanley’s explanation of why magnanimity comes to be expressed in harmony with civic life.)