Aristotle on the Great Souls

Aristotle · Hellenic and Hellenistic Papers Series · 9 pages

From the Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV, in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by Harris Rackham, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, and London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1934. The compiler has placed before Aristotle's own text a numbered summary of eleven common characteristics of great souls, drawn from the passage that follows.

The eleven characteristics form a portrait rather than a definition. Great souls do not take small risks and are not devoted to risk-taking, but will take great ones without regard for their life, on the reasoning that a worse life is worth less than a great one; they act seldom and are slow to begin unless great honour is involved. They do not esteem what is popularly esteemed, take few things seriously, and are not anxious. They give favours gladly but are ashamed to receive them, apt to forget one received or to return a greater. They are frank about what they hate and love, since concealment would come of fear or of valuing another's opinion above one's own; they live as they choose rather than as suits others; they are not given to wonder, since nothing seems great to them; they do not bear grudges or gossip; they do not complain of necessities or ask for help; they tend to own beautiful and useless things rather than productive ones; and they move slowly and speak with a deep steady voice. Aristotle's own argument then supplies the reasoning behind the portrait. A man is great-souled if he claims much and deserves much; one who claims much without deserving it is vain, and one who claims less than he deserves is small-souled — the most small-souled of all being he whose deserts are great and whose claim is least. Greatness of soul is therefore an extreme in the size of the claim but a mean in its rightness, since the claim matches the desert. The object it is concerned with is identified as honour, on the ground that honour is the greatest of external goods.

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