μεγαλοψυχία] ‘high-mindedness’ is represented in the same way as the preceding, as a virtue which is ‘productive of benefits’, shews its utility, ‘on a large scale’; to which ‘little-mindedness’, meanness of spirit, is the opposite. This is a very different and much narrower view of the virtue than that which is conveyed by the description of it in Nic. Eth. IV 7—9, which is summed up in the brief phrase at the end of c. 9, ἡ μὲν οὖν μεγαλοψυχία περὶ τιμήν ἐστι μεγάλην, and defined c. 7, 1123 b 2, δοκεῖ δὲ μεγαλόψυχος εἶναι ὁ μεγάλων αὑτὸν ἀξιῶν ἄξιος ὤν. The μεγαλόψυχος of the Ethics is a man of high aims and lofty spirit, full of scorn and contempt for all that is beneath him, men and things, and with a pride which is justified by his deserts: pride without merits to support it is no longer proper pride, a virtue; but degenerates into vanity χαυνότης, an undue sense of one's own merits. μικροψυχία δὲ τοὐναντίον] is put in brackets by the recent Edd. as a gloss. It certainly seems to be superfluous, as it is repeated in the following sentence; and also if it be retained, μικροπρέπεια and μικροψυχία are both contrasted as opposites with μεγαλοπρέπεια, which in the latter case is certainly incorrect. At the same time if the words are omitted the repetition of ἀρετή is quite equally objectionable.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.