Christianity, magnanimity, and statesmanship

Review of Politics

Volumn 61, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 581-604

  Holloway, Carson ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 10644287265     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500050531     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. Nicomachean Ethics 1124al-4.1 have generally followed the translation of H. Rackham (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990) while occasionally supplying transliterations of certain key Greek terms.
2. Ibid., 1124b5-6.
3. Ibid., 1125a30-35.
4. Polity 16, no.2 (Winter 1983): 263-283. Arnhart's argument seems so far to have received no comment in the scholarly literature.
5. I should note that I owe Professor Arnhart many thanks for what I have learned not only from his insightful article but also from his always stimulating seminars at Northern Illinois University.
6. Matthew 11:30 (emphasis mine). All Biblical references are to The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version, edited by Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962).
7. Mark 10:43-44.
8. Luke 14:7-11.
9. Matt. 18:4.
10. Luke 19:37-40.
11. Of course, to say that Christians must imitate Christ is not to say that their behavior will be identical to his. Christian magnanimity obviously cannot manifest itself in the same way as Christ's magnanimity because no Christian can rightly claim the great honors that Christ claims for himself. Nevertheless, it may be that there are honors, less great than those claimed by Christ but still great according to human standards, that Christians may rightly, and without departing from the virtue of humility, claim for themselves. In so doing they would display magnanimity.
12. Nicomachean Ethics 1124a5-10.
13. The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: The Modern Library, 1993), p. 511.
14. Ibid., p. 510.
15. Ibid., pp. 167 and 164 (emphasis mine).
16. Summa Theologica II-II, q. 129, a. 1.1 have followed the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1948).
17. Ibid..
18. Ibid, (emphasis mine).
19. It is worth noting in this connection that Aquinas, in his discussion of magnanimity in his famous commentary, makes no mention of any incompatibility between greatness of soul and Christian morality. See the Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. I. Litzinger, O.P. (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993), pp. 237-251
20. Summa Theologica II-II, q. 131, a. 1.
21. Ibid, II-II, q. 129, a. 2.
22. On this point see, for example, The City of God, p. 674.
23. Nicomachean Ethics 1125a25-33.
24. Arnhart, "Statesmanship as Magnanimity," p. 267.
25. Politics 1279a28. I have used Carnes Lord's translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
26. In this light Aristotle's magnanimous man resembles less the man who takes the highest seat in Christ's parable of the wedding feast than the good servant who uses the talents given him to earn a great profit, and similarly the small-souled man resembles less the humble man who takes the lowest place than the worthless servant who buries his talent in the ground where it produces nothing good. On this point see Aquinas's Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 133, a. 1.
27. Also, see. the Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, where Aquinas contends that the small-souled man "refuses to strive after great accomplishments and aims at certain petty undertakings" and that he does this "from a certain laziness," pp. 238 and 251.
28. The City of God, p. 164.
29. Ibid..
30. One might also observe that the context of the parable in which Christ advises his listeners to take the lowest place (Luke 14:1-11) indicates that his audience is a group of Pharisees, who are said repeatedly in the Gospels to have been much more concerned with their reputation for holiness than with holiness itself. Thus Christ may exaggerate the need to shun honor not only because of the general tendency of most human beings but also in view of the specific weakness of his immediate audience.
31. Luke 14:26.
32. Nicomachean Ethics 1124bl7-25 and 27-1125al.
33. See Summa Theologica II-II, q. 161, a. 1.
34. Aristotle says very little in the Nicomachean Ethics about man's relationship to the gods and therefore the Christian virtue of humility seems utterly alien to him. Nonetheless, that Aristotle's thought contains the basis for something not unlike humility is indicated by his comment that prudence, or wisdom about human affairs, cannot be the "loftiest kind of knowledge, inasmuch as man is not the highest thing" in the cosmos. See the Nicomachean Ethics, 1141a21-23.
35. Summit Theologica II-II, q. 161, a. 3.
36. Ibid..
37. This is in fact only the first of three distinct arguments advanced by Arnhart in support of his contention that Christianity undermines magnanimity. The other two are that Christianity does away with the need for magnanimous statesmanship by lowering the end of politics to the preservation of temporal peace and that it destroys the ground for magnanimity by undermining belief in nature as an autonomous order. In this article I respond only to Arnhart's first argument.
38. Arnhart, "Statesmanship as Magnanimity," pp. 263 and 272.
39. Quoted in ibid., p. 264.
40. Ibid., p. 269.
41. Ibid., pp. 266-267 Arnhart contends that there is, in addition to the political manifestation, also a philosophic version of magnanimity exemplified in Socrates.
42. Ibid., pp. 265-67 and 271. Harry Jaffa also presents the magnanimous man as being preoccupied with honor. See chapter six of Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).
43. Nicomachean Ethics 1124a5-10.
44. Ibid., 1124al2-20.
45. Arnhart, "Statesmanship as Magnanimity," p. 267.
46. Nicomachean Ethics 1124a5-13.
47. Ibid., 1115bl3, 1116b31, and 1120a22.
48. Ibid., 1116a20 and 1116b3-4.
49. Ibid., 1124a5-20.
50. Ibid., U19b21-22.
51. Ibid., 1177al2-18.
52. Ibid., 1177b30-1178al.
53. This interpretation of moral virtue as a participation in the eternal differs considerably from Harry Jaffa's contention that for Aristotle "morality is merely a human affair." See Jaffa's Thomism and Aristotelianism, p. 120
54. Nichomachean Ethics 1099a7-21.
55. Ibid., 1179a3-8.
56. John 14:21-23.
57. Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 129, a. 3.
58. Ibid., II-II, q. 131, a. 1.
59. Arnhart, "Statesmanship as Magnanimity," p. 273 (emphasis mine).
60. Nicomachean Ethics. 1103b24-25.
61. Ibid., 1123bl-5.
62. Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 129, a. 2.
63. One might object that the argument of this article, in relying so heavily on the thought of Aquinas, is distinctly Thomist or Catholic while there are other versions of Christianity that might not so readily harmonize with Aristotelian magnanimity. My intention, however, has been to show that some reasonable interpretation of Christianity can be compatible with Aristotelian magnanimity, not that every interpretation can be. In any case, those who suspect that this harmonization of Christianity and Aristotle can be accomplished only within the Thomist or Catholic framework would have to come to grips with the arguments the article advances based on passages adduced not only from Augustine, who is regarded as a profound interpreter of Christianity by many non-Catholic Christians, but also from the New Testament itself.
64. Quoted in Arnhart's "Statesmanship as Magnanimity," p. 264.
65. Ibid., p. 264.
66. Ibid..
67. Ibid..
68. What, then, one may wonder, is Tocqueville thinking when he calls a "vice" the kind of pride necessary to democracy's elevation? It may be that Tocqueville simply misunderstands Christian morality, that he is speaking in light of what he mistakenly thinks is the Christian understanding. Alternatively-and, to my mind, more plausibly-it may be that such usage is forced on him not by Christianity but by democracy the egalitarian sensibilities of which are necessarily offended by any claims of superiority.
69. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 530.
70. Ibid., p. 531.
71. Ibid..
72. Ibid..
73. Ibid..
74. Ibid., pp. 530 and 531.
75. Ibid., p. 534.
76. Ibid., p. 533.
77. Ibid., p. 546.
78. Ibid..
79. Ibid., p. 542.
80. Ibid., pp. 534-535
81. Ibid., p. 545.
82. Ibid., p. 543.
83. Ibid., p. 546.
84. Ibid., p. 532.
85. Ibid., p. 247.
86. Ibid., p. 435.
87. Ibid., p. 255.
88. Ibid., pp. 255 and 258.
89. Nicomachean Ethics 1124a5-15.
90. Democracy in America, p. 198.
91. Nicomachean Ethics 1124b23-24.
92. Democracy in America, p. 199.
93. Ibid., p. 12.
94. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: Collier Books, 1965), pp. 18-19.
95. Matthew 9:10-12.