Rhetorica:
Magnanimity, Part I:
The Doctrine of Largesse
By Gabriel Blanchard
The fourth moral principle underlying rhetoric, and the first that demands a social context, is the rule of magnanimity;
so what's that?
We Live in a Society
The next topic in our professed lineup is that of magnanimity, which may seem like an odd or even a fishy thing to include in a guide to rhetoric. It basically means how much benefit of the doubt you give to people, right? Isn’t how generous and patient we are with people pretty definitively our own business?
Yes and no is the answer to both questions. Let’s begin with the second. Yes—in the sense that what we do will always be in our own control; there is no number of essays on the proper ethics of rhetoric that can force us to take any course of action over another. But also, no: How we treat other people (whatever our motives in the moment) is pretty definitionally not only our own business; it affects other people—it is literally about affecting other people. Which is not to say that we may or should go about correcting strangers! But it is important, for its own sake, to dispel the prevalent cultural illusion that a legal right not to be interfered with while doing X is the same as a moral right to do X.
Magnanimitās
But to return to the first question. What is magnanimity? The idea (and indirectly even the term) go back to antiquity. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle names the chief of the virtues μεγαλοψυχία [megalopsüchia], which means “greatness of soul” pretty literally; the natural Latin translation was magnanimitās (from magnus “great” and anima “soul,” plus the abstract noun suffix -(i)tāt-).1 English translations sometimes render the term as “pride.” Now, Aristotle was codifying a value that already existed, not coining a new one, so we aren’t bound to accept his definition; however, he was an excellent codifier, so let’s begin there.
Greatness in every virtue would seem to be characteristic of a proud man. … At honors that are great and conferred by good men he will be moderately pleased …; but honor from casual people and on trifling grounds he will utterly despise … Yet he will also bear himself with moderation towards … all good or evil fortune … Hence proud men are thought to be disdainful. … He will face great dangers, and when he is in danger he is unsparing of his life, knowing that there are conditions on which life is not worth having. And he is the sort of man to confer benefits, but he is ashamed of receiving them … And he is apt to confer greater benefits in return … It is a mark of the proud man also to ask for nothing or scarcely anything, but to give help readily, and to be dignified towards people who enjoy high position and good fortune, but unassuming towards those of the middle class; for … a lofty bearing over the former is no mark of ill-breeding, but among humble people it is as vulgar as a display of strength against the weak. … He must also be open in his hate and in his love (for to conceal one’s feelings, i.e. to care less for truth than for what people will think, is a coward’s part) … He is given to telling the truth, except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar. … Nor is he mindful of wrongs; for it is not the part of a proud man to have a long memory, especially for wrongs, but rather to overlook them.2
Now, our culture’s ethical outlook has been generally (if imperfectly) Christianized since the fourth century BC. A person who really behaved as Aristotle describes doesn’t sound like pleasant company, and probably wouldn’t strike us as a man characterized by “greatness in every virtue.” Modesty, at least in the social sense, is—well, perhaps “popular” would be too strong, but considered a praiseworthy trait, certainly. The hints of arrogance, ingratitude, and self-centeredness3 in this portrait (which are toned down from the original text) also “hit different” now than they did back then. Yet there is a certain style or character traceable here—a quality that’s hard to name, save as “nobility,” “grandeur,” or something like that; something very much the opposite of being fickle, grasping, lazy, or petty; something that gives first, and seeks reward secondarily if at all.
דַּעֲלָךְ סְנֵי לְחַבְרָךְ לָא תַּעֲבֵיד—זוֹ הִיא כָּל הַתּוֹרָה כּוּלָּהּ, וְאִידַּךְ פֵּירוּשָׁהּ הוּא, זִיל גְּמוֹר
[Daṛàlâkh s'nêy l'ḥavrâkh' lâ' taṛàvêydh—zau hî' kâl ha-Taurâh kulâh, w'îdakh pêyruushâhh huu', zîl g'maur.]
What you find hateful? do it to no one else. This is the whole fullness of the Law; the rest is interpretation. Go study already.
Chevaliers
That is the thread ethics picked up in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, which carries down to today. The Medieval code of chivalry arguably owes something to μεγαλοψυχία, but interestingly modified. The chevalier (and in later centuries, the gentleman) was marked by a determination never to take unfair advantage. This is why Arthurian knights are always dismounting from horses to fight unhorsed opponents, or giving swords to swordless ones; making use of the advantage they had would offend against the code. Granted, not many Medieval people really did behave this way, but it was how they liked to think of people behaving—and on occasion, people really did behave like that, perhaps (who knows) inspired by literary example.
The same quality underlies the panache of French heroes like Cyrano de Bergerac; the same ideal is evident also in the hero of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Panache is not a word one hears often; it does not merely mean courage or confidence, but a certain kind of elegant poise, as unruffled by insults as by cannon-fire. The word entered English through the play Cyrano de Bergerac, and this is quite fitting, since the title character is much concerned with his panache, which he exhibits from the first. Early on, he is insulted for his oversized nose by a handsome but rather stupid character: “Your nose is rather large.” Rather than be openly offended, de Bergerac replies:
Oh, no, young sir. You are too simple. Why, you might have said a great many things. Why waste your opportunity? For example, thus: AGGRESSIVE: I, sir, if that nose were mine, I’d have it amputated on the spot. PRACTICAL: How do you drink with such a nose? You must have had a cup made especially. … KINDLY: Ah, do you love the little birds so much that when they come to see you, you give them this to perch on. CAUTIOUS: Take care! A weight like that might make you top-heavy. … Or, LITERARY: Was this the nose that launched a thousand ships? These, my dear sir, are things you might have said, had you some tinge of letters or of wit to color your discourse. But wit? Not so, you never had an atom.5
What If Life Were Fair?
The modern use of the word magnanimity is less defined by battle, whether of guns or of wits. It draws more upon two other things discussed in Aristotle’s description of the magnanimous man: his generosity and his forgetfulness of injuries. In the rhetorical sphere, it primarily means things like extending the benefit of the doubt and applying charitable interpretations. This is easily perceived as going “beyond the call of duty,” and most people view it that way.
Is it, though? Consider the golden rule: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. This is widely accepted as a good summary of ethics in general, no doubt partly because it’s intuitive; what we notice less often is what a high bar it is. Would you want anybody who was reading your work to be anything less than gracious in their interpretation? If you were making an apology to someone (not a forced apology, mind, but one made because you felt bad and wanted to make things right), how awful would it be if they didn’t believe you? How many times have we found ourselves dismissed without a hearing because of our views or even because of who we are as people?
Recognizing magnanimity as something much closer to justice than it is to mercy is the first step. The next will be to think about its practical applications.
1This is the source of the suffix -(i)ty in English (as in difficulty or originality). English has native suffixes of the same type (e.g. -dom, -hood, -ness, and -ship); it also once had a direct cognate to the Latin -(i)tāt-: -th, or -t in some Anglo-Saxon dialects, used to derive nouns from verbs and adjectives. This is where we get words like birth (← bear), growth (← grow), health (← heal), sloth (← slow), theft (← thieve), warmth (← warm), and weight (← weigh).
2Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV (W. D. Ross translation, 1908); text obtained via Wikisource.
3Self-centeredness, not selfishness—two quite different vices, as C. S. Lewis intelligently pointed out. The selfish man is interested in many things other than himself; he can even be quite cultured and, under certain circumstances, pleasant to be around; he’ll put what he wants first if your desires conflict with his, but that won’t happen in every interaction. The self-centered man, on the other hand, may bestow all his goods to feed the poor and give his body to be burned, but hath not charity: All his help of others is done not so that they may be better off, but so that he may be a good person for helping them. In his introduction to The Screwtape Letters, Lewis speaks of “the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon Self which is the mark of hell”; self-centeredness bears that mark, but selfishness almost never thinks about itself.
4This quotation comes from the Talmud (specifically, the tractate מוֹעֵד [Mauṛêdh] or “Seasons,” in the chapter on the Sabbath); the text was obtained courtesy of Sefaria, an invaluable online library of Judaica. Hillel the Elder (ca. 70 BC?-ca. 10 AD) was a revered rabbi of the Zugothic period. Hillel was famed for his wisdom, his wit, and his interpretation of the Torah, which laid great emphasis on generosity and mercy. His teachings form a major element of the Talmud. The underlining of “kulâh” in the transliteration—כּוּלָּהּ is the original Hebrew—represents the fact that the Hebrew word is written with a dagesh (central point, a type of diacritic) in all four letters, almost as if it were written kkuullâhh; this indicates emphasis, much like underlining or boldface in Roman script.
5As the play was written in French, it is not quoted directly here; this text comes from the 1950 film adaptation of the same name, and was obtained via IMDb.
Gabriel Blanchard is a proud uncle to seven nephews, and holds a degree in Classics from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has worked for CLT since 2019, and serves as its editor at large; he lives in Baltimore, MD.
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Published on 27th February, 2025. Page image of a thirteenth-century depiction of Richard the Lion-hearted and King Philip II of France (Richard in red decorated with golden lions, Philip in blue with golden lilies—their respective royal coats of arms).