Friday, September 22, 2006

Aristotle on megalopsychia; or, getting back to the philisophes

In parusing the footnotes of, uh-oh, Beyond Good and Evil (something I've argued that Islam doesn't, and may never, get), part 6, "We Scholars," aphorism 212 (the Walter Kaufmann translations), I came across an interesting passage that Nietzsche remarked on when speaking of Greatness of Soul. No, I can't claim I'm a Nietzschean, but I do think he's an interesting and provocative and understandable read. The late Kaufmann provided the extensive Aristotle footnote.

Aristotle says that a person with a great soul, "does not bear a grudge, for it is not a mark of greatness of soul to recall things against people, especially the wrongs they have done you, but rather to overlook them... Such then being the great-souled man, the corresponding character on the side of deficiency is the small-souled man, and on that of excess the vain man."

Alright: let's have some freecounterpoint about that.

2 comments:

The Darkroom said...

One thing's for sure I'll never forgive JJ for setting me up on this board.

My Frontier Thesis said...

You like it. You know you do.