27. It Pertains to Magnanimity to Have a Great Soul.
27. It pertains to Magnanimity to have a great soul.27
Along with the virtues of justice and compassion, Aquinas urges us to magnanimity (from two Latin words, “great” and “soul”). Magnanimity is about acting out of a large soul. In times of stress and chaos—and such chaos will only increase as climate change brings rising oceans, droughts, and massive migrations—we humans must become of stronger and deeper character. In such times magnanimity will be called for, and it is especially important to see it developing in young people. I am bullish about magnanimity, and I especially love to see it in young people.
Aquinas reminds us that “magnanimity is the expansion of the soul to great things. … To do something great … belongs properly to the very notion of virtue.” Of course, the word magnanimity comes from the Latin words for “great” and “soul.” Thus Aquinas declares that “it pertains to magnanimity to have a great soul” and “magnanimity makes all virtues greater.”
Magnanimous people, in Aquinas’s understanding, do not depend overly much on the opinions of others. “It is characteristic of magnanimous people to be more solicitous about the truth than about the opinions of others. They do not depart from what they ought to do according to virtue because of what people think.” Magnanimous people do not hide, for “it is a mark of magnanimous people to speak and work openly … and publicly divulge their words and deeds.” Furthermore, magnanimity does not hang on to hurts but moves on: “Magnanimous people deliberately determine to forget injuries they have suffered.”
People hide what they do or say out of fear, but magnanimity is the opposite of fear—it is an expression of courage. Courage and magnanimity go together: “magnanimity is a part of the virtue of courage or fortitude.” In taking on big tasks, magnanimity faces great challenges and obstacles. Hope is very much needed in dark times like ours, so magnanimity is needed also for it “establishes the soul when arduous tasks arise.” And because it is “about hope in some arduous task” it is also about trust. Trust adds something to hope—it “furnishes a certain vigor to hope. For this reason it is the opposite of fear, as is hope.” Vigor, energy, enthusiasm, are part of hope revitalized by trust and magnanimity.
In times of increasing despair like our own, this insight about trust and hope and magnanimity seems especially practical and valuable. A crisis of hope faces us all today. But Aquinas also addresses the cause of despair when he discusses taking on the powers of evil. “Because courage properly speaking strengthens a person against evil, magnanimity strengthens a person to take on good tasks. That is why trust pertains more properly to magnanimity than to courage.”
Magnanimity is arduous, it takes effort. “It is difficult for anyone to be magnanimous. No evil person is able to be magnanimous.” But the rest of us can be. Apparently evil renders a person smaller in soul, not larger.
While magnanimous people take on large tasks and implement great visions, they do not do so out of naiveté regarding the opposition and the courage that is required to overcome it. Here is how Aquinas puts it:
Magnanimous people do not expose themselves to dangers for trifles, nor are they lovers of danger, as it were exposing themselves to dangers hastily or lightly. However, magnanimous people brave great dangers for great things because they put themselves in all kinds of danger for great things, for instance, the common welfare, justice, divine worship, and so forth.
It would seem, therefore, that the great movements needed to combat climate change and wake people up to their deeper selves, their prophetic and mystical selves, will demand plenty of magnanimity. To reinvent education, religion, worship, politics, economics, media, engineering, art will require magnanimity. And I know no surer guide than Thomas Aquinas. Indeed, he has been an inspiration in the work I have undertaken with many other people—dj’s, vj’s, rappers, musicians and more—in creating cosmic masses the past twenty-five years to renew forms of worship. It has demanded magnanimity of us all. It is a great task and has proven rewarding to many. (See http://www.cosmicmass.org)
Angels
carry thoughts
from prophet to prophet.