Polytropy

This is about intellect, wisdom, and prudence. They are strange subjects for discussion.

• If you have them, are you going to spend time talking about them?
• If you haven’t got them, what can you say about them?

Apparently I did talk about them with my classmates when we were undergraduates, even freshmen: too young for prudence, although not for wisdom, by Aristotle’s account below, at least in special pursuits such as geometry and mathematics.

Does that sound like wisdom? According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary (6th edition, 1976), wisdom is

experience and knowledge together with the power of applying them critically or practically; sagacity, prudence, common sense.

Aristotle is talking about σοφία though, and this can mean cleverness. Intellect and prudence are νούς and φρόνησις. Last time we saw the claim that the latter is prudence only in the older sense of “practical judgment,” not the sense of “playing it safe” that is current today.

Continue reading →

There was a remark near the end of the last reading, in § v.18:

τοῦ δὲ ἀδικήματος
τὸ μὲν ἔλαττον ἀδικεῖσθαί ἐστι,
τὸ δὲ μεῖζον τὸ ἀδικεῖν.

And with an unjust transaction,
having injustice done to one is less than the mean,
and doing the injustice is in excess of it.
(Sachs)

Of the injustice done,
the smaller part is the suffering
and the larger part is the doing of injustice.
(Rackham)

At first glance – my first glance, anyway – Aristotle alludes here to the teaching of Socrates, which I tried to work out in “Doing and Suffering”: suffering injustice is less bad than doing it.

Continue reading →

When I was ten, I learned the adjective “magnanimous” from Star Trek. I learn now from Wikipedia that the episode called “Whom Gods Destroy” was unseen in the UK until 1994, and one reason was the scene that preceded the following dialogue:

Garth of Izar

She’s yours if you wish, Captain.

Kirk

Thank you, that’s – very magnanimous of you.

Garth

You will find that I am magnanimous – to my friends, and merciless to my enemies.

The woman referred to is called Marta. Garth styles himself Lord Garth, Master of the Universe, but he is mad. For Lee Erwin then, the writer of the episode, magnanimity would seem to be generosity exhibited by the powerful, or the deserving of power, at least in their own minds. This understanding is supported by definitions in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (sixth edition, 1976):

magnanimous

Noble, generous, not petty, in feelings or conduct.

generous

Magnanimous, noble-minded; not mean or prejudiced; free in giving, munificent.

Generosity is one word for the main subject of our previous reading. Etymologically, the word refers to birth, so that generosity is literally being of good family.

Nobility, by contrast, is being “in the know”: the letters “no” show the relation, while the K of “know” corresponds to a letter missing in “noble,” but retained in “ignoble.”

In its Latin parts, “magnanimity” is being of “great soul.” The word seems to be a calque of Aristotle’s μεγαλοψυχία, which is our main subject now.

Continue reading →