Megalopsykhos, Magnanimus, Great-souled

Abstract

The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the historical biography of the notion “megalopsykhos” as well as of the main fragment on magnanimity from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The understanding and re-thinking of this piece of text has become a self-sustained, independent subject in the history of both ethical thought and morality. The author analyses the main contexts of Aristotle’s reflection on high-mindedness and discover the main moments of tension in meaning and difficulties in understanding of the fragment which have engendered the main range of questions discussed even nowadays. The analysis of the image of the magnanimous in the works of Cicero, St.Thomas Aquinas and Hobbes helps to see the main tendencies in the corruption of the Aristotle’s creation. The history of re-thinking of magnanimity and the fragment has become the history of refusal from the ethics based on such self- attitude which sees the person as the exclusive and solely basis of morality and the history of elimination of the aristocratic content of the Aristotle’s ideal.