Thank you for sharing this remarkably well-written overview of magnanimity (megalopsychia). If I may add to your reflections on If you take your morality to extremes you may not be prepared for what you find there, I think you should read Søren Kierkegaard's work Fear and Trembling. In it, he explores what it means to pursue righteousness and moral glory to it's extreme through the story of Abraham and Isaac. It's been a while since I had re-read his work, and while I fear to paraphrase him poorly, but essentially Kierkegaard makes a distinction between the magnanimous man, and the "merely" tragic hero.
Kierkegaard explores magnanimity through the story of the Binding of Issac, and how Abraham's sacrifice of his son is a paradigmatic example of magnanimity and it's moral terror. For those unfamiliar with the story, Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and Abraham complies. Kierkegaard opens the monograph by asking "What sort of man could sacrifice his only son in such a manner?" i.e. pursue righteousness and moral virtue to the most terrific of extremes? He reminds us that Abraham's decision to sacrifice his son was not one that happened 'in the spur of the moment,' but it must have came after several days of thought and preparation — especially since the journey to the mountain was one that must have taken several days:
One forgets that Abraham rode only on an ass, which carried him slowly along the way, that he had three days’ journey, that he needed some time to cut the wood, bind Isaac, and sharpen the knife.
— Problemata: Preliminary Expectoration
Kierkegaard makes a case that the magnanimous person is somehow different from the tragic hero. The tragic hero is one who "merely" pursues ordinary virtues to their extremity. In Kierkegaard's words:
He who denies himself and sacrifices himself for duty gives up the finite in order to grasp the infinite—he is secure enough; the tragic hero gives up what is sure for that which is still surer, and the observer’s eye rests confidently on him
— Problemata: Problema I
This could describe the someone who donates 10% of their income for the certain good, they whom we may applaud and appreciate unreservedly, even if we may not have the strength to pursue their virtues to the same extent. However, a magnanimous man is somehow by nature different — they are, properly speaking, an object of horror.
But he who gives up the universal in order to grasp some still higher thing, which is not the universal, what does he do? Is it possible that this can be anything but a spiritual agon? And if it is possible, but the individual makes a mistake, what salvation is there for him? He suffers all the tragic hero’s pain, he annihilates his joy in the world, he renounces everything, and perhaps he, in the very same moment, barricades himself off from the exalted joy that is so precious to him that he would buy it for any price. Him, the observer cannot understand in the slightest, nor indeed can he rest his eye confidently on him. Perhaps it cannot be done at all, this thing the believer intends, because it is quite inconceivable. Or if it could be done, but the individual misunderstood the deity—then what salvation is there for him? The tragic hero needs tears, and he demands tears, and where was the envious eye that was so barren that it could not cry with Agamemnon? But where is the soul that is so crazed as to dare to weep over Abraham?
[...]
Abraham one cannot weep over. One draws near to him with a religious horror.
— Problemata: Problema I
And is it not the case that your example of Beatrice and Cornelius Boeke one that invokes a similar sense of horror? Perhaps that is the difference between mere moral excellence, and true magnanimity. It is like the difference between a person who donates 10 percent of their income, versus someone who takes a vow of poverty — gives up their worldly possessions, a person who donates their kidney, who sacrifices the very possibility of an ordinary life for that higher thing.
I think you're right to intuit that at a first glance, a life of magnanimity can be a very unhappy existence. Although, I would also bring up Socrates' argument from The Gorgias, where he claims that it is better the suffer injustice than to act injustly, where a just (i.e. magnanimous life) is happy for it's own sake.
I'm grateful for your posting of this essay on righteousness and megalopsychia. While I also hesitate to opine on it, as I do not believe I have came upon any conclusions myself, it is clear to me that these matters are important for us to contemplate if we seek to pursue a moral life, irrespective of our underlying values. You've given me much to think about!
Notes on Righteousness and Megalopsychia — EA Forum
This post examines the virtues of righteousness and megalopsychia. As with my other posts in this sequence, I focus less on breaking new ground and more on synthesizing the wisdom I could find on the subject. I wrote this not as an expert, but as someone who wants to learn.
I investigate whether these virtues are more than the sum of other virtues, whether they’re a good thing to have, whether they are available to ordinary people, and how people who have these virtues have developed them. I hope this helps people who want to know more about these virtues and how to nurture them.
What are these virtues?
“What good is there in knowing what virtue is, if this knowledge doesn’t make us love it?” —Petrarch[1]
Someone who is righteous holds themselves to extraordinary moral standards. Someone with megalopsychia engages in a similar pursuit, but along dimensions that map awkwardly to what we moderns typically think of as “morals”—dimensions closer to classical notions of excellence.
They share an impulse that most people who think about ethics have entertained, whatever the details of their specific ethical intuitions: if there is a standard of right and wrong to guide our behavior, shouldn’t we adhere wholeheartedly to that standard? If the standard is the greatest good, shouldn’t we always choose the greatest good? If the standard is to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself, shouldn’t that be our constant vocation? If virtues are the way to flourish, why waste any time doing anything but pursuing the virtuous golden mean? Isn’t being a Buddhist mere cosplay if you aren’t urgently trying to become a Buddha?
Susan Wolf defined the moral saint as “a person whose every action is as morally good as possible, a person, that is, who is as morally worthy as can be.” She observes that moral theorists struggle to avoid concluding “that one ought to be as morally good as possible and that what limits there are to morality’s hold on us are set by features of human nature of which we ought not to be proud.” But most of us recoil from such a demanding conclusion, even if we think of ourselves as adhering to a moral code.[2]
But a few of us decide to give it a try. Larissa MacFarquhar profiled some (she calls them “do-gooders”) in her book Strangers Drowning. She described them this way:
I don’t mean a part-time, normal do-gooder—someone who has a worthy job, or volunteers at a charity, and returns to an ordinary family life in the evenings. I mean a person who sets out to live as ethical a life as possible.... I mean someone who pushes himself to moral extremity, who commits himself wholly, beyond what seems reasonable. I mean the kind of do-gooder who makes people uneasy.
[H]is life makes ordinary existence seem flabby and haphazard. The standards to which he holds himself and the emotions he cultivates… can seem inhumanly lofty, and separate him from other people.[3]
Who are the righteous?
There is no rigorous definition of a righteous person. Most empirical examinations begin by identifying people who seem righteous to the examiners (or to some expert or panel), and their selection criteria inevitably affect the conclusions. That’s something to keep in mind in the sections below.
For example, researchers Anne Colby & William Damon established the following criteria that they used to select 23 American moral exemplars to interview in depth for their study:
they demonstrate sustained commitment to moral principles that respect humanity broadly
they consistently act according to these principles
they willingly sacrifice self-interest for moral values
they inspire others to moral action
they maintain realistic humility about their own significance relative to the larger world[4]
The Colby & Damon study is particularly revealing, so I refer to it often in what follows.
What the heck is megalopsychia?
Megalopsychia is a concept that has fallen out of fashion and lacks a good English translation. Aristotle described it in detail, saying that it crowns the rest of the virtues: “it makes them better, and cannot exist without them;” it is “the union of all the virtues.”[5]
The megalopsychos collects the complete set of virtues, excels at each, and boy does he know it.[6] (To Aristotle, he’s definitely a he.) He knows himself to be worthy of honor and revels in it.[7] That said, he’s not a glory-hound; he’s contemptuous of popular fame.[8]
The megalopsychos “cares about few things only, and those great, and not because someone else thinks them so.” This indifference to inferior or fashionable things protects him from temptation: “for what thing is there for love of which he would do anything unseemly, seeing that all things are of little account to him?” He doesn’t court danger (there’s not much he finds worth courting danger for), but when he encounters danger, he faces it “unsparing of his life, knowing that there are conditions on which life is not worth having.” He despises “honor from ordinary men and on trivial grounds” and makes light of supposed dishonor, as he knows he doesn’t deserve any.
He will not put himself in service to any so-called superior, but may choose to serve a friend. He prefers giving benefits to receiving them (if he receives a favor, he’ll try to give a better one in return). He doesn’t hold grudges. Among high-status people, he displays lofty behavior as a way to assert himself, but among people of lower rank he’s more affable, not trying to strut his stuff. He speaks forthrightly, and won’t pretend to be what he isn’t or use diplomatic euphemisms (“except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar”). He doesn’t gossip or casually badmouth others, or praise himself, or try to prompt people to praise him or blame others. However he may sometimes strategically “speak evil of others… with the express purpose of giving offence.” He prefers to own beautiful but unprofitable things over useful and profitable ones. He moves slowly, speaks with a deep voice in measured tones, and remains typically unhurried and unexcited.
“Contempt seems particularly the special characteristic of the magnanimous man; and, again, as regards honor, life, and wealth—about which mankind seems to care—he values none of them except honor. He would be pained if denied honor, and if ruled by one undeserving.”[8]
Aristotle’s portrayal of the megalopsychos verges on the comical, even mocking, which is strange (he does not describe his other virtues that way). The megalopsychos reminds me a bit of James Bond, but from the era when they dialed up the camp in the films and exaggerated him. Aristotle seems to gloss over the more attractive parts of the megalopsychos and linger on the less attractive ones, perhaps to remind us that virtue is meant for the virtuous person, not for the rest of us.
We should not expect a megalopsychos to be a best buddy, but rather as someone far above us.[9] The megalopsychos, who has all the virtues, looks down his nose at most of what the rest of us spend our time pursuing.[10] What he does want—genuinely-earned honor—cannot be gained by means of vice.
(A common failure of wannabe megalopsychoi is to become haughty and disdainful first, without aiming for higher things. They are arrogant because of their wealth, their fame, and their indulgences, not because they have transcended care about such petty stuff.)[11]
Aquinas tried to make a Christian out of the megalopsychos
Thomas Aquinas tried to incorporate Aristotle’s megalopsychia into Christian ethics (as the Latin magnanimitas). But the self-focused, haughty, undeniably proud megalopsychos is an awkward match for Christian virtues like love and humility.
Aquinas argued that pursuing honor, at least great honor of the sort “offered to God and to the best” (not just popular acclaim), is worthwhile. Honor is “an attestation to a person’s virtue” and so ambition for honor (of this sort) motivates one to virtue.[12] The magnanimus correctly recognizes that being worthy of honor matters more than receiving honors.[13]
Aquinas thought that, despite Aristotle’s portrayal, humility is compatible with magnanimitas; the magnanimus has an accurate self-evaluation that includes both what is great in himself (which he properly attributes to God’s grace) and what is defective (which is inevitable due to the fallen nature of man).[14]
The obligatory and the supererogatory
“Kung-sun Ch‘ou said, ‘The way is indeed lofty and beautiful, but to attempt it is like trying to climb up to Heaven which seems beyond one’s reach. Why not substitute for it something which men have some hopes of attaining so as to encourage them constantly to make the effort?’
“ ‘A great craftsman,’ said Mencius, ‘does not put aside the plumb-line for the benefit of the clumsy carpenter.…’ ”[15]
J.O. Urmson argued that moral philosophers set a trap for themselves, and so they established moral systems that none but rare saints can live up to.[16] These philosophers tended to categorize acts as either obligatory, permissible, or wrong, but this “is totally inadequate to the facts of morality.”[17]
There is an additional category of things which are undeniably good but are in no way obligatory—the “supererogatory.” Moral philosophies that neglect this category leave no room for someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty, because in them duty stretches to the very pinnacle.[18]
If we make the mistake of establishing a morality that is nearly impossible to follow, people will come to see moral duty as “something high and unattainable.” If they are told their moral duty is to be a saint, but they see hardly any saints around them, this “lower[s] the degree of urgency and stringency that the notion of duty does in fact possess.”[19]
It would be better, Urmson said, to have a standard of morality that is broadly achievable, that covers the most important matters, and that we can expect typical people to meet. “It is important to give a special status of urgency, and to exert exceptional pressure, in those matters in which compliance with the demands of morality by all is indispensable” but not in all matters that have a moral flavor.[20] For supererogatory acts, “it is better that pressure should not be applied and that there should be encouragement and commendation for performance rather than outright demands and censure in the event of nonperformance.”[21]
Certain acts we think of as kind (to put your life on hold to tend someone in sickness, to give a stranger your last bus token) we would hesitate to call obligatory or to judge people for not accomplishing. “A line must be drawn between what we can expect and demand from others and what we can merely hope for and receive with gratitude… duty falls on one side of this line, and other acts with moral value on the other…”[22]
How do we draw such a line? Urmson suggests that obligatory acts concern “the avoidance of intolerable results” while supererogatory ones “have more positive aims.”[23] This seems to privilege the status quo in a way that I find suspect, but I can’t think of a better formula off the top of my head. I suppose this gives something for Urmsonian moral philosophers to argue about.
Aristotelian supererogatoritude?
There are some hints of the supererogatory in Aristotle’s discussion of the virtues (though, since his virtues are not organized around the concept of “duty,” supererogatory isn’t quite the right description). Aristotle distinguishes ordinary generosity from extraordinary magnificence, for example, and the ambition for mundane honor from the love of great honor that characterizes megalopsychia.
Perhaps in an Aristotelian moral system you could also say something like “certainly do not be a coward; have courage. And if you feel up to it, also show valor and deliberately seek out those dangerous tasks that must be done.” Or “certainly do not lie, be honest. And if you feel up to it, also show parrhêsia and speak truth to power.”
Moral exemplars may reject the supererogatory category
Note that particularly righteous people often reject the idea of the supererogatory:
Some do-gooders say they’re only doing their duty: they’re only doing what everyone ought to, and if most people think their sense of duty is bizarre and unreasonable, then most people are wrong. They reject the idea that what they do is saintly or heroic, because to them, that’s another way of saying that most people needn’t even try to do such things. Praise is a disguised excuse.[24]
Related virtues and vices
This section is longer than usual for a post in this sequence, because righteousness and megalopsychia affect, enhance, or display many other virtues. Aristotle (and Aquinas) thought that all of the virtues participate in megalopsychia.[25] He also says that you cannot sacrifice some other virtue in order to get megalopsychia, the way you might try, for example, to sacrifice justice for wealth or fame. The only way to get at megalopsychia is via the rest of the virtues in concert. He further thought that each virtue, when it is at its golden mean of perfection, exhibits something like megalopsychia in its particular domain (courage in the domain of confronting frightful threats, for example).[26]
Below, I discuss some virtues that interact in interesting ways with righteousness and megalopsychia, while ignoring others that certainly have some connection (e.g. altruism, benevolence) but that don’t interact in as notable ways.
Terms for righteousness and megalopsychia and their opposites
Righteousness is sometimes called “moral ambition.” In less ambitious forms, it appears as “rectitude” or “conscientiousness.” The superbly righteous sometimes achieve “saint” or “hero” status. They are sometimes called “moral exemplars” or “paragons” in academic literature.
Megalopsychia gets translated as “magnanimity”, “great-mindedness”, “noble-mindedness”, “great-souledness”, or “elevation of soul.” “Magnanimity” is common (derived from Aquinas’s Latin magnanimitas), but these days I usually see “magnanimity” used to describe a sort of forbearance combined with noblesse oblige, rather than the virtue I discuss here.
The vices of deficiency associated with these virtues include pettiness, small-mindedness, mean-spiritedness, pusillanimity, want of spirit, low moral dignity, holding yourself to a low standard, and making excuses for yourself. Some excuses come in the form of cynicism about human nature (e.g. “we’re all selfish, petty, and stupid… which excuses my own behavior.”)
The vices of excess typically imply unearned or domineering self-righteousness: high-handedness, vanity, vainglory, haughtiness, or pride (in the Christian sense). Self-righteousness without genuine righteousness makes you tiresome. Via “moral licensing” it can also make you additionally vicious (people who believe themselves to be righteous may give themselves permission for unethical behavior because they remain “good on the whole,” or because they feel they’ve earned a little naughtiness).
Integrity
Righteousness seems to accompany integrity. If you have certain values, then you have integrity to the extent that your decisions verify those values. If you hold those values with absolute integrity, your decisions should absolutely reflect them.
This may create awkward cognitive dissonance for, say, an effective altruist who believes she values the lives of orphans in Rwanda more than a frappuccino, but buys the frappuccino anyway. What can she say: “I truly believe I should value the orphans more, but…”? How can she believe she should value something more except on the grounds that she does think it is more valuable, and in that case, why the coffee slurpee?[27]
For the righteous, values are not decorative accessories: they’re behind the wheel, not stuck to the bumper.[28] Because of this, they judge what they perceive and they choose corresponding actions with single-minded, unhesitating determination.[29]
The difference between righteous people and others is not that righteous people have better, more sophisticated, or more airtight moral judgement, but that they give moral judgement a decisive place in their lives, while others give it a merely advisory role.[30]
How the righteous reinvent classical ethics
A curious feature of how most people approach ethics is that they treat it not as guidance for how best to live, but as constraints we must work within (or around). This creates the peculiar situation where someone might say “well, the ethical thing to do is X, but I’m not sure that’s what I should do”—as though they could say “the mathematical way to add 2+2 gives us 4, but I’m not sure that’s the right answer.”
This wasn’t the case for classical thinkers, for whom ethics was the study of how to live. Righteous people seem to have implicitly recovered this classical understanding: for them, asking “what’s the ethical thing to do?” and “what should I do?” are the same question.
Fortitude, hope, confidence, and security
Aquinas categorized magnanimitas under the more general virtue of fortitude, said that it springs from the passion of hope (for honor), and identified as components of magnanimitas confidence (which bolsters hope) and security (which banishes despair).[31]
He considered three vices of excess—1) presumption (attempting Godlike perfection, overestimating one’s virtue, or attempting more than your means allow), 2) ambition (desiring undeserved honor, honor that rightly belongs to God, or honor for its own sake rather than for what it enables you to do for others), and 3) vainglory (pursuing fame rather than deserved and great honor)—and one of deficiency: pusillanimity or faint-heartedness.[32]
Faith
Many righteous people are motivated in part by religious faith. Even those who aren’t show “a conspicuous absence of doubt” about their path and an unusually elevated sense of security and efficacy.[33]
Courage
Ordinary people attribute courage to moral exemplars because exemplars do things that seem to require courage. Moral exemplars tend to respond, “rubbish.” What explains this?
It could be humility or modesty. But moral exemplars are not prone to this sort of modesty about other virtues. If you call them kind, considerate, helpful, just, honest, etc., they’ll say “yeah, of course; what were you expecting?”
Colby & Damon examined this puzzle. They found that the overwhelming majority of the moral exemplars they interviewed “disclaimed entirely the experience of moral courage… courage seemed somehow beside the point.” They did not need courage in addition to moral certainty; moral certainty sufficed. “It is as if the exemplars are rhetorically asking, Why does one need courage when one has no morally acceptable choice in the matter?”[34]
Equanimity
Shannon Vallor included magnanimity among her proposed modern “technomoral virtues,” grouping it with equanimity, courage, and ambition.[35]
Equanimity was also something Aristotle noticed in the megalopsychos, who “will neither be very much exalted by prosperity, nor very much cast down by adversity.”[36]
Colby & Damon found equanimity common among the moral exemplars they studied. If things don’t go according to plan, or there are setbacks or obstacles or powerful adversaries… well, nobody said it would be easy. Why should that derail you? If the thing to do is the right thing to do, you just do it, regardless of whether things go well or badly otherwise. Because moral exemplars are more focused on doing right daily than on achieving right results eventually, problems seem like challenges to address more than discouraging setbacks.[37]
Awe and elevation
There is some connection between righteousness and awe, though usually the awe is attributed to outside observers rather than to the righteous person. Jonathan Haidt asserts that people who witness moral excellence are inspired to similar behavior via “moral elevation,”[38] while Larissa MacFarquhar highlights the more unnerving aspects:
The life of a zealous do-gooder is a kind of human sublime—by which I mean that, although there is a hard beauty in it, the word “beautiful” doesn’t capture the ambivalence it stirs up… A sublime object… inspires awe, but also dread… It is this sense of sublime that I mean to apply to do-gooders: to confront such a life is to feel awe mixed with unease…[39]
Self-reliance
Julia Annas suggests that people hesitate to develop exceptional virtues because we feel more comfortable close to the center of the herd. As a person becomes more exceptional in some virtue, they become less able to relate to people who are more mediocre. While an exceptionally honest person (for example) might join a community-of-the-honest for companionship, such communities are more dispersed, virtual, and abstract than the day-to-day communities of family, friends, and neighbors. The more you approach excellence in more virtues, Annas thinks, the more lonely you risk becoming. Intuiting this, people typically decide they’d rather be mediocre together than exceptional apart.[40]
This suggests to me that courage, self-reliance, and perhaps “solitude” may be prerequisite virtues to the pursuit of megalopsychia. Moral exemplars and megalopsychoi tend to have strong, confident selves and less need for validation from others. Rather than being self-less, the righteous person tends to have a strong self, but one that has morality at the center rather than off in its own compartment.[41]
Righteous people are apart somehow. Even when they are attractive, they are unnerving and implicitly accusatory.[42] Their morality seems disobedient to social niceties; the way they stand for something reminds us tactlessly that we do not.[43]
Yet the moral exemplars Colby & Damon studied typically had long histories of fruitful collaboration. They relied on others to fuel their moral development. Perhaps the loneliness of the megalopsychoi is not a necessary feature of righteousness.
Liberty
Righteousness has an ambiguous relationship with liberty.[44] Righteous people are less free than other people, to the extent that they bind themselves to a particular standard and do not deviate from it. But they are more free, to the extent that they bind themselves to that standard. Ordinary people, bound to no standard at all, may blow in the winds of desire and fashion. The righteous person is free-climbing; the ordinary person is free-falling.[45]
Honor, dignity, pride, and shame
Aristotle and Aquinas thought that pursuit of great honor drives the magnanimous person. Megalopsychia implies dignity in human nature. It assumes we are (potentially) important, worthy, and dignified, and sets that as our standard. Accepting this standard can counter cynical nihilism, the idea that we’re all just selfish animals, that ethics is just posturing, that life is meaningless.[46]
A variety of pride may discourage people from developing megalopsychia. If one fails at particularly great deeds (the sort of deed a megalopsychos finds worthwhile), the failure is often spectacular and susceptible to public mockery. People might avoid particularly ambitious things from fear of taking that sort of hit.
On the other hand, a megalopsychos may be motivated by wanting more “glad I did”s than “wish I had”s. Or he may be motivated to avoid the shame of failing to live up to his own standards.[47]
Humility
There is some tension between the virtues of righteousness and humility. Moral exemplars commonly exhibit what observers interpret as genuine humility (the megalopsychos, not so much).[48] But their unhesitating certainty in approaching moral action can seem arrogant to those who believe it is wiser to be more tentative about moral conclusions.
Personal growth, self-improvement
One way humility plays out in moral exemplars is in their continuous personal growth. Colby & Damon found that exemplars combine “extraordinary reliability, dependability, and stability in their values and in their conduct” with great “capacities for change and growth” and for “persistent truth-seeking” and “ ‘open receptivity’ to new ideas.” This results in “moral consistency without cognitive or behavioral stagnation.”[49]
How can you be both stable and flexible? Exemplars seem to have solid bedrock values, but flexible ways of deriving goals, actions, and beliefs from those values, plus an eagerness to learn from others and from experience. This resembles how scientists constantly challenge and revise theories and experimental techniques, while remaining faithful to empiricism and the scientific method.[50]
Recursive environmental reinforcement
Colby & Damon say that moral exemplars also change their environments such that they reinforce and build their exemplary qualities. This happens in two ways:
First, their qualities encourage them to take on challenging problems. By rising to the occasion, they become more practiced and more confident. And by putting themselves forward, they make themselves prone to encounter more such challenges.
Second, they project themselves socially in ways that cause others to reinforce their exemplarity. For example, if you have a reputation for feeding the needy, people may approach you when a needy person needs clothes or medicine, with the expectation that you might help. This can prod you to go further along the road to being a more comprehensive helper, and before you know it you’re one of those full-time righteous do-gooders.[51]
Attention
Morally extraordinary people commonly reject the idea that they’re special or that they have unusual willpower. They’ll say “I just did what anyone would do” when this clearly isn’t true. Why does what seems extraordinary to most of us seem ordinary to them?
Righteous people appear to do less deliberating, hand-wringing, and worrying. They see something that needs doing, and do it. It is as though much of their moral reasoning has already been baked in, and they just need to apply it.
Iris Murdoch described how she thinks this works via “attention”:
[I]f we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over. This does not imply that we are not free, certainly not. But it implies that the exercise of our freedom is a piecemeal business which goes on all the time and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at important moments. The moral life, on this view, is something that goes on continually…[52]
Murdoch argues that once you develop a sense for “the good” (in down-to-earth incarnations like generosity, thoughtfulness, justice, love, empathy, honesty, etc.) then the important skill to exercise in order to be moral is not will or reason but attention. “The task of attention goes on all the time and at apparently empty and everyday moments we are ‘looking,’ making those little peering efforts of imagination which have such important cumulative results.”[52] This attention is not fully objective (humans inevitably import judgements into observations) so it is important to attend virtuously (justly, courageously, humbly, etc.). When we have a loving attitude, and attend in this way, a loving choice becomes clear, obvious, and automatic: “action will follow naturally.”[52]
Only in strange edge-cases do we need to dither and rationalize. Trolley Problem quandaries are for philosophy papers. More typical ethical challenges occur not when the right thing to do is an obscure puzzle, paradox, or dilemma, but when we approach situations failing to attend virtuously to their morally-relevant aspects.
What good is it?
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” ―Jesus[53]
In a way, the goodness of righteousness is obvious. Whatever standard of good and bad, good and evil, or right and wrong you happen to have, a righteous person with that standard will strive to be most good, most right. What makes righteousness good is built into its definition.
Furthermore, if you believe the Stoics (this is somewhat implied in Aristotle too), the megalopsychos is much more resilient and self-reliant than other people. Because he does not care much for material rewards, reputation, or other such baubles, but only for his own worthiness, his destiny is much more in his control.
You love what you do
“All this deliberately willed morality is horrible. You have no right to be moral if it is not your joy, your highest form of artistic expression. Wrestle for the good life exactly as the poet wrestles to create a beautiful verse, in the same spirit, for the love of the thing itself.” ―Pierre Cérésole[54]
A stereotype portrays righteous people as grim, humorless, and so focused on do-gooder work that they can’t have fun. I think this partly reflects how people who don’t adopt righteous lives imagine they could do so only at such a cost. Anecdotal reports about real-life righteous people do not support this stereotype.
Colby & Damon say that “virtually all” of the moral exemplars they studied share “positive spirit in the face of severe challenge” and “a strong, enduring, and general positivity.”[55] Traits like a “buoyant attitude,” “enjoyment,” & “unmitigated joy” are among those exhibited by their exemplars. (A few exceptions seemed to find their work a discouraging grind.)
Colby & Damon theorize that positivity traits help moral exemplars persevere long-term.[56] They describe techniques exemplars use to downplay negative events, including “not focusing on them… finding a way to construe them in a hopeful way… finding a way to turn them to one’s advantage… [and] accepting them as challenges that must be met. Our exemplars are brilliantly capable of making the best of a bad situation.”[57] This is especially helpful because exemplars tend to seek out challenges rather than avoiding them, and they don’t always win.
When exemplars fail, they interpret failure in a way that is not discouraging. This resembles the “learned optimism” theory of Martin Seligman (see Notes on Optimism, Hope, and Trust) in which optimists describe positive things as “permanent and pervasive” and negative things as “temporary and narrowly-focused.”[58] But Colby & Damon say that moral exemplars are less self-deceptive than this rose-colored-glasses technique implies. For one thing, because of their unusual egolessness, they aren’t especially eager to take credit for good things or evade responsibility for bad things.[59]
They also tend not to be as bothered by ingratitude as one might expect. Needy people whom moral exemplars help not uncommonly need social skills as well, or can’t help feeling resentful or degraded at being the targets of charity.[60] Sometimes they are rude about it. But this often doesn’t bother moral exemplars, in part because they see helping as inherently valuable to both parties (not as a transaction, or as one-sided generosity), and if the other party doesn’t get it, that doesn’t mean it has to spoil their fun.[61]
Speaking of gratitude, some moral exemplars use their own gratitude as a motivator: both gratitude for the immediate benefits of doing righteous work, and gratitude for having a good life, which encourages them to “give back” or to help other people to also live well.[62] Gratitude also promotes a positive outlook by making the positive facets of your life, those for which you have a reason to be grateful, more salient.[63]
You get into the flow
Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi described flow as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” People who excel at flow “lead vigorous lives, and are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until they day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if it is tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, and they can take in stride anything that comes their way.”[64]
He suggested that “The hero and the saint, to the extent that they dedicated the totality of their psychic energy into an all-encompassing goal that prescribed a coherent pattern of behavior to follow until death, turned their lives into unified flow experiences.”[64]
Colby & Damon noticed a lot of similarity between the positive mental state exhibited by most of the moral exemplars they studied and this flow state. People in this state are confident, and perform tasks with conviction and certainty; they concentrate attention outward and focus on the here-and-now. They get satisfaction from the process, not just from goal-attainment.[65]
What bad is it?
Do-gooders are off-putting
If Aristotle invited his megalopsychos friend to my party, describing him as someone with contempt for most human affairs who sometimes speaks evil with express purpose of giving offense, who isn’t afraid to let you know how wonderful he is but despises honors from ordinary people—I think I’d tell him to leave his friend out. The megalopsychos strikes me as something of an asshole.
Righteousness, too, is a close cousin to “self-righteousness” (and its companions of arrogance and moral license). If you miss the mark and hit self-righteousness by mistake, you veer into asshole territory as well. Some quasi-righteous people use big important moral crusades as excuses to avoid mundane courtesies (why are you asking me to do the dishes when you know how much is at stake?)[66] Freud thought that extraordinary altruism often amounts to indirectly aggressive masochism.[67]
Even if you get this right and add enough social virtues to the mix to overcome the snootiness of Aristotle’s megalopsychos, just being righteous can be off-putting. “[D]o-gooders are a reproach” to the rest of us.[68] They spur others to “feel a hint of shame at their own moral weakness.”[69]
More ordinary people tend to prefer those who are closer to their own level, who do their part but don’t give their all.[70] As mentioned in the “Self-Reliance” section above, if you aim for righteousness, you may need to prepare for some social isolation.
If you take your morality to extremes you may not be prepared for what you find there
Sometimes people discover that their values behave unexpectedly and have unwelcome effects when pushed to extremes.
Beatrice and Cornelius Boeke are among the “Righteous Among the Nations” (people who stuck their necks out to assist victims of Nazi policies). Beatrice was an heir to the Cadbury chocolate fortune, but the couple gave this money away rather than live on unearned wealth. They were Christian pacifists who took their pacifism so seriously that they refused to cooperate with coercive government: refusing to pay taxes, or even to use government currency, passports, the postal service, or the nationalized railways.
This principled stance led to practical mayhem. Because they would not rely on police and courts to defend property rights, local authorities told derelicts they might as well move into the Boeke household as the Boekes would be unable to evict them. The Boekes as a result ended up moving into tents as strangers occupied their home. Their children lived in squalor. Visits from their extended family resembled interventions from social workers—with relatives taking the children aside out of view to look them over for signs of malnutrition. The trust the Boekes set up to redistribute their inherited money instead felt compelled to intervene for the welfare of the family.
One observer noted: “They had wanted to humble themselves before God, to prove that He would provide their daily bread. All they had actually done was to cause hardship for the children and put the responsibility for their welfare onto the shoulders of other people…”[71]
They eventually recognized they had gone too far. In their attempts to patch up any hints of hypocrisy in their lifestyle, common sense slipped through the cracks. They backed away from their more impractical experiments, accepted family help to set up a modest home, resumed using money, and reapplied for passports.
From one perspective, this was a successful example of experimentation, learning, and adjustment. But it was risky. If you push moral ideals too far beyond where they have been successfully tested, you may not like what you find. We should beware that tales of moral exemplars may suffer from selection effects that highlight successful experiments while obscuring burnouts and disasters.
If you max out moral virtue in particular, you may become unbalanced or stunted
“So far as we aspire to become transhuman and posthuman, we should be aspiring to this godlike perspective that takes into account the suffering of all sentient beings” ―David Pearce[72]
“Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.” ―George Orwell[73]
Classical ethics asked how to best live. Post-classical morality asks how you must live: how you obey your duty. This puts morality in conflict with the moral person’s life: you sacrifice in order to be moral.[74]
Most modern moral systems define goodness as orthogonal to self-interest, and imply that the best person is “a person whose every action is as morally good as possible, a person, that is, who is as morally worthy as can be.” In such systems “it is generally assumed that one ought to be as morally good as possible and that what limits there are to morality’s hold on us are set by features of human nature of which we ought not to be proud.”[75]
In 1982, Susan Wolf published a frontal attack on such “moral saints,” arguing “that moral perfection, in the sense of moral saintliness, does not constitute a model of personal well-being toward which it would be particularly rational or good or desirable for a human being to strive.”[75]
Wolf defines “moral” saintliness as self-sacrificing altruism: treating others “as justly and kindly as possible” in a life “dominated by a commitment to improving the welfare of others or of society as a whole.”[76] (Her argument is less effective against broader conceptions of megalopsychia that incorporate virtues beyond altruistic ones.)
Moral saints choose altruism even over “the enjoyment of material comforts, the opportunity to engage in the intellectual and physical activities of our choice, and the love, respect, and companionship of people whom we love, respect, and enjoy,” either because they prefer being altruistic more (“the Loving Saint”) or because they have reasons for choosing altruism despite preferring those other things (“the Rational Saint”).[77]
Either way, the moral saint seems “if not too good for his own good, at least too good for his own well-being. For the moral virtues… crowd out the nonmoral virtues, as well as many of the interests and personal characteristics that we generally think contribute to a healthy, well-rounded, richly developed character,” resulting in “a life strangely barren.”[76]
Wolf appeals first to common sense. Few people actually aspire to moral sainthood. It’s a philosophical construction, not an organic ideal. The people we actually admire are rarely moral saints (as Wolf defines them); rather they have moral virtues alongside “specific, independently admirable, nonmoral ground projects and dominant personal traits.” Indeed, we often prefer moral exemplars with “idiosyncrasies or eccentricities” that humanize them: “there seems to be a limit to how much morality we can stand.”[78]
But maybe this just reflects our defensive rationalization of our own failures to live up to standards we acknowledge to be good ones. Just because I’d rather play basketball with other flabby middle-aged guys doesn’t mean that NBA players aren’t better at basketball. Wolf acknowledges that “the fact that the models of moral saints are unattractive does not necessarily mean that they are unsuitable ideals. Perhaps they are unattractive because they make us feel uncomfortable…”[79]
But Wolf says “some of the qualities the moral saint necessarily lacks are virtues, albeit nonmoral virtues.”[79] Such a saint, sacrificing such virtues so as to better adhere to a narrower set of altruistic virtues, loses sight of how to live a valuable life. The loving saint seems “blind to some of what the world has to offer” while the rational saint is blocked by “fear” or “self-hatred” from “enjoy[ing] the enjoyable in life.”[80] Some non-moral joys aren’t merely crowded-out by morality’s priority, but are actually contradicted, Wolf argues. For example, can a moral saint appreciate the “cynical or sarcastic wit” of a Marx Brothers movie, or must such a saint not entertain the thoughts that make such humor funny?[81]
Consequentialists might respond that there’s nothing wrong with being well-rounded, because that will help you to do the most good. It’s important to understand the pleasures life has to offer in order to maximize the pleasures of the many. But such a consequentialist saint doesn’t get to participate wholeheartedly in such pleasures, but is only allowed to sample them as a means to a consequentialist end. In contrast, for the person unencumbered by sainthood, “it is not because they produce happiness that these activities are valuable; it is because these activities are valuable in more direct and specific ways that they produce happiness.”[82]
Wolf instead wants to let us off the hook. She says it is fine to do things for reasons that are not moral reasons:
[N]o matter how flexible we make the guide to conduct which we choose to label “morality,” no matter how rich we make the life in which perfect obedience to this guide would result, we will have reason to hope that a person does not wholly rule and direct his life by the abstract and impersonal consideration that such a life would be morally good.…
[M]oral ideals do not, and need not, make the best personal ideals.…
[T]he posture we take in response to the recognition that our lives are not as morally good as they might be need not be defensive.…
The role morality plays in the development of our characters and the shape of our practical deliberations need be neither that of a universal medium into which all other values must be translated nor that of an ever-present filter through which all other values must pass.… [O]ur values cannot be fully comprehended on the model of a hierarchical system with morality at the top.[83]
Individual perfection may indeed be worth striving for, but unlike “moral perfection” it is not something that one is obligated to strive for. And morality is just one ingredient in that project, not the whole recipe. It is not “always better to be morally better.”[84]
I think there’s something to these criticisms, but I also suspect that virtue ethics (or at least an ethics that borrows insights from virtue ethics) can avoid most of these problems. Wolf is skeptical of this. She doubts we can enumerate the virtues in such a way as to “capture the full range of possible ways of realizing human potential or achieving human good which deserve encouragement and praise.”[85] But I think the package of virtues as a whole should escape Wolf’s net. If we find a way of “realizing human potential or achieving human good” that isn’t on the list, we can always add it to the list. The virtues are made for us, not us for them.
Louis P. Pojman criticizes Wolf on a couple of other grounds.[86] First, real-life moral saints (attainable human ideals, not theoretically perfect saints) are not as dull as Wolf makes them out to be. He compares the rich life of Albert Schweitzer to some of the non-moral exemplars Wolf puts forward (Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire) and thinks Schweitzer comes off pretty well. Second, even if a moral saint were to be a little boring, sometimes dullness is indeed better than sensational but valueless activities, and we just have to swallow that.
Love in action is harsh and dreadful compared with love in dreams
The experience of the Boekes shows how sometimes our ideals for how the world ought to work, and how righteous we can be, stumble when they leave our daydreams for messy reality.
Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, relates a conversation between Madame Khokhlakov (a wealthy widow) and Zosima (a saintly cleric), in which Khokhlakov says “I often dream of forsaking all that I have… and becoming a sister of mercy. I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to overcome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering sores could at that moment frighten me. I would bind them up and wash them with my own hands. I would nurse the afflicted. I would be ready to kiss such wounds.”
Zosima responds that such things are nice thoughts to have, and by thinking such things “some time, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality.”
Khokhlakov then says that what holds her back is not knowing whether she would endure. She asks herself, “if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not meet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing or remarking your charitable services, began abusing you and rudely commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which often happens when people are in great suffering)—what then? Would you persevere in your love, or not?”
Zosima tries to be encouraging, but can see that she is not ready for such a step. “I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage.”
I notice this tension in my own fantasies of righteousness, and perhaps some of my fantasies have leaked into this essay. When I imagine living righteously, I picture the satisfying moments—the clarity of purpose, the absence of moral conflict, the sense of integrity. I may be subconsciously trying to convince myself that love in action is as delightful as love in dreams.
This suggests to me that it may be better to approach righteousness with an attitude of persistent tentative experimentation rather than in leaps of faith based on theoretical models. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
How to develop these virtues
Righteous people seem uncommon. Is this a path open to the rest of us? Colby & Damon conclude from their study that “[e]nduring moral commitment is available for all to acquire.” Moral exemplars aren’t “gifted” with inborn talent, but rather “there are developmental continuities between ordinary and extraordinary moral achievement. The difference is a matter of degree rather than kind.” Moral exemplars started on the same developmental path most of us take to become more morally integrated; what distinguishes them is that they continue further on that path than most people.[87]
The exemplars Colby & Damon studied became exemplary gradually, in adulthood: “enduring moral commitment takes years to forge.”[88] While some can identify a “Rubicon moment” at which they felt fully-committed to a righteous life, that moment didn’t come out of the blue, but was something they progressed toward and continued to grow beyond.[89]
Develop all of the other virtues as much as you can
Some theories of character strengths recommend that you arrange your life so as to play to your strengths and work around weaknesses.[90] The megalopsychos instead wants the whole set of strengths.
Iris Murdoch pointed out that virtues mutually support each other:
If we reflect upon the nature of the virtues we are constantly led to consider their relation to each other… For instance, if we reflect upon courage and ask why we think it to be a virtue, what kind of courage is the highest, what distinguishes courage from rashness, ferocity, self-assertion, and so on, we are bound, in our explanation, to use the names of other virtues. The best kind of courage (that which would make a man act unselfishly in a concentration camp) is steadfast, calm, temperate, intelligent, loving… This may not in fact be exactly the right description, but it is the right sort of description.[91]
For this reason, virtues cannot be perfected in isolation. They rely on each other to be at their best.
Cultivate attention
As mentioned earlier, moral exemplars have tighter observe-orient-decide-act loops than most people (see “Attention” above). They spend less time weighing options because they do not have to adjudicate as many conflicts between values. They do not see morality and self-interest as conflicting.
Once you reach such a blessed state of integrity, whether you then become righteous depends on the quality of your attention and your willingness to be attentive. Something that sets moral exemplars apart is that they eagerly seek out opportunities to notice when they can act. They put themselves in situations where they can apply themselves to solve or ameliorate problems. They don’t wait for the problems to come to them.
Focus on (and emulate) exemplars
“Noble examples stir us up to noble actions; and the very history of large and public souls inspires a man with generous thoughts. It makes a man long to be in action, and doing something that the world may be the better for; as protecting the weak, delivering the oppressed, punishing the insolent.” ―Seneca[92]
Exemplars are real-world role models that can help others develop their characters. They are particularly important in virtue-oriented ethics, which tend to be less theoretically rigorous than other models. Virtue-oriented ethics treats ethical development less like learning rules and formulas and more like apprenticing to master craftspeople.
Another argument for learning from others rather than reasoning yourself into righteousness is that your reasoning is prone to stubborn biases, particularly self-justifying and self-interested biases that interfere with moral reasoning. “The argument for looking outward at Christ and not inward at Reason,” Iris Murdoch wrote, “is that self is such a dazzling object that if one looks there one may see nothing else.”[52]
Exposing yourself to moral exemplars (or to inspiring, credible stories about moral exemplars) can fertilize your imagination and give you confidence to set high moral ambitions.
Collaborate with others
Colby & Damon found that the moral exemplars they studied, even those regarded as leaders or pioneers, relied on guidance, support, feedback, and advice from others.[93] They sought out others who shared their fundamental moral outlook, and were curious and open about the diverse ways others applied such an outlook to real-world problems. They eagerly sought opportunities to learn new knowledge, skills, and perspectives.[94]
Moral exemplars typically develop by collaborating with people who share some goals but conflict on others. These collaborations involve extended periods during which exemplars first engage in activities that reflect common objectives, then gradually ones that align with goals they did not originally share. Throughout these interactions, exemplars communicate richly about the values that underpin their partners’ perspectives. Eventually exemplars adopt certain of their partners’ goals and corresponding strategies—modified to integrate coherently with their own evolving worldviews. This change occurs through sustained engagement rather than in sudden shifts, as exemplars synthesize new commitments into their existing perspectives while allowing those perspectives to expand.[95]
As they learn from others in this way, they also practice how to learn from others, which has compounding effects.[96]
Virtues that promote interaction (e.g. openness, friendliness, competitiveness, empathy, curiosity, tolerance) and good communication skills (e.g. reciprocity, honesty, respect for others, expressiveness) make this process easier or more fruitful.[97]
There is also a more passive way collaboration reinforces moral development: the social feedback mentioned in the “Personal growth, self-improvement” section above. If people come to expect the supererogatory from you, they behave toward you as though these acts were more expected than supererogatory, which moves the goalposts, pushing you further in that direction.
Don’t feel you have to get your theory perfect first
“You want to do just one good thing that you’ll feel unreservedly good about, and where you know somebody’s going to be directly happy at the end of it in a way that doesn’t depend on a giant rickety tower of assumptions.” ― @Scott Alexander[98]
Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg created a six-stage model to describe moral development. In this model, children begin at egoistic stages (morality is what I have to do to avoid punishment), advance through conventional stages (morality is what I must do to be considered good and law-abiding), and, if they’re morally sophisticated enough, reach post-conventional stages (morality is what we implicitly agree on to get along best, or morality is the application of universal principles).
Psychologists determine what level a person is at by presenting them with stories containing moral dilemmas, asking them how they would resolve the dilemmas and why, and judging whether they answer based on egoistic, conventional, or post-conventional considerations.
The assumption is that as people progress through these levels, their behavior should become more reliably moral. So you might guess that moral exemplars would cluster around the top of the 1-to-6 scale. Colby & Damon gave Kohlberg-based tests to the moral exemplars they studied. They found instead that “the exemplars’ scores are not dramatically higher than those of nonexemplars”:[99]
Kohlberg Stage
Number of Exemplars
3
2
3/4
3
4
6
4/5
7
5
4
They found that higher scores correlated with education level. This suggests that educated people learn what counts as sophisticated ethical thinking, but do not necessarily learn how to integrate that into their own behavior, at least not in a way that stands out. Conversely, it suggests that people who appear to be morally outstanding are so not because of how sophisticated or nuanced their moral understanding is, but because their morality is more central to the way they live.
As mentioned earlier, moral exemplars don’t exhibit much anguished weighing of moral complexities and trade-offs; their responses are typically uncomplicated.[100] They may insist their moral reasoning is already baked in, and decision-making mostly concerns the practicalities involved in aiming at the goals those reasons suggest.[101]
For most of us there is a stutter-step in which we determine what is the moral thing to do, and then decide whether we really want to do that (or worse, we decide what we want to do, then decide what moral reason we will give if anyone asks us why).
Colby & Damon say that most people never integrate their moral reasoning and their motives such that they don’t stutter-step in this way. The reason Kohlberg-like tests don’t uncover moral exemplars is that “it is not possible to gauge the extent to which an individual has integrated the two simply by focusing on his or her moral judgment. …[A] person’s moral judgment does not determine the place that morality occupies in the person’s life.”[102] And it’s this that distinguishes the moral exemplars from the rest of us.
Conclusion
The virtues of righteousness and megalopsychia represent attempts to take ethics seriously—to live as though our moral convictions actually matter rather than treating them as mere preferences-among-others or social conventions. While these paths are demanding and sometimes isolating, they offer distinctive rewards, such as the deep satisfaction of integrity and the possibility of entering flow states where moral action is pleasant and enriching.
Evidence suggests that becoming righteous or magnanimous is less about having superior moral theories and more about the place morality occupies in one’s life. It’s about moving from treating moral considerations as advisory to treating them as decisive, and about developing the attention and habits that make moral action feel obvious rather than effortful.
Encouragingly, these virtues aren’t gifts reserved for the naturally saintly but developments available to anyone willing to take gradual steps: cultivating other virtues, practicing attention, learning from exemplars, and collaborating with others who share fundamental moral commitments.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Ⅳ.3: “High-mindedness [(megalopsychia)], then, seems to be the crowning grace, as it were, of the virtues; it makes them greater, and cannot exist without them. And on this account it is a hard thing to be truly high-minded; for it is impossible without the union of all the virtues.”
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Ⅳ.3: “The high-minded man… in respect of the greatness of his deserts occupies an extreme position, but in that he behaves as he ought, observes the mean; for he claims that which he deserves, while all the others claim too much or too little.… And indeed greatness in every virtue or excellence would seem to be necessarily implied in being a high-minded or great-souled man.” See also Eudemian Ethics Ⅲ.5.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Ⅳ.3: “[H]onour is what high-minded men are concerned with; for it is honour that they especially claim and deserve.” See also Eudemian Ethics Ⅲ.5.
Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics Ⅲ.5: “[I]t seems characteristic of the magnanimous man to be disdainful; each virtue makes one disdainful of what is esteemed great contrary to reason” (e.g. liberality disdains wealth-hoarding; courage disdains self-preservation/safety; temperance disdains various sensual pleasures).
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Ⅳ.3: “[T]hose who have these good things readily come to be supercilious and insolent. For without virtue it is not easy to bear the gifts of fortune becomingly; and so, being unable to bear them, and thinking themselves superior to everybody else, such people look down upon others, and yet themselves do whatever happens to please them.”
Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Ⅱ.ⅱ.129.2: “[M]an cannot sufficiently honor virtue which deserves to be honored by God. Hence [the magnanimus] is not uplifted by great honors, because he does not deem them above him; rather does he despise them, and much more such as are ordinary or little. On like manner he is not cast down by dishonor, but despises it, since he recognizes that he does not deserve it.”
See also Scott Siskind “The Consequentialism FAQ”raikoth.net: “Most people don’t want to be perfect, and so they don’t sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor. You’ll have to live with the knowledge of being imperfect, but Jeremy Bentham’s not going to climb through your window at night and kill you in your sleep or anything. And since no one else is perfect, you’ll have a lot of company.”
Urmson (1958) p. 210: “No intelligent person will claim infallibility for his moral views. But allowing for this, one must claim that one’s moral code is ideal so far as one can see; for to say, ‘I recognize moral code A but see clearly that moral code B is superior to it,’ is but a way of saying that one recognizes moral code B but is only prepared to live up to moral code A.”
Colby & Damon (1992) p. 304: “Where there is perceived concordance between self and morality, there will follow direct and predictable links between judgment and conduct as well as great certainty in the action choices that result.”; p. 294: “All [such exemplars] endorse their moral commitments so single-mindedly and wholeheartedly that they become convinced that they have no choice but to act accordingly.”; p. 308: “moral exemplars generally carry out their commitments in a spontaneous and nonreflective manner, as if by force of habit.”
Colby & Damon (1992) p. 306: “it is not possible to gauge the extent to which an individual has integrated… simply by focusing on his or her moral judgment. This is because a person’s moral judgment does not determine the place that morality occupies in the person’s life.”
Colby & Damon (1992) p. 300 (and chapter 11 generally): “[R]ather than denying self, they define it [self] with a moral center” — “None saw their moral choices as an exercise in self-sacrifice.”
See also Cécile Rozuel “Exemplarity as Commitment to the Self: Insights from Spiritual Healers” Moral Saints and Moral Examplars (Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations, vol. 10), 2013, p. 119.
MacFarquhar (2015) p. 5: “do-gooders are a reproach.”
Rozuel (2013): “[W]ho could argue against moral exemplars and moral saints? Who, but a wicked soul, would declare that they are not inspired by [such]… Who, but a corrupted soul, would not feel a hit of shame at their own moral weakness…” “…Yet, there is something unsettling about moral exemplars and moral saints.” We tend to feel “[t]hey are special people, we are not.”
MacFarquhar (2015) p. 296: “[T]he do-gooder’s goodness is not usually obedience—it is often, on the contrary, a revolt against the rules and customs he grew up with. Part of the reason do-gooders seem so strange is that they’re acting on their own. They are following rules that they laid down for themselves…”
Though Thoreau thought of heroes that “they move free and unconstrained through Nature as her guests, their motions easy and natural as if their course were already determined for them; as of rivers flowing through valleys, not as somewhat finding a place in Nature, but for whom a place is already found.” (H.D. Thoreau “Sir Walter Raleigh”)
Colby & Damon (1992) p. 59: A “combination of a sense of effectiveness with a deep humility is one of the most characteristic features of many of our exemplars”; p. 272: the “ability to see oneself as contributing to an ongoing effort, not [as] a savior” is “a factor in their stamina and persistence”.
Rozuel (2013) pp. 118–19: “interviews with such heroes and exemplars demonstrate they do not perceive themselves as being in any way special.”
“He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.” ―Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government (1849).
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Can’s impact evaluation for 2025. At the end of this post we share links to more information, including the full report and...
I used AI to fix transcription errors, rerrarange the ideas, and suggest tweaks to the title and some sentences.
Three of the most exciting projects to come out of EA in recent years are, in a vague sense, CEA spinouts:
* Kairos is directly a spinout of CEA and now handles most support for university AI safety groups. Basically everyone I've found who knows them is really excited about what they do
* NEST is an opinionated ideas-fi...
Thank you for sharing this remarkably well-written overview of magnanimity (megalopsychia). If I may add to your reflections on If you take your morality to extremes you may not be prepared for what you find there, I think you should read Søren Kierkegaard's work Fear and Trembling. In it, he explores what it means to pursue righteousness and moral glory to it's extreme through the story of Abraham and Isaac. It's been a while since I had re-read his work, and while I fear to paraphrase him poorly, but essentially Kierkegaard makes a distinction between the magnanimous man, and the "merely" tragic hero.
Kierkegaard explores magnanimity through the story of the Binding of Issac, and how Abraham's sacrifice of his son is a paradigmatic example of magnanimity and it's moral terror. For those unfamiliar with the story, Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and Abraham complies. Kierkegaard opens the monograph by asking "What sort of man could sacrifice his only son in such a manner?" i.e. pursue righteousness and moral virtue to the most terrific of extremes? He reminds us that Abraham's decision to sacrifice his son was not one that happened 'in the spur of the moment,' but it must have came after several days of thought and preparation — especially since the journey to the mountain was one that must have taken several days:
Kierkegaard makes a case that the magnanimous person is somehow different from the tragic hero. The tragic hero is one who "merely" pursues ordinary virtues to their extremity. In Kierkegaard's words:
This could describe the someone who donates 10% of their income for the certain good, they whom we may applaud and appreciate unreservedly, even if we may not have the strength to pursue their virtues to the same extent. However, a magnanimous man is somehow by nature different — they are, properly speaking, an object of horror.
And is it not the case that your example of Beatrice and Cornelius Boeke one that invokes a similar sense of horror? Perhaps that is the difference between mere moral excellence, and true magnanimity. It is like the difference between a person who donates 10 percent of their income, versus someone who takes a vow of poverty — gives up their worldly possessions, a person who donates their kidney, who sacrifices the very possibility of an ordinary life for that higher thing.
I think you're right to intuit that at a first glance, a life of magnanimity can be a very unhappy existence. Although, I would also bring up Socrates' argument from The Gorgias, where he claims that it is better the suffer injustice than to act injustly, where a just (i.e. magnanimous life) is happy for it's own sake.
I'm grateful for your posting of this essay on righteousness and megalopsychia. While I also hesitate to opine on it, as I do not believe I have came upon any conclusions myself, it is clear to me that these matters are important for us to contemplate if we seek to pursue a moral life, irrespective of our underlying values. You've given me much to think about!