Analysis Of Aristotle's Great-Souled Man

Aristotle 's great-souled man is not only an inaccurate depiction of greatness of soul, honour, perfect virtue and human excellence, but also a hypocritical, short-tempered and insensitive human being. Aristotle describes the great-souled man as being the ultimate person but as Fetter points out in Aristotle’s Great-Souled Man: The Limited Perfection of the Ethical Virtues, we see that there are many flaws in his account. This article looks at the contradictory statements being made about Aristotle’s great-souled man by loyal readers of his works, other philosophers and metaphysicians before Aristotle’s time who seem to have a sense for the worth of honour. We see that nearly all of Aristotle’s statements regarding the great-souled man can

Overall, Aristotle comes to the conclusion that the Great-souled man is one who possesses all of the virtues and is perfectly virtuous. FETTER FOOTNOTE p. 1-28. James T. Although Aristotle’s great-souled man is genuine, he is still “a limited pinnacle of human excellence who confers great benefits upon his city and, in exchange desires to receive honours reserved for the gods and to attain a quasi-godlike degree of self-sufficiency.” FETTER P. 1. This statement is controversial because Aristotle’s great-souled man considers nothing great in regards to the estimation of the worth of honour and fortune. Fetter brings forth other apparent flaws in Aristotle’s account of the great-souled man; such as the great-souled mans incapability to receive gratification in hearing of the benefits he has received from others while he still maintains the spirit to disregard such benefits. The haughtiness of the great-souled man, and the notion that he is not overjoyed at receiving good fortune, presumably including favours from others, contradicts Aristotle’s assertion that “[h]e, then, who deems himself worthy of great things and is worthy of them is held to be great-souled. For he who does this in a manner contrary to his real worth is foolish, and no one who acts virtuously is foolish or mindless’” (NE, IV .2, 1123b2-5). IRWIN. Quoted in

Supportive readers of Aristotle’s works point out that the great-souled man lacks basic human decency and is exceedingly attached to honour. If the great-souled man does not think anything is great, yet devotes his entire existence to attaining superiority and greatness, no satisfaction will ever come from the attainment of greatness and honour due to the fact that according to Aristotle the great-souled man receives no pleasure from praise of honour itself. Furthermore, according to William David Ross the great-souled man portrays self-absorption, which is considered the bad side of Aristotle’s ethics. WILLIAM ROSS p.217 FOOTNOTE. Overall I believe that the great-souled man that Aristotle describes is an incoherent and not altogether pleasing human type. I believe that Aristotle should have illustrated a broader category for the great-souled man. A recent scholarship on Aristotelian greatness of soul criticizes that the great-souled man contains undesirable qualities inconsistent with a purported archetype of human excellence. I agree with Fetter, in that the limitations of the purely ethical life produce certain unresolvable disagreements in the character of the great-souled man such as the yearning for self-sufficiency and his permanent dependency on the goods of fortune, including the