Magnanimity and The Great Soul
Magnanimity, written by Andrea Piaget
Magnanimity and The Great Soul
Consider the intricate and harmonious pattern of a single flower. This creation, a mathematical symphony, is a testament to the transformative power of the magnanimity of nature, as are the butterflies. The intricate beauty of the patterns that constitute the flower, a marvel crafted by nature, mirrors the elegant beauty of a magnanimous soul. This inner charisma, not immediately apparent, is shaped by the noblest aspects of all the other ethical and practical virtues a person cultivates over time through daily practice. The golden heart of a flower, the nucleus from which the petals unfurl towards the sun at dawn, is a tangible manifestation and an eloquent expression of its magnanimity, and so are the virtues a person cultivates, unfurling toward the creation of beauty and order in their daily lives. This transformative effect of magnanimity on the human soul is a key aspect of its impact.
Magnanimity is not about seeking status or power but about earning honor from select individuals, such as family and meaningful sources. In their pursuit of excellence in all things, these magnanimous individuals, particularly in significant endeavors, demonstrate an outwardly oriented selflessness expressed by having a fulfilled and rich inner world. Their actions, driven by a deep sense of purpose, inspire others to look beyond themselves and contribute to the world.
I have encountered women in Bolivia who find cascades of fulfillment in service. They are their community's pillars, spiritually nurturing it like a crystalline well cradling with utmost care the clear water scented with faith and healing. These women dedicate themselves to their church, known by Catholics as the bride of Christ. I have witnessed and felt the magnanimous spirit of these women, who express it elegantly, much like a beautiful bride on her wedding day, with a feminine charm spreading her grace like a fairy's enchantment. They ask for nothing and give of themselves generously to honor Christ by nurturing a dignified community.
Once, I met a magnanimous man in Yucatán who knew not he was magnanimous, but I am sure he felt he had a great soul, for without one, the man could not be magnanimous. This man was not the CEO of the construction company he worked for. He was an engineer, one of many, but he did not go unnoticed. Everyone in town knew this man, from the poorest construction worker who had recently arrived in the small city looking for a job to the wealthiest man in the state.
Looking from the outside, one might perceive him as a simple man, one that most people with a lack of soulfulness would ignore, cutting themselves off from getting to know the magnanimous soul everyone wanted to work with. Every building and investment he oversaw was successful for everyone involved. Even though his superiors acknowledged his work with financial modesty, this man did his job not for a specific sum of money but for honor, and status came along with it. He first honored his soul and acted with utmost appreciation and wisdom for every little opportunity begotten to him. His magnanimity had a transformative effect, elevating the spirits and work ethics of those around him.
Magnanimity is compelling and seductive because it does not seek to take from others. Instead, it nurtures beauty and honor on a grand scale from within the generosity of a person's soul. It is a virtue that draws its power from within, magnetically radiating outwards, enriching the individual and an entire community.
Magnanimity and Architecture
Magnanimity and Architecture
One can argue that the grandeur of Western architecture began in Classical Greece, with the Siphnians playing a significant role in 550 B.C. These people, hailing from the island of Siphnos, unearthed gold and silver mines on their land, a wealth they used to craft a treasure chest of unparalleled opulence for their God Apollo at Delphi on Mount Parnassus. This treasure, known as the Siphnian Treasury, testified not only to their wealth but also to their artistic and cultural contributions. Its walls were made of large rectangular blocks of marble, a material painstakingly imported from Siphnos to Delphi. The grand spectacle entrance, adorned with enormous caryatid sculptures, marble carvings of draped female figures, and pillars supporting the entablature of the classic Greek building, was a testament to their architectural prowess and cultural heritage.
This treasure house held gold and silver and rich gifts to their god, Apollo. On the wall facing the upward pathway leading toward the main temple of Apollo at Delphi, the Siphnians commissioned some of Greece's finest sculptors to adorn the treasury with scenes from the battle between the Olympian gods and the giants carved on large pieces of marble. In great detail, these scenes depicted a narrative akin to a 3D movie today. For the ancient Greeks, sculptures were not mere inanimate objects but vessels of life and animation. Sculptures were believed to live, breathe, and respond, a belief that permeated their culture and influenced their architecture. The fountain of Apollo at Versailles, evidence of the enduring spirit of ancient Greek sculpture, mirrors this belief as the horses seem to leap from the water, infused with the very force of life. Many of the sculptures in the garden fountains share this same sense of vitality, a recapitulation of the enduring influence of elaborate storytelling in architecture and design and the rich cultural and artistic heritage of ancient Greece.
In architecture, the vista of beauty and grandeur integrated within the proportions of scale fills one's inner glass with a sense of wonder, leading the mind and the heart to conceptualize beyond what one once understood as beauty, beckoning the soul to further understanding. Just like a symphony has a body of notes giving it volume and layers, the scale of a space, its interior decorations, and layout can similarly affect the inner workings of a person's soul. The scale of Versailles, per se, can make one feel like a speck of dust within its larger-than-life surrounding beauty. So did the ancient Greek temples, the Mesopotamian temple of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the Vatican in Rome.
The grandeur reminds us of the magnificence of the creator of all things, of God. It is the reminder of the vastness, mystery, and grandees of the Universe, which is yet unknown to man; it is this feeling of smallness that is also grand, for one can land on a map, conceptualizing oneself as an intricate part of a masterplan where somehow, one is a piece of the core of a Universal clock moving in conjunction with a coherent, magnanimous symphony that constitutes the reality we stand upon. The Fountain of Apollo at Versailles is nested within the Palace Gardens, the gardens are nested within the Palace, and the Palace is nested within the city of Paris. So then, space is a story within a story, and so on. This story, Meet Me at Versailles, begins in the gardens of Versailles, leading us to the Republic of Plato, a beautiful city built in speech to find justice first in dialogue and later in the soul.
Magnanimity and Education
Magnanimity and Education
So, in 1510, a wide-eyed man with a soft gaze, thin, even lips, and a long neck, all features of an elegant profile of the intellectual and introverted Raphael Sanzio da Urbino, the Italian painter and architect, was given the commission to create a body of paintings for the Vatican. The School of Athens is one of the four paintings on each wall inside the room before entering the Sistine Chapel. The painting, a grandeur in size, is approximately 8 meters wide and 5 meters tall; in America, that is 26 feet wide and 16 feet tall. The story it tells shows, with a stimulating sense of intellectual depth, the School of Athens in action. In the drama of the fresco, we see philosophers of the epoch in action to further understand their position in the society of ancient Greece.
Euclid, the father of geometry, draws a shape with a compass; their students observe with the spirit of Studiositas. Heraclitus sits on the marble stairs, lost in thought, as he contemplates the context of his writing. Parmenides, showing a text as he teaches, and a beautiful muse walks behind him, dressed in a white robe with golden trim along the edges of her attire. At the center of the painting are Plato and Aristotle, the crown of the School of Athens, conversing. Plato is pointing up with his right hand, a large book under his left arm. Aristotle points ahead. Above all paintings by Raphael, on the ceiling of the room within the Vatican where these artful renderings of ancient Greece are exposed, there is an inscription cavsarv cognito, which means knowledge of causes. This encryption, sighting the sky above the room and the paintings, defines philosophy as the knowledge of causes.
Plato's book, the Republic, stands out for its profound philosophical approach. Written as a play, with its characters described as Dramatis Personae, the book creates a rich city in speech through the art of dialogue in philosophy. It first explores justice within the city and then in the soul, a concept Plato believed was challenging to find within a soul due to its invisibility. However, he thought that one could find justice in speech, leading to the creation of the Republic. The book also delves into the importance of proper education from a young age to correctly perceive what is good, virtuous, and beautiful. This concept is crucial to understanding the soul from the classical perspective of an ancient Greek education, which we will explore further.
The Soul in Classical Greece
The Soul in Classical Greece
In the West, we understand the soul to be composed of Reason and Appetite. Our reason is a compass to what we should do, and our appetite is a pull toward titillations and a loss of focus. The continuous negotiation between reason and appetite can create tension within a person, and tension can be described as chaos. It is uncomfortable and uneasy. It is not elegant, and like the unsettled tides of an ocean crashing on rocks, its intensity can emotionally paralyze an individual with perplexity. Socrates, the founding father of Western philosophy and teacher of Plato, proposes that there is a third part of the soul: Spiritedness. He says Spiritedness does not reside where reason is, in the mind, or where appetite abides below the center of the body. Spiritedness resides in our chest between our higher faculties of reason and our lower faculties of appetite. To understand this more nuancedly, Socrates teaches that there are two ways of looking. One of them is Cutiositas, and another is Studiositas.
In modernity, we can easily argue without hesitation that curiosity is something positive becuase it leads people to learn about something they did not know. But this was different during the medieval period and its traditions. Thomas Aquinas, for example, thought that curiosity was a vice. Curiosity for the classics was perceived as obscene and ugly—a way of looking at the world that can lead man toward too much reliance on the lower faculties and away from the proper virtues. Socrates and Plato taught that the essence of curiosity is not the genuine desire to learn but rather the desire to erode what is truly beautiful. Curiosity as a vice is described as a passionate spectacle rather than a genuine beckoning of beauty toward proper learning. Studiositas, on the other hand, is the desire to focus on the object to learn and enrich our knowledge of some reality, refining our perception to more beauty through sophisticated philosophical understanding.
Philosophy then, dear reader, cultivates Studiositas, which means philosophy is an ethical enterprise becuase it teaches us how our ethical disposition shapes how we see the world around us. And so, returning to the conversation about the soul, Studiasitas for the classics is located in our chest as the Spiritedness, the third aspect of the soul Socrates gives us an understanding about. Within the context of Reason and Appetitie, Spiritedness is not the desire to learn for mere intellectual pursuits, nor is it to satiate the desires of the Appetites. Spiritedness is the moral and ethical center of a human being, inviting us to reflect on our own moral compass through philosophy and classical education.
And so, to those inclined to philosophy, I have good news: Philosophy requires a moral disposition, which means you are morally inclined. It is a profound and elegant preference of the soul. The philosophically inclined understand that passions and emotions are the ingredients that shape how we see the world around us and how these perceptions shape our actions and behavior. And so, the rearing of their education is of significant importance. Socrates in Plato's Republic asks, How are people going to be educated? The pillar of education to Plato is music; what he means by this is works inspired by muses, works of art. He proposes to begin with mythos, false tales, stories that aren't real but are morally true.
"First, as it seems, we must supervise the makers of tales; and if they make a fine tale, it must be approved, but if it's not, it must be rejected. We'll persuade nurses and mothers to tell approved tales to their children and to shape their souls with tales more than their bodies with hands. Most of those they now tell must be thrown out. " [1]
Socrates thinks that melody, harmony, and lyrics shape the soul profoundly. Thus, he says, teaching to perceive beauty correctly must begin at a young age through proper tales.
"Don't you know that the beginning is the most important part of every work and that this is especially so with anything young and tender? For at that stage, it is its most plastic, and each thing assimilates itself to the model whose stamp anyone wishes to give" [2]
To the classics, proper education in youth is necessary for man to perceive fine things and take pleasure in them before grasping reasonable speech.
"So, Glaucon," I said, "isn't this why the rearing in music is most sovereign? Because rhythm and harmony most of all insinuate themselves into the inmost part of the soul and most vigorously lay hold of it in bringing grace with them; and they make a man graceful if he is correctly reared, if not, the opposite. Furthermore, it is sovereign because the man properly reared on rhythm and harmony would have the sharpest sense of what's been left out and what isn't a fine product of craft or what isn't a fine product of nature. And, due to his having the right kind of dislikes, he would praise the fine things; and, taking pleasure in them and receiving them into his soul, he would be reared on them and become a gentleman. He would blame and hate the ugly in the right way while he's still young before he is able to grasp reasonable speech. And when reasonable speech comes, the man who was reared in this way would take most delight in it, recognizing it on account of its being akin? [3]
Reading the excerpts from The Republic reveals to us that the text is a play. Plato writes only dramatic dialogues to display the dramatic nature of the philosophical enterprise. Philosophy is embedded in dialogue in the context of a story of some idea, some occurrence outside of what the philosopher already knows. Thus, it seeks to understand and discover itself further. The wisdom is in the drama. Plato invites us to look at the dialogue to understand the context in which philosophy resides.
Philosophy does not deconstruct reason; it instead sees it, understands it, and expands it to see further in more detail and with better resolution. Philosophy cheats not because it is a moral enterprise for people searching for beauty and harmony through proper rearing of the ethical virtues through music, the muses, and art. It observes dialogue to understand it, refining its previous understanding of reality with great sensitivity. Philosophy is not a disposition of doubt, nor does it create constant skepticism. It is not a set of formulas to copy and paste into an argument to develop further doubt or win an argument selfishly.
The philosopher wins when his heart and mind expand through proper seeing, creating more beauty within his soul, and not through doubt or nihilism. He listens to the dramatic dialogue of what is being communicated with great sensitivity and ethics and is receptive to what the drama is saying or could be saying. He knows the faculties of consciousness, clarity, intellect, and way of perceiving reality through genuine beauty are his greatest gifts because it is through them that he can refine the music of his soul.