Magnanimity

What Magnanimity means in shared life

The opposing neighborhood campaign warned that the proposed traffic route would make a crossing harder to reach. Your group dismissed the warning. Now its revised proposal uses the other campaign’s observation, under a heading that reads “Our findings.” You change the credit before the report goes round. The route to a better plan has turned out to pass through your rivals’ meeting room.

Magnanimity gives…

Groups can learn across disagreements. People receive an accurate account of how the proposal improved, and a contribution does not have to be wasted merely because it came from an unwelcome source.

Finding the balance

Recognition can be precise. Giving credit for this finding does not settle every disagreement, and a correction to your own group’s account need not become a ceremony of defeat.

In ordinary life

A borrowed design

Acknowledge the other association’s watering system even if your own garden has the larger sign.

A public summary

Keep the source of a correction visible when your group shares the improved account.

Nearby virtues, different work

Open-Mindedness

Open-Mindedness considers the objection before deciding; Magnanimity acknowledges the contribution when pride makes that difficult.

Contrition

Contrition addresses your own wrong. Magnanimity can give another group its credit without turning the moment into a speech about yourself.

Recognizing a counterfeit

A counterfeit of Magnanimity: “They finally had one good idea” gives praise with a claw still attached. Accurate acknowledgment names the contribution without arranging a smaller humiliation beside it.

How to cultivate Magnanimity

• Describe the rival’s contribution before describing your reaction to it.
• Check whether the credit disappears when the account reaches your supporters.
• Let a deserved acknowledgment stand without a balancing criticism.

Try it today

Identify a sound contribution by a group you often disagree with. Write one accurate sentence of acknowledgment without adding “but.” Share it only in a suitable, welcome setting; recognition does not endorse unrelated conduct.

Questions worth returning to

• Would I call this a contribution if my own group had made it?
• What am I trying to recover by attaching a put-down to the credit?

Choose your practice

The situations on these pages are illustrative. These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Read these passages in their original settings through the source links.

1. I have long looked with suspicion on all views which are recommended as peculiarly consolatory to wounded vanity or other personal disappointment.

   Theophrastus (fictional narrator), in George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such
   I. Looking Inward.

   The narrator stops converting disappointment into a theory of his own superior virtue.

2. some of them have perhaps been struck with surprise at his reserve in praising the works of his contemporaries

   Theophrastus (fictional narrator), in George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such
   IV. A Man Surprised At His Originality.

   A character’s reluctance to praise contemporaries exposes a rivalry that his unpretending appearance conceals.

3. Surely it had been pity indeed, if so much of this had been lost as would have been if it had been crushed out by the pride of intellect, that will not stoop to look at beauty, unless its own kings and great men have had a hand in it.

   William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art
   Making The Best Of It

   Morris challenges pride that can recognize beauty only when its own celebrated figures have made it.

4. An upstart, though of the greatest merit, is generally disagreeable, and a sentiment of envy commonly prevents us from heartily sympathizing with his joy.

   Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
   CHAP. V. Of the selfish passions.

   Smith describes the envy that obstructs recognition of merit. His period label describes a social reaction, not the person’s moral worth.

5. He whom success has made confident of his abilities, quickly claims the privilege of negligence, and looks contemptuously on the gradual advances of a rival, whom he imagines himself able to leave behind whenever he shall again summon his force to the contest.

   Samuel Johnson, The Works of Samuel Johnson, Volume III: The Rambler
   No. 111

   Success can make a person contemptuous of a rival’s steady progress; Johnson exposes the cost of that complacency.

6. It would be ungracious indeed for me who have been so much taught by him, that I cannot help feeling continually as I speak that I am echoing his words, to leave out the name of John Ruskin from an account of what has happened since the tide, as we hope, began to turn in the direction of art.

   William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art
   The Beauty Of Life

   Morris openly credits Ruskin’s influence on his own speech, allowing another person’s standing to remain visible in his contribution.

7. When we truly know the Europe which is great and good, we can effectively save ourselves from the Europe which is mean and grasping.

   Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism
   Nationalism in Japan

   Tagore resists wholesale contempt even while criticizing Europe’s imperial conduct. Recognizing a real contribution can sharpen disagreement rather than amounting to defeat.

Continue through the catalog