Too little
Diminishing the winner
Anyone could have done that with their advantages.
Possible differences are used as a reflex to avoid recognizing the actual performance.
Magnanimity
Give a rival’s excellence the credit it deserves.
Freedom from petty resentment when another's standing challenges one's pride.
Magnanimity is freedom from the petty resentment that another person’s standing can provoke. A rival’s good performance may cost you a result you wanted. You can feel that loss without shrinking their achievement to protect your own importance. This leaves you free to recognize something admirable, even from the inconvenient side of the score.
Magnanimity gives a rivalry with room for admiration
At the end of the archery round, your rival has produced the grouping you hoped would be yours. Your mind begins an inventory of mitigating circumstances: their equipment, the light, perhaps the suspicious cooperation of the air. Then you look again. Those were excellent shots. You say so. The result still stings, but the compliment does not have to wait until it stops.
Finding the balance in Magnanimity
A competitor acknowledges a rival’s excellent archery result instead of explaining it away to protect pride.
A fitting response
An undivided compliment
That was a fine round.
The merit is acknowledged without attaching a small insult or denying disappointment.
Pursued too far
Admiration as surrender
They are better, so my own effort no longer matters.
Recognizing another person’s achievement becomes an unnecessary verdict against yourself.
Another person’s excellence can be real without making your own endeavor pointless.
What Magnanimity makes possible
Magnanimity lets you learn from people you would otherwise dismiss. It can also give rivalry a longer life: both participants can pursue improvement without having to reduce the other to an obstacle. Legitimate criticism remains possible. The distinction is whether you are attending to an actual concern or searching for a reason the rival should not receive their due.
Magnanimity in ordinary life
The selection you wanted
Congratulate a selected teammate for a specific strength without pretending that your own disappointment has vanished.
Discussing a strong opponent
Describe what they did well before constructing a plan to play them differently next time.
Nearby virtues, different work
Fairness
Fairness gives interests and evidence their due. Magnanimity addresses the particular smallness of spirit that can resist another person’s merit.
Humility
Humility admits limits in your own knowledge or importance; Magnanimity allows another person to be excellent without petty resentment.
Magnanimity and its counterfeits
The compliment with a hook
“Good effort, considering…” can keep an insult alive inside apparent praise.
The gracious pose
Performing generosity for spectators while belittling the rival afterwards leaves the disposition unchanged.
How to cultivate Magnanimity
Notice the explanation that arrives immediately after a rival succeeds.
Distinguish a relevant concern from an excuse your pride would like to use.
Practice describing excellence concretely, including when its bearer unsettles you.
Try it today
Think of an ordinary performance you admired despite wishing the result had favored you. Name the particular thing done well, privately or in a sincere acknowledgment.
Questions worth returning to
- What merit am I finding inconvenient?
- Can I keep my ambition without needing their achievement to be smaller?
Keep the practice proportionate
Acknowledging skill does not require overlooking cheating, mistreatment or a relevant unfair advantage.
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
He was at his best in that race and as a result he led me over the line for the first time in his life.
Marshall W. “Major” Taylor · The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World · Chapter 16
Taylor credits Tom Butler’s performance even while discussing equipment and track conditions that affected his own race. Explanation need not consume all the space where acknowledgment belongs.
We are not sure that they all were, or that there was more nervousness than usual; but the wicket was difficult, the Australians’ fielding superb, and their bowling extraordinarily good.
R. H. Lyttelton · Cricket · Chapter II · Batting
Lyttelton questions the easy explanation that England lost through nerves and names Australia’s excellent fielding and bowling. Giving the opponent credit changes the account of defeat.
We ought not therefore to be niggardly in our praise and honour of an enemy that deserves a good name.
Plutarch presses recognition further than friendly congratulations: even an enemy can deserve praise. In a sporting contest, naming a rival’s fine work gives pride less power to edit the evidence.
…nor does he bear malice, since remembering anything, and specially wrongs, is no part of Great-mindedness, but rather overlooking them…
Aristotle · Nicomachean Ethics · Book IV · Great-mindedness · D. P. Chase translation
Aristotle’s account of great-mindedness resists nursing wrongs. His wider aristocratic ideal differs from this catalog’s definition; here the relevant insight concerns wounded pride becoming lasting resentment.
I can still see Clark waiting to congratulate me as I finished my lap of honor, which was an outstanding demonstration of good sportsmanship.
Marshall W. “Major” Taylor · The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World · Chapter 92
Taylor remembers Jackie Clark’s congratulations after losing. The later account describes Clark yielding to pressure to protest the result, so this moment is praised as a particular act rather than a certificate of flawless character.
I do not mean by that that I lost it to a bad player. It was Andy Stuart who knocked me out, and for his game I have always had a high respect.
Hutchinson distinguishes playing badly from losing to a bad player. A candid account of one’s disappointment can still preserve an opponent’s earned standing.
All games owe the zest which they bring with them to the fact that they are rooted in the emulous passion, yet they are the chief means of training in fairness and magnanimity.
William James · Talks to Teachers and to Students · What the Native Reactions Are
James finds generous rivalry in the play through which children learn to take account of one another. Competition becomes more generous through the way a rival is treated.
Continue through the catalog
Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.