ARISTOTLE'S GREAT-SOULED MAN: THE LIMITED PERFECTION OF THE ETHICAL VIRTUES

This article argues that Aristotle's account of greatness of soul in the Nicomachean Ethics is an intentional illustration of both the excellence and the limited character of a life defined by the ethical virtues. Aristotle's great-souled man is, as I show, a genuine, yet 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. I argue that, although some of the harshest critiques of the great-souled man in the scholarship on the Nicomachean Ethics are misplaced, the sympathetic readers of Aristotle's portrait of supposed human excellence who nevertheless find flaws in the character of the great-souled man, have, broadly speaking, the reaction Aristotle sought to evoke in those of his