A Composite Portrait of a True American Philosophy on Magnanimity

In this chapter, we offer a composite portrait of the concept of magnanimity in nineteenth-century America, focusing on the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. In our portrait, these New England philosophers provide an account of magnanimity that reconciles it with humility, egalitarianism, and beneficence. They suggest that individuals can achieve the best sort of magnanimity without wealth, and without engaging in warfare or violence. In many respects, their project resembles that of philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, who similarly provide a modernized account of magnanimity. Yet the American account of magnanimity is also religious in a way more reminiscent of the Thomist and Stoic traditions. These Americans propose that, to become magnanimous, an individual must engage in the correct sort of philosophical inquiry, which involves direct engagement with God. They revitalize a trope from the Scottish Enlightenment—the notion of the magnanimous ‘true philosopher’—but provide a novel, religious, and Americanized account of it. For example, they contend that, to become true philosophers, individuals must directly engage with and study wilderness, which they associate with America and contrast with the culture and conformity of Europe.