Be magnificent – it’s a virtue!

New research from the University of St Andrews is urging people to “be magnificent”. 

Published in the journal  Mind, this work provides a new perspective on the nature of human happiness and how we can flourish, via the ancient philosopher Aristotle’s account of the virtue of ‘magnificence’.  

Scholars have often struggled to make sense of magnificence as a virtue – a form of human excellence, like courage or generosity – which contributes to a flourishing human life.  

This new work asserts that magnificence is ultimately about exceeding the necessities of daily living as a means of celebrating and expressing that we value something: for example, celebrating weddings with flowers and feasts, glorifying the gods with beautiful temples, giving gifts to those we love and honour, and marking special occasions in similar ways. By adorning, beautifying and in general going beyond the necessities of everyday life, these things are marked out and therefore made, special.  

Author of the paper, Dr Margaret Hampson from the School of Philosophy, said: “Magnificence contributes to our happiness or flourishing, then, because we are beings who need to celebrate and, when the occasion demands it, to rise above the everyday. It brings colour to our lives.” 

 The article also addresses the question of who can be magnificent. Scholars have often assumed that magnificence is an elitist virtue—that it must require great wealth to perform acts of magnificence—but this new work suggests there are ways that most of us can bring magnificence into our lives, by going beyond the necessities to celebrate what we value, without great costs.  

ENDS