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8 - Generosity breeds content: self-mastery through self-esteem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2009

Deborah J. Brown
Deborah J. Brown
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Summary

Have we, in this, lost more than a mere word? Is there also some quality so far faded from our world and our literature that we find it hard to recognize in the writings of men long dead, so that when they would speak to us over the abysm of time we cannot clearly hear what they are saying?

(Margaret Greaves on the passing of ‘magnanimity’ (Greaves, 1964: 14)

Managing our desires and regrets through reflection on providence and the illusory fortuna takes us only so far towards the rational self-mastery Descartes deems necessary for attaining the good in this life. It assists us in maintaining our equilibrium when things don't turn out as we had hoped, but it cannot prevent our being affected by things that induce in us the wrong kinds of desires or other kinds of unruly passions. Nor do we through this process move beyond the realm of self-regarding desires to become definitively moral beings. A stronger medicine is required to overcome these defects – générosité – which is first a passion of the soul and then, through habituation, a virtue as well. Since générosité is both the key to all the other virtues and a general remedy for all defects of the passions, it is an essential component of emotional health and moral development (PS, art. 161).

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Descartes and the Passionate Mind , pp. 188 - 209
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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