Commusings: What Makes a Person Great? by Jonny Thomson

Dear Commune Community,
 

The label of greatness has long been bestowed upon war heroes. We think of Achilles, George Washington, Joan of Arc, and Simon Bolivar.

Then there are those less famous but equally great. As a Polish soldier and resistance fighter during World War II, Witold Pilecki volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to gather intelligence and organize resistance within the camp. He later escaped and fought in the Warsaw Uprising.

Pilecki is considered great for his selflessness, for putting the sake of others before his own welfare. And this is the curious thing about greatness, as today’s essayist Jonny Thomson so eloquently elucidates. True greatness is to be “seen as great.” When it’s self-proclaimed, it’s hollow.

Those who display greatness on the battlefield are easier to identify, for their courage is on full display. They know they can suffer injury or even death, yet they press on because they feel connected to a cause greater than themselves. They display bravery in the face of vulnerability.

The word vulnerable comes from the Latin word vulnerabilis, which means “wounding.” In a general sense, vulnerable means “open to attack or damage.” When someone is physically vulnerable, like a soldier, they are exposed to the possibility of injury or harm.

But, of course, vulnerability is more often an emotional state. And this is where we all have the opportunity to step into our greatness. Greatness may emerge from navigating life bravely with the knowing that you may be hurt, rejected, or disappointed. You don’t have to be Napoleon. You can have that hard conversation with a loved one. You can write that book. You can march for your beliefs. You can put others before yourself – like Aunt Lucy. 

Here and there rarely great on IG @jeffkrasno.

In love, include me,
Jeff

 • • •

What Makes a Person Great?

By Jonny Thomson

I went to a funeral last year. It was a Christian funeral in a medieval church, overlooking the beautiful, windy downs of East Sussex. And, while the setting was perfect, the Reverend was not. I appreciate that it’s hard to preside over hundreds of funerals a year, writing sermons about people you never knew. It’s hard to authentically grieve someone on the basis of a single-page biography and an afternoon speaking with the bereaved. But still, this particular Reverend wasn’t very good — his sermon was the generic, cookie-cutter rote of unpolished prose.

This fact was made all the more obvious by what followed. When the Reverend stepped back and invited the widower — my uncle — to speak, it was like night and day. My uncle began his speech by saying, “Lucy was a great person. She was a great person.” What he went on to argue was that Auntie Lucy was not great in the way we say, “Oh, I had a great time,” but great in the way the ancients used the term.

She was greater than me. She was greater than most. She was a bright beacon in a twinkling cloud of fireflies. That’s what my uncle meant when he said, “Lucy was a great person.”

• • •

In moral philosophy, there is something called “supererogatory actions.” These are those actions that are above and beyond the call of duty. They are the exceptional acts of exceptional people.

On any given day, we are all expected to do the bare minimum. We should wash, be polite, and wear half-respectable clothes. We should cover our mouths when we cough and help someone if they fall over. Equally, we are expected not to do certain other things. We shouldn’t ogle attractive strangers or steal from a local store. We shouldn’t murder. And, while it’s good that you didn’t murder someone today, it’s not praiseworthy. The reason we don’t congratulate someone for going a day without murder is that this is an expected behavior. It’s the norm. We tend to only praise people for things that are supererogatory.

This is what it means to be “great.” There's nothing great about average and normal. Aunt Lucy didn’t simply live a life free from murder and with impeccable manners. She went beyond what was expected. Lucy was great because her life was defined by the exemplary acts of the supererogatory few who stand out from the crowd and feature in our history books. Every day, Lucy would check in on the elderly in her village who lived alone. Every week, Lucy organized the county food bank (a local charity in the UK). And in every conversation, Lucy saw the good in you. She made sure to listen and to see you. You never felt like a time-wasting fixture with Lucy. You were all that mattered.

Of course, all of this made Lucy hugely popular. People stopped her in the street, and her birthdays were busy affairs. Her funeral was packed tighter than any I’ve been to in my life. And this, in turn, made her great. Because, the thing about greatness is that you cannot self-identify as great. Saying, “I'm great,” unironically, doesn't make you great; it makes you a narcissist. To be great is to be seen as great.

• • •

When we look at greatness in this way, then it comes very close to another word we use less often these days: honor. We don’t talk so much today about the “honorable” thing to do; we rarely call someone honorable or insist we act honorably in every situation. To use this language sounds dated — as if you’re an extra in a Jane Austen novel. Yet for Aristotle, greatness is all about being honorable.

For Aristotle, honor is when a person places the community’s good above their own. They give up their own chance at happiness or peace for the good of others. It's done not for reward or promotion, and the great person will turn down (even be insulted by) payment. When Lucy bought and delivered the shopping for her octogenarian neighbor, she was doing so at the expense of her own comfort. She could have had a lie-in, gone for coffee, visited a spa, meditated, or done any number of acts of “self-care.” But she chose, instead, the care of another. The care of her community.

Aristotle was an Ancient Greek, and, as with most of the ancient world, things were a little different then. For one, it was a far more bloodily violent world to live in. And so, when Aristotle gives his own examples of “great people,” there is an unignorable element of sword-swinging, chest-stabbing, blood-splattered machismo to things. He chose Achilles and Ajax — heroes from the Iliad — and then Alcibiades and Lysander — Greek generals who won victories for Athens and Sparta, respectively. But it was not their penchant for death that made these people great; it was the motivation behind their actions. They were pulled to war so as to protect the community from which they were born. They gave up their own pleasure and risked their own lives so others could enjoy theirs. They sacrificed their today so their friends and family could enjoy a tomorrow.¹ And, in their martial honor, they were awarded the title of “greatness.”

As we’ve seen already, you cannot achieve honor in isolation. Someone living on a desert island cannot earn honor because honor is a social title given by others in the community. I honor you. We honor some great person. Honor is a gift given from one person to another. It’s the collective appreciation of a country, as they lay titles, gifts, or medals on those they deem great. The extravagant peacock costume of self-congratulating dictators, with their jackets covered in medals, is not great. It’s ridiculous.

• • •

So, what would Aristotle have said about Aunt Lucy? Well, even the most ardent Aristotelian scholar ought to acknowledge that Aristotle was not exactly a feminist. His philosophy veers from being slightly sexist to flagrantly misogynistic. Women are, at best, seen as either very rarely capable of greatness or, at worst, very rarely capable of any virtue at all.

Aristotle was wrong in this, and my uncle was right. Aunt Lucy was someone who managed to walk the difficult corridors of virtue — she did good without needing to be seen as doing good. Almost all of her actions were honorable yet never done for that honor. She did things that invited the praise of her community but never for the praise. 

When my uncle stood up after the staid and lackluster Reverend to say, “Lucy was a great person,” that was only an opinion. It was simply the love-lined expression of the freshly grieving. What turned it from opinion to fact was the near-universal nodding of the congregation. Everyone in that old, flinty church agreed with what my uncle said. Hundreds of people recognized that, in a coffin, atop an altar, lay a person who did great actions. Lucy had earned her greatness.

And, if you have any reason to doubt what I say, there’s a grave somewhere on the windy downs of East Sussex, covered in the fresh flowers of a community, still grieving a year later.

1. In homage to John Maxwell Edmonds’ famous epitaph composed for those fallen in battle:

When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrows these gave their today.

Jonny Thomson is a public philosopher and runs the social media accounts Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). He is the bestselling author of three books: Mini Philosophy, Mini Big Ideas, and Mini Psychology. Jonny lives in North Oxfordshire with his wife and two young sons.