There is Something Greater Than Bios Here: Braveheart’s William Wallace
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What strikes us in the character of William Wallace?
Wallace is a force to be reckoned with. He seems to be exaggerated, because his person seems to be larger than life. He has two fundamental qualities which we will bring to the fore. Most people have one or the other; but in the best instances they have both. First, there is something pertaining to strength: "Yes, I have heard! He kills men by the hundreds!" Second, something pertaining to eloquence or intelligence: "And fire breathing out of his mouth."
We come to the virtue of ‘megalopsychia’, which means greatness of soul. For Aristotle, this can be characterized as a noble bearing, calmly, through great misfortunes: the one who deems himself worthy of great things and is indeed worthy of them. He is concerned with the mean between honor and dishonor. He throws himself at great dangers while throwing away his life and is open in both hate and love (Ethica, 1100b32, 1107b22, and 1123a34-1125b3).
‘Megalopsychia’ is what theologians like Saint Thomas Aquinas have understood as magnanimity. Saint Thomas says: "by its very name denotes stretching forth of the mind to great things" (ST IIa-IIae.129.1.resp.). The magnanimous man is called magnanimous because he is "minded to do some great act" (ST IIa-IIae.129.1.resp.).
Wallace has two loves, corresponding to these two qualities of the magnanimous man. First, he has a wife to protect. This corresponds with strength. Second, he has a truth to uphold, which is freedom. This corresponds to intelligence.
Father Garrigou-Lagrange, a great Thomist of the 20th century, writes of these two qualities. First, he speaks of strength—or fortitude: "The heroes of barbarian races made the perfection of man consist above all in fortitude, courage, bravery…" (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Three Ages of the Interior Life, 145-6). Second, Father Garrigou-Lagrange speaks of wisdom: "[According to the Greek Philosophers], man is distinguished from lower beings by his intellect, and therefore the perfection of man as such is chiefly the perfection of his intellect" (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Three Ages of the Interior Life, 147).
At the death of his wife, something broke inside of Wallace. It was as if when his wife died, he died alongside her. Hence, he became likened to an ethereal prowler, caring neither for life nor death but only freedom at any cost.
Ratzinger, when talking of Plato, writes: "It is both a political martyrdom and a testimony to the greater degree of reality to be found in justice as opposed to simply a biological existence…this philosophy finds its center in the idea of justice…man, to survive biologically, must be more than bios" (Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 78-9). And we see that Wallace does this. But yet there is something more.
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange writes: "Philosophical and theological systems are often true in what they affirm and false in what they deny. Why is this? Because reality, as God Made it, is far richer than all our limited and narrow conceptions" (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Three Ages of the Interior Life, 152). In Shakespeare's Hamlet, we find the phrase: "There are no things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in our philosophy" (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, sc. 5).
The character of William Wallace is a sophisticated and complicated character, who has not yet fully integrated the highest perfection which goes beyond the perfections of heroic fortitude and heroic wisdom: heroic charity. It is an instance of unfettered masculinity. As well as fortitude and wisdom, heroic charity is the highest perfection of man and is what makes him truly magnanimous.
