Aristotle’s claim sounds counterintuitive at first: how can calamity—something that wounds, frightens, or impoverishes—ever be “beautiful”? Yet he is not praising the calamity itself; he is praising the human response to it. Beauty here points to a moral and emotional nobility that becomes visible when a person meets hardship without being reduced by it.
From the outset, the quote asks us to shift focus away from suffering as a mere event and toward character as a kind of artistry. In that shift, suffering becomes a stage on which the virtues of courage, self-command, and dignity can be clearly seen, even when the outcome remains painful. [...]
