Gentleness is a personal quality which can be part of one's

character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to Theoph ...

. It consists of kindness, consideration, and amiability.

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

used it in a technical sense as the

virtue A virtue () is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be morality, moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is Value (ethics), valued as an Telos, end purpos ...

that strikes the

mean A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

with regard to anger: being too quick to anger is a

vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, Habit (psychology), habit or item generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhe ...

, but so is being detached in a situation where anger is appropriate; justified and properly focused anger is named mildness or gentleness. Gentleness is not passive; it requires a resistance to brutality. Gentleness does not submit to tyranny, but it responds with a tender awareness of others' experiences and pain. According to , gentleness comes from releasing ourselves from desires, like wanting others to read our minds, seeking their attention, expecting continuous agreement, or wanting them to always please us. He suggests that focusing on wants creates an endless cycle, but by releasing and gently inviting, we can attain our goals. Another historical context for gentleness emerged in medieval times, associated with higher social classes. This is reflected in terms like

gentleman ''Gentleman'' (Old French: ''gentilz hom'', gentle + man; abbreviated ''gent.'') is a term for a chivalrous, courteous, or honorable man. Originally, ''gentleman'' was the lowest rank of the landed gentry of England, ranking below an esquire ...

gentlewoman A gentlewoman (from the Latin ''gentilis'', belonging to a ''gens'', and English 'woman') in the original and strict sense is a woman of good family, analogous to the Latin ''generosus'' and ''generosa''. The closely related English word "gentr ...

, and

gentry Gentry (from Old French , from ) are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. ''Gentry'', in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to Landed property, landed es ...

. Over time, the concept of gentle behavior evolved from the literal gentry to the metaphorical "like a gentleman," applicable to anyone. Philosopher and psychoanalyst Anne Dufourmantelle wrote in her book, ''Power of Gentleness'', that gentleness is, above all other things, a force of ''potentiality''. Gentleness, she argued: "Is an enigma. It is taken up in the double movement of welcoming and giving, it appears on the threshold of passages signed off by birth and death. Because it has its degrees of intensity, because it is a symbolic force, and because it has a transformative ability over things and beings, it is a power."

References

{{Virtues Fruit of the Holy Spirit Moral psychology Personality traits Virtue

See also

References