Hegel modeled plastic character on Aristotle forming Alexander’s genius

Evidence

At his instigation there began ‘the production of those eternal monuments of sculpture’; his orations were addressed to a ‘band of men whose genius has become classical for all centuries’ (ibid., Suhrkamp 12, p. 318). Here again we meet the same examples: Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristophanes. Further, Alexander himself is characterized as a ‘plastic spirit’: … [He] had been educated by the deepest and also the most comprehensive thinker of antiquity, by Aristotle, and the education was worthy of the man who had undertaken it. Alexander was initiated into the most profound metaphysics: therefore his nature was thoroughly refined and liberated from the customary bonds of mere opinion, crudities and empty fantasies (dadurch wurde sein Naturell vollkommen gereinigt und von den sonstigen Banden der Meinung, der Roheit, des leeren Vorstellens befreit). Aristotle left this grand nature as unconstrained as it was already, but impressed on it a deep consciousness of what Truth is, and formed the spirit so endowed with genius into a plastic character moving freely like a sphere roams through its own aether. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1303

Categorization

• XREF: This pays off the earlier chapters’ reading of plastic individuals as self-made from substantial personality (ch30 claims) and connects plasticity to the hexis/formed-character thread running throughout the book.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source