This is an
article I wrote for the International Encyclopedia of Ethics. I
think its interest goes beyond the purely academic, so I'm putting a
copy here.
With few
exceptions, the moral philosophers of the last several centuries have
written little about generosity. Those of the ancient, medieval, and
Renaissance periods, however, often treated it as an important
subject. Though Plato ignores it, Aristotle devotes a substantial
chapter to it, as does Aquina. Indeed, in Book IV of the Nicomachean
Ethics (1119b–1122a) Aristotle recognizes two different virtues
that could be regarded as subspecies of generosity: eleutheria
(“freedom”) and megaloprepeia (“magnanimity”). Descartes
calls generosity “the key of all the virtues, and a general remedy
for all the disorders of the passions” in his treatise The Passions
of the Soul (Art. 161). Spinoza discusses it at some length in Part
IV of his Ethics and treats it as intimately connected with freedom
(Propositions 37 and 50–73). After that, philosophers seem to have
lost interest in the idea of generosity, until Nietzsche, a
philosophical atavist on so many matters, sings the praises of
something he calls a “gift-giving virtue” in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (Part I, Ch. 22). Most likely, Nietzsche’s gift-giving
virtue and Spinoza’s generositas are best understood as a
super-virtue, a sort of generosity of spirit, of which the trait
that we ordinarily call generosity is a natural consequence.
One of the reasons
for the decline of interest in generosity is fairly obvious. In
premodern Western ethics it was typically assumed that the sort of
value ethics is concerned with is something that inheres in the
individual person, namely virtue. Virtue was typically supposed to
consist of particular traits, such as courage, temperance, or
generosity. The typically modern ethical theories – utilitarianism
and Kantian deontology – are, essentially, rules for selecting
right actions. Determining what is the right thing to do is quite a
different matter from seeking to understand what sort of person is a
good person. Recent decades have seen a great resurgence of interest
in “virtue ethics,” but this has typically been treated as an
alternative way of doing what Kantianism and utilitarianism do and
has not led to a comparable resurgence of interest in analyzing
particular traits, such as generosity.
Another possible
reason why generosity was much more highly regarded before modernity
set in is political. Moral codes and ethical ideals that place a high
value on generosity seem to be most comfortably at home in
aristocratic societies. The very adjective generosus, like
Aristotle’s eleutherios (whence the derivative noun eleutheriotes,
“freedom”), meant “noble”; and the kind of “nobility”
originally meant here was one of birth or “generation”
(generosus, generare, and genus are words from the same family) –
hence it was political in nature. Part of the reason for the
aristocrats’ high valuation of generosity must have been their
disdain for productive activities. Giving wealth away was thought to
be more appropriate for an aristocrat than productively investing it
in agricultural land or capital goods. Further, the fact that one has
wealth to give away rather than consume is proof of one’s lofty
status.
Generosity differs
in potentially important ways from other virtues that necessarily
involve conferring benefits or detriments upon others (what is
sometimes called the “other-regarding virtues”), and some of the
differences might shed light on the question of which cultural and
ethical systems tend to make generosity an important virtue and which
tend to make it less so. Take for instance justice and charity.
Justice is sharply different from generosity. Acts that are just –
for instance being fair to an opponent, keeping a promise, or giving
students the grades they deserve – tend to be required by
considerations of justice. On the other hand, one thing that seems to
be a necessary condition of generosity is that the act is not
required. One gives, not from duty, but from the goodness of one’s
heart. Of course, the promptings of the heart are also what typically
lies behind charitable contributions. Typically, if the benefit
conferred was charitable, it was not given because the giver already
owed it to the recipient. To this extent, it resembles generosity.
There is, however, a large difference between generosity and charity.
“Charity,” at least as the word is used in modern English, refers
to attempts to remedy deficiencies, such as poverty and disease.
Generosity, on the other hand, is an attempt to confer a positive
benefit. Generosity typically takes the form of giving, not alms, but
gifts. Charity is a response to evils, while generosity is a response
to opportunities to do good.
The notion that
justice is the cardinal other-regarding virtue would make more sense
in some worldviews than in others. The sorts of Weltanschauungen more
congenial to it would have to be ones that see the most meritorious
life as one that conforms to the relevant requirements – for
instance one that gives a privileged position to quasi-juridical
concepts like “duty” and “obligation,” as well as to other
concepts that involve an agent’s being bound to do a particular
act, such as “debt” and “owing.” Such a view becomes even
more congenial to a lofty valuation of justice if we add a strong
element of egalitarianism. Egalitarian ideas enable us to see as
either unjust many facts – for instance, the fact that one person
has a larger income than another – that might otherwise not seem to
be so. An egalitarian worldview might well be held by someone who is
quite comfortable with being a citizen in a modern, regulated, and
bureaucratized welfare state based on some sort of egalitarian
ideology – such as those that are characteristic of contemporary
Western Europe and of the English-speaking world. On the other hand,
placing a high value on charity is obviously congenial to orthodox
Christianity, with its emphasis on human sinfulness and frailty and
on the inability of humans ultimately to do well without powerful
help (such as divine grace).
By the very same
reasoning, though, generosity might be of great interest to someone
who rebels against the worldviews of modern welfare-state liberalism
and Christianity. This attitude is one of the factors that motivate
the work of Hunt and Machan on generosity. The other-regarding traits
of character connect us with our fellow human beings and thus color
the quality and the very meaning of our lives. A highly valued virtue
of charity connects us with others through their suffering and
inability to help themselves. This might well seem like the wrong
sort of focus for such an important part of one’s life. Generosity
connects us with our fellow human beings though opportunities for
advancing their positive well-being. Thus generosity, as a cardinal
virtue, can be a fundamental functioning component in a view of life
in which human beings are regarded as agents who create value and
build their lives, and not primarily as frail and sinful beings in
need of help from above. Justice, if sufficiently inflated, creates a
social world in which the good we do for others is entirely
prescribed, in which everything that is not required is prohibited: a
sort of highly regulated economy of the soul. A generous act, on the
other hand, is not required but chosen freely. To the extent that one
treats generosity as an important other-regarding virtue, one’s
ethical relations with others become a realm of moral freedom.
References
Aquinas, Thomas 1948
[ca. 1273]. Summa theologica, trans. Fathers of the Dominican
Province. New York: Benziger Bros. (Esp. 1a 2ae: Question 117.)
Aristotle 1985. The
Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett.
(Esp. Book IV, Ch. 1 = 1119b–1122a.)
Descartes, René
1989 [1649]. The Passions of the Soul, trans. Stephen H. Voss.
Indianapolis: Hackett. (Esp. Articles 156, 159, 161.)
Nietzsche, Friedrich
2006 [1883–5]. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. Robert Pippin, trans.
Adrian del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Esp. Part I,
Ch. 22: “On the Gift-Giving Virtue.”)
Spinoza,
Baruch/Benedictus de 2005 [1677]. Ethics, trans. Edwin Curley.
London: Penguin Books. (Esp. Part IV, Propositions 37 and 50–73.)
Further Readings
Hunt, Lester H.
1975. “Generosity,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 12,
pp. 235–44.
Hunt, Lester H.
1997. “The Unity and Diversity of the Virtues: Generosity and
Related Matters,” in Lester H. Hunt, Character and Culture. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 55–87.
Kupfer, Joseph 1998.
“Generosity of Spirit,” The Journal of Value Inquiry, pp.
357-367.
Machan, Tibor R.
1998. Generosity: Virtue in Civil Society. Washington, DC: The Cato
Institute.
Schrift, Alan, ed.
1997. The Logic of the Gift. New York: Routledge.
Wallace, James 1978.
Virtues and Vices. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (Esp. Ch. 5:
“Benevolence.”)
White, Richard 2016.
“Nietzsche on Generosity and the Gift-Giving Virtue,” British
Journal for the History of Philosophy, pp. 348-364.