The Ethics of Philanthropy

Abstract

This essay considers the ancient antecedents to the “new field” of the ethics of philanthropy, arguing that key questions such as “to whom should we give our money?” have already been explored by ancient authors and that the answers they give to these questions can be quite different to the answers given by contemporary scholars. By analysing the treatment of giving in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero’s De Officiis, and Seneca’s De Beneficiis, I argue that the focus of ancient thinkers upon giving within one’s own community can be viewed as a possible response to a number of issues that have been raised by modern scholars, including the “problem of acting at a distance” and the “problem of accountability.” Moreover, these ancient thinkers have additional, positive reasons for thinking that philanthropy should take place within one’s own community, based upon their ideas of man’s natural duty to his political community, and the social benefits that can be derived from local philanthropy. The integration of ancient perspectives, then, into these modern debates, can serve to complement and broaden research in this emerging field.     

Tradition and Reform: Aristotle’s Response to Modern Alternatives

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to articulate an Aristotelian alternative to two prominent contemporary ways of understanding human freedom and dependence on the past, and to the implications these understandings have for political life. While a liberal tendency, following Machiavelli’s emphasis on new modes and orders, understands political life to begin with breaking from the past, the more conservative camp in modern thought, following Burke in his emphasis on tradition, understands political life to begin with laws and customs inherited from the past. Aristotle’s teaching in his Nicomachean Ethics on the freedom and responsibility that make human beginnings possible points us, I propose, to a better understanding of political founding than either modern alternative. In the Politics, he connects the city to natural beginnings in the family but also calls the first who founded a city one “responsible for the greatest of goods” (Pol. 1253a31-32). And in the Ethics, he offers his own founding of a way of inquiring about politics, which engages with his predecessors, as a model for politics itself. In this way, Aristotle offers us a deeper understanding of political founding and change, even presenting his own philosophic inquiry in the Ethics as its ground and model.     

The Politics of Subjectivity in Vangelis Raptopoulos’s Urban Stories

In this article I offer a critical analysis of the spatial cultures of modern Athens through the urban portraits presented in three fictive stories by Vangelis Raptopoulos—“At the Bottom of the Sea” (Sto Vytho), “One-Way Street” (Monodromos), and “Long-Distance Call” (Yperastiko)—from his 1995 collection “In Pieces” (Kommatakia). I argue that by constructing first-person fictive narratives, written in confessional prose, Raptopoulos problematizes the notion of subjectivity in its varying relationships to modern urban and spatial cultures. My main focus is on the practice of subjective recitations of urban space in view of the narrator’s experiences of imaginative and physical spatial appropriation. I argue that these experiences and the fragmentary style, through which they are conveyed in the stories, are an incisive critique of the official planning practices of urban public space and prescribed practices of spatial mobility. By drawing on the critical-philosophical and critical-historical literature, with particular reference to Benjamin, Foucault, Lefebvre, and de Certeau, this article contributes to the broader critique of the politics of subjectivity in modern Europe.     

3. NATURE,RELIGION, AND IMAGINATION: COMMENTS ON IMAGES OF HISTORY

After sharing some reflections, I raise three questions. The first asks about the role of nature and reason according to Kant's teleological history, and the extent to which Kant's essays written before the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) are “dogmatic,” as his phrase “aim of nature” might suggest. The second asks about Kant's “impure” ethics and the role of religion. What would Kantian religion look like today? The last question concerns the relation between images and ideas—a thornier issue than Kant's initial definitions of imagination and reason would seem to suggest.     

Antimodernist Antecedents in Early Canadian Modernism: Archibald MacMechan’s “A Ballade of Canadian Literature” and F.R. Scott’s “the Canadian Authors Meet”

ABSTRACT

Archibald MacMechan’s regular column in the Montreal Standard entitled “The Dean’s Window” (1906–1933) is an important index to educated antimodernist literary values. MacMechan brought his reading of world literature into his appraisals of the Canadian scene, through his groundbreaking work, Headwaters of Canadian Literature(1924). In a 1912 “Dean’s Window” column, MacMechan, a published poet, opened with a poem of his own, “The Ballade of Canadian Literature,” which anticipated F.R. Scott’s “The Canadian Authors Meet”—itself a seminal work of early Canadian modernism. By no means binaries, the degree to which modernism and antimodernism could resemble each other is manifest in MacMechan’s and Scott’s poems, even though Scott’s poem eviscerates the Canadian Authors Association, an organization of which MacMechan was a founding member.     

Le Danger des liaisons: Censoring Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses

When Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses first appeared in late March 1782, it was an immediate succès de scandale. Laclos’s focus on his characters’ libertine psychology and his creation of a “monstrous” female villain, Merteuil, distinguished the novel from mainstream eighteenth-century French works. As an analysis of the novel’s reception demonstrates, Laclos’s suggestive portrayal of female sexuality and empowerment—and, specifically, of Merteuil—led first to the text’s association with dangerous works known as “mauvais livres” or “livres philosophiques” such as the Marquis de Sade’s Justine (1791) and the anonymous Histoire de Dom Bougre, Portier de Chartreux (1741), and later contributed to its classification as a pornographic work at the time the concept was invented in the early nineteenth century—and, ultimately, to its censorship in 1823. If the novel was devoid of explicitly sexual scenes, it nonetheless elicited such images in the minds of (at least some of) its readers and thereby caught the attention of the authorities. Les Liaisons dangereuses may be one of the most prominent historical cases of a book being banned not for what was depicted in its pages, but for the fantasies it inspired—providing a compelling twist to the adage that “pornography is in the eyes of the beholder,” or the mind of the reader.     

From Domus to Polis: Hybrid Identities in Southey’s Letters from England (1807) and Blanco White’s Letters from Spain (1822)

ABSTRACT

Robert Southey’s fictive travelogue, Letters from England, by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella (1807), inspired several imitators, most importantly José María Blanco White with his Letters from Spain (1822). These works rejuvenate a fictional device popularised by Montesquieu’s Persian Letters—the “familiar stranger”—at a crucial juncture when British involvement in the affairs of Europe provoked a reassessment of pre-Revolutionary cosmopolitanism. The stranger as home-interpreter calls attention to an emerging emphasis in European Romantic thought on the contingency of freedom with hybrid, mobile identities, prefiguring the psycho-social-historical terrain in which Jean-François Lyotard and Dean MacCannell link modernity with travel and tourism. This essay argues that the Romantic figure of the foreign traveller expresses a condition of travel, reflecting Lyotard’s critique of human contingency in his essay “Domus and the Megalopolis.” Southey’s sympathetic stranger modulates a conversation with Wordsworth about the nature of modern subjectivity, historically contingent yet paradoxically liberated from historical particulars. Blanco White’s Letters from Spain demonstrates how displacement, emigration, and expatriation become refigured as conditions of the modern psyche, especially visible in moments of political crisis, when the cosmopolitan polis is immobilised by the myth of the domus.     

A convenient “inconvenience”: The eponymous legacy of Sir William Richard Gowers (1845–1915)

A century since his passing, the legacy of the great Victorian clinical neurologist, Sir William Richard Gowers (1845–1915), remains traceable to students and practitioners of medicine worldwide through eponymous medical terms named in his honor. Popular designations like “Gowers’ sign” continue to lead curious minds to learn more about the pioneering neurologist’s lifework and influence, and yet Gowers himself was not fond of medical eponyms. Memorably remarking that eponyms were an educational “inconvenience” in medicine, Gowers was apt to disfavor the system in the very same lecture in which he reportedly first referred to the spinal cord fasciculus that later took his name. This article will examine Gowers’ own use of eponyms alongside the eponymous medical terms named for him, and, in the process, will show how Gowers’ “inconvenience” may be of great service to the historically inclined modern clinician today.     

Al-Fārābī’s Cave: Aristotle’s Logic and the Ways of Socrates and Thrasymachus

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric al-Fārābī harmonizes Plato and Aristotle in terms of philosophic education by ordering Aristotle’s eight logical works onto Plato’s famous image of the cave. He represents the way out of the cave with Aristotle’s four logical works of ascent (Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, and Posterior Analytics) and the return into the cave through Aristotle’s four logical works of the descent (Topics, Sophistical Refutations, Rhetoric, and Poetics). Al-Fārābī’s image of ascent and descent also alludes to Socrates’ conception of protreptic education in Book VII of the Republic. In essence, protreptic education consists in the Socratic art that freely turns the soul from the images and political interpretations of things to being itself. In this essay I argue that for al-Fārābī the four logical works of ascent guide the soul to free itself from its habituations so as to contemplate real beings, particularly the good of one’s own soul and the souls of one’s fellow citizens. Yet the ruler needs to use the arts of “descent,” as demonstrated by Thrasymachus, in order to rule the city well. The way of Socrates consists of the logical methods used to come to possess knowledge of being, while the way of Thrasymachus comprises the methods of persuasion to habituate citizens and protect the philosophic quest for the truth. Al-Fārābī, I conclude, combines the way of Socrates and the way of Thrasymachus in order to show that both ways are useful and necessary for good governance.     

Körpergefühl und Raumvorstellung: Leonardo und Descartes

“Experience and the conception of the world in science in transition to modern times” is the general subject. There are two different points to be made clear, i.e. 1. That the conception of the world had to be made imaginable by art before it could be taken over by science. The central perspective dates back to about three centuries before the time Descartes developed the co-ordinate system. 2. Furthermore it should be taken into account that it was first of all due to the lead of the painters (especially in the Italy of the Quattrocento’) that the possibility of making experiences had changed. In a space opened by a perspective view and seemingly thus appearing as measurable even the painted figures acquire a new reality. Due to his anatomic studies Leonardo could treat the natural movement of the figures shown in his paintings. It was the artists who first of all investigated optics and anatomy before relations could be measured with the aid of scientific methods ami before quantities — instead of qualities — could become the base of unbiased science, as called for by Galilei in 1623.     

Covering the Building of a Kingdom: The Saudi Arabian Authority in The London Times and The New York Times, 1901–1932

The orientalist literature subjected the Middle East in an exotic way — mostly as an “Arabian Nights” society ruled by traditional sultans and/or tribal chiefs — rather than modern governance structure's “bureaucracy.” The presumption within postcolonial scholarship has been that this perception influenced the policy landscape in the United States and Europe, especially the media depictions of the oriental leaders and leadership. The paper empirically tests this hypothesis through content analysis using Weber's categorization of leadership of two newspapers of record — The New York Times in the United States and The London Times in the United Kingdom — during the period of state building in Saudi Arabia (1901–1932). I find that rather than depicting the Saudi leadership as “backward,” these newspapers in particular, tend to overstate the development of the Saudi state during this period. As Weber is best known for his three types of authority, it benefits the discipline to see how the interpretive communities of Western journalists operationalized “authority” in terms of politics and religion of Saudi Arabia as this monarchy emerged.     

Tannery and Duhem on the Concept of a System in the History of Philosophy and History of Science

ABSTRACT

This article examines John Toland’s Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews (1714) by placing it alongside other elements of his engagement with Jewish history, Mosaic principles and wider “Hebraica” – specifically, an appendix to his Nazarenus (1718) and his Origines Judaicae (1709). Although Toland’s case for Jewish naturalization shows the strong influence of Locke’s case for political and religious toleration, and also of a general “mercantilism”, it is argued that one of its main characteristics is a philosophical naturalism, shown in its treatment of the human species as a whole. Furthermore, it is also argued that this same naturalism is evident throughout Toland’s engagement with Jewish history and Mosaic thought. Accordingly, when we “fold” these works into each other, we find each enhancing our understanding of the others – not just as examples of Toland’s treatment of “Jewish affairs”, but also as illustrations of a consistent conceptual materialism. To emphasize this, the article concludes by suggesting that the figure of Rabbi Simone Luzzatto, author of a 1638 plea for tolerance, provides an important clue in understanding the links between Toland’s political injunctions and the philosophical foundation on which they are built.     

“Machiavellian” Instruction: Why Hesiod’s Ainos Has No Moral

Hesiod’s fable (ainos) of the hawk and the nightingale, addressed to kings, notoriously has no moral. Its depiction of a hawk carrying off a nightingale, preaching the futility of either resistance or pleading, appears to communicate the counsel, commonly designated as “Machiavellian,” that a ruler must know how to imitate a beast as well as a man. Such instruction—which advises that unjust actions are justifiable and necessary for a ruler—is clearly at odds with Hesiod’s explicit exhortations to his brother Perses to work hard and avoid hubris, and his caution that unjust kings or lords (basileis) will be punished by Zeus. I argue that Hesiod’s addressing the fable to kings “who themselves have understanding” explains the lack of a moral. To substantiate my claim I compare Hesiod’s and Machiavelli’s ranking of intellects, and illuminate Hesiod’s position with particular reference to and comparison with Machiavelli’s Prince, and examples drawn from the Old Testament and Old Irish law.     

Benedicto Kiwanuka and Catholic Democracy in Uganda

In this article, I introduce Benedicto Kiwanuka (1922–72), Uganda’s first prime minister and most prominent modern Catholic politician, and explore how his religious and political sensibilities — especially his vision of democracy — intersected with Catholic thought and historical experience in Buganda and Uganda. Far from turning him into a “Catholic tribalist” looking to empower Catholics vis à vis other religious groups, Kiwanuka’s Catholic identity was a core component of his political commitment to non-sectarian democracy, the common good, and pan-ethnic nation-building. He saw in Catholicism the possibility of envisioning political solidarity during a moment of social rupture, and he and his Democratic Party used Catholic and biblical discourse and theology to help undergird a broader political commitment to liberal democratic nationalism during Uganda’s transition to independence (1958–62). At the same time, Kiwanuka’s prophetic commitment to principle — an uncompromising dogmatism often expressed in religious and theological language — also helped cost him the opportunity to lead Uganda into and beyond independence.     

Anatomy of the Superman: Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Response to Nietzsche

This essay explores D’Annunzio’s reception of Nietzsche—particularly his sociopolitical theory and idea of the Übermensch—as dramatized in his novel Le Vergini delle rocce (The Maidens of the Rocks). D’Annunzio’s attitude towards Nietzsche was complicated and contradictory, varying from fascination and rivalry to rejection and negation: rather than a philosopher or master, he saw Nietzsche as a poet and soulmate. Like many writers and artists of fin-de-siècle Europe, D’Annunzio too was attracted by Nietzsche’s elitist social theory and Übermensch, of which he presents his own version especially in Maidens of the Rocks. In the novel, the young aristocrat Claudio Cantelmo aspires to overcome himself. However, the fact that Cantelmo fails to achieve his dream of fathering a New King of Rome, reveals D’Annunzio’s deep skepticism about contemporary Italy as well as his own “decadent” soul.     

Franz Joseph Gall on hemispheric symmetries

ABSTRACT

Franz Joseph Gall believed that the two cerebral hemispheres are anatomically and functionally similar, so much so that one could substitute for the other following unilateral injuries. He presented this belief during the 1790s in his early public lectures in Vienna, when traveling through Europe between 1805 and 1807, and in the two sets of books he published after settling in France. Gall seemed to derive his ideas about laterality independently of French anatomist Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802), who formulated his “law of symmetry” at about the same time. He would, however, later cite Bichat, whose ideas about mental derangement were different from his own and who also attempted to explain handedness, a subject on which Gall remained silent. The concept of cerebral symmetry would be displaced by mounting clinical evidence for the hemispheres being functionally different, but neither Gall nor Bichat would live to witness the advent of the concept of cerebral dominance.     

Constantin Frantz and the intellectual history of Bonapartism and Caesarism: a reassessment

The conservative German publicist and political theorist, Constantin Frantz (1817–1891), occupies an ambiguous place in German intellectual history. Some, such as Friedrich Meinecke, located him within the rich intellectual tradition of German federalism, highlighting his hostility to the idea of the “nation-state” and the traditions of nationalism, Realpolitik and militarism. Others, by contrast, have situated him within a long genealogy of German fascism, identifying his remarkable 1852 work, Louis Napoleon, as a kind of precursor or antecedent of twentieth-century fascist ideology. This interpretation raises broader questions about the historiography on Bonapartism and Caesarism, which has often been motivated by an interest in the intellectual origins of modern fascism. The present article supplies a reinterpretation of Frantz’s thinking about Bonapartism (Napoleonismus) and Caesarism by focusing on a much broader range of his intellectual output and by tracking the development of his view of Bonapartism’s significance between 1851 and the early 1870s. The main outcome is not just to question Frantz’s place in the “prehistory” of fascism, but also to show how deeply nineteenth-century debates about Bonapartism were connected to concerns about liberalism, democracy, nationalism and imperialism.     

The eponymous legacy of Sir William Richard Gowers (1845–1915): A revealing letter

The eponymous legacy of Sir William Richard Gowers (1845–1915) was the subject of a comprehensive appraisal first written for this journal late last year. Since the completion of that work, a revealing February 1903 letter has come to light recording, amongst other things, Gowers’ firsthand and somewhat private opinions concerning some of his own eponymous contributions to medicine. This addendum to the primary author’s original article will review and contextualize this very interesting find as it relates to Gowers’ eponymous legacy. Gowers’ “ataxic paraplegia” (referred to as “Gowers’ disease” in the letter) and “syringal hemorrhage” are specially considered, and his broader neological contributions are also briefly addressed. For completion, a number of other previously unnoticed eponyms are added to the already impressive list of medical entities named in Gowers’ honor, and a more complete collection of eponyms found in Gowers’ Manual are tabulated for consideration.     

A Liberal and a Classic: Pierre Manent's Neo-Aristotelian Reading of Raymond Aron

The contemporary French political philosopher Pierre Manent is, by his own account, deeply influenced by the Christian tradition, by Leo Strauss, and by his teacher Raymond Aron. This article explores Manent's indebtedness to Raymond Aron (1905–1983), one of the great political thinkers of the twentieth century. In a series of writings about Aron over the past thirty-five years, Manent presents a public man who spoke with “authority and competence of the things of the city, whose eloquence was able to instruct the public as it retained the ear of princes, of whom the sovereign reason seized, in each situation, the essential.” Manent has thought long and hard about Aron's lucid and courageous opposition to totalitarianism, his defense of human liberty and political reason, and his affinities with the prudence and sobriety of the first great political scientist, Aristotle. Manent's Aron is a liberal classic more than a classical liberal. His defense of modern liberty never forgot that even a free society must cultivate virtue and respect for the common good. This article shows the affinities between the later Aron in particular and Manent's own political writings. Manent's own turn to the chose publique owes much to Aristotle as indirectly mediated by Aron.