The Varieties of Philanthropic Experience
From the book, Philanthropy: Voluntary Action for the Public Good, by Robert L. Payton

PART 1 OF 6

No one denies that a system needs enough indifference to hold it together and enough involvement to make it move. The question is: how much is enough?

 

The title is borrowed from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. James drew from a vast array of writings of responsible people and tried to infer from what they said about their own religious experiences and understandings a classification of the principal forms that emerged.

This essay is an attempt to make a map of the territory. What do we include within the definition of the word philanthropy? What must we leave out? Why?

In addition to boundaries, what are the practices and values that we may justly call philanthropic?

What follows is an outline of the philanthropic tradition: an outline in the literal sense, first, followed by commentary and interpretation.

I think it is important to seek a rough consensus about such an outline, knowing that it is too simple and arbitrary and also that it is constantly changing. Our work will suffer unless we achieve some greater shared understanding—suffer from avoidable internal conflict and suffer from external attacks and intrusions.

Philanthropy is one aspect of religion; there are also philanthropic dimensions to economics and politics. One can approach philanthropy from the perspective of any of the humanities and social sciences: history, literature, anthropology, and so on. One can also look at its functions: how money is raised, how it is given, and how it is used. There are also the people involved: the volunteers and professionals. Some approach philanthropy from the vantage point of the structure of the society and its institutions, and see in it only the expression of class struggle, domination alienation, and false consciousness. Others look on philanthropy as a subset of exchange—social as well as economic—ruling out the sublime emotions in favor of what they term more rigorous analysis. 

This long chapter (not half long enough!) attempts to relate to the following outline of the philanthropic traditions. You will notice that some categories overlap and are not as distinct as the outline suggests. You should try to bear in mind, too, as I have, that it isn't possible to design a definitive outline of a dynamic tradition. (I welcome your improvements of it.)

The Philanthropic Tradition

1. A living tradition

1. Core values and themes

2. Constantly changing

2. Philanthropy will always be with us, because

1. Things go wrong, and some people need help

2. Things could always be better for all of us

3. The need for public goods

1. Limitations on the marketplace

2. Limitations on government

4. Philanthropy is the manifestation of two values

1. Compassion (charity)

2. Community (philanthropy)

5. The philanthropic dialectic

1. Self and other

2. Love and fear

3. Mercy and justice

4. Voluntary and obligatory

5. Relief and development

6. The works of mercy

1. Corporal

2. Spiritual

7. Methods of philanthropy

1. Mutual aid

2. Empowerment and self-help

3. Without strings

4. A mixed economy (welfare issues)

8. The dynamic of philanthropy

1. From impulse to habit

2. From simple to complex

3. From individual to collective

4. From voluntary to obligatory

5. From private to public

6. From relief to development

9. There are two basic types of philanthropic activity

1. Organizing, recruiting, fund raising

2. Contributing services, expertise, money

10. There are six major areas of philanthropic activity

1. Religion

2. Health

3. Education

4. Welfare

5. Culture

6. Civic and community affairs

11. There are two categories of personal participation

1. Volunteer

1. Expert

2. Non-expert

2. Paid

1. Professional / managerial / technicaI

2. Secretarial / clerical / maintenance
   

A Living Tradition

Philanthropy is a tradition, "a sequence of variations on received and transmitted themes," as Edward Shils put it in Tradition. It is not a body of laws, nor is it a fixed set of institutions. As a tradition it has common roots, themes, practices, and values. As a tradition it is also dynamic and changing, and the themes, practices, and values change so that even tracing the roots becomes a continuing problem. It is "the social history of the moral imagination" (to borrow a wonderful phrase from Clifford Geertz's Local Knowledge, p. 8), or at least one prominent thread in it.

Philanthropy in some organized form appears in all the major cultural and religious traditions, and it might be argued that philanthropy is an essential defining characteristic of civilized society.

Things Go Wrong

The disturbances of our domestic tranquility in the late 1960s and early 1970s serve as a reminder that things can go seriously wrong even in a society as blessed and favored as this one. Given the right circumstances, in every society there will be opportunities to improve the quality of life in the community and there will be reasons for acts of mercy and compassion. In sum, as John Gall declared, "All systems operate in a failure mode most of the time." That is a caution to all the idealists, optimists, Utopians, and other true believers that "the best-laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley." Religion sometimes puts a good face on it, and declares that the poor offer opportunities for charity that will win us credit in heaven.

The reason this simple idea is important is because there are two fallacies of the modern age that would eliminate philanthropy entirely. Both are blindly Utopian. The first is a misinterpretation of the "invisible hand" that applies economic self-interest as the criterion of all behavior. The second is an interpretation that argues that the state best understands the needs of the society and of individuals and has the primary responsibility for their welfare; the state, therefore, must have the power and authority to plan and provide for them as necessary. Whatever labels we put on them, neither has a place for philanthropy.

Self-interest as the principal acceptable motive for economic behavior seems to me far superior to the notion that the state can plan economic activity with such wisdom as to produce a humane and free society. But the self-interested society tends to pay for its wealth by a loss of humanity; the planned society certainly pays for distributive justice by the loss of freedom, political as well as economic.

Philanthropy—to paraphrase James Douglas's splendid book, Why Charity?—is the instrument that societies have used to compensate for the indifference of the marketplace and the incompetence of the state. Voluntary acts of compassion and acts of community are always needed, in all societies, and always will be.

Public Goods

The quality of life even in modern America and in other economically advanced societies makes the scale of resources required beyond the reach of private, voluntary giving. Churches, corporations, universities, artists, and intellectuals willingly and properly accept government funds: It is in their self-interest to do so; most will argue that it is also in the public interest for them to do so. The scale of need is so great that voluntary contributions inevitably fall short.

 Less often voiced is a second theme: Many of the needs of community are what economists call public goods which

 ... bestow benefits that are often so widely diffused that it is impossible to allocate their costs to the individual beneficiaries in a commensurate proportion. Moreover, in the case of pure public goods their enjoyment by some will not curtail their enjoyment by others. The market will not produce such goods for a variety of reasons, but chiefly because if everyone can enjoy what it produced for someone else, no one will want to reveal his demand for a public good. (Henry W. Spiegel, The Growth of Economic Thought)

If someone else will pay for something that I will then be able to use, why should I pay for it? Mr. Jones built a private road and a private bridge; when others began to use it, Mr. Jones concluded that the next road and bridge would be built by someone else. When no one stepped forward—when no one volunteered —" the public" had to pay for it, or it wasn't built at all.

The reason I prolong this is because not enough attention is given to the range and variety of public goods, and which among them should be provided by taxation and which might be left to the marketplace and to private philanthropy. This becomes a powerfully important question in my mind because it involves a determination of the best way to preserve the freedom of thought. For example:

HOW SHOULD PHILOSOPHERS BE PAID?

If, as has been the case in recent years, philosophers are primarily dependent on income derived from teaching, and if it is true that there has been a decline in the number of students who take courses in philosophy; and if it is the case that those who provide financial support to colleges and universities through gifts and grants either neglect philosophy or attach strings to their gifts to philosophers; and if the popular culture is bored with philosophy and philosophy can claim little share of the vast sums generated by television advertising, say, or the more profitable books clubs ... Or if philosophers have to spend so much time teaching in order to earn a living that they have no time for reflection, discussion, debate, and research on questions that may not prove to be fruitful (the same problems plague mathematicians, by the way), then perhaps there is a place for philanthropic support. The marketplace usually ignores philosophy because it isn't "useful"; the state usually becomes very heavy--handed in making sure philosophers are useful, but in one Right Way.

 

 

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