The Healthy Democracy System Map

The National Civic League has launched its Healthy Democracy Ecosystem Map, with data from 1,257 organizations in 10 states. The map will expand to include the whole country, and you can add organizations to it. The categories of work represented on the map are:

Civic associations
Civic education/civic learning
Civic media
Civic research [research about or in support of civic life)]
Civic technology
Connecting across differences
Deliberative, participatory, and direct democracy
Electoral reform
Faith-based efforts
Organizing and advocacy
Service and volunteerism
Voter engagement

The literal map is useful for seeing the physical locations of organizations. The database also supports other visualizations apart geospatial ones.

I attempted scans a bit like this in previous decades. I put diagrams of what I called the “civic renewal” field on this blog in 2005 and 2016. For people who are interested in global examples–especially in the categories of deliberative or participatory democracy and organizing and advocacy–Participedia.net is the go-to site. You can trace relevant funding at the US Democracy Hub. But for an extensive database of US civic organizations, the Healthy Democracy Ecosystem Map is the place to go.

generosity as a virtue

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Summary: I will argue here that generosity is a virtue when it is involves respectful care for an individual. Therefore, paradigm cases of generosity involve acts of personal attention and two-way communication, such as carefully selecting an appropriate gift or making a kind remark. To assess a transfer of money, it is better to ask whether it manifests justice, not generosity. Aristotle launched this whole discussion by drawing a useful distinction between generosity and justice. However, because his ideas of justice were constrained, and because he analyzed generosity strictly in terms of money, he left the impression that generosity was not a very appealing virtue. We can do better by focusing on acts conducted in the context of mutually respectful relationships.

To begin: virtues are traits or dispositions that we should want to cultivate in ourselves and in others to improve these individuals’ characters, to raise the odds that they will benefit their communities, or both.

Generosity is found on famous lists of virtues, such as Aristotle’s twelve (or so) and the Buddha’s six paramitas. However, generosity receives much less attention than most other virtues in contemporary English-language philosophy. Miller (2018) finds only three “mainstream philosophy” articles about generosity prior to his own. Ward (2011) finds little discussion of generosity in scholarship on Aristotle, notwithstanding that a whole section of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is focused on it.

I would propose this explanation. Aristotle continues to provide the most influential framework for theories of virtues in the academic world, partly because he is often insightful, and also because he shaped ethics in the three Abrahamic religions. However, his account of generosity (eleutheriotes–more literally translated as “liberality”) makes it a problematic trait. And that is why the virtue does not receive much attention in Anglophone and European academic philosophy.

Aristotle introduces his discussion of generosity with an explicit mention of money:

Let us speak then of freeness-in-giving [eleutheristes, generally translated as generosity or liberality]. It seems to be a mean in respect to needs/goods/property [chremata], for a man is not praised as generous in war, nor in matters that involve temperance, nor in court decisions, but in the giving or taking of goods, and especially in giving them–“goods” meaning all those things whose worth is measured with coins (NE 1119b–my translations).

For Aristotle, generosity does not mean transferring money to people who have a right to it, because that is the separate virtue of justice. Rather, generosity means donating material things voluntarily because one is not overly enamored of them, and doing so in an excellent way.

Things that are done in virtue are noble and are done for their nobility. The generous man therefore will certainly give for the nobility of it. And he will do it rightly, for he will give to the right people, in the right amount, at the right time, and whatever else counts as right giving; and he will give with pleasure or at least painlessly, for whatever is done virtuously is pleasant and painless, or at least not distressing (NE 1120a).

The appropriate recipient is not one who deserves the money (again, that would be an act of justice), but rather someone whom a person of generous spirit would desire to help. I imagine a land-owner being generous to his tenant or to a retainer of long standing.

Aristotle acknowledges that a person with less money can be as generous as a rich man, since the appropriate measure is the proportion of one’s wealth that one donates. Nevertheless, his paradigm of a generous person is a man of inherited wealth who is liberated enough from the base appeal of material things that he voluntarily gives some money away in a gentlemanly fashion (NE 1120b).

I will not claim that the ideal of generosity in the Buddhist canon is the same as in Aristotle, but the early Buddhist texts also appreciate people who give things away because they are free from a desire for goods:

Furthermore, a noble disciple recollects their own generosity: “I’m so fortunate, so very fortunate! Among people full of the stain of stinginess I live at home rid of stinginess, freely generous, open-handed, loving to let go, committed to charity, loving to give and to share.” Then a noble disciple recollects their own generosity, their mind is not full of greed, hate, and delusion. This is called a noble disciple who lives in balance among people who are unbalanced, and lives untroubled among people who are troubled. They’ve entered the stream of the teaching and develop the recollection of generosity (Numbered Discourses 6.10.1, translated by Bhikkhu Sujato).

One difference is that Aristotle mainly thinks about generosity to people who are poor against their will, whereas the paradigm of generosity in early Buddhism is a wealthy layperson’s donation to monks, who have voluntarily renounced worldly goods. In fact, I am not sure that monks can be generous in the Pali Canon, because their role is to receive alms. Another difference—typical when comparing Aristotle to classical Buddhism–is that the Buddhist path leads toward complete liberation, whereas Aristotle expects us to navigate happiness and suffering until death.

In any case, for Aristotle, generosity is relational (one person is generous to another), and it usually accompanies an unequal relationship. As Ward writes, it “abstracts” from justice. When we are being generous, in Aristotle’s sense, we do not have justice on our minds, although we might also act justly.

If one accepts inequality and suffering as natural, then justice is simply a matter of paying one’s debts, honoring contracts, and otherwise following the current rules; and generosity easily accompanies justice. A true aristocrat exhibits justice by paying his bills and taxes. He may also make generous gifts, although never giving so much as to threaten his social standing. (Aristotle defines prodigality as giving so much as to ruin one’s own resources: NE 1119b–1120a.)

However, if we decide that the current distribution of rights and goods is unjust and should be changed, then we will not be impressed by a person who is generous yet not just. More than that, we may feel that justice is the only standard, and generosity is virtuous just to the degree that it approximates justice. Then a gentleman’s holiday gifts are virtuous insofar as they diminish an unjustifiable disparity between the lord and his tenants. The effect is probably quite small. It would be better if the gentleman were prodigal or if his lands were reallocated. Meanwhile, if he takes satisfaction in his own gift-making–as evidence that he is free from base material desires–then he looks worse, not better. If he makes gifts, he should demonstrate respect for the recipients by making the payments seem obligatory and insufficient.

By alluding to land reform, I am suggesting that a social system should be egalitarian, and some powerful force, such as a modern government, should make it so. This is not necessarily correct. Adam Smith makes a different argument for generosity. In his view, a market economy is best for everyone because it continuously increases prosperity. But rich people should be generous, not only for the sake of those with less but also because a reasonable person will not be overly attached to his own wealth and will know when he has more than enough.

When “a man of fortune spends his revenue chiefly in hospitality” (benefitting friends), he demonstrates a “liberal or generous spirit” and also puts his wealth into circulation, thus contributing to the “increase of the public capital.” On the other hand, by hoarding his money for himself, a person would manifest “a base and selfish disposition” (Wealth of Nations, ii:3). It is less clear whether Smith recommends generosity toward poor people who are not one’s friends (discussed in Birch 1998). But in general, virtues are good for the individual and contribute to a civil society. Generosity is just one example; “humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem” are others (Theory of Moral Sentiments, IV).

Whether you endorse or reject Smith’s view of markets, at least his theory of generosity is connected to his theory of social justice. Ward argues that Aristotle also considers generosity in the context of his view of a good community. She discusses the sections in the Politics where Aristotle says that the best regime empowers the middle classes. They are neither arrogant, like the rich, nor craven, like the poor (Pol. 1295b5).

A democracy dominated by the middle classes enables deliberation among peers. Equal citizens can look one another in the eye, say what they think, and cast equal votes to set policy. To the extent that Aristotle appreciates this kind of political system, then his discussions of generosity (giving moderate amounts of money to individuals) and munificence (giving lots of money to the city) begin to seem ironic. These are virtues of oligarchy, and Aristotle prefers democracy (albeit with qualifications).

I appreciate Ward’s argument, but I suspect that for Aristotle, equal standing or eisonomia can only work for an elite (even if it extends to the middling sort), and they should be generous to those who are naturally inferior. Members of the Assembly should treat the large majority of humans who are non-citizens generously, while treating one another with equal respect. However, once we embrace universal human rights, then everyone should be a citizen–somewhere–and the Aristotelian versions of generosity and munificence begin to look problematic.

As long as we are thinking primarily about the transfer of money or goods that money can buy, then I think that justice is the relevant virtue, and generosity is a poor substitute. This point does not depend on a radically egalitarian theory of social justice, because a libertarian should also put justice first and generosity well behind.

However, we naturally use the word “generous” for things other than money. For instance, “generous reading” is a common phrase for interpretive methods that seek to reconstruct persuasive positions from texts. Ann Ward reads Aristotle generously by combining his discussion of generosity in the Nicomachean Ethics with his analysis of democracy in the Politics.

Likewise, we can make “generous remarks” at a colleague’s retirement party, and our words will offer real insights about the colleague’s contributions. We can also give things or people our “generous attention.”

Our partner the Vuslat Foundation defines generous listening as “active, empathetic engagement with another person’s thoughts and feelings. At its core, generous listening is about creating a space for authentic dialogue.”

Think of a colleague who skillfully chooses holiday gifts, wrapping them nicely, and adding thoughtful notes. The objects may have limited monetary value yet reflect generous attitudes toward their recipients because they match each person’s desires and needs. Finding the gifts required time, and during that time, the donor focused on the recipient. We would not object if the skillful donor takes pleasure and pride, just as we generally appreciate cases when people derive happiness from their own virtue.

Whereas money is fungible, the generosity in these examples is specific to the individuals involved. Aristotle (like the Buddhist sutra I quoted earlier) is most interested in generosity as a display of freedom on the part of the giver, but in the cases I am sketching, the donors focus on the recipients. And these forms of generosity are relatively independent of the social system. I presume that generous speeches at retirement parties are appreciated alike in state socialism, corporate capitalism, and the nonprofit sector.

We might, then, agree with Smith in the Theory of Moral Sentiments that generosity is one of the virtues that “appear in every respect agreeable to us.” Generosity is agreeable regardless of the social or economic system, and apart from justice. But it is a virtue that requires benevolent respect for the recipient, listening and speaking as well as giving. Contrary to Aristotle, it is least relevant to monetary transfers and does not reflect a gentlemanly insouciance about private wealth. Rather, it is best manifested in reciprocal relationships, when the parties devote time and attention to one another.

Sources: Christian B. Miller, “Generosity,: in Michel Croce and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, eds., Connecting Virtues: Advances in Ethics, Epistemology, and Political Philosophy (Wiley, 2018): 23-50; Ann Ward, “Generosity and inequality in Aristotle’s ethics.” Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 28.2 (2011): 267-278; Thomas D. Birch, “An analysis of Adam Smith’s theory of charity and the problems of the poor.” Eastern Economic Journal 24.1 (1998): 25-41.my translations of Aristotle use the text from Project Perseus.

Cezanne’s portait of Gustave Geffroy

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In “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1946), Maurice Merleau-Ponty discusses Paul Cézanne’s portrait of the critic Paul Geffroy (1895-6), which led me to some congruent reflections.

Merleau-Ponty notes that the table “stretches, contrary to the laws of perspective, into the lower part of the picture.” In a photograph of M. Geffroy, the table’s edges would form parallel lines that would meet at one point, and the whole object would be more foreshortened. That is how an artist who followed what we call “scientific perspective” would depict the table. Why does Cézanne show it otherwise?

Imagine that you actually stood before Paul Geffroy in his study. You would not instantly see the whole scene. Your eye might settle on your host’s face, then jump to the intriguing statuette next to him. The shelves would at first form a vague pattern in the background. Objects for which you have names, such as books, would appear outlined, as borders filled with color. On the other hand, areas of the fireplace or wall would blend into other areas.

You would know that you could move forward toward M. Geffroy, in which case the table would begin to move below you. Just as you see a flying ball as something moving–not as a round zone of color surrounded by other colors–so you might see the table as something that could shift if you moved your body forward.

A photograph of this real-world scene would be a representation of it, very useful for knowing how M. Geffroy looked in his study, and possibly an attractive object in its own right. But the photo would not represent anyone’s experience of the scene. Instead, it would be something that you could experience, rather like the scene itself, by letting your eye move around it, identifying objects of interest, and gradually adding information. You would experience the photograph somewhat differently from the actual scene because you would know that everything was fixed and your body could not move into the space.

A representation of this scene using perspective’s “laws” would make the image useful for certain purposes–for instance, for estimating the size of the table. Michael Baxandall (1978) argued that Renaissance perspective originated in a commercial culture in which patrons enjoyed estimating the size, weight, and value of objects represented in paintings.

But other systems have different benefits. Here is a print in which Toyoharu Kunichika (1835-1900) uses European perspective for the upper floor and a traditional Chinese system (with lines that remain parallel and objects placed higher if they are further away) for the lower floor. As Toshidama writes, this combination is useful for allowing us to see as many people and events as possible.

Print by Toyoharu Kunichika from Toshidama Japanese Prints

Perspective does not tell us how the world is–not in any simple way. The moon is not actually the size of a window, although it is represented as such in a perspectival picture (East Asian or European). Perspective is a way of representing how we experience the world. And in that respect, it is partial and sometimes even misleading. It overlooks that for us, important things seem bolder; objects can look soft, cold or painful as well as large or small; and some things appear in motion or likely to move, while others seem fixed. We can see a whole subject (such as a French intellectual in his study) and parts of it (his beard), at once and as connected to each other.

Merleau-Ponty writes:

Gustave Geoffrey’s [sic] table stretches into the bottom of the picture, and indeed, when our eye runs over a large surface, the images it successively receives are taken from different points of view, and the whole surface is warped. It is true that I freeze these distortions in repainting them on the canvas; I stop the spontaneous movement in which they pile up in perception and in which they tend toward the geometric perspective. This is also what happens with colors. Pink upon gray paper colors the background green. Academic painting shows the background as gray, assuming that the picture will produce the same effect of contrast as the real object. Impressionist painting uses green in the background in order to achieve a contrast as brilliant as that of objects in nature. Doesn’t this falsify the color relationship? It would if it stopped there, but the painter’s task is to modify all the other colors in the picture so that they take away from the green background its characteristics of a real color. Similarly, it is Cézanne’s genius that when the over-all composition of the picture is seen globally, perspectival distortions are no longer visible in their own right but rather contribute, as they do in natural vision, to the impression of an emerging order, of an object in the act of appearing, organizing itself before our eyes.

The deeper point is that a science of nature is not a science of human experience. Third-person descriptions or models of physical reality are not accounts of how we experience things. And even when we are presented with a scientific description, it is something that we experience. For instance, we actively interpret a photograph or a diagram; we do not automatically imprint all of its pixels. And we listen to a person lecture about science; we do not simply absorb the content.

There are truths that can be expressed in third-person form–for example, that human eyes and brains work in certain ways. But there are also truths about how we experience everything, including scientific claims.

And Cézanne is a scientist of experience.

Quotations from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1946), in Sense and Non-sense, translated by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Northwestern University Press 1964); image by Paul Cézanne, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The image on the Mus?e d’Orsay’s website suggests a warmer palette, but I don’t know whether it’s open-source. I also refer to Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy : A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford, 1978).

what you need to know for collective action

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The graphic with this post shows the outline for “Introduction to Civic Studies,” which I am offering for 50 Tufts undergraduates this spring, and also for my 2022 book What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life (with an associated website).

To trace one portion of the argument: There is not much point in asking what’s wrong with the world or how things should be unless you can also address the question: “What should we do?” And there is not much point in asking that question unless you are part of–or can form–a functioning “we” that is able to act collectively, assembling and deploying assets.

Functioning groups require rules (broadly defined) as well as attitudes, such as trust.

In order to create rules and trust, it is helpful to know how to:

Develop explicit models (simplified representations) of the social situation that can guide your action and that you can modify in the light of experience
Analyze institutions in terms of components, such as their biophysical circumstances, the choices that they create for participants, and their outcomes. You should be able to analyze institutions that you want to launch or sustain, so that these entities can persist and even grow. You may also need to analyze institutions that you oppose, to reveal their vulnerabilities.
Treat your own group as a common-pool resource: that is, as a good that benefits everyone involved but that can be used up or degraded. Common-pool resources are difficult to finance and sustain, yet some flourish. The ones that succeed usually employ wise principles. Therefore:
Apply design principles that enable successful collective action, such as establishing clear boundaries around the the group and its assets, developing efficient processes for resolving conflicts, and using light but graduated sanctions for members who violate the rules.
Preserve and expand social capital (otherwise known as “collective efficacy” or “community cohesion”): the social ties and interpersonal commitments that enable further action.
Practice skills that organize people (rather than simply mobilize them to take specific actions), such as one-to-one interviews and decision-making meetings.

The second through fifth points come from the work of Elinor Ostrom, although you may decide to analyze institutions into different components from the ones she identified, or apply different design principles, if your experience yields different lessons.

This is not all you need to know, because additional challenges arise when you face conflicting beliefs about good means and ends or when you encounter oppressive power. We will move onto those topics for the rest of the semester. But the list shown here is necessary.

Rilke, The Grownup

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The Grownup

All this stood on her and was the world
And stood on her with everything, fear and grace,
As trees stand, growing and straight,
All image and imageless like the Ark. 
And solemnly, as if placed on a people.

And she endured it, bore it--
The flying, escaping, distant,
The immense, not yet learned--
Calm as a woman bearing water
In a full jug. Right in the midst of the game,
Transforming and preparing for something else,
The first white veil, gently gliding,

Fell over her open face
Almost opaque and never lifting again
And somehow to all your questions
Only vaguely offering an answer:
In you, you who has been a child, in you. 

        — Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. by Peter Levine)

The original poem, “Die Erwachsene” from New Poems (1907), is here. The title is the ordinary German word for “adult,” but etymologically, it means “one who has accomplished growth.” Rilke invents a word in his final line, “Kindgewesene,” which I translate here as “one who has been a child.” All of us (even the youngest) are both things at once.

The first lines describe a female person in the past tense. Every reading that I have seen presumes that she is a child, but that is not explicit, and the poem’s title names an adult.

She is with something. The phrase “all this” or “this all” (das alles) suggests that the narrator is referring to everything we perceive, the world. It exceeds representative language–being immense and fleeting–yet it has a heavy weight, which she bears calmly. It is likened to a tree and to the Ark of the Covenant. Trees do not intend anything; they simply grow. The Biblical Ark incorporated golden images of cherubim (Ex. 25:18), but it also contained the written prohibition against graven images, so that it was ganz Bild und bildlos–“all image and imageless.” A tree, the Ark, and perhaps a child are alike in that they have meanings for us but do not intend meanings.

At a specific moment, in the middle of an absorbing activity (a Spiel or game), a second object enters, a veil that descends permanently over this person’s face. Until now, she has seemed oblivious or absorbed in her context, but now there are things that are concealed from her, and vice-versa.

This veil–not the girl or woman–responds unclearly to “your” questions. With this evocation of “you,” there is another person in the poem: presumably, Rilke’s adult reader. The poem advises “you” to look for answers not through a veil but within yourself as someone who has been a child.

We might think of time as a series of instants, of which the present is merely one. That is how the time of clocks and calendars works: a system with which we analyze and control aspects of nature. One year we are children; another, we are grown. But consciousness is not simply located in the present. What we experience at any given moment is a set of meaningful objects that have various durations and histories, often extending into the future as well back into the remembered past. Like the objects that we experience, our selves have histories and hopes. Sometimes we are aware of the kind of time that clocks measure, and sometimes we are absorbed in an activity (bis mitten unterm Spiel) when a sudden change occurs.

Put another way: I am not merely an organism located at a time and a place but also a person who has been a child, who has grown, and who feels the weight of things “not yet learned.” The good and bad things that matter–both fear and grace–extend in time and carry me backward and ahead.

Kant deduced from the fact that we experience objects with duration that there must be a lasting self, but his deduction yielded an “I” that was invisible, simple, and identical for all who reason. As Merleau-Ponty writes, Kant’s argument “rids the world of its opacity and its transcendence. … There is nothing hidden behind … faces and gestures, no domain to which I have no access, merely a little shadow [the self] which owes its very existence to the light” (Merleau-Ponty 1945/2002, xiii).

Looking inward, we should instead find a self that is complicated, dynamic, elusive, and situated. Rilke explores opacity and transcendence in this poem, which is about having both a past and a present.

Quotation from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by Colin Smith (Routledge, 2002). The Rilke translation is mine and misses the tight rhythm and rhyme-scheme of the original. See also: Notes on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall“; phenomenology of nostalgia; Kieran Setiya on midlife; three great paintings in dialogue (addressing Rilke’s 5th Duino Elegy); and the sublime is social–with notes on Wordsworth’s “Lines Above Tintern Abbey“.