Category Archives: Buddhism

The Art of Solitude

Leave a reply

I first explored similarities between Montaigne’s Essays (1580-88) and the ancient Buddhist texts called the Pali Canon (particularly the “Chapter of Eights”) on this blog in August 2024. I have been developing these ideas into a longer article or perhaps a portion of a book. One shared theme (among several) is that we should be committed to other people rather than to our own ideas. We can be unattached to our opinions while still deeply caring.

Last week, I discovered and read Stephen Batchelor’s The Art of Solitude (2022), which emphasizes precisely the same pair of texts. He translates the whole Chapter of Eights and discusses Montaigne at length.

Batchelor is a great writer on solitude. He does not define it as being alone, but rather as being deeply attentive to what’s going on inside yourself. In fact, you can hide away in your room or retreat to a forest and yet be mentally consumed by other people and events, or you can genuinely talk and listen to others while retaining an inner space. Montaigne makes these points well, as does the Pali Canon.

Montaigne, a Renaissance European, knew nothing of Buddhism, but he was impressed–at least during a phase of his life–by the Skeptical philosophy of the Greco-Roman author Sextus. The Skeptical School traced its origins to Pyrrho of Ellis, who had visited India with Alexander the Great in 327-326 BCE and may even have become a Buddhist. In my view, the strongest evidence of Buddhism’s influence on Greek Skepticism is this passage, which purports to represent Pyrrho’s teaching:

Whoever reflects on how to attain happiness must see three things: First, what are matters like by nature? Second, in what state should we approach matters? And last, what happens to those who are in this state? … Matters are without an essential nature, unmeasurable, and unfixed, and for this reason neither our senses nor our opinions are true or false. For this reason, therefore, do not believe them, but be without opinions and without biases and without agitation. …

Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.18.1-4 (my trans)

Christopher Beckwith (2017, p. 32) shows that this text “is so close to” a specific, early Indian Buddhist text “that it is virtually a translation of it,” and he argues that some of the Greek words were coined to translate Sanskrit words that were important in early Buddhism, such as anatman (without an essential nature) and duhkha (unsteady or unstable).

At any rate, Greek Skepticism developed during a period when Greeks were in dialogue with Indian Buddhists in a large region where many schools and sects taught overlapping ideas. And Montaigne was strongly influenced by Greek Skepticism.

Batchelor is less interested in such historical links and influences than in sheer similarities. He presents Montaigne as having rediscovered principles of solitude, meditation and compassion from personal experience and experimentation, which is how Montaigne describes his own journey.

Montaigne is far more empathetic and compassionate than Sextus, who often tries to attain inner peace by ridiculing the various views of past philosophers. There are more than 1,300 quotations from Latin alone in Montaigne’s Essays (Selevold 2010), and his usual mode is to demonstrate that he appreciates the quoted author’s stance without necessarily endorsing it. By introducing compassion to Sextus’ Skepticism, Montaigne actually moves closer to Buddhism (without knowing anything about that tradition).

There is pretty good evidence that Montaigne also remained a believing Catholic, in private as well as public life, which means that some of his deepest commitments were incompatible with Buddhism. But he could write long passages in which his religious commitments appear irrelevant and he is fully guided by ideals that we could call compassion and mindfulness. Just for example:

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been absorbed by external events for part of the time, I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude and to myself.

Montaigne, 3:13 (“On Experience”), my trans.

Batchelor beautifully translates this and other relevant passages–as I can attest, since I have been translating an overlapping set of excerpts from Montaigne for my own use. (I do wish, however, that the Yale Press book provided notes or other references, because it is quite a task to locate Batchelor’s original texts.)

Batchelor also writes about meditation and his own experiments with hallucinogens. Those sections are engaging and interesting but beyond my capacity to evaluate.

Sources: Stephen Batchelor’s The Art of Solitude (Yale University Press 2022); Christopher I. Beckwith, Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia (Princeton, 2017); Sellevold, Kirsti. “Quotation in Montaigne’s Essais: communication across time and contexts–A case study,” Symbolae Osloenses 84.1 (2010).

See also: Montaigne and Buddhism; three takes on the good life: Aristotle, Buddha, Montaigne; Montaigne the bodhisattva?; does skepticism promote a tranquil mind?

Cuttings: Ninety-Nine Essays About Happiness

Leave a reply

Cuttings is a book in progress that consists of 99 essays about the inner life: about suffering, happiness, compassion, and related themes. I first posted each of the essays on this blog, which is 22 years old today and has accumulated more than 2,400 posts. I’ve selected the contents of Cuttings carefully from this archive, revised most of the essays substantially, and arranged them so that there is a small and meaningful step between each one. In the last three years, I have written some new posts to fill gaps that I perceive in the overall structure. I believe that the architecture is now pretty solid.

Michel de Montaigne is the hero; I seek to emulate his skeptical, curious, humane mind. Like Montaigne, I talk about books, but my library is different from his. Cuttings includes short essays about Montaigne himself, early Buddhist texts, Greek philosophers, Keats and Blake, Hopkins and Stevens, phenomenologists from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty, Arendt and Benjamin, and Hilary Mantel and Ann Carson, among others.

I am releasing the third edition today–a substantial revision from last year, but not yet the final one. You can find the book here as a Google doc. I have also posted it as an .epub file, which will open directly in many e-readers. Alternatively, you could download the .epub to a computer or phone and then use this Amazon page to send it with one click to your own Kindle.

As always, comments are welcome and really the best reward for me.

Le Vase blue, Paul Cezanne

happiness, for skeptics

Leave a reply

Perhaps human beings are designed for a purpose or end, the pursuit of which brings us happiness. Aristotle is a major proponent of this view (“teleology”), and his theory has influenced each of the Abrahamic faiths.

But what if one is skeptical that we have any end, or that pursuing any “telos” promises a good life for us?

One school was already skeptical more than two thousand years ago. The First Noble Truth of Buddhism (the ubiquity of suffering) is incompatible with teleology, and the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Origination says that things arise just because previous things happened–not for any end.

The Third Noble Truth implies that we can escape permanently and completely from pointless suffering by understanding and transcending our will, thus entering the state variously understood under the word “Nirvana.”

What if one is skeptical of Nirvana as well as teleology? What if one doubts either an end or an exit? Is there anything to gain from the Aristotelian-Abrahamic tradition or from Buddhism?

I think there is much to be learned. I would offer these six points.

1) It is not peace but the turn toward peace that yields our happiness

In “The Poems of our Climate,” Wallace Stevens imagines a pure image that could come from East Asian or European modernist art: “Clear water in a brilliant bowl / Pink and white carnations.” He posits that this image could represent “complete simplicity / Stripped … of all one’s torments.” For a suggestive illustration, consider a “Blue Vase” by Paul Cézanne from 1890 (above), to which I will return later.

Such an image, Stevens says, cannot represent peace or happiness for creatures such as us. It cannot satisfy anyone who has a “never-resting mind.” Since “the imperfect is so hot in us,” our “delight” lies not in pure and permanent simplicity but in those moments of relief that art or nature can offer. In other words, we can never be the brilliant bowl and cut flowers, but we can relish objects that are purer than ourselves.

I paid homage to Stevens’ poem with one of my own that relates my relief at hearing a Bach oboe concerto in my earphones during a flight on a hectic day. “That turn, / For us—with our minds so noisy— / Our delight lies only there.”

This principle has a limitation. Like Stevens’ poetry, it is all about the individual who experiences things. What about all the other sentient creatures who also suffer? We should care about each as much as we care about ourselves. “Without exception, no sufferings belong to anyone. They must be warded off simply because they are suffering” (Šantideva, 8.102-3).

2. Compassion combats suffering

It’s a very small step from understanding the truth of other creatures’ suffering to feeling compassion for those who suffer. The disposition of compassion is grounded in a clear view of reality. That is one argument in its favor.

Another argument is that compassion is what people (and some animals) need from us. Sometimes, they need us to fix their problems, and compassion may necessitate action. But we cannot make others happy or liberate them from suffering, and therefore action rarely suffices. Nor do creatures need pity or that mirroring of emotions that I would call “sympathy.” If you are sad, you don’t want me to be sad sympathetically. You want me to will your relief.

After the Buddha has defeated an elitist student, Ambattha, in a debate, Ambattha’s teacher calls this student a “fool” and says, “Please forgive him.” The Buddha replies, “May the student be happy”: sukhi hotu, a Pali phrase that now serves as a greeting. We want people to extend this wish to us–and to mean it (Long Discourses, Sujato trans. DN3).

A third argument is that compassion can fill one’s mind, replacing the kind of self-oriented will that is (per the Second Noble Truth) the source of suffering. In my skeptical view, compassion can only ever take up some space, leaving room for willfulness and pain to persist, but it is worth expanding.

Universal, undifferentiated compassion is a virtue–perhaps most appropriately a monastic one, because a monk renounces individual attachments. For those of us who deeply prize specific relationships, compassion is not the sole positive emotion that should fill our thoughts. There is also love, which borders compassion but differs by being focused and by needing to be reciprocated.

3. Each mind is a ripple in the river of history

Looking at pink and white carnations, or hearing one’s own breath, or observing someone in pain, we naturally presume that the self is directly experiencing the object. Not so. Our minds are deeply structured by language, judgments, memories, and other cultural inheritances that arose before us and will continue after.

For instance, we enjoy flowers because our predecessors have named, raised, bred, sold, collected, drawn and painted, and praised these particular plants.

At the time of each day that we call sunset, the big ball of rock on which we live is turning so that we can no longer see a huge and remote ball of fire. Yet we experience the sun as moving across our sky toward its “setting,” and we think about closure, sleep, or even death and rebirth. We must think about these things (at least occasionally) at twilight because they are inherent in our languages and stories. Science describes the solar system, but not our experience of it, which has a human past.

It follows that we are never alone. Others speak through us. The stream of thoughts that constitutes a self began before and continues after a person.

There is no reason to presume that the whole stream flows toward happiness or justice. But we do know that the species can accomplish more than any person could in the space of one life. To me, this realization makes some sense of the doctrine that achieving enlightenment requires many lives. And it makes me less attached to my own life and less interested in being original, authentic, or influential. The 13-century Zen teacher Dogen writes:

It is an unshakable teaching in the Buddha’s discourse that death does not turn into birth. … Although there is birth and death in each moment of this life of birth and death, the body after the final body is never known. Even though you do not know it, if you arouse the aspiration for enlightenment, you will move forward on the way of enlightenment. The moment is already here (pp. 116-117).

4. We can do things that have outcomes for their own sake

This is an Aristotelian argument that I owe to Kieran Setiya (2017):

Many of our actions have concrete and immediate goals. We work to make money; we wash the dishes so that they are clean. When we behave this way, it is difficult to escape from suffering because the mind is set on the future, and there is always more to do.

We also do some things for their own sake, like listening to music or watching carnations or paintings of them. But we cannot depend on intrinsically valuable activities to obtain happiness. They are rare for most of us, and if they come to occupy all our time, how can we be compassionate? Only the idle rich can spend their whole lives on intrinsically enjoyable experiences.

The solution is to perform tasks that have objectives as if they were ends in themselves. I can grade papers not to complete the task but to be an educator. This is not always easy, and such an attitude would be harder if I cleaned toilets or processed chickens instead of teaching college students. But it is something to strive for in our own lives and to make more attainable for others.

5. Reality rewards a close and open-minded inquiry

We evolved to have brains that can do many things, but we do not know what we cannot fathom, just as my dog has no idea that he is unaware of politics, cosmology, or Shakespeare. In an entirely abstract way, we know that our reality of suffering, delight, and finitude is not the only reality.

Specifically, we evolved with brains that are not very well designed for understanding consciousness itself. Our minds prove evasive to our minds. Neverthless, highly disciplined and strenuous efforts to describe consciousness yield glimmers that expand our consciousness and bring–if we use them right–some happiness.

Merleau-Ponty begins his essay “Cézanne’s Doubt” this way:

He needed one hundred working sessions for a still life, one hundred and fifty sittings for a portrait. What we call his work was, for him, only an essay, an approach to painting. In September, I906, at the age of 67–one month before his death–he wrote: ‘I was in such a state of mental agitation, in such great confusion that for a time I feared my weak reason would not survive. . . . Now it seems I am better and that I see more clearly the direction my studies are taking. Will I ever arrive at the goal, so intensely sought and so long pursued? I am still learning from nature, and it seems to me I am making slow progress.’

What was Cézanne working so hard to accomplish? According to Merleau-Ponty, he strove to present the experience of nature without the tools that people had created for that task, such as “outline, composition, and distribution of light” and linear perspective. “He was pursuing reality without giving up the sensuous surface, with no other guide than the immediate impression of nature.” For him, “reality” meant neither the object in itself nor the subjective appearance of it, but the way they unite in our experience.

The “Blue Vase” shown above is harmonious and calm, yet close inspection reveals choices that a classically trained painter would avoid. For instance, the base of the vase is perpendicular to the plane of the painting, whereas the table on which it stands tilts down. And the color of the flowers seem to have influenced the shadows, making them bluish.

Similarly, in Stevens’ poem, the color of the bowl infuses the space around it: “The light / In the room more like a snowy air, /
Reflecting snow.”

Such choices are more obvious in an 1880 painting that Cézanne left unfinished (right). Here the vase clearly stands separate from the table, with entirely different vanishing points.

Our experience does not encompass the whole world at once, lining everything up together. We focus on objects that have names and significance for us, then move to other ones. The color of one object depends on its relationship to others. We do not perceive a world made of borders filled with color, but something much more complex and dynamic.

Although the following paragraph from Merleau-Ponty’s essay is not about any particular painting, it could describe Cézanne’s 1880 vase:

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. In the same way, the contour of an object conceived as a line encircling the object belongs not to the visible world but to geometry. …. To trace just a single outline sacrifices depth-that is, the dimension in which the thing is presented not as spread out before us but as an inexhaustible reality ful of reserves. That is why Cézanne follows the swelling of the object in modulated colors and indicates several outlines in blue. [Compare the outlines of the flowers above.]

We can attend closely to positive experiences, such as the sight of flowers. We can try to analyze suffering, although that requires impressive equanimity. I am especially interested in the close investigation of states that I find mildly problematic, such as my own regretful and appreciative awareness that a current pleasure is transient. This is roughly the same as mono no aware in Japanese aesthetics, or, as I have named it, “nostalgia for now.” It affords insight into time, just as the phenomenology of other states reveals other truths. And one can focus on other people’s experience or on relational states, including love.

Cézanne’s explorations brought him no happiness, Merleau-Ponty describes the artist’s “fits of temper and depression.” In short, Cézanne was obsessed. Wallace Stevens also devoted his career to a constant exploration of consciousness, and he seems to have been far from happy.

These people failed to balance their expeditions into their own consciousness with concern for other people. Merleau-Ponty says of Cézanne, “His extremely close attention to nature and to color, the inhuman character of his paintings (he said that a face should be painted as an object), his devotion to the visible world: all of these would then only represent a flight from the human world, the alienation of his humanity.” Stevens has a similar tendency and writes, “It is the human that is the alien.” Wisdom requires a combination of intense inner inquiry with care for others.

Exploring consciousness can enhance compassion rather than distract from it, since we can learn to feel the depths of others’ experience. Glimpsing hidden worlds can shake our attachment to our everyday circumstances. And the curiosity that motivates our expeditions into the inner life can supplant anxiety and discontent. But it is more likely that we will obtain happiness by looking at a painting by Cézanne or by reading a poem by Stevens than by trying to be either person. They are not models but they left us gifts, as have many others.

6. We must embody truths, not merely acknowledge them

Important thinkers have provided arguments and reasons for each of the preceding five principles. Although these conclusions cannot be proven from axioms, they can be defended.

However, assenting to a principle of this type or acknowledging the arguments in its favor accomplishes little. One must consistently feel the truth of the idea. That requires practice, ritual, meditation, and other cultivated habits.

To return again to Cézanne’s flowers: it will do no good to glance at them or to read a learned article that explains them. One must take the time to see the object itself, must “come back / To what had been so long composed” in order to realize that “the imperfect is our paradise.”

Sources: Shantideva, The Bodhiicaryacatara, trans. by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton (Oxford University Press, 1995); Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt, The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master (Shambala); The Long Discourses translated by Bhikkhu Sujato on Suttacentral (2018); Kieran Setiya Midlife (Princeton, 2017); and 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). The paintings are Le Vase bleu (1889-90) in the Musée d’Orsay and Flowers in a Blue Vase (1880) in the Orangerie. I quote the Stevens Poems “The Poems of Our Climate” from Parts of A World and “Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit” from Transport to Summer.

See also: many previous posts, which I have collected and organized as Cuttings: A Book About Happiness.

three takes on the good life: Aristotle, Buddha, Montaigne

Leave a reply

I am attracted to two views that have been enormously influential for thousands of years.

The first view began with Aristotle and has influenced billions of people by being incorporated (with variations) into all three Abrahamic faiths. 

According to this theory, humans can be happy in the same way that we might describe a lush and towering tree as happy–or a fox that is busy hunting rabbits. It’s not about these organisms’ sensations of pleasure or pain, but whether they are doing what they are designed to do. “Flourishing” may be a better translation than “happy” for Aristotle’s Greek term, eudaimonia.

How do human beings flourish? Aristotle says it is by thinking, since that is our distinctive characteristic and evidently the advanced task for which we are optimized. But we think many things, including ugly thoughts and idle ones that fail to motivate our actions. We know the difference between good and bad thinking because we are taught to recognize virtues. 

Unfortunately, it is not always evident what a given virtue means, or even whether something called a virtue deserves the title; and the various virtues can conflict. We need a master virtue that is about deciding which virtues to deploy in each situation; call that “practical reason.” 

At least some people may also flourish by exercising a purer kind of reasoning that does not motivate action; for Aristotle, the very best way to spend one’s time is by contemplating the divine. 

To sum up, a happy human life is one guided by practical reason, perhaps with a dose of contemplative reasoning (also known as worship). A person of virtue is fortunate and happy in the same way that a fox flourishes if it can hunt rabbits all day. They live their best lives.

A very different view is also influential, because it is the root of Buddhism, which has about half a billion adherents today. In contrast to Aristotle, Buddha taught that we are not designed for any particular end. Like everything else in the universe, we exist because previous things just happened before. Since we have turned out to be sensitive creatures, we are bound to suffer; suffering is intrinsic (the First Noble Truth). It arises wherever there is a will, because desire is inevitably frustrated (the Second Noble Truth). 

However, we can introspect and discover that the self that we have valued so highly and that seems to intend and to want so many elusive things does not really exist. Specific phenomena just happen one after another, resulting from previous phenomena. This realization allows us to stop attaching our will to things. Instead of feeling wilful and frustrated, we can allow our minds to fill with compassion for ourselves and for everyone else, understanding everyone as determined by events beyond their control. 

This escape can be complete and final, so that we no longer suffer (the Third Noble Truth). No supernatural force is required for escape; it is just a matter of realizing how things really work. Once that happens, we can live a life of active compassion toward others (the Fourth Noble Truth). The conclusion is rather like Aristotle’s vision of a virtuous life, but with a different underpinning and a more dramatic moral.

I am no means against either view, both of which instruct and inspire. But I am skeptical that we are designed or optimized for anything. We emerged as a result of impersonal forces, especially biological evolution. Insofar as we have intrinsic purposes, I doubt that they are all about reasoning, since we have bodies as well as brains, and our brains are embodied. In essence, for me, the First Noble Truth trumps Aristotle’s idea that any natural species has a special natural purpose or end. 

Aristotle defines a virtuous life as happy or eudaimonic. He draws this link because he sees human beings as naturally designed for virtue. If we doubt this premise, then there is no reason to hope that virtue will bring happiness. On the contrary, virtue can easily enhance suffering in the form of guilt, disappointment, and frustration. We should strive to live virtuously for the good of others but not expect it to make us happy.

At the same time, I am also skeptical about the Third Noble Truth, the idea that a complete escape is possible if one fully embraces the truth that there is no self or any intrinsic purposes in nature. 

I just used the word “skeptical” in relation to both Aristotle and Buddhism. Skepticism was one of the ancient Greeks’ philosophical schools, a rival to Aristotle’s tradition. In 16th-century France, Michel de Montaigne read and developed the Skeptics’ ideas, and his work has influenced–or at least found echoes–in many subsequent authors, European and otherwise. 

Montaigne’s skepticism does not rest on a theory of the natural best life for human beings, nor on the idea that human selves are illusory and can be transcended. Montaigne views each human being, including himself, as something imperfect, a bit miscellaneous, without clear boundaries, and largely opaque–yet complex, distinctive, fragile, and precious. “For sure, man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and wavering subject. It’s a queasy business to try to base any constant and uniform judgment about him” (Montaigne 1580, 1:9).

For creatures like this, there is no natural best way to live, nor any escape from suffering. But there is much to be appreciated–even relished–if one attentively studies any particular person. Close, appreciative listening brings moments of compassion and consolation.

Montaigne wrote mostly about himself. “I wish to be seen in a simple, natural, and ordinary manner, without striving [he changed the word to “study” in the 1592 text] or artifice, for it is me that I paint” (Montaigne, 1580, “To the Reader”). This was his revolutionary contribution. Before him, authors in the European languages had never made subjects of themselves in a similar way. St. Augustine had written a great autobiography, but he had seen his life as an illustration of a universal story: the sinner finds God and is saved. Montaigne, in contrast, saw himself as himself. Inventing the very word “essay,” he inaugurated practices of self-description that have become ubiquitous. And he made the search for himself interesting by demonstrating how elusive we are to ourselves.

Today, we probably suffer from a bit too much self-exploration and self-description. The Romantic movement and some of its successors have encouraged writers and other artists to focus on themselves to a far greater extent than Montaigne could have imagined. In a secular and individualistic market-economy, self-presentation literally sells. Some memoirs and confessions are valuable, particularly when the authors have compelling stories. But people like me–we whose lives are quite unremarkable– should pause before we assume that anyone else needs to hear about us.

That brings me to the other side of Montaigne’s essays. He says that his subject is himself, but what does he do with his life? He spends it in his library. The self that he presents in his Essays is a devoted reader, that is, a compassionate observer of many other people, both authors and subjects, living and dead. 

I’ve posted a book-in-progress on this blog entitled Cuttings. My main purpose there is not to understand texts or to explain them to anyone, but rather to experiment with compassionate attention as a modest form of consolation. This is not an original ideal. I take it from Montaigne and many others. In the book (¶20-21), I even criticize originality as another Romantic ideal that has been overemphasized. Generalizations about important matters that are right and good are also likely to be clichés, because why would any of us suddenly discover truths that had been hidden before? Still, the book is full of concrete observations rather than generalizations. It is, in fact, a collection of “cuttings.”

...
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

    -- Theodore Roethke, "Cuttings (later)," 1948

Source: Montaigne, Michel Eyquem (1580), Les Essais. See also: some basics; Montaigne and Buddhism; varieties of skepticism, etc.

generosity as a virtue

Leave a reply

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.