DWill wrote:about "Economy."...2. His animadversion against philanthropy. I think I get his basic point--make yourself good first rather than doing good for others-- but it's surprising that he goes on at such length against it. Either he was truly worked up over people telling him he should do charitable work, as he mentions they did, or there was some great emphasis in the day placed on charity work that just rubbed him the wrong way. He suspects in others a motive for doing good that is not so praiseworthy: "There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom." (1.104) We would be disappointed, I suspect, if Thoreau did not have a contrary opinion about most things. He seemed to delight in that, as Emerson mentions in his eulogy. I can certainly agree, though, with this statement: "I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. The last were not England's best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists." (1.107)DWill
Good morning. Apologies that I have not found enough time for Walden, but I do want to comment on this philanthropy discussion.
By the way, I have been reflecting further on my affinities with Thoreau. When I was young I read a book "My Side of The Mountain" about a boy who goes to live in a tree in the Catskills, and I always found it inspiring and intriguing, and now wonder how much it was inspired by Thoreau. I saw my dad the other day, who was a professor of English with focus on American spirituality in poetry. He had four copies of Walden in his library and gave me one, which alas I have barely opened (after reading half the book from the internet). My mum owns a stone hut at Bullaburra in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, completely surrounded by bushland next to a deep gorge, and she always used it as a Thoreau type retreat. Once when I stayed there I read
An Imaginary Life by David Malouf, which presents Ovid in exile as a sort of Thoreau type figure.
To philanthropy. I agree with Thoreau on this. My day job is managing the infrastructure program for the Australian Agency for International Development, in which we fund major World Bank programs in the transport and energy sectors in Asia. Overseas aid is often seen as charity, but to me this is incorrect, as it should be seen as an investment in security through poverty reduction. The trouble with philanthropy is that it is geared more to the needs of the giver than the receiver, so is often like the Pharisee who Jesus criticizes for praying in public, doing it to get kudos. If we are serious about reducing poverty, then Thoreau's comments deserve attention. The underlying issue here is one I can best present from the thought of Martin Heidegger in his analysis of care as the meaning of being. He says there are two types of care