Reconstructing Philanthropy

Thou Shalt not Politicize: On the Relationship between Politics & Philanthropy

In an insightful article on the current state of politicization of large donors in political affairs worldwide, Benjamin Soskis of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute explores critical themes surrounding politics and philanthropy that it is very important that we as a society confront and think

Pyrrho

On the Philanthropic Philosophy of the Pyrrhonists

"La mucha luz es como la mucha sombra: no deja ver" - Octavio Paz From what we’ve all heard about the Pyrrhonists, and of what is commonly understood of the history of philanthropy, it’s hard to imagine a relationship of one with the other. That they

Direction of Comparison

'Direction of Comparison' and the Subjectivation of Charity

"The power and increase of every passion, and its persistence in existing are not defined by the power, whereby we ourselves endeavour to persist in existing, but by the power of an external cause compared with our own." - Spinoza Pt IV, Proposition V The idea of perspective

Capital

Pushing Beyond the Idea of Symmetry Between Capital and Gift?

Man himself must first of all have become calculable, regular, necessary, even in his own image of himself, if he is to be able to stand security for his own future, which is what one who promises does!" Friedrich Nietzsche - Geneology of Morals It fits quite neatly, the

mentalizing

On the Gifts of Mentalizing

Spinoza first developed a framework of understanding the role of images and imagining in the cognitive and affective frameworks of people via their altering of a person’s affects (cf. proposition 27 of the 3rd part of the Ethics). A central concern framing his exposition of imagining was the Hobbesian

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE GREEK IDEA OF CHARITY

The three Charities (Χαριτες) have a fundamentally ambivalent status in the greek pantheon. Associated with both the Sirens and the Muses, they are often seen in opposition to the Erinynes. At times working for the benefit and bliss of gods and men, at other times used for the purposes of

Gilles Deleuze

WHY GOOD INTENTIONS ARE INEVITABLY PUNISHED (ON THE 29TH SERIES OF DELEUZE’S LOGIC OF SENSE)

The saying “no good deed goes unpunished” has new real-world exemplars just about daily. If not directly in the form of legal punishment, or physical aggression, then most certainly in the form of conspiratorial levels of blame and distrust. It’s almost as if we distrust more and more, and

Charitability

IN-GROUP BIAS AND LACK OF CHARITABILITY TO THE OTHER

What is one to do with the other? This is at the base of near all questions of philosophical ethics, and at the heart of near all of our daily social decision-making. Out-group motivated “violence” or uncharitability can be as distant and familiar as traditional examples of xenophobic expression or

Charitability

SPINOZA’S “HERETICAL” CHALLENGE TO THE CONCEPT OF CHARITABILITY

The term “heresy” is often uttered with respect to Spinoza’s life. Being formally excommunicated and socially outcast in a number of different ways was the cost of privileging a critical engagement with objects over tradition, and the search for logically consistent knowledge over material comfort. One might say that

externalities

EXTERNALITIES OF THE GIVEN

What is an Externality? Somewhere there is an exchange. Two things (at minimum) change hands for which there in the immediate sphere one assumes a equivalence between givens. The traders or exchangers take their givens back to their private domains and there take stock of what went into their objects

Emerson

ON WHAT THE PIECE OF YOU IN A GIFT DOES TO THE RECEIVER

The idea that gifts contain a piece of the giver is often invoked from the Maussian interpretation of the Maori ‘Hau’. But the idea seems to have already existed in the West. Emerson invokes it in his famous essay “Gifts” published in 1844: “The only gift is a portion of

Chogyam Trungpa

IDIOT PHILANTHROPY – PETER FRUMPKIN, CHOGYAM TRUNGPA AND A REARTICULATION OF PHILANTHROPIC STRATEGY

Ever since the publication of Peter Frumkin’s Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy in 2006[i], the push to become more wise with the provision of resources for the betterment of others has taken off in the western world. In ways both profound (outcome-oriented philanthropy) and dangerously

ON THE COUNTERFEIT MONEY OF THE GIFT : DERRIDA AND PHILANTHROPY PT 3

Your Gift is Not “The Gift” (as presented by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss) is counterfeit. Derrida credits Claude Levi-Strauss with putting the Thing itself (Derrida’s terminology) of the “gift” into question. The given of the gift, as anthropology matured, was to be called into question inevitably perhaps in absence

ON THE MADNESS OF DERRIDA’S ECONOMIC REASONING : DERRIDA’S CONTRIBUTION TO PHILANTHROPY PT 2

One cannot look for noon at two o’clock… to do so would be mad. Moving on from the Time of the King, Derrida’s preoccupation comes to reflecting on the narrative of Baudelaire’s “Counterfeit Money”. Time has been from the beginning an essential key to his analysis of

ON DERRIDA’S CONTRIBUTION TO PHILANTHROPY PT1: “THE TIME OF THE KING”

Here I will discuss through three separate posts are Derrida’s reflections on “giving” in the book Given Time 1. Counterfeit Money. The time of the King is constituted and regulated by circles, by a circular movement or circulation that produces and reproduces economy. Economy is here defined along two