"Noblesse oblige". For or against?
Noblesse oblige infers an aristocracy doling at favors according to the whim of a ruling class. America was founded to say farewell to kings. Can you imagine Americans waiting to be dubbed sir or knight from say, Dame Jane Fonda!!
I think you may be confusing duty with virtue. Duty may be defined as: "moral necessity to perform certain actions for no other reason other than obedience to a higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest." I.e. impossible!
Not every citizen soul is capable of being noble, and being noble cannot be legislated or imposed on society. Perhaps it was best described by Ortega Gasset:
"For me...nobility is synonymous with a life of effort, ever set on excelling itself, in passing beyond what one is to what one sets up as a duty and an obligation. In this way the noble life stands opposed to the common or inert life, which reclines statically upon itself, condemned to perpetual immobility, unless an external force compels it to come outside itself. Hence we apply the terms mass to this kind of man -not so much because of his multitude as because of his inertia." (Revolt. 65)
The noble soul - a soul open to an oriented toward ideals - is the essential characteristic of the true aristocrat. By contrast, mass man is characterized by a soul that is "closed" to anything lofty and ideal. He does not guide his action by looking up (to the ideal), but by looking down (to appetite or expediency) and to the side (to the opinions of his fellow mass men). Because the noble man orients himself by ideals, he is perpetually dissatisfied with himself and strives unceasingly for perfection. Because mass man orients himself by appetite, expediency, and opinion, he is characterized by smugness and contentment. Noble man's orientation toward ideals that transcend the present gives him an external perspective on the present. The grants him a measure of intellectual liberty: relative freedom from prejudice, opinion and convention." |
