I
think it’s time to resurrect an old chestnut. Bringing life to misunderstood and misused nuts might seem trivial at first glance but bear with me. ‘Noblesse oblige’ is just such a chestnut. Originally this phrase can be traced back to late eighteenth-century France, a country and time where aristocrats should have spent more time heeding the phrase’s message. Along with power, position, and wealth came the implicit responsibility to be generous and forbearing with those not as fortunate. The understanding behind ‘noblesse oblige’ predates pre-revolutionary France and can be referenced in works as old as Homer’s Iliad.
Every one of us has an obligation to seek out and share with those less fortunate.
Nineteenth-century liberal democracy and the growth of philanthropy in the Industrial Age was as much a device for self-preservation as altruism. The outcomes of the French Revolution coupled with the turmoil amongst aristocratic institutions was the writing on the wall. This raises the question of whether aristos were obliged or felt under obligation to ‘stoop to conquer’. Perhaps a moot point, for in surveying modern royal houses, the survivors have been those who have changed with the times such as the Netherlands and England, even though acts of altruism were limited to such seemingly minor duties as visiting the sick in the hospital and opening schools.
But the point assails us that intention is everything. Each of us has a noble core. Every one of us has an obligation to seek out and share with those less fortunate. Most religions exhort us to pray and perform good acts without public fanfare and so it should be in the non-secular realm. Coerced philanthropy is forced compliance to another’s values. But noblesse oblige, in its truest sense is an act of gratification and selflessness that is its own reward, which is in no way limited to kings and queens.
