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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2010
Millions of Americans, as well as millions in Europe, have used or will use a library established by Andrew Carnegie. In his lifetime Carnegie gave the equivalent of several billion dollars in today's money to establish 1,689 public libraries in the United States, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Moreover, 660 libraries in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, 17 in New Zealand, 12 in South Africa and scattered others around the world exist because of this man.1 And this does not include the extensive positive influence of the foundations and grants established by Carnegie. Aristotle would likely have called him ‘magnificent’. Carnegie had the virtue beyond mere generosity available only to those with the means and position to benefit the polis on a grand scale. Unlike generosity, magnificence involves what Irwin has called ‘the judgment and tact that are needed for large benefactions.2 Whether ‘magnificent’ or ‘generous’ is a better term for Carnegie's character is not my major concern. Carnegie's recent biographer simply uses ‘generous’. So, for the remainder of this paper, I will use ‘generous’.3 But was Carnegie, in fact, generous? This paper will explore both the definition of the virtue and its application to Andrew Carnegie.
1 Nasaw, David, Andrew Carnegie (New york: The Penguin press, 2006), p. 607.Google Scholar
2 Aristotle, , NichoMachean Ethics, trans. Irwin, Terence (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1985), p. 325, Note to 1122a29.Google Scholar
3 Nasaw, p. 78.
4 Aristotle, 1116a16–1117a23.
5 MacIntyre makes this point cogently when he says that, if a devoted Nazi were to be re-educated, one of the (possibly few) virtues that would not need re-education would be courage, i.e., the trait to avoid cowardice and intemperate rashness in the face of danger. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd edition (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 179–180.
6 Aristotle, 1120a10–1120a13.
7 Ibid. 1120a20–1120a22.
8 Nasaw, pp. 42–43.
9 Ibid. pp. 178, 261, 282, 452–461, 471–472.