Theodore Lechterman’s The Tyranny of Generosity is a major contribution to normative theorizing about philanthropy. The book combines clear, precise argumentation with well-chosen examples, with the result that both political philosophers and general readers will be able to learn a great deal from it.
Lechterman sometimes presents himself as investigating discrete puzzles in the political morality and regulation of philanthropy—which he does, with great creativity and subtlety, exploring some aspects of philanthropy that have received little philosophical attention. But this undersells the contribution of the book, taken as a whole: Lechterman develops the most complete and compelling philosophical account I have read of philanthropy’s place within a democratic division of institutional labor. In the tradition of liberal egalitarian political philosophy that informs Lechterman’s approach, voluntary giving appears (if at all) on the periphery, either as a primitive and unsatisfactory device for discharging obligations of justice that properly belong to the state, or as a residual mechanism for supplying goods that obligations of justice or liberal neutrality bar the state from distributing. By contrast, Lechterman treats philanthropy’s moral evaluation and institutional design with a level of seriousness and detail often reserved for public institutions.
In Chapter 2, Lechterman develops an account of “democratic sovereignty,” which holds that “to be fully legitimate, major social outcomes must issue from collectively authorized decisions” (p. 21). Some forms of philanthropy violate citizens’ collective self-determination, “privatizing decisions that properly belong to citizens collectively” (p. 21). Whether or not private providers perform well in supplying essential public goods, it is objectionable for “matters of basic justice” to be decided privately rather than through public democratic institutions. This gives a preliminary standard for evaluating what philanthropy should not do on Lechterman’s account: it should leave provision of and decision making about essential public goods to public institutions.
Chapter 3 complements this with an argument about when philanthropy is worth encouraging and even subsidizing. Public subsidies for citizens’ philanthropic commitments (e.g., in the form of tax deductions for charitable contributions) are usually neutral: while qualifying donations must be made to registered nonprofits, no priority is given to some causes or organizations over others. Some critics of the deduction have argued that subsidy mechanisms should instead favor organizations that serve the least well-off members of society (e.g., Cordelli 2020). But Lechterman argues against incentivizing donors to focus on the traditional charitable goal of helping the poor: while the least well-off members of society are indeed owed assistance as a matter of justice, this obligation is not appropriately discharged through philanthropy. The case for subsidies is at least as strong when donations fund “discretionary public goods,” which are not required by justice and are therefore more appropriate objects of decentralized voluntary action. Public support for citizens’ diverse donations is desirable “as a way of mediating the limitations of majority rule and securing the organizational foundations of democratic deliberation” (p. 16).
Chapter 4 complicates this picture somewhat, showing how egalitarian concerns apply even within some activities where philanthropy plays a legitimate role. “Expressive giving” to civil society organizations fuels processes of public deliberation and allows people to imagine and build support for alternative conceptions of the public good. However, since citizens differ widely in their capacity to donate, this situation (often coupled with subsidy mechanisms that favor wealthier donors) risks translating economic inequalities into political inequalities (e.g. unequal opportunities to disseminate ideas and shape the background political agenda). Lechterman proposes a novel, steeply progressive voucher scheme as a way of addressing this problem. In addition to providing all citizens with equally weighted vouchers to contribute to the nonprofits of their choice (as other political theorists have suggested), his proposal would require the rich to pay for the opportunity to contribute in excess of their vouchers: nonprofits seeking funding for their expressive activities could only accept vouchers, not cash, and the price of additional vouchers would rise in proportion to the volume purchased.
If Chapters 2–4 develop the core of Lechterman’s argument about the (in)appropriate roles and regulation of philanthropy in a democratic society, the later chapters apply and further refine the picture with reference to specific institutional forms and social practices of giving. Chapter 5 examines “dead hand” control of philanthropic bequests by donors. It argues that, appropriately circumscribed, institutionalized deference to donor intent can respect democratic sovereignty and contribute to democracy’s substantive reliability, by requiring present generations to engage with the wisdom of past ones. Chapter 6 analyzes an important dilemma for effective altruists: because of the enormous impact of political institutions on people’s wellbeing, philanthropists who seek to maximize welfare face choices between attempting to exert influence over recipient countries’ political institutions (in arguably undemocratic ways) or restricting themselves to “palliative” attempts to offset the effects of underperforming institutions. Chapter 7 considers donations by commercial corporations and excavates a surprising democratic thread in Milton Friedman’s famous argument against corporate philanthropy.
References to the “tyranny” of generosity may lead some readers to expect a wholesale rejection of philanthropy. In fact, Lechterman concludes that realizing democratic ideals actually requires a role for philanthropy. His point is not that generosity should be condemned as damaging or despotic but that it should be prevented from encroaching on matters of basic justice and citizens’ shared control over essential aspects of their common life.
As with all attempts to specify an ideal division of institutional labor, it is a complicated matter to apply Lechterman’s account to actually existing, non-ideal democratic societies. Consider, for example, Lechterman’s case for public subsidy of philanthropy as an alternative to state provision of discretionary public goods. He defends this policy in part as a way to mediate the limitations of majoritarian decision making (e.g., pp. 16, 63). I agree that this would be an important project in a robustly democratic society. But is it a pressing problem in existing democratic societies, where institutions are often captured by powerful economic interests, constrained by supermajority requirements, or otherwise unresponsive to majority preferences? Fears about the tyranny of the majority are not the only good reason for seeking counterweights to state power, and so a subsidy of the scope that Lechterman defends might still be desirable on democratic grounds (or for other instrumental reasons). But in existing democracies, we cannot assume that philanthropy will operate as a complement or corrective to reliably majority-driven public institutions. Does that change the kind of justification that needs to be offered for philanthropy’s public role?
On the other hand, applying Lechterman’s arguments to non-ideal theory might also throw up new arguments in philanthropy’s favor. Lechterman recognizes that existing democratic societies often fail to realize democratic ideals. They do not fully satisfy citizens’ interests in collective self-determination and in feeling “at home in our social world” (p. 38). But this might threaten one argument for seeking to limit philanthropy’s role: while the private provision of essential public goods represents a dereliction of democratic sovereignty, it is less obvious that it meaningfully erodes the degree of democratic control that citizens enjoy in existing democracies. The argument from democratic sovereignty makes sense on the presupposition that public institutions are at least more responsive to citizens’ preferences and judgments than private philanthropy can be. Perhaps that remains a reasonable assumption even in imperfect democracies. On the other hand, where political institutions seem alien, hostile, or unresponsive, perhaps participation in voluntary enterprises can be a more practicable way of experiencing and sharing authorship over essential parts of the social world. Of course, on Lechterman’s account this would necessarily remain a distant second-best to the democratization of public institutions. But perhaps the seriousness of public shortfalls warrants more consideration of how philanthropy ought to do the things that it shouldn’t be doing in the first place. (Lechterman does consider in Chapter 6 such questions with reference to the practical ethics of global philanthropy; my suggestion is that similar dilemmas may arise even within wealthy democracies.)
Lechterman is right to point out that philosophers have more often assessed philanthropy’s relationship to distributive justice than to democracy or legitimacy. His account is distinctive for giving those values a central place and for the sophistication with which it conceptualizes and defends them. But I am not sure how far the democratic division of labor he endorses can be specified without recourse to a substantive theory of justice. Lechterman’s arguments for a public monopoly on the supply of essential public goods applies to the “decent social minimum” that all societies owe their members. But many important sectors like education and health care plausibly comprise a mix of justice-required goods, discretionary goods, and supplementary goods (i.e., in excess of the minimum required). Do we need to disaggregate these sectors, to determine in a fine-grained way when philanthropic funding is permissible (e.g., for resource-intensive extracurricular activities or the newest textbooks, but not to fund teacher training or school buses)? If so, this would seem to require resolving deep disagreements about what justice requires. (The required/supplementary distinction might also be difficult to sustain in the case of goods like education, whose value is partly positional.) On the other hand, discouraging any philanthropic contributions within sectors that touch essential public goods might look far too restrictive: why should collective self-determination entitle citizens to limit each other’s access to benefits above the (democratically determined) minimum threshold, if those benefits are provided on a voluntary basis at no cost to the public? This seems especially objectionable if public funding is itself inadequate or unequally distributed: how just and democratic must public institutions be before they are entitled to assert a monopoly over essential public goods?
I should underscore that these are questions that haunt most political theories of philanthropy. Lechterman’s book is of particular value for combining an exacting democratic ideal with a nuanced understanding of philanthropy as an actually existing and evolving social practice. The Tyranny of Generosity is a powerful critique of philanthropy in its undemocratic aspects, and at the same time one of the best philosophical defenses yet written of philanthropy—in its place.
