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  • What's Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment

What's Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment Hardcover – 19 juli 2011

Engelstalige uitgave David Stove (auteur), Andrew Irvine (redacteur)
4,5 van 5 sterren (16)
Is benevolence a virtue? In many cases it appears to be so. But when it comes to the "enlarged benevolence" of the Enlightenment, David Stove argues that the answer is clearly no. In this insightful, provocative essay, Stove builds a case for the claim that when benevolence is universal, disinterested and external, it regularly leads to the forced redistribution of wealth, which in turn leads to decreased economic incentives, lower rates of productivity, and increased poverty.

As Stove points out, there is an air of paradox in saying that benevolence may be a cause of poverty. But there shouldn't be. Good intentions alone are never sufficient to guarantee the success of one's endeavors. Utopian schemes to reorganize the world have regularly ended in failure.

Easily the most important example of this phenomenon is twentieth-century communism. As Stove reminds us, the attractiveness of communism--the "emotional fuel" of communist revolutionaries for over a hundred years--has always been "exactly the same as the emotional fuel of every other utopianism: the passionate desire to alleviate or abolish misery." Yet communism was such a monumental failure that millions of people today are still suffering its consequences.

In this most prescient of essays, Stove warns contemporary readers just how seductive universal political benevolence can be. He also shows how the failure to understand the connection between benevolence and communism has led to many of the greatest social miseries of our age.
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  1. Printlengte
    240 pagina's
  2. Taal
    Engels
  3. Uitgever
    ENCOUNTER BOOKS
  4. Publicatiedatum
    19 juli 2011
  5. Afmetingen
    16.1 x 2.29 x 23.62 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    1594035237
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1594035234
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Productbeschrijving

Over de auteur

According to some, the Australian philosopher David Stove (1927-1994) may have been the late-twentieth century's "funniest and most dazzling defender of common sense," far better than authors such as G.E. Moore and J.L. Austin. According to others, he was little more than a political reactionary, a social commentator whose oft-cited books (including The Plato Cult and Scientific Irrationalism) are best left unopened. Since his death in 1994, four new collections of his writings have appeared.

Productgegevens

  • Uitgever ‏ : ‎ ENCOUNTER BOOKS
  • Publicatiedatum ‏ : ‎ 19 juli 2011
  • Taal ‏ : ‎ Engels
  • Printlengte ‏ : ‎ 240 pagina's
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594035237
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594035234
  • Gewicht van item ‏ : ‎ 499 g
  • Afmetingen ‏ : ‎ 16.1 x 2.29 x 23.62 cm
  • Klantenrecensies:
    4,5 van 5 sterren (16)

Klantenrecensies

4,5 van 5 sterren
16 wereldwijde beoordelingen

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  • Geoff Puterbaugh
    5,0 van 5 sterren Brilliant explanation of what went wrong
    Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten op 20 juli 2011
    Formaat: Kindle-editieGeverifieerde aankoop
    I owe Roger Kimball a lot for his "discovery" of the late Australian philosopher David Stove. Stove is very definitely a man in near-total disagreement with the "received ideas" of his time.

    In other essays, Stove makes intelligent attacks on Darwinian evolution and the equality of women, if you can imagine such things! (!! Even "worse," reading those essays may make you wonder whether he is actually right.)

    In this book, Stove takes on the unquestioned virtue of benevolence, and by the time he is done with it, it is a pathetic, pretentious thing with its clothes in tatters, desperately needing something to cover its ugly core --- which is, of course, our inborn need to feel good about ourselves. (I mean, who really cares about the poor? And, really, what is to be done about the poor? Writing a check to the government relieves so many anxieties!)

    But Stove goes back to Malthus (and makes me really want to read Malthus, but not the first edition) and basically makes the economic argument of "you get what you pay for." Beginning with the English Poor Laws, the wonders of benevolence went like this: a certain fragment of the population was deemed worthy of subsidy, and so (of course) others were taxed to pay for that subsidy. Those "others" included people who were very near poverty, and the additional taxes actually forced them into poverty. As a result, with the coming of the new year, there were (amazingly) MORE poor people, rather than less.

    I can't summarize the book here, of course, but I would suggest reading it with another book which lefties really hate, Charles Murray's Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, 10th Anniversary Edition. Murray provides the data for the failure of welfare in America, while Stove provides (along with Malthus) the philosophical explanation.

    Be aware, though: when Stove discusses "human psychology," he is likely to sum it up as follows: (1) everyone has a hunger instinct (b) almost everyone has a sexual instinct (c) the vast majority of human beings have a huge endowment of laziness, and (d) no shortage anywhere of selfishness, stupidity, and short-sightedness. I suspect this disqualifies him as a "feel-good writer."

    Have we learned anything from the collapse of the USSR, and the shocking revelation that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the others produced well over a hundred million corpses in the name of "benevolence?"

    I don't know. Have we?

    ----------------------------

    By the way, for an update on the state of benevolence in Britain, see Theodore Dalrymple's article in the City Journal (8/11/11), "British Degeneracy on Parade."

    "But of all the examples of benevolence causing misery, easily the most important is twentieth-century communism. This is an evil so appalling that some ignorant or superstitious people believe that its psychological roots can only lie in Satanism, or even in Satan himself. But in sober fact it is quite certain that the psychological root of communism is benevolence. Lenin, Stalin, and the rest would not have done what they did, but for the fact that they were determined to bring about the future happiness of the human race."
    Melden
  • Backpacker
    4,0 van 5 sterren Have skin in the game
    Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten op 16 maart 2018
    Formaat: HardcoverGeverifieerde aankoop
    The law of unintended consequences on full display.
    Melden
  • Donald J. Keck
    5,0 van 5 sterren What's wrong with the "Enlightened Benevolence" of the self proclaimed intellectual elite
    Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten op 5 september 2011
    Formaat: HardcoverGeverifieerde aankoop
    Australian philosopher David Stove hits the nail on the head with this treatise on what he calls "Enlightened Benevolence," a term of art which encompasses a vast array of liberal and radical thinkers from Voltaire and Rousseau in the 18th Century to John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx in the 19th Century to Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Lord Beveridge, and V.I. Lenin in the 20th Century, to the entire cast of 21st Century Liberals, Social Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Welfare Statists and other brands of Marxist fellow feelers. He illuminates what all of these true believers in Enlightened Benevolence have in common - something that is usually obscured by the obfuscations of liberal politicians, the media, and academia. He demonstrates that they are all sleeping in the same intellectual bed, and why they are so comfortable sleeping together (although they will, of course, deny it when accused of sleeping around.) It is the conviction of their own superior intelligence which enables them to know what is best for the rest of us, and their uniquely benevolent intentions in managing and directing our lives, regardless of the actual consequences that may befall us as a result.

    I have only one quibble with his argument. In Chapter 13 Stove insists that all of these blundering buffoons (even Lenin, Stalin and Mao, the greatest mass murderers in history) should be judged by the sincerity of their intentions, which are always and everywhere to do the greatest good for the greatest number of their victims. Here I profoundly disagree with Stove's analysis. To take this position is to concede the moral argument to the so called Enlightened Benevolents. By his definition all of their crimes can be justified and excused as unfortunate errors in their noble effort to do good for mankind. The self-appointed do-gooders of this world must be judged not by their intentions, but by the consequences of their actions. If their deeds are wicked and harmful their intentions are irrelevant.

    When a supposedly benevolent Marxism is applied to real people in the real world, and again and again produces tyranny and poverty, it must be judged to be a bad idea, not a good idea gone wrong. That is the kind of exculpatory argument that has for far too long been used to excuse the deeds of Marxist tyrants like Lenin, Stalin and Mao, as well as the human cost of the failed policies promoted by the likes of the Webbs and Lord Beveridge. It allows a thoroughly wicked idea to survive and flourish among the self-anointed benevolent and the self-proclaimed enlightened, where it lies in wait always ready to raise its head once again and repeat its evil deeds. All forms of Enlightened Benevolence need to be condemned once and for all as an irredeemably wicked ideology, based on envy and pride, which is poisonous to liberty, prosperity, and the welfare and happiness of the human race.
    Melden
  • Nathan Shachar
    5,0 van 5 sterren Egalitariansm for All
    Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten op 13 mei 2016
    Formaat: Kindle-editieGeverifieerde aankoop
    David Stove was wrong in one important respect: Welfare societies are more resilient than he foresaw, they have not collapsed as a result of their inherent contradictions. But his analysis of how equality, or egalitarianism, became the first commandment of all western, modern societies, is superb. How did it happen? And in such a short time! By the end of the 18th century egalitarianism was an exclusive view, embraced by very few, even very few among the reformers and liberals. At the end of the 19th century even kings and popes professed egalitarianist beliefs. To reject the idea today requires considerable courage, especially among politicians and opinion makers. Even right-wing conservatives claim that their path will lead to real equality, as opposed to the socialist chimeras. Egalitarianism has become an over-ideology, like democracy and Human Rights. And David Stove remains one of the sharpest and funniest dissident commentators of Modernity.
    Melden
  • FF
    5,0 van 5 sterren Your brother's keeper
    Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten op 28 januari 2013
    Formaat: HardcoverGeverifieerde aankoop
    I have read quite a few books on the evils of socialism, but this book gets to the core of why socialism etc. is useless and harmful. Stove peels all the way to the bottom layer of the onion, benevolence. He clearly explains where it originates, how it has been applied and why it will never work, and lastly what one should do about it (not a happy ending, I'm afraid). The book is easy to read, but not simplistic. Stove is a gifted thinker, you should read this book.
    Melden
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