Noblesse Oblige
The Old Idea That Nobles Should Act Nobly
People are endowed unequally with money and power, just as with looks and smarts—and those with more are at an obvious advantage. Which prompts one to ask, What will they do with that advantage? Few questions are as pressing and have such far-reaching consequences for the political order.
As fate would have it, the United States landed upon a historically awful approach: we religiously assure ourselves that all men are created equal while also submitting to the rule of a class of vampires who recognize no equality and feel zero obligation to those beneath them. Quite the opposite—their expertise and paper credentials entitle the meritocrats to bleed others dry in their quest for more. Our vampires do have a point, though: not everyone is fit for self-rule. For all its big promises, the democratic experiment of recent centuries did not usher in an age of feel-good equality but instead gave rise to mass confusion. Then hierarchy reasserted itself with a vengeance. The remarkable thing is how the new elites cleverly amped up the buzzwords and taglines of equality, even as they ate away at a normal fellow’s chance at a decent life. They laundered oligarchy while paying lip service to “Our Sacred Democracy.”
This is an overly generalized history of course, but it’s obvious enough that Americans gave their country over to a class of people marked by a strange combination of ruthlessness and effeteness. (See: Gates, Bloomberg, etc.) It’s hard to imagine a worse way to address the challenges of hierarchy—pretend it need not exist and also unleash all its excesses.
Noblesse oblige (French for “nobility obliges”) is a better way. Honoré de Balzac is credited with first using these words in 1835, but even he called it an “old term” and was only giving a name to an ethos that had long been present in the Western soul. Simply put: those with more ought to be generous toward those with less. All men are not created equal, and nobility shows itself in duty. Several centuries earlier Ramon Lull expressed the same thing when describing the duties of chivalry: “The office of a knight is to maintain and defend women, widows and orphans, men diseased, and those who are neither powerful nor strong […] because the great, honorable, and mighty must succor and aid those who are under them.”
It’s a deeply Christian ideal. Though some will argue that it predates the birth of Christ, noblesse oblige is undoubtedly charged with Christian principles and comes into its own during Christian times. God himself shows us the perfect embodiment of the generous king who arrives in person to pay a debt owed by others. Undergirding noblesse oblige is the Christian claim that our blessings are given to us with the expectation that we will put them to good use, like a steward who anticipates his master’s return. Luke 12:48: “Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required.” Matthew 25:40: “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”
This ideal animates some of the great characters of literature. Jane Austen’s appropriately named Mr Knightley never fails to extend guidance, protection, and kindness to those who depend on him. In a more dramatic gesture, Austen’s Mr Darcy parts ways with a small fortune to save the Bennet family from ruin; he also doesn’t say a word about it (unlike the billionaires of our times who hire PR agencies to trumpet their fake philanthropy). Bishop Myriel’s act of generosity is the inciting incident of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, so stunning to the thief Jean Valjean that it compels a conversion of the heart and a reversal of his destiny. Percy Blakeney, from Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, adopts the dangerous and expensive hobby of rescuing people from the guillotine during the French Revolution. He pays an even higher price by sacrificing his reputation and adopting the persona of an empty-headed dandy so as to throw people off his scent.
Blakeney is the prototype for the greatest embodiment of noblesse oblige in the popular culture: Bruce Wayne, the Dark Knight himself. Even those of us who have come to despise the superhero genre can appreciate Wayne as a worthy exception, probably because he’s not that super. He’s not an invulnerable demigod; he’s just a highly-skilled man who risks his body and pledges his fortune to save his city from the darkness. Bruce’s noblesse oblige finds perfect expression in an exchange near the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy when the thief Selina Kyle tries to convince him to run from the danger facing his people. But Bruce isn’t having it. “Save yourself,” she says, “You don’t owe these people any more. You’ve given them everything.”
“Not everything,” Bruce answers. “Not yet.”
What kind of elites will we have? Generous ones or rapacious ones? Everything is riding on the answer. The efforts of men like Bruce Wayne and Bishop Myriel are not simply quaint gestures—they hold everything together. Those with power and influence set the tone, and their conduct determines whether we are building a civilization, or whether everyone is at war with all others, as Gates and Bloomberg and company seem to wish. The point is not to rail against oligarchs and technocrats but to suggest that their absurdly bad examples should compel us to do better. Even if we will never come into possession of wealth like Gates or Bloomberg, anyone with open eyes can find opportunities to act more nobly than our effetely ruthless elites. Prove worthy in the little opportunities and you may be given larger ones. You also have to suspect that the turbulent times ahead will call for men of real quality to step forward.
Note: An earlier version of this essay appeared in IM1776. I made significant revisions to it for my book and am revisiting it here in anticipation of the revised and updated edition.
The well off were expected to grant zero interest loans under Old Testament Law. True, they got servants for six years from those who could not pay back, but they were expected to treat those indentured servants well and give them startup capital upon release.
A mixture of duty and power.
But not feudal. The servants were released on the Sabbath Year, and land was released on the Jubilee Year.
In the American West we overemphasize "king AMONG THE PEOPLE" completely dismissing that it's a King. This relates smoothly to your comments on cinematic Aragorn.
Our revolutionary roots leave kingship with a bad taste in our mouth. But leadership without ownership, leads to duty without weight.
You see this in the protestant churches and family structure as well. No sense of authority. The father became a sort of master deliberator. And pastor has been relegated to scriptural rhetorician.
We need to return language of "my people" back to the public consciousness.
Good post.