Descartes’s Generosity: Self-Sufficiency as Ideal Sociability

Abstract Descartes’s account of generosity, his alternative to magnanimity, is the richest source of his thought on how individuals should interact with others. In response to recent scholarship emphasizing the beneficence of the generous person, I argue that this beneficence is best understood in terms of the awareness of self-sufficiency core to generosity. Understanding generosity as a universally available awareness of one’s own freedom as the highest good explains the egalitarian judgments made by the generous person and her resulting beneficence. Exploring generous pity, veneration, and gratitude reveals that the generous person is alienated from others, and analyzing Descartes’s self-presentation in Discourse VI shows the importance of isolation to beneficence. This suggests that Descartes does not view relationships as key to human flourishing, and moreover that scholars who describe generosity in terms of love and friendship should note that these concepts are austere and depersonalized in the case of the generous individual.