Prophets and Poseurs: Niebuhr and Our Times, by A ndrew Bacevich. What Niebuhr says of nations forgetting their weakness, and blind and vainglorious, falling into violence as they pursue dreams they mistake for God's purpose, goes just as well for philanthropy. When a Paul Schervish, a former Jesuit, speaks of the very wealthy person's moral biography, and when he encourages the rich to see their lives as a pilgrim's progress, or Dantesque journey, towards some high goal, and even immortality, when he speaks of the stories the rich tell of their lives as "The Gospels of Wealth," he and those who follow in his footsteps run the risk of being false counselors, flatterers, and eggers on of madness. When he calls the ultra-rich, "hyperagents," suggesting they need not live in ordinary time and place, like ordinary beings, but can shape history to their liking, he might as well by Secretary of State to some moral monster. At least that is a risk that ought to give any wise counselor pause. In Niebuhr appears a phrase that make me sit up bolt upright: “tutors of mankind in its pilgrimage to perfection.” As a Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families, reading that made me feel ashamed. I can see now that I am pious fraud. If true moral philosophy is, as Martha Nussbaum shows it was for Seneca and Cicero, a healer's art, and if the key saying is, "Know thyself," then we are all of, in this our noble trade, wounded healers, and carriers of contagion. The temptations are great. And so are the risks if a healer does heal himself. Seneca and Cicero were both killed by those they served, the hyperagents of Rome. Goodness is fragile, those who tend it are fragile too. Yet tend it we must else it will surely perish.
"Hyperagents" is a word I encounter far too often. In a way, though, it's appropriate--the hyperagents in question have caused far more damage to the global economy than we prosaic agents ever could.
Posted by: Jeff Trexler | November 27, 2008 at 11:27 PM
Yes, interestingly, Schervish first used the term in writing of the dot com wunderkinds, just before that bubble burst. He could write of Mr. Fuld, head of the firm formerly known as Lehman, and big philanthropist, in the same spirit. We hear a lot about the "Journey" of these hyperagents from success to significance, or salvation. We hear less about Fortune's Wheel on which they like the rest of us are broken and tormented.
Posted by: Phil Cubeta | November 28, 2008 at 10:12 AM