Reconstructing

Habits of Mind
Lukas Bacho
I was recently out to coffee in New
Haven with a friend when a woman
approached us and asked if we could
spare any change. When this sort of
thing happens, I can usually answer
“No, sorry,” with a clear conscience,
since I don’t tend to carry cash. But
this time, three realizations made me
pause: I had a few small bills in my
wallet, my friend’s eyes were on me,
and we had just been discussing our
Christian perspectives on intrinsic
human worth. It felt like a pop quiz of
my faith sent from God. So I fished my
wallet out of my bag, produced five or
ten bucks, and held them out to her.
She thanked me and walked away, but
my face burned. Would I ever do a
good deed out of anything but guilt?
WOULD I EVER DO A
GOOD DEED OUT OF
ANYTHING BUT GUILT?
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau, with whom I fell
uneasily in love over the summer, spent
a lot of strong words on the subjugation
of the will to prevailing ideas of good.
Their writing is intoxicating, almost
ideological in its totalizing effect. Yet,
as a Christian reader, I felt I had to
square each arresting sentence with
Christian ethics as I knew them,
and it was these two authors’ tirades
against philanthropy that caused me
to suspect that they had seduced me
with a morally vacuous spirituality.
For all of their mystical contemplation
on the junction of self and nature,
Emerson and Thoreau can come off
as indifferent or even scornful toward
other people. I worried that their
maxim of “self-reliance” indulged my
tendency to self-absorption and my
attraction to a socially disengaged—not
to mention privileged—contemplative
life. Consider these lines from “Self-
Reliance”:
Then again, do not tell me, as a good
man did to-day, of my obligation to
put all poor men in good situations.
Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou
foolish philanthropist, that I grudge
the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to
such men as do not belong to me and
to whom I do not belong. [1]
Out of context, this passage seems
unsalvageable, but let us humor
Emerson for a moment. The outburst
comes amid a larger critique of
conformity, which begins as one exits
childhood and enters adulthood,
surrendering “the integrity of your
own mind” to “badges and names, to
large societies and dead institutions.”
What Emerson lambasts here is not
Christlike aid to the marginalized,
but philanthropy, with all of today’s
condescending connotations. (Indeed,
his privileged audience consists of
those for whom philanthropy is an
option.) He hastens to add that that
there are those for whom he “will
go to prison if need be,” but that
donating to “your miscellaneous
popular charities” or shamefully giving
a dollar to the man on the street are
deeds devoid of moral value, reflective
of one whose “virtues are penances.”
When he writes, “What I must do is all
that concerns me, not what the people
think,” he may have in mind something
like Kant’s categorical imperative,
which is a moral obligation whose
power lies in the fact that it is universal
yet determined by each individual
will. [2] Emerson’s ethic, like Kant’s,
is not anti-Christian but Christlike.
Jesus is concerned not just about our
deeds, but also the motivations behind
them. All three men would rebuke my
sheepish surrender of a few dollars to
that woman on the street, even as they
would approve of the act itself.
Is this reading of Emerson a reach?
Thoreau, though his renegade spirit
Reconstructing: Fall 2022