noblesse oblige

noblesse oblige
noun | noh-BLESS-uh-BLEEZH
 
What It Means
 
Noblesse oblige refers to the idea that people who have high social rank or wealth should be helpful and generous to people of lower rank or to people who are poor.
 
// As the inheritor of a great fortune, he was raised to have a strong sense of noblesse oblige, not only volunteering and donating to charity, but advocating for structural change to address inequality.

 
Examples of NOBLESSE OBLIGE
 
“As is usually the case, actual research reveals that the pair bond of the cardinal is not really sacrosanct. The ostensibly quaint couples we see regularly have a 20% divorce rate, which is of course better than our own, but they are not exactly swans. And while they are mated, they are generally monogamous, but polygyny is known. It is, however, usually observed in cases where the male of an adjacent territory goes missing or because an unmated female persists in foraging and remaining in a male’s territory. A strange form of noblesse oblige. It has not been determined whether these second pairings produce any offspring.” — Bill Chaisson, The Eagle Times (Claremont, New Hampshire), 20 Jan. 2024
 
 
Did You Know?
 
In a tale collected in 16th-century Germany, a noblewoman wonders why the hungry poor don’t simply eat Krosem (a sweet bread), her cluelessness prefiguring the later, much more famous quote attributed to Marie Antoinette: “let them eat cake.” The queen never actually said that, but we can think of the sentiment behind noblesse oblige as the quote’s opposite—something more like “let us bake them a cake since we own all the eggs/flour/sugar/etc.” In French, noblesse oblige means literally “nobility obligates.” It was first quoted in English in the early 19th century, before being used as a noun referring to the unwritten obligation of aristocrats to act honorably and generously to others. Later, by extension, it also came to refer to the obligation of anyone who is in a better position than others—due, for example, to high office or celebrity—to act respectably and responsibly.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Noblesse oblige (/no;;bl;s ;;bli;;/; French: [n;bl;s ;bli;] ;; literally “nobility obliges”) is a French expression that means that nobility extends beyond mere entitlement, requiring people who hold such status to fulfill social responsibilities; the term retains the same meaning in English. For example, a primary obligation of a nobleman could include generosity towards those around him. As those who lived on the nobles' land had obligations to the nobility, the nobility had obligations to their people, including protection at the least.[1]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term suggests "noble ancestry constrains to honourable behaviour; privilege entails responsibility." The Dictionnaire de l'Acad;mie fran;aise defines it thus:

Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly.
(Figuratively) One must act in a fashion that conforms to one's position and privileges with which one has been born, bestowed and/or has earned.
OED and others cite the source of the phrase as Maxims (1808) by Pierre Marc Gaston de L;vis, Duke of L;vis.

Meaning and variants
Noblesse oblige is generally used to imply that wealth, power, and prestige come with responsibilities. In ethical discussion, the term is sometimes[citation needed] used to summarize a moral economy wherein privilege must be balanced by duty towards those who lack such privilege or who cannot perform such duty. Recently, it has been used to refer to public responsibilities of the rich, famous and powerful, notably to provide good examples of behaviour or exceed minimal standards of decency. It has also been used to describe a person taking the blame for something in order to solve an issue or save someone else.

History and examples

Figurative armories of "de Mortsauf" in Le lys dans la Vall;e by Honor; de Balzac
Part of the Politics series on
Toryism
The Royal Oak in which Charles II hid to escape capture by the Roundheads is a prominent symbol of Toryism
Characteristics
AgrarianismClassicismCounterrevolutionHigh Church (Anglicanism)High cultureInterventionismLoyalismMonarchismNoblesse obligeTraditionalismTraditional CatholicismRoyalismUnionism
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An early instance of this concept in literature may be found in Homer's Iliad. In Book XII, the hero Sarpedon delivers a speech in which he urges his comrade Glaucus to fight with him in the front ranks of battle. In Pope's translation, Sarpedon exhorts Glaucus thus:

'Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace
The first in valour, as the first in place;
That when with wondering eyes our confidential bands
Behold our deeds transcending our commands,
Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state,
Whom those that envy dare not imitate!

In Luke 12:48,[5] Jesus says: "Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more."

During the Hellenistic period, a similar practice of benevolence and benefaction in funding public institutions and distributing wealth, known as euergetism, used private, focused urbanization and investment to engineer a reciprocal relationship predicated on tradition and established societal norms. These customs bounded the civic elite to economic intervention through these social expectations and the populace to loyalty in subordinating them to dependents sustaining themselves through philanthropy.

On a larger scale, this mutual interdependence can be observed in the symbiotic relationship between a tributary state and its overlord: Alexander the Great formalized this policy in seeking to portray his conquests and subjugations as a form of liberation by directing funding into recently acquired polities.[6]

Similarly, patron-client relationships in ancient Roman society and the mutual paternalistic obligations the patrician class maintained towards plebeians existed for a similar purpose: to reinforce traditional social hierarchies and imbue loyalty. Within the Roman colonies, a similar expectation existed surrounding the collective maintenance of the outpost by its Roman inhabitants.[7]

In Le Lys dans la Vall;e, written in 1835 and published in 1836, Honor; de Balzac recommends certain standards of behaviour to a young man, concluding: "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"[8] His advice included "others will respect you for detesting people who have done detestable things."

The phrase is carved into Bertram Goodhue's Los Angeles Public Library on a sculpture by Lee Lawrie as part of Hartley Burr Alexander's iconographic scheme for the building.[9][10]

In the song "The Life I Lead" from the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins, the character Mr. Banks (played by David Tomlinson) uses the phrase: "I'm the lord of my castle! The sovereign! The liege! I treat my subjects, servants, children, wife, with a firm but gentle hand—noblesse oblige."

Critique
Some critics have argued that noblesse oblige, while imposing on the nobility a duty to behave nobly, gives the aristocracy a justification for their privilege. Jurists Mickey Dias and Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld have pointed out that rights and duties are jural corelatives,[11] which means that if someone has a right, someone else owes them a duty. Dias's reasoning was used in Murphy v Brentwood District Council (1991) to disapprove Alfred Denning's judgment in Dutton v Bognor Regis Urban District Council (1972).

See also
Chivalry
Euergetism
Honour
High Tory
"The Gospel of Wealth"
Liturgy (ancient Greece)
Mandate of Heaven
National Honor Society (USA)
Paternalistic conservatism
The White Man's Burden
With great power comes great responsibility
References

Look up noblesse oblige in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Noblesse oblige.
Notes

"Noblesse | Etymology, origin and meaning of noblesse by etymonline".


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„Noblesse oblige“ ist ein altes franzoesisches Sprichwort, das woertlich uebersetzt „Adel verpflichtet“ bedeutet. Dieses Sprichwort wird u. a. in Niederlaendisch und Englisch nicht uebersetzt. Heutzutage bedeutet dies, dass eine herausragende soziale Position besondere Verpflichtungen mit sich bringt. Diese ausserordentlichen Verpflichtungen beziehen sich ausdruecklich auch auf soziale Verhaltensweisen und die Erfuellung einer Fuehrungsrolle. Mit anderen Worten: Jemand, der durch Herkunft, Geld, Position oder Talent privilegiert ist, hat die Pflicht, etwas Gutes zu tun und sich entsprechend zu verhalten. Die inhaerente Suggestion, dass dies nur f;r diejenigen von edler Abstammung gelten wuerde, ist mit der Zeit verschwunden. In Laendern wie den USA, wo sich historisch bedingt nie ein Adel im europaeischen Sinne entwickeln konnte, ist der Ausdruck „noblesse oblige“ sogar ausschliesslich auf privilegierte Buerger anzuwenden.