Per amore e per interesse. Moventi e modelli dell’azione benefica nella riflessione antica

Abstract

Classical thinkers described sometimes the donor’s move employing some unexpected analogies: Aristotle explains the “benefactor’s love” comparing it to the artist’s love for his artwork, or to the mother’s devotion to her sons. Cicero talks about benivolentia as a permanent and constant affect, very distant from amor adulescentulorum. Seneca, in ben. 1.14, chooses to compare donor’s beneficia amabilia to the behavior of meretrix. The aim of this paper is to recognize the tight bind of love and interest underlying these analogies, and to explain how it could be, after all, a pattern useful for re-thinking the nature of contemporary philanthropy.