Abstract
Defenders of modern philanthropic freedom often defend donor intent and celebrate voluntary action. Nevertheless, donor intent and voluntarism have often undermined the conditions of constitutional freedom. This paper proposes that philanthropy currently suffers an intellectual crisis very much like the intellectual crisis in public administration diagnosed by Vincent Ostrom. The Common Core State Standards initiative is a case study of the problems of epistemic drift in philanthropy and raises questions about whether merely defending donor intent and voluntary action for their own sake is sufficient. To escape philanthropy’s current intellectual crisis requires a clearer consideration of the epistemic choices that shape donor intent and voluntary action.
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Notes
Unfortunately, Hayek’s analysis tended to posit dualisms—the State and the Market, the tribal order and the extended order, community and commerce—that have not helped us explain domains of human action such as philanthropy and education very well. Ostrom’s insights take us farther toward a helpful analytical framework that depicts how decentralized and overlapping jurisdictions can generate alignment with the rule of law at multiple levels as well as workable patterns of order in which both constitutional and collective choices can be expressed by citizens most involved in the production and use of goods such as education, which are mostly private but possess positive externalities that make our communities better places to live.
Further Reading
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Ealy, L.T. The Intellectual Crisis in Philanthropy. Soc 51, 87–96 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-013-9741-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-013-9741-2