Word Finder - benevolence

definition

Disposition to do good.

definition

Charitable kindness.

definition

An altruistic gift or act.

definition

A kind of forced loan or contribution levied by kings without legal authority, first so called under Edward IV in 1473.

He had a benevolence of manner suited to the philanthropy of his mind.

Gentleness, equanimity and benevolence were native to him.

The chief features of Alembert's character were benevolence, simplicity and independence.

Their religion teaches them benevolence as the first principle, and no people practise it with more liberality.

Now, whatever speculation may say as to God's purpose being necessarily universal benevolence, experience plainly shows us that our present happiness and misery depend upon our conduct, and are not distributed indiscriminately.

For some people they represent nature, humanity or benevolence.

After fourteen years' confinement, he was released on bail and lived in Holborn, where his benevolence was shown by all manner of works of charity.

He symbolizes balance, fairness, trust and benevolence.

In 1615 an attempt to exact a benevolence in Ireland failed, and in 1620 it was decided to demand one for the defence of the Palatinate.

But, as Tenneman says, he imparted to it "a character of gentleness and benevolence, by making it subordinate to a love of mankind, allied to religion."

His gaunt features were beautified by an expression of singular force and benevolence.

Then followed a fresh call for a benevolence, this time more sparingly answered than before.

It knows nothing of universal benevolence or of a humane tolerance.

She is naked except for an old tee shirt of mine which, out of my benevolence I allowed her to wear.

But by regarding benevolence less as a definite desire for the general good as such than as kind affection for particular individuals, he practically eliminates it as a regulative principle and reduces the authorities in the polity of the soul to two - conscience and self-love.

In spite of this act Richard demanded a further benevolence; but it was Henry VII.

Among the Nayars of Malabar at the ceremonies of the Pambantullel, the household serpent-deities show their benevolence by inspiring with oracles certain women who must be of perfect purity.'

Thus, by the criterion of harmony, Shaftesbury refutes Hobbes, and deduces the virtue of benevolence as indispensable to morality.

The moneys allotted by the emperor were in many cases supplemented by private benevolence.

Cumberland, therefore, lays it down that " The greatest possible benevolence of every rational agent towards all the rest constitutes the happiest state of each and all.

Hume, taking for granted that benevolence is the supreme virtue, points out that the essence of benevolence is to increase the happiness of others.

But it owed its lasting character to the benevolence of its opponents rather than to the enthusiasm of its supporters.

The distinctive features of Christian ethics are obedience, unworldliness, benevolence, purity and humility.

The former, while accepting utility as the criterion of " material goodness," had adhered to Shaftesbury's view that dispositions, not results of action, were the proper object of moral approval; at the same time, while giving to benevolence the first place in his account of personal merit, he had shrunk from the paradox of treating it as the sole virtue, and had added a rather undefined and unexplained train of qualities, - veracity, fortitude, activity, industry, sagacity, - immediately approved in various degrees by the " moral sense " or the " sense of dignity."

With a little straining these are made to correspond to five chief divisions of Jus, - personal security (benevolence being opposed to the ill-will that commonly causes personal injuries), property, contract, marriage and government; while the first, second and fourth, again, regulate respectively the three chief classes of human motives, - affections, mental desires and appetites.

Accordingly, it is the development of benevolence in man, and of the habit of " living for others," which Comte takes as the ultimate aim and standard of practice, rather than the mere increase of happiness.

This inner wisdom activates your capacity to express benevolence for your fellow humans without regard for what is in it for you.

She was a lady of great benevolence who spent much of her time uplifting the poor, the funeral was at Beckenham.

Page 328 Ringley Chapel appears to have been the first built and endowed in Lancashire by private benevolence after the Reformation.

Among the works of benevolence with which his name is associated are the establishment of a hospital for galley slaves at Marseilles, the institution of two establishments for foundlings at Paris, and the organization of the "Filles de la Charite," to supplement the work of the confreries, whose members were mainly married women with domestic duties.

Deists believed in a God of unmixed benevolence; Butler's contention is that justice, punishment, hell-fire itself are credible in their similarity to the known experiences of man's life upon earth.

Unless you are a mother who is extending her benevolence to a coming-of-age or bride-to-be daughter, it is generally unwise to give Christmas bra and panty sets to relatives.

Their interest was to show that the gospel precept of universal benevolence, which owes nothing to civil enactment, was both agreeable to nature and conducive to happiness.

It had been founded by Gerhard Groot, a wealthy burgher who had been won to pious living mainly through the influence of Ruysbroeck the Flemish mystic. It was at Deventer, in the midst of this mystical theology and hearty practical benevolence, that Thomas a Kempis was trained.

For while self-love plays a most important part in the human economy, there is no less evidently a natural principle of benevolence.

The threefold division into passions and affections, self-love and benevolence, and conscience, is Butler's celebrated analysis of human nature as found in his first sermon.

The rule should be in righteousness and benevolence; the submission in righteousness and sincerity.

Xenocrates's earnestness and strength of character won for him universal respect, and stories were remembered in proof of his purity, integrity and benevolence.

The peculiarity of this work - written, of course, from what is known as the intuitional point of view - is its fivefold division of the springs of action and of their objects, of the primary and universal rights of man (personal security, property, contract, family rights and government), and of the cardinal virtues (benevolence, justice, truth, purity and order).

In Plato's exposition of the different virtues there is no mention whatever of benevolence, although his writings show a keen sense of the importance of friendship as an element of philosophic life, especially of the intense personal affection naturally arising between master and disciple.

Such are the evangelical principle of " doing as you would be done by the principle of justice, or " giving every man his own, and letting him enjoy it without interference "; and especially what More states as the abstract formula of benevolence, that " if it be good that one man should be supplied with the means of living well and happily, it is mathematically certain that it is doubly good that two should be so supplied, and so on."

It is to be observed that though More lays down the abstract principle of regarding one's neighbour's good as much as one's own with the full breadth with which Christianity inculcates it, yet when he afterwards comes to classify virtues he is too much under the influence of Platonic-Aristotelian thought to give a distinct place to benevolence, except under the old form of liberality.

But in his general view of ethical principles as being, like mathematical principles,' essentially truths of relation, Clarke is quite in accordance with Locke; while of the four fundamental rules that he expounds, Piety towards God, Equity, Benevolence and Sobriety (which includes self-preservation), the first is obtained, just as Locke suggests, by " comparing the idea " of man with the idea of an infinitely good and wise being on whom he depends; and the second and third are axioms self-evident on the consideration of the equality or similarity of human individuals as such.

We may observe that, in stating the principle of benevolence, " since the greater good is always most fit and reasonable to be done, every rational creature ought to do all the good it can to its.

Thus the object of hunger is not the pleasure of eating but food; hunger is therefore, strictly speaking, no more " interested " than benevolence; granting that the pleasures of the table are an important element in the happiness at which self-love aims, the same at least may be said for the pleasures of love and sympathy.

In the Sermons, indeed (1729), Butler seems to treat conscience and calm benevolence as permanently allied though distinct principles, but in the Dissertation on Virtue, appended to the Analogy (1739), he maintains that the conduct dictated by conscience will often differ widely from that to which mere regard for the production of happiness would prompt.

The identification is slightly qualified in Hutcheson's posthumously published System of Moral Philosophy (1755), in which the general view of Shaftesbury is more fully developed, with several new psychological distinctions, including Butler's, separation of " calm " benevolence - as well as, after Butler, " calm self-love " - from the " turbulent " passions, selfish or social.

Hutcheson follows Butler again in laying stress on the regulating and controlling function of the moral sense; but he still regards " kind affections " as the'principal objects of moral approbation - the " calm" and " extensive " affections being preferred to the turbulent and narrow - together with the desire and love of moral excellence which is ranked with universal benevolence, the two being equally worthy and necessarily harmonious.

Calm self-love Hutcheson regards as morally indifferent; though he enters into a careful analysis of the elements of happiness,' in order to show that a true regard for private interest always coincides with the moral sense and with benevolence.

To this Hutcheson replies that no doubt the exquisite delight of the emotion of love is a motive to sustain and develop it; but this pleasure cannot be directly obtained, any more than other pleasures, by merely desiring it; it can be sought only by the indirect method of cultivating and indulging the disinterested desire for others' good, which is thus obviously distinct from the desire for the pleasure of benevolence.