Philanthropy and the Wisdom of Hospitality

Todd Breyfogle, PhD

Senior Advisor, Humanistic Studies and Practices, The Aspen Institute

The stranger comes to the door and is invited in. Come and eat with us, the hosts say. The hosts and the stranger eat, nourishing the body, affording safety and rest. Conversation accompanies the meal, perhaps, but it is only after the meal is finished that the stranger is offered the most intimate invitation “Tell us who you are, and what stories make you who you are.”

This is a most improbable story. The stranger is invited in, unknown, untested. The intimacy of the meal precedes the intimacy of identity and experience. The stranger is known first according to nature, and only secondarily according to name and social convention. The gifts of food and respite are offered unconditionally.

An improbable story indeed, to our modern ears, and yet it is repeatedly Odysseus’s story in Homer’s telling. The improbable story is not only a fiction, but the common practice of many ancient and modern cultures for which the duties of hospitality prevail.

This duty can have its roots in religion. For the Greeks and the Abrahamic traditions, the stranger might be a god or angel in disguise. In Jesus’s words, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” Hospitality as a form of piety recognizes the godlike possibilities of all human beings. For Confucius, hospitality derives from the principle of reciprocity, to treat others as you would want to be treated: “Behave when away from home as though you were in the presence of an important guest. Deal with the common people as though you were officiating at an important sacrifice.” Even when away from home, reciprocity enjoins us to be the host, and to do so with religious reverence for life and a sense of sacrificial celebration.

These duties of hospitality rooted in piety and reciprocity are improbable because they invert the logic of our modern experience. Tell me who you are and what you want, runs the modern logic, and then I’ll decide what to offer you. The modern logic begins with self; the wisdom of hospitality begins with the other. Indeed, the duties of hospitality originate not with our own strength and security, but with the neediness, vulnerability, and humanity of the person we find in front of us.

There is something profound in the improbability of the duties of hospitality. Eating a meal together—as distinct from simply providing food—is a form of intimacy that recognizes not just our common life but our common humanity. Eating together is a gift not just of physical nourishment but of spiritual communion. And so Odysseus’s story—the story of all hospitality to strangers—underscores the inseparability of the material and moral gifts we have the opportunity to share.

First, in offering a common meal, the host offers community and communion. The common meal recognizes that vulnerability is both material and moral. The stranger—as stranger—is by definition temporarily (or perhaps permanently) without community. Offering food is materially necessary but is morally insufficient. Food is necessary for physical life; a meal is both necessary and sufficient for human life. Second, the host invites truth rather than performance. The order of the hospitality matters. The meal is offered without condition; it is offered without proof of membership or demonstrated transactional value. “Eat first, talk second” means that the guest does not have to “sing for his supper.” The identity and self-disclosure the guest and host offer after the meal will be more honest and authentic once they have broken bread together. Third, the union of the material and moral gifts both reflects and increases the bonds of trust that are essential to any community—trust in each other but also the trust in oneself when one’s vulnerabilities are attended to.

Communion, honesty, trust—these are the true fruits of the common meal. The duties of hospitality begin with the material needs but do not end with them. Indeed, in the common meal, in the wisdom of hospitality, our material and moral needs are inseparable. As Aristotle reminds us, community begins with the material needs of life but finds its fulfillment in the mortal solidarity of belonging together, the highest form of which is friendship.

The success of our modern project of material surplus—however unevenly shared—has hidden from us that our needs are both moral and material. The lessons for philanthropy are significant, for philanthropy has focused largely on the often readily apparent impact of material change. Less apparent, and harder to measure, are the deeper, more lasting, and more human moral and spiritual dimensions of our being together.

The logic of philanthropy, and of social action generally, would do well to learn from the wisdom of hospitality. When we give of our things, we give materially. When we give of ourselves, we give spiritually. We give both materially and spiritually—we give and receive with human wholeness—when we share together the nourishment of a meal, and the nourishing conversation of the stories of who we are. In sharing a meal, we expand the moral ecology while meeting material needs. Whether host or guest, when we share a meal we become better versions of the people we’re called to be.