Delphic Maxim 75: Fulfil a favour
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.
75. Fulfil a favour
Again with the dual meanings! Have you noticed the way each of these maxims can be interpreted both as a condition of debt to others, and also as a condition of giving? For example, this maxim can be interpreted as both fulfilling a favour as an act of generosity (‘let me help you!’), and also as a repayment for a favour that you ‘owe’ to someone. This all ties back to the idea that community is a significant part of our lives, and the mutuality that community entails is foregrounded pretty strongly in the Delphic maxims.
Favours are funny things. Being a person who does someone else a favour generally means that you’re of good character, since a favour is usually done without the expectation of repayment. Maybe that expectation is implicit, and that’s why we have a sense that we might ‘owe’ someone a favour. I’d hate to think of favours as being a transaction based entirely on reciprocity, at least in the material sense that someone must repay me the effort I make. I prefer to think of favours as having emotional reciprocity, they reflect our good spirit towards each other.
On the flip side of that, of course, is that you don’t want to draw too frequently on the favours of others. This means that in a sense you should ‘fulfil a favour’ by repaying the favour one day. The nature of favours is that they are a kind of open-ended act of giving, but social convention suggests that we should/might/could repay it one day. Accepting a favour with no intention — emotional or material — to one day reciprocate really is acting in bad faith.
This is where I think favours differ from a maxim we heard about earlier last week: ‘flee a pledge’. There’s a kind of neat symmetry to these two maxims: flee a pledge, fulfil a favour. A pledge, you might remember, is a commitment that doesn’t necessarily have certainty. It’s almost as though a pledge leaves you strategically open, and the natural reciprocity that accrues to a favour doesn’t apply. It’s because of this particular social dimension to favours, as well as the understanding that we don’t expect repayment, and we especially aren’t dependent on it. Favours are an act of generosity, whereas pledges have a kind of conditionality and directedness attached to them.
How does this work in day to day life? Well I think we naturally tend towards helping the people around us, and that’s a very good thing. Not that we should get to the point where we burn out from saying yes all the time. If it got to that point, where people were almost exploiting us, then the reciprocity the governs a real favour would break down. People should recognise the kindness in that gesture, and it is generally repaid in kind (even if it’s not expected to be, and it doesn’t always have to be).
So I think a nice thank you and recognition of the favours people do for each other is important. Making it your mission to do the odd favour is an important part of living in a community, and sustaining healthy friendships and families. And most importantly, recognising that there’s a mutuality to favours: you don’t technically owe a person a material return for a favour, but good character and community spirit suggests that somewhere down the line you balance the books.
