Many centuries of moral and political philosophers have maintained that the question of beneficence is of crucial importance for the analysis of virtuous relations, relations which go beyond the call of justice, in a society of non-equals. Study of the discussion or the description of beneficence in different writers makes it possible to detect elements of a code, a set of prescriptions which seem to be presupposed by a large number of those who enter the debate. This chapter will briefly outline and analyse some key elements of the code of beneficence based on eighteenth-century writing, and on some of the authorities who influenced the eighteenth century in general and Rousseau in particular. Even in this primary analysis it will start to become clear that many aspects of the code impinge on questions of sexual difference – if only in that elements of the definition of the true benefactor implicitly exclude the pudic woman.

Speaking of the code of beneficence might suggest something monolithic and inflexible; in fact, as the sociologist Jean Baudrillard has pointed out, individuals or groups use n'importe code moral ou institutionnel … à leur façon: ils en jouent, y trichent, ils le parlent dans leur dialecte de classe’.