Topics Ethics

Question People say that to be a good person you should help others without expecting anything in return, because then you're just being selfish. But anytime we help someone, we all get a feeling of self gratification. Helping others makes us feel good inside. Isn't that in itself being selfish? Can it be that the real reason we help others is because it gives us something back, that being, a good feeling inside? In which case, wouldn't it be fair to say that we're all selfish, and will only help others to help ourselves?

Accepted:
May 9, 2008

Comments

The fact that we take pleasure in performing good acts and even perhaps expect to take pleasure in good acts doesn't mean that we perform them in order to produce this pleasure for ourselves. To assume that we must be acting selfishly in such cases would be to confuse the consequences we intend and those we merely foresee. We foresee that doing good deeds will have pleasure as a by-product but this is not why most of us perform them.

Indeed, this is no accident. For we can ask why we take pleasure in performing good deeds, and the answer is presumably because we enjoy doing what we believe to be good or right. The pleasure is consequential on the perception of doing what's good or right. If we didn't already have a desire to be good, we wouldn't take pleasure in doing what we regard as good. But that means that the desire to do good is prior to the pleasure, not the other way around. But then the pleasure is a by-product of the desire to be good, which is doing the real explanatory work. (Similar remarks apply to those who are pained at doing bad deeds. The pain is consequential on the perception of doing wrong and the prior desire to avoid wrongdoing.)

Some people may behave morally for purely prudential reasons, as a way of avoiding legal or social sanctions. Their motivation may be selfish or otherwise morally suspect. But taking pleasure in good deeds does not show that your real motivation is selfish or taint the moral quality of your acts.