Ethics

Suppose I behave altruistically, because I believe that doing so will help create a better community for all - and because I want to live in such a community. Am I acting according to altruism or egoism? Or are the two actually compatible?

Comments

I for one am hoping that philosophers' obsessions with these notions will simply go away, because aas your question indicates, I think these concepts are more useful for creating confusions than for solving real philosophical problems. Surely one can (quite correctly) regard it as very much in one's own self-interest to do things for others. Any parent knows this! So why should we find ourselves tied in knots trying to figure out whether this is really altruistic or egoistic (as if somehow the distinction mattered)? Other-regarding bevaior can also be self-regarding, if one includes among one's self-interests the interests of others who are important to one. Now, an act presumably cannot both entirely sacrifice one's own self interest and also promote one's self-interest. But I have never been able to see why sacrifices of some of one's self-interests can't also be ways to promote others of one's self-interests.

This does not mean that the notion of selfishness (as a vice), or beneficence (as a virtue) are not cogent. It simply means that the attempt to divide motives into self-interest and other-interest, as if these cannot overlap, is an error.

I agree with Professor Smith that in this context concepts like altruistic and egoist are a recipe for confusion. Clearly, if your only intention were to improve the community for your own benefit -- like working on your house or something --- then it would be egoistic but it would be hard to imagine someone devoting their lives to others with purely selfish motives.

As a footnote, I don't think one needs to be a Freud to note that it is really impossible to be transparent to ourselves with regard to our motives. There are wonderful passages in Dostoyevsky's THE IDIOT in which characters believe that they have only selfish motives and Prince Myshkin points out that they were oblivious to their good intentions. Of course, it is usually the other way around.

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