## 1. What is altruism?



Before proceeding, further clarification of the term
"altruism" is called for.


### 1.1 Mixed motives and pure altruism



Altruistic acts include not only those undertaken in order to do good
to others, but also those undertaken in order to avoid or prevent harm
to them. Suppose, for example, someone drives her car extra cautiously
because she sees that she is in an area where children are playing, and
she wants to insure that she injures no one. It would be appropriate to
say that her caution is altruistically motivated. She is not trying to
make those children better off, but she is being careful not to make
them worse off. She does this because she genuinely cares about them for
their sake.



Furthermore, altruistic acts need not involve self-sacrifice, and they
remain altruistic even when they are performed from a mixture of
motives, some of which are self-interested. The driver in the
preceding example may have plenty of time to get where she is going;
slowing down and paying extra attention may not be contrary to her own
good. Even so, her act counts as altruistic if *one* of her
motives for being cautious is her concern for the children for their
sake. She may also be aware that if she injures a child, she could be
punished for reckless driving, which she of course wants to avoid for
self-interested reasons. So, her caution is both altruistic and
self-interested; it is not motivated by only one kind of reason. We
should not be confused by the fact that "self-interested"
and "altruistic" are opposites. A single *motive*
cannot be characterized in both ways; but a single *act* can be
undertaken from both motives.



If someone performs an act entirely from altruistic motives--if,
that is, self-interested motives are entirely absent--we can
describe her act as a case of "pure" altruism. We should
be careful to distinguish purely altruistic behavior from
self-sacrificing behavior: the former involves no gain for oneself,
whereas the latter involves some loss. If someone has a theater ticket
that he cannot use because he is ill, and he calls the box office so
that the ticket can be used by someone else, that is a case of pure
altruism, but it involves no sacrifice.


### 1.2 Self-sacrifice, strong and weak altruism



Consider someone whose deliberations are always guided by this
principle: "I shall never do anything unless doing so is best
for me". Such an individual is refusing ever to sacrifice his
well-being even to the slightest degree. But in view of the
terminological points just made, he could have altruistic motives for
some of what he does--or even for much or all that he does! On
any given occasion, he could have mixed motives: he is careful always
to do what is best for himself, but that allows him also to be
motivated by the perception that what he does is also good for others.




It would be odd or misleading to say that such an individual is an
altruistic person. Many people would criticize him for being
insufficiently altruistic. It is part of common sense morality that
one should be willing to compromise with other people--to
cooperate with others in ways that require one to accept what is less
good for oneself than some other alternative, so that others can have
their fair share.



These reflections lead to a peculiar result: each act undertaken by
such an individual could be altruistically motivated, and yet we are
reluctant, and reasonably so, to say that he is an altruistic person.
The best way to accommodate both ideas, which seem to be in tension,
would be to make a distinction between two uses of the word
"altruism". An act is altruistic in the strong sense if is
undertaken in spite of the perception that it involves some loss of
one's well-being. An act is altruistic in the weak sense if it
is motivated, at least in part, by the fact that it benefits someone
else or the fact that it will not injure anyone else. The individual
described two paragraphs above is someone who never acts
altruistically in the strong sense. That policy seems objectionable to
many people--even though he may act altruistically in the weak
sense on many occasions.


### 1.3 Moral motives and altruistic motives



Some of what we do in our interactions with other people is morally
motivated but not altruistic. Suppose *A* has borrowed a book
from *B* and has promised to return it within a week. When
*A* returns the book by the deadline, his motive might be
described as moral: he has freely made a promise, and he takes himself
to have an obligation to keep such promises. His motive is simply to
keep his word; this is not an example of altruism. But if *A*
gives *B* a book as a gift, thinking that *B* will enjoy it
and find it useful, he is acting simply out of a desire to benefit
*B*. His motive in this case is altruistic. 



Similarly, suppose a mother refrains from giving her adult son advice
about a certain matter because she thinks that it is not her place to
do so--it would be interfering too much in his private affairs.
Even so, she might also think that he would benefit from receiving her
advice; she respects his autonomy but fears that as a result he will
decide badly. Her restraint is morally motivated, but it would not
normally be described as an act of altruism.



As these examples indicate, the notion of altruism is applicable not
to every morally motivated treatment of others, but more narrowly to
what is done out of a concern for the good of others--in other
words, for their well-being. Altruistic acts might be described as
charitable or benevolent or kind, for these words also convey the idea
of acting for the good of others, and not merely rightly towards
others.



Often the individuals who are the "targets" of altruistic
behavior are selected for such treatment because of a personal tie
between the benefactor and the beneficiary. If *A* was
extraordinarily kind to *B* when *B* was a child, and at a
later time *B* is in a position to help *A* out of a
difficult situation, the help *B* gives to *A* is
altruistically motivated, even though their common past explains why
it is *A* that *B* has chosen to help (rather than a
stranger in need). Here it is assumed that *B* is not promoting
*A*'s well-being as a mere means to his own
(*B*'s) own well-being. If that were so, *B* would not
be benefiting *A* for *A*'s sake, but only for
*B*'s sake. (A further assumption is that *B* is not
motivated simply by a sense that he owes repayment to *A*;
rather, he not only feels indebted to *A* but also genuinely
cares about him.) The people whom we treat altruistically are often
those to whom we have a sentimental attachment, or towards whom we
feel grateful. But that is not the only possibility. Some altruistic
acts are motivated simply by a recognition of the great need of those
who benefit from them, and the benefactor and beneficiary may be
strangers to each other. 



That an act is altruistically motivated does not entail that it is
justified or praiseworthy. *A* may *mistakenly* think that
she is enhancing the well-being of *B*; *B* might also
*mistakenly* think that she is benefiting from *A*'s
efforts. We could say that in such cases there is something admirable
about *A*'s motive, but nonetheless judge that she ought not
to have acted as she did.


### 1.4 Well-Being and perfection



As noted above, altruistic acts are guided by assumptions made by the
agent about the well-being of some other individual or group. What
well-being consists in is a disputed matter, but it is uncontroversial
that a distinction must be drawn between (i) what constitutes
well-being and (ii) what is a necessary means towards or a
pre-condition of well-being. This kind of distinction is familiar, and
is applicable in all sorts of cases. For example, we distinguish
between what a breakfast consists in (cereal, juice, coffee) and the
things one needs in order to eat breakfast (spoons, glasses, mugs).
There is no such thing as eating breakfast but not eating anything
that breakfast consists in. In the same way, well-being must be sought
and fostered by seeking and fostering the good or goods in which
well-being consists. Rival theories of well-being are competing ways
of answering the question: what are its constituents? After we have
answered that question, we need to address the further question of how
best to obtain those constituents. (Contemporary discussions of
well-being can be found in Badhwar 2014; Feldman 1994, 2010; Fletcher
2016; Griffin 1986; Kraut 2007; Sumner 1996 Tiberius 2018.)



Well-being admits of degrees: the more one has of the good or goods in
which it consists, the better off one is. It would be an awkward
manner of speaking to say of someone: "she has well-being".
A more natural way to express that idea would be to use such terms as
these: "she is faring well", "she is well off",
"she is flourishing", "her life is going well for
her". The constituents of well-being can also be spoken of as
benefits or advantages--but when one uses these terms to refer to
well-being, one must recognize that these benefits or advantages are
constituents of well-being, and not merely of instrumental value.
Benefits and advantages, in other words, fall into two categories:
those that are good for someone merely because they foster other
goods, and those that are good for someone in that they are
constituents of that individual's well-being.



A distinction must be drawn between being good *at* something
and having what is good *for* oneself. It is one thing to say,
"he is good at acting" and another to say "acting is
good for him". Philosophers speak of the former as
"perfectionist value" and the latter as "prudential
value". That is because when one tries to be good at something,
one hopes to move closer to the ideal of perfection. Prudential value
is the kind of good that it would be in someone's interest to
obtain--it is another term that belongs to the group we have been
discussing: "well-being", "welfare",
"benefit", and so on.



Even though perfectionist and prudential value must be distinguished,
it should not be inferred that that being good at something is not a
constituent of well-being. To return to the example used in the
preceding paragraph: if someone has great talent as an actor and
enjoys acting and every aspect of theatrical life, it is plausible to
say that his well-being consists, at least to some extent, in his
enjoyment of these activities. There are two different facts in play
here: (i) he is an excellent actor, and (ii) being an excellent actor
is good for him (not as a mere means, but as a component of his
well-being). The value referred to in (i) is perfectionist value, and
in (ii) prudential value. It would be prudent of him, in other words,
to continue to excel as an actor.



These points about well-being and excellence are pertinent to a study
of altruism because they help guard against a too narrow conception of
the sorts of goods that an altruist might promote in others. Altruists
do not aim only at the relief of suffering or the avoidance of
harm--they also try to provide positive benefits to others for
their sake. What counts as a benefit depends on what the correct
theory of well-being is, but it is widely and plausibly assumed that
certain kinds of excellence are components of a good life. For
example, someone who founds a school that trains children to excel in
the arts and sciences, or in sports, simply so that they will enjoy
exercising such skills, would be regarded as a great public benefactor
and philanthropist. Similarly, teachers and parents who foster in
their students and children a love of literature and the skills needed
to appreciate it would be viewed as altruists, if they are motivated
by the thought that by themselves these activities are benefits to
those students and children.



However, it is possible for someone to be dedicated to excellence and
at the same time to be utterly indifferent to human
well-being--and when this happens, we have no inclination to say
that such a person is motivated by altruism. Someone might be devoted
to a subject--mathematics, or philosophy, or
literature--rather than to the well-being of those who study and
master that subject. For example, imagine a student of literature who
cares deeply about James Joyce's *Ulysses*, because he
takes it to be one of the supreme achievements of the human mind. He
does not want that novel merely to gather dust on library
shelves--it deserves readers who love and understand it, and so
the skills needed to appreciate it must be kept alive from one
generation to another. This kind of devotion to perfectionist value is
not a form of altruism.



For an act to be altruistically motivated is for the
*benefactor*--not the beneficiary--to have a certain
attitude towards it. A child who acquires from a tennis instructor the
skills of a good athlete and a love of the game may simply think of
tennis as great fun--not as something that benefits him or as a
constituent of his life going well. The child does not need to
practice his skills because he believes that doing so is good for him:
that is not a necessary condition of his being the beneficiary of an
altruistic act. Similarly, someone might deny that physical suffering
counts as something that is bad for him. (He should deny this,
according to the Stoics.) But on any plausible theory of well-being,
he is wrong about that; someone who aims to diminish the pain of
another individual, out of a concern for that individual's
well-being, is acting altruistically. 



To take another example, consider someone who develops a love of
philosophy and immerses herself in the subject. When she asks herself
whether she is doing this for her own good, she may reply that her
reasons are quite different. She may say, "philosophy is
worthwhile in itself". Or: "I want to solve the mind-body
problem and the free will problem because these are deep and important
issues". If we suggested to her that her philosophical struggles
are a component of her well-being, she might regard that as a strange
way of looking at things. But her view is not
authoritative--whether she is right depends on what the best
theory of well-being is. Others who care about her could plausibly
believe that her love of philosophy is a component of her well-being,
because it constitutes an enrichment and deepening of her mind, which is of value to her in itself, whether or not it leads to some further result. If they help her pursue her
philosophical interests simply for her sake, their motives would be
altruistic, even if she herself does not care about philosophy because
she thinks it is good for her.


## 2. Does altruism exist?


### 2.1 Psychological egoism: strong and weak versions



According to a doctrine called "psychological egoism", all
human action is ultimately motivated by self-interest. The
psychological egoist can agree with the idea, endorsed by common
sense, that we often seek to benefit others besides ourselves; but he
says that when we do so, that is because we regard helping others as a
mere means to our own good. According to the psychological egoist, we
do not care about others for their sake. Altruism, in other words,
does not exist.



Since we have distinguished several different ways of using the term
"altruism", it will be helpful to make similar
distinctions between different varieties of psychological egoism.
Recall that an act is altruistic in the weak sense if it is motivated,
at least in part, by the fact that it benefits someone else (or the
fact that it will not injure anyone else). Psychological egoism, as
defined in the preceding paragraph, denies that altruism in this sense
exists. That is the strongest form of this doctrine; it is usually
what philosophers have in mind when they discuss psychological egoism.
But we can imagine weaker versions. One of them would deny that
altruism is ever pure; it would say, in other words, that whenever we
act, *one* of our motives is a desire for our own good. Another
weaker form of psychological egoism would hold that we never
voluntarily do what we foresee will sacrifice our well-being to some
extent. This third form of psychological egoism would admit that
sometimes one of our reasons for acting is the good we do for others
for their sake; but it claims that we never act for the good of others
when we think that doing so would make us worse off.


### 2.2 An empirical argument for psychological egoism



Someone might arrive at one or another of these forms of psychological
egoism because she takes herself to be a keen observer of the human
scene, and her acquaintance with other people has convinced her that
this is how they are motivated. But that way of justifying
psychological egoism has a serious weakness. Others can say to this
psychological egoist: 



> 
> 
> Perhaps the people *you* know are like this. But my experience
> of the world is rather different from yours. I know many people who
> try to benefit others for their sake. I myself act altruistically. So,
> at most, your theory applies only to the people in your social
> world.
> 
> 
> 



The psychological egoist can respond to this criticism in either of
two ways. First, she might claim that his doctrine is supported by
experimental evidence. That is, she might believe that (i) the subjects
studied by psychologists in carefully conducted experiments have been
shown to be not purely altruistic, or (more strongly) that these
subjects ultimately care only about their own good; and (ii) that we
can infer from these experiments that *all* human beings are
motivated in the same way.



This is a disputed matter. There is experimental evidence that casts
doubt on psychological egoism in its strong and in weaker forms, but
the controversy continues (see Batson 2011; Stich et al. 2010).


### 2.3 An *a priori* argument for psychological egoism



A second response on the part of the psychological egoist would
consist in an *a priori* philosophical argument for one or
another version of that doctrine. According to this line of thinking,
we can see "from the armchair"--that is, without
seeking empirical confirmation of any sort--that psychological
egoism (in one of its forms) *must* be true.



How might such an argument go? Drawing upon some ideas that can be
found in Plato's dialogues, we might affirm two premises: (i)
What motivates us to act is always a desire; (ii) all desires are to
be understood on the model of hunger (see *Meno* 77c;
*Symposium* 199e-200a, 204e).



To elaborate on the idea behind (ii): When we are hungry, our hunger
has an object: food (or perhaps some particular kind of food). But we
do not want to ingest the food for its own sake; what we are really
after is the feeling of satisfaction that we expect to get as a result
of eating. Ingesting this or that piece of food is something we want,
but only as a means of achieving a sense of satisfaction or
satiation.



If all desire is understood in the same way, and all motivation takes
the form of desire, then we can infer that psychological egoism in its
strong form is true (and therefore its weaker versions are also true).
Consider an action that seems, on the surface, to be altruistically
motivated: I give you a gift simply because I think you will like it.
Now, since I want to give you this gift, and all desire should be
understood as a kind of hunger, I am hungering after your feeling
pleased, as I hunger after a piece of food. But just as no one wants
to ingest a piece of food for its own sake, I do not want you to feel
pleased for your sake; rather, what I am seeking is the feeling of
satisfaction I will get when you are pleased, and your being pleased
is simply the means by which I achieve satisfaction. Accordingly, we
don't have to be keen observers of other people or look within
ourselves to arrive at psychological egoism. We can recognize that
this doctrine is correct simply by thinking about the nature of
motivation and desire.


### 2.4 Hunger and desire



But the assumption that all desires are like hunger in the relevant
respect is open to question. Hunger is not satisfied if one still
*feels* hungry after one has eaten. It seeks a certain kind of
consciousness in oneself. But many kinds of desires are not like that.
Suppose, for example, that I want my young children to be prosperous
as adults long after I have died, and I take steps that increase to
some small degree their chances of achieving that distant goal. What
my desire is for is their prosperity far into the future, not my
current or future feeling of satisfaction. I don't know and
cannot know whether the steps that I take will actually bring about
the goal I seek; what I do know is that I will not be alive when they
are adults, and so even if they are prosperous, that will give me no
pleasure. (Since, by hypothesis I can only hope, and do not feel
confident, that the provisions I make for them will actually produce
the good results I seek for them, I get little current satisfaction
from my act.) It would make no sense, therefore, to suggest that I do
not want them to be prosperous for their sake, but only as a means to
the achievement of some goal of my own. My goal is their well-being,
not my own. In fact, if I allocate to them resources that I myself
need, in the hope that doing so will make their lives better, I am
doing something that one form of psychological egoism says is
impossible: sacrificing my own good, to some degree, for the sake of
others. If the psychological egoist claims that such self-sacrifice is
impossible because all desire is like hunger, the reply should be that
this model does not fit all cases of desire.



Recall the two premises used by the armchair psychological egoist: (i)
What motivates us to act is always a desire; (ii) all desires are to
be understood on the model of hunger. The second premise is
implausible, as we have just seen; and, since both premises must be
true for the argument to reach its conclusion, the argument can be
rejected. 


### 2.5 Desire and motivation



It is worth observing, however, that first premise of this argument is
also open to question.



This thesis that what motivates us to act is always a desire should be
accepted only if we have a good understanding of what a desire is. If
a desire is simply identified with whatever internal state moves
someone to act, then the claim, "what motivates us to act is
always a desire", when spelled out more fully, is a tautology.
It says: "the internal state that moves us to act is always the
internal state that moves us to act". That is not a substantive
insight into human psychology, but a statement of identity, of the
form "*A* = *A*". We might have thought we were
learning something about what causes action by being told, "what
motivates people is always a desire", but if
"desire" is just a term for whatever it is that motivates
us, we are learning nothing (see Nagel 1970: 27-32).



Here is a different way of making the same point: As the words
"desire" and "want" are often used, it makes
good sense to say: "I don't want to do this, but I think I
ought to". That is the sort of remark we often make when we take
ourselves to have an unpleasant duty or obligation, or when we face a
challenge that we expect to be difficult and stressful. In these sorts
of situation, we do not hunger after the goal we move towards. So, as
the word "desire" is often used, it is simply false that
what motivates us to act is always a desire. Now, the psychological
egoist who seeks an *a priori* defense of this doctrine might
say: 



> 
> 
> when I claim that what motivates us to act is always a desire, I am
> not using the word "desire" as it is sometimes used. My
> usage is much broader. Among desires, in this broad sense, I include
> the belief that one ought to do something. In fact, it includes any
> internal state that causes someone to act. 
> 
> 
> 



Clearly, the thesis that what moves us is always a desire, when so
understood, is empty. 



The common sense terms we often use to explain why we help others do
not need to refer to our own desires. You are in a public space and
come across someone off-putting in appearance but who seems to need
your help. He appears to be in pain, or confused, or needy in some
way. Recognizing this, you take yourself to have a good reason to
offer him your assistance. You think that you ought to ask him whether
you can help--even though that will delay you and may cause you
some trouble and discomfort. These ways of describing your motivation
are all that is needed to explain why you offered him your help, and
it is not necessary to add, "I wanted to help him".
Admittedly, when "desire" is used to designate whatever it
is that motivates someone, it is true that you wanted to help him. But
what does the explanatory work, in these cases, is your recognition of
his need and your judgment that therefore you ought to offer your
help. Saying, "I wanted to help him" would be misleading,
since it would suggest that there was something pleasant that you
expected to get by offering your assistance. After you have given him
your help, it is true, you might think back on this encounter, and be
pleased that you had done the right thing. But you might not--you
might be worried that what you did actually made him worse off,
despite your good intentions. And in any case, if you do look back
with pleasure at your good deed, it does not follow that feeling good
was your goal all along, and that you merely used him as a means to
that end. That would follow only if desire by its very nature is a
form of hunger.


### 2.6 Pure altruism and self-sacrifice



Of the three forms of psychological egoism distinguished above, the
one that is least open to objection is the weak form that holds that
altruism is never pure. It claims that whenever we act, *one*
of our motives is a desire for our own good. There is no good *a
priori* argument for this thesis--or, at any rate, the *a
priori* argument we have been considering for the strongest form
of psychological egoism does not support it, because the two premises
used in that argument are so implausible. But it might nonetheless be
suggested that as a matter of fact we always do find some
self-interested motivation that accompanies altruistically motivated
behavior. It is difficult to refute that proposal. We should not
pretend that we know all of the considerations and causes that
underlie our behavior. Some of our motives are hidden, and there is
too much going on in our minds for us to be aware of the whole of our
psychology. So, for all we know, we might never be pure altruists.



But what of the other weak form of psychological egoism?--the one
that admits that sometimes one of our reasons for acting is the good
we do for others for their sake, but claims that we never act for the
good of others when we think that doing so would make us worse off. It
says, in other words, that we never voluntarily do what we foresee
will sacrifice our well-being to some extent. 



The first point to be made about this form of psychological egoism is
that, once again, there is no *a priori* argument to support
it. The two premises we have been examining--that all action is
motivated by desire and all desire is like hunger--are
implausible, and so they do not support the thesis that we never
sacrifice our well-being to any degree. If this form of psychological
egoism is to be sustained, its evidence would have to be drawn from
the observation of each human being's reasons for acting. It
would have to say: when our motives are carefully scrutinized, it may
indeed be found that although we do good to others for the sake of
those others, we never do so when we think it would detract even
slightly from our own well-being. In other words, we count the good of
others as something that by itself gives us a reason, but it is always
a weak reason, in that it is never as strong as reasons that derive
from our self-interest.



We have no reason to suppose that human behavior is so uniform in its
motivation. A far more plausible hypothesis about human motives is
that they vary a great deal from one person to another. Some people
are never altruistic; others are just as this weak form of
psychological egoism says: they are altruistic, but only when they
think this will not detract from their own well-being; and then there
is a third and large category filled with people who, to some degree
or other, are willing to sacrifice their well-being for others. Within
this category there is wide range--some are willing to make only
small sacrifices, others larger sacrifices, and some extraordinarily
large sacrifices. This way of thinking has the great advantage of
allowing our experience of each individual to provide us with the
evidence by means of which we characterize him. We should not label
everyone as an egoist on the basis of some *a priori* theory;
rather, we should assess each person's degree of egoism and
altruism on the basis of what we can discern of their motives.


### 2.7 Does egoism exist?



One further point should be made about our reasons for supposing that
there is such a thing as altruism. Just as we can ask, "what
entitles us to believe that altruism exists?" so we can ask:
"what entitles us to believe that egoism exists?" Consider
the possibility that whenever we act for our own good, we are not
doing so only for our own sake, but also for the sake of someone else.
On what grounds are we entitled to reject that possibility?



Once again, the egoist might reply that it is an *a priori*
truth that all of our actions are ultimately motivated only by
self-interest, but we have seen the weakness of the premises that
support that argument. So, if the hypothesis that sometimes one acts
only for one's own sake is true, it must recommend itself to us
because close observation of human behavior supports it. We must find
actual cases of someone promoting his own good *only* for his
own sake. It is no easier to be confident about such matters than it
is easy to be confident that someone has acted out of purely
altruistic motives. We realize that much of what we do for ourselves
has consequences for other people as well, and we care to some degree
about those other people. Perhaps our ultimate motivation always
includes an other-regarding component. It is more difficult to find
evidence against that suggestion than one might have thought.



To take matters to an extreme, it might be suggested that our ultimate
motivation is always entirely other-regarding. According to this
far-fetched hypothesis, whenever we act for our own good, we do so not
at all for our own sake, but always entirely for the sake of someone
else. The important point here is that the denial that altruism exists
should be regarded with as much suspicion as this contrary denial,
according to which people never act ultimately for their own good.
*Both* are dubious universal generalizations. Both have far
less plausibility than the common sense assumption that people
sometimes act in purely egoistic ways, sometimes in purely altruistic
ways, and often in ways that mix, in varying degrees, the good of
oneself and the good of others.


## 3. Self and others: some radical metaphysical alternatives



An assumption that many people make about egoistic and altruistic
motives is that it is more difficult to justify the latter than the
former, or that the former do not require justification whereas the
latter do. If someone asks himself, "Why should I take my own
good to be a reason to do anything?" it is tempting to respond
that something is amiss in the very asking of this
question--perhaps because there can be no answer to it.
Self-interest, it might be said, can be given no justification and
needs none. By contrast, since other people are *other*, it
seems as though some reason needs to be given for building a bridge
from oneself to those others. In other words, we apparently have to
find something in others that justifies our taking an interest in
their well-being, whereas one need not seek something in oneself that
would justify self-regard. (Perhaps what we find in others that
justifies altruism is that they are just like oneself in important
respects.) It is worth asking whether this apparent asymmetry between
justifying self-interest and justifying altruism is real or only
apparent.



One response to this question is that the asymmetry is illusory
because the very distinction between oneself and others is artificial
and an obstacle to clear thinking. One can begin to challenge the
validity or importance of the distinction between self and others by
noticing how many changes occur in the inner life of what is,
conventionally speaking, a single "person". The mind of a
newborn, a child, an adolescent, a young adult, a middle aged person,
and an old person approaching death--these can have at least as
many differences as do those who are conventionally counted as two
distinct individuals. If a young man of twenty years sets aside money
to provide for his retirement in old age, he is saving for someone who
will be quite different from himself. Why should that not be called
altruism rather than self-interest? Why does it matter whether it is
called acting for his own good or for the good of another? (See Parfit
1984.)



Another kind of challenge to the validity of the distinction between
self and others derives from the observation made by David Hume that
when we look within and make an inventory of the contents of our
mental life, we have no acquaintance with any entity that would
provide a reference for the word "self". Introspection can
tell us something about sensations, feelings, and thoughts--but
we do not have any experience of some entity that is the one who has
these sensations, feelings, and thoughts. That point might be regarded
as a reason to reject the common sense view that when you refer to
yourself, and distinguish yourself from someone else, there is
something real that you are talking about, or some valid distinction
between yourself and others. It might be thought, in other words, that
the ordinary distinction between altruistic and egoistic motives is
misguided because there are no such things as selves.



A third metaphysical possibility is this: human beings cannot be
understood one by one, as though each were a self-sufficient and fully
real individual. That way of thinking about ourselves fails to
recognize the profound way in which we are by our nature social
beings. You and I and others are by our nature mere parts of some
larger social unit. As an analogy, one might think of the human body
and such parts of the body as fingers, hands, arms, legs, toes, torso,
and so on. They cannot exist, much less function properly, in
isolation. Similarly, it might be said that individual human beings
are mere fragments of a larger social whole. Accordingly, instead of
using the concepts expressed by the terms
"self-interested" and "altruistic", we should
see ourselves as contributors to the success and well-functioning of
the larger community to which we belong (see Brink 2003; Green
1883).



The remainder of this essay will set aside these unorthodox
alternatives to the common sense metaphysical framework that we
normally presuppose when we think about self-interested and altruistic
motives. It would take us too far afield to examine them. We will
continue to make these assumptions: First, a single individual human
being persists over time from birth to death, even when the mental
life of that individual undergoes many changes. Second, there is
someone one is referring to when one talks about oneself, even though
there is no object called the "self" that we detect
introspectively. And the fact that we do not encounter such an object
by introspection is no reason to doubt the validity of the distinction
made between oneself and others. Third, although certain things (arms,
legs, noses, etc.) are by their very nature parts of a whole, no human
being is by nature a part in that same way. Rejecting these ideas, we
will continue to assume, with common sense, that for each human being
there is such a thing as what is good for that human being; and that
the questions, "what is good for me?", "what is good
for that other individual, who is not me?" are different
questions. Accordingly, it is one thing for a reason to be
self-interested, and another for it to be altruistic (although of
course one and the same act can be supported by both kinds of
reasons).



Assuming, then, that the distinction between these motives is real,
the questions we asked at the beginning of this section remain: Why
ought one to be altruistic? Does one need a justification for being
motivated in this way? Is egoistic motivation on a sounder footing
than altruistic motivation, in that it stands in no need of
justification?


## 4. Why care about others?



Radically different ways of answering these questions can be found in
moral philosophy. The first makes self-interested motivation
fundamental; it holds that we should be altruistic because it is in
our interest to be so moved. That strategy is often attributed to the
Greek and Roman philosophers of antiquity--Plato, Aristotle, the
Stoics, and the Epicureans (see Annas 1993).



In the modern era, a second approach has come to the fore, built on
the notion that moral thinking is not self-centered but impartial and
impersonal. Its basic idea is that when we think *morally*
about what to do, reason takes a god's-eye perspective and sets
aside the emotional bias we normally have in our own favor, or in
favor of our circle of friends or our community. Here Kant 1785 is a
representative figure, but so too are the utilitarians--Jeremy
Bentham 1789, John Stuart Mill 1864, and Henry Sidgwick 1907. 



A third approach, championed by David Hume (1739), Adam Smith (1759),
and Arthur Schopenhauer (1840), gives sympathy, compassion, and
personal affection--rather than impartial reason--a central
role to play in the moral life. It holds that there is something
extraordinarily valuable in the sentimental bonds that take hold among
human beings--a feature of human life that is overlooked or
distorted when morality is understood solely or primarily in
impersonal terms and from a god's-eye point of view. In
favorable conditions, we naturally and emotionally respond to the weal
and woe of others; we do not and should not look for reasons to do so.
(The assorted ideas labeled "sentimentalism" in this entry
are an amalgam of ideas derived loosely from the writings of Blum
1980; Noddings 1986; Slote 1992, 2001 2010, 2013; and others. The term
is sometimes applied to a family of meta-ethical views that ground the
meaning or justification of moral propositions in attitudes rather
than response-independent facts (Blackburn 2001). Here, by contrast,
sentimentalism is a ground-level thesis about what is most valuable in
human relationships. It could be combined with meta-ethical
sentimentalism, but need not be.)



These three approaches are hardly an exhaustive survey of all that has
been said in the Western philosophical tradition about altruism. A
fuller treatment would examine the Christian conception of love, as
developed by thinkers of the medieval period. To a large extent, such
figures as Augustine and Aquinas work within a eudaimonistic
framework, although they are also influenced by the Neoplatonic
picture of the visible world as an outpouring of the bountifulness of
divine goodness. To the extent that rewards of heaven and the
sufferings of hell play a role in a theocentric framework, there are
instrumental reasons, for those who need them, to care for others. But
there are other reasons as well. Other-regarding virtues like charity
and justice are perfections of the human soul and are therefore
components of our earthly well-being. Christian philosophy rejects
Aristotle's doctrine that divine being has no ethical qualities
and makes no interventions in human life. God is a person who loves
his creation, human beings above all. When we love others for
themselves, we imitate God and express our love for him (Lewis
1960).


### 4.1 Eudaimonism



The term "eudaimonism" is often used by philosophers to
refer to the ethical orientation of all or the major philosophers of
Greek and Roman antiquity. "*Eudaimonia*" is the
ordinary Greek word they apply to the highest good. As Aristotle
observes at the beginning of the *Nicomachean Ethics*, whenever
we act, we aim at some good--but goods are not all at the same
level. Lower goods are undertaken for the sake of more valuable goals,
which are in turn pursued in order to achieve still better goods. This
hierarchy of value cannot continue endlessly--a life must have
some ultimate goal, something that is valuable in itself and not for
the sake of anything still better. What that goal should be, Aristotle
acknowledges, is a much disputed matter; but at any rate, everyone
uses the word "*eudaimonia*" to designate that
highest good. ("Happiness" is the standard translation,
but "well-being" and "flourishing" may be
closer to the Greek word's meaning.)



Aristotle does not say that one's ultimate goal should be
one's own well-being (*eudaimonia*) *and no one
else's*. On the contrary, he holds that the *common*
good (the good of the whole political community) is superior to the
good of a single individual. Nonetheless, it has become common among
scholars of ancient ethics to attribute to Aristotle and the other
major moral philosophers of antiquity the assumption that one's
ultimate goal should *just* be one's own well-being.



Is this an implausible assumption? That is the accusation of many
systems of modern moral philosophy, but one must be careful not to
attribute to Greek and Roman ethics an extreme endorsement of
selfishness. One way to see that this would be unfair is to recognize
how important it is to Aristotle that we love others *for their
sake*. That is a key ingredient of his lengthy discussion of
friendship and love in Books VIII and IX of the *Nicomachean
Ethics*. There he argues that (i) friendship is an ingredient of a
good life, and (ii) to be a friend to someone (or at any rate a friend
of the best sort) one must not treat him as a mere means to
one's own advantage or one's own pleasure. He elaborates
on (ii) by adding that in friendships of the best sort, each
individual admires the other for the excellence of that other
person's character, and benefits him for that reason. It is
clear, then, that he explicitly condemns those who treat others as
mere means to their own ends. So, even if it is true that, according
to Aristotle, one's ultimate goal should be one's own
well-being (and no one else's), he combines this with the denial
that the good of others should be valued solely as a means to
one's own.



It is crucial, at this point, that we keep in mind the distinction,
drawn above in
 section 1.4,
 between (i) what constitutes well-being and (ii) what is a necessary
means towards or a pre-condition of well-being. Aristotle argues that
one's well-being is constituted by the excellent use of
one's reason, and that such virtues as justice, courage, and
generosity are among the qualities in which one's good consists.
When one acts with justice and generosity towards one's family,
or friends, or the larger community, that is good for oneself (one is
achieving one's ultimate goal) and it is also good for
others--in fact, one's action is motivated in part by the
desire to benefit those others for *their* sake. If treating
others justly and in accordance with the other ethical virtues were
merely a means towards one's own well-being, Aristotle's
framework for ethics would be objectionably self-regarding--and
it would be difficult for it to endorse, without inconsistency, the
thesis that we ought to benefit others for their sake.



We should recall a point made in
 section 1.1:
 altruistic acts need not involve self-sacrifice, and they remain
altruistic even when they are performed from a mixture of motives,
some of which are self-interested. For Aristotle, altruism should
*always* be accompanied by self-interested motives. His system
of practical thought could be dismissed out of hand if one begins with
the assumption that moral motivation must be purely altruistic, free
from all taint of self-regard. Otherwise, it would not count as
*moral*. That idea has some currency, and it is often
attributed (rightly or wrongly) to Kant. But on reflection, it is open
to question. If it is the case that whenever one has a good reason to
benefit someone else for that person's sake, there is also a
second good reason as well--namely, that in doing so one will
also benefit oneself--it would be implausible to suppose that one
should not let that second reason have any influence on one's
motivation.



Nonetheless, if another point made earlier is correct, there
*is* a serious problem for Aristotle's eudaimonism. In
 section 1.2,
 we noted that someone is open to criticism if he is always guided by
the principle, "I shall never do anything unless doing so is
best for me". Such a person seems insufficiently altruistic,
insufficiently willing to make compromises for the good of others. He
is (to use the term introduced earlier) never altruistic in the strong
sense. Aristotle, it might be said, would have been on firmer ground
if he had said that ultimately one should act for one's own good
*and that of others*. (To be fair to him, he does not deny
this; on the other hand, he does say that treating others well never
makes one worse off.)



If the project undertaken by Greek and Roman moral philosophy is to
begin with the unquestioned assumption that one should never act
contrary to one's own good, and that one's ultimate end
should be only one's own eudaimonia, it faces the serious
objection that it will never be able, on this basis, to give proper
recognition to the interests of others. The idea underlying this
objection is that we should be *directly* concerned with
others: the fact that an act one performs benefits someone
*else* can already provide a reason for undertaking it, without
having to be accompanied by a *self*-interested reason. There
is no argument to be found in ancient ethics -none is
offered--that purports to show that the only way to justify
having other-regarding motives is by appealing to the good it does
oneself to have them.



At the same time, that gives us no reason to dismiss out of hand the
efforts made by these authors to show that in fact one does benefit by
having altruistic motives. There is nothing morally offensive about
asking the question: "is it good for someone to be a good
person?" once it is understood that being a good person might be
a *component* of well-being, not a means to further private
ends. As noted earlier
 (section 1.4),
 certain kinds of excellence are widely assumed to be components of a
good life. The examples used there were excellence in the arts, the
sciences, and sport. But excelling at ethical life is also a plausible
example, since it consists in developing and exercising cognitive,
emotional, and social skills that we are pleased and proud to have. In
any case, it would be sheer dogmatism to close our minds and refuse to
listen to the arguments found in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics that
ethical virtue is of great value because it is a component (and for
the Stoics the sole component) of one's well-being.


### 4.2 Impartial Reason



We turn now to the idea, central to one modern approach to ethics,
that when we think morally, we reason from an impartial or impersonal
perspective. Moral thinking is not self-centered. Of course we all
have an emotional bias that attaches special weight to self-interest,
and we are often partial to our particular circle of friends or our
community. But when we look at the world from a moral point of view,
we try to set aside this self-centered framework. Taking a god's
eye perspective on things, we ask ourselves what *one* ought to
do in this or that situation--not what would be good for me or my
friends. It is as though we forget about locating ourselves as this
particular person; we abstract away from our normal self-centered
perspective and seek the solution to a practical problem that anyone
similarly impartial would also arrive at.



We can find anticipations or analogues of this idea in ancient
ethics--for example, in Plato's and Aristotle's
recognition that the political community serves the *common*
good rather the interest of some one class or faction; and in the
Stoic belief that the cosmos is governed by a providential force that
assigns to each of us a distinctive role by which we serve not just
ourselves but also the whole. In the ideal city of Plato's
*Republic*, the family and private property are abolished
within the elite classes, because these institutions interfere with
the development of a common concern for all individuals. It is not
clear how these ideas can be made to fit within a eudaimonistic
framework. How can the good of the community serve as the highest
standard of evaluation if one's own good alone is one's
highest end? One way of looking at the history of ethics would be to
say that modern ethics salvages the impartialism that occasionally
appears in ancient ethics, and rightly abandons its attempt to derive
a justification of altruism from a prior commitment to self-interest.
Contemporary eudaimonists, of course, would tell a different story
(see, for example Annas 1993; LeBar 2013; Russell 2012).



The notion of impartiality has thus far been described in highly
general terms, and it is important to see that there are different
ways of making it more concrete. One way of doing so is adopted by
utilitarians, and more generally, by consequentialists. (The
utilitarianism of Bentham 1789, Mill 1864, and Sidgwick 1907 holds
that one is to maximize the greatest balance of pleasure over
pain--treating pleasure and the absence of pain as the sole
constituents of well-being. Consequentialism abstracts away from this
hedonistic component of utilitarianism; it requires one to maximize
the greatest balance of good over bad. See Driver 2012.) In their
calculus, no individual's good is given greater weight or
importance than any other's. Your own good, therefore, is not to
be treated by you as having greater weight as a reason than anyone
else's, simply because it is your own good. The well-being of a
human being (or of a sentient creature) is what provides one with a
reason to act: that is why one has a reason to take one's own
good into consideration in practical thinking. But the same point
applies equally and with equal force to the well-being of anyone
else.



But that is not the only way of taking the general notion of
impartiality and making it more specific. The general idea, as stated
earlier, is that moral thinking, unlike prudential thinking, is not
self-centered. One can make this idea more concrete by taking it to
mean that there is a single set of rules or norms that apply equally
to all human beings, and so the standard by which one answers the
question, "what should I do in this situation?" is the
standard by which one answers the question, "what should anyone
do in this situation?" Someone whose practical reasoning is
guided by this condition is abiding by an ideal of impartiality. He
makes no special exceptions for himself or his friends.



Suppose, for example, that you are a lifeguard and one afternoon you
must choose between swimming north to rescue one group and swimming
south to rescue another. The northern group includes your friend, but
the southern group, full of strangers, is much larger. The ideal of
impartiality described in the previous paragraph does not by itself
determine what one should do in this situation; what it requires is
simply that it should make no difference that the lifeguard faced with
this dilemma is *you* (and the northern group includes
*your* friend). What *you* should do, if you are the
lifeguard, is what *any* lifeguard ought to do in that
situation. If it is right to take friendship into consideration, when
making this decision, then it would be right for anyone to do so.
(What would be right, in that case, would be for each individual to
choose the good of *his or her* friend over the good of
strangers.)



The consequentialist has a more radical interpretation of what
impartiality means and requires. His ideal of impartiality does not
allow the lifeguard to take into consideration the fact that by
swimming north he will be able to save *his* friend. After all,
the well-being of his friend is not made more valuable simply
because that person is *his* friend. Just as my good is not
made more valuable than the good of others simply because it is
*my* good, so too the well-being of my friend deserves no extra
weight because he is a friend of *mine*. So, the lifeguard,
according to the consequentialist, must choose to save one group
rather than the other solely on the basis of the greater balance of
good over bad. 



The consequentialist will correctly point out that quite often one is
in a better position to promote one's own good than that of
others. As a rule, I have more knowledge about what is good for me
than I have about what is good for strangers. It often requires fewer
resources for me to benefit myself than to benefit others. I know
immediately when I am hungry without having to ask, and I know what
kind of food I like. But additional steps are needed to find out when
others are hungry and which food they like. These sorts of facts about
one's special relationship to oneself might allow the
consequentialist to justify giving somewhat more attention to
one's own well-being than that of anyone else. Even so, there is
only one individual who is me; and the number of other individuals
whom I can benefit, if I make the effort, is very large. When all of
these factors are taken into consideration, it will often be the case
that self-interested reasons ought to give way to altruistic
motives.



Consequentialism evidently does not recognize certain ways in which
each human being has a special relation to her own well-being--a
relation different from the one she has to the well-being of others.
When each of us becomes an adult, we are normally charged with the
special responsibility of having to look after our own welfare. Young
children are not expected to be in command of their own lives; they
are not yet competent to occupy this role. But the point of their
education is to train them so that as adults they can be responsible
for themselves. A fully mature person is rightly expected by others to
care for someone in particular--namely herself. She is given room
to make decisions about her own life but is not given the same kind
and degree of authority over the lives of others. If she would like to
devote herself to others, she cannot simply do so without receiving
their permission, or without taking other steps that make her entry
into their lives permissible. Consequentialism, by contrast, regards
all adult human beings as equally responsible for the well-being of
all. It does not take seriously the idea that our social relations are
governed by a division of labor that charges each with a special
responsibility for herself--and certain others as well
(one's children, one's friends, and so on.)



According to the weaker interpretation of impartiality described
above, moral rules reflect this division of labor. (By the
"weaker interpretation" is meant the thesis that moral
thinking avoids being self-centered because it upholds a single set of
rules or norms that apply equally to all human beings.) Consider, for
example, the duty we normally have to help others, even when they are
strangers. If someone is in need, and asks for your assistance, that
gives you a reason to help him, and you should do so, *provided
that compliance with such appeals is not overly burdensome*.
Notice the escape clause: it builds into the duty to aid others a
recognition of the importance of each person having a significant
degree of control over his own life. Common sense morality assumes
that what we owe to others might call for some sacrifice of our own
good, but also that in the ordinary business of life the degree of
sacrifice should fall within certain limits, so that we can make good
use of the responsibility we have been given as adults to seek our own
good. The balance struck by moral rules between the claims of
self-interest and the claims of others is what makes it possible for
those rules to be recognized and accepted as appropriate. These rules
leave us free to volunteer to make greater sacrifices; but such
greater sacrifices are not required of us except in extraordinary
circumstances (wars, disasters, emergencies).



The three approaches to altruism that we have examined thus far give
three rather different answers to the question: "why should one
act for the sake of others and not only for one's own
sake?" 



Eudaimonism replies that those who act for the sake of others are
benefited by having an altruistic disposition.



The consequentialist's answer begins with the claim that
one's own well-being ought to be of concern to oneself simply
because it is *someone's* well-being; it should not be of
importance to oneself simply because it is one's own well-being.
There is, in other words, no reason why a benefit should go to you
rather than someone else just because you are the one who would be
receiving it. Accordingly, if one assumes, as one should, that one
should act for one's own sake, then one has no less a reason to
act for the good of anyone and everyone else.



If we adopt a weaker interpretation of impartiality, we see the
justification of altruism simply by seeing that we have a duty to aid
other people in certain circumstances. The moral rule that requires us
to help others is a rule that calls upon us to help them not as a
means to our own good, but simply in virtue of their need. And we see
the rule as justified by recognizing that it strikes a proper balance
between our self-concern and the appropriate claims of others.



Notice that both consequentialism and the weaker impartialist position
are compatible with the eudaimonist's thesis that having
altruistic motives is a component of one's own well-being. What
these two forms of impartialism reject is the stronger eudaimonistic
thesis that one's ultimate goal should be one's own
well-being and that alone.



That stronger eudaimonistic thesis and consequentialism stand at
opposite poles from each other, in the following respect: The first of
these poles elevates the self to a position of primacy, since it is
only one's own well-being that constitutes one's ultimate
goal; by contrast, consequentialism, at the opposite extreme, deflates
the self to the point where it has no more claim to one's
attention than does any other individual. The weak impartialist
attempts to occupy a middle ground.


### 4.3 Nagel and the impersonal standpoint



Yet another conception of impartiality--and a novel argument for
the rationality of altruism--can be found in the work of Thomas
Nagel. In *The Possibility of Altruism* (1970), he seeks to
undermine both psychological egoism, in its strong form, as defined in
 section 2.1
 above, and its normative counterpart (sometimes called
"rational egoism or "ethical egoism"), which holds
that one *ought* to have no direct concern with the good of
others. *Indirect* concern, the ethical egoist grants, can be
justified: the good of others may be instrumental to one's own
good, or one might happen to have a sentimental attachment to others.
But absent these contingent relations to others, one has, according to
the ethical egoist, no reason to care about their well-being.



Nagel doubts that anyone actually is a psychological egoist (1970:
84-85), but his major concern is to refute ethical egoism, by
showing that altruism is a rational requirement on action. His
idea is not simply that we ought in certain circumstances to help
others for their sake; it is also that we are acting irrationally if
we do not. That is because it is required of us as rational beings to
view ourselves and others from what Nagel calls "the impersonal
standpoint". As he puts it, 



> 
> 
> to recognize others fully as persons requires a conception of oneself
> as identical with a particular, impersonally specifiable inhabitant of
> the world, among others of a similar nature. (1970: 100)
> 
> 
> 



Nagel likens the impersonal standpoint to the prudential policy of
regarding all times in one's life as equal in importance. One
has reason not to be indifferent to one's future because the
present moment is not more reason-giving simply by virtue of being
present. Similarly, he holds, one has reason not to be indifferent to
other people, because the fact that some individual is me is not more
reason-giving simply because he is me. Terms like "now"
and "later, " "me and not me" point to no
differences that make a rational difference. A time that is later
eventually becomes a time that is now; that is why it is arbitrary and
irrational to discount the future simply because it is future. Giving
greater weight to someone's good because that person is me is no
less irrational.



The "impersonal standpoint", as Nagel conceives it, is a
view of the world from outside it, one that deprives one of
information about which individual in that world one is. (It is, in
the phrase Nagel chose as the title of his 1986 book, *The View
From Nowhere*.) From this perspective, one need not be a
utilitarian or consequentialist--one need not maximize the good,
but can abide by the constraints of principles of the right. But
certain principles *are* ruled out from the impersonal
standpoint: egoism is, as well as any other principle that gives one
individual or group a reason not shared by all others. For example, if
someone has reason to avoid pain, that must be because
pain--anyone's pain--is to be avoided. So, it cannot
be the case that although I have a reason to avoid pain, others are
permitted to be indifferent to my plight, as if that pain were not an
objectively bad thing, something that gives only the person who feels
it a reason to oppose it. Nagel called such reasons
"objective", as contrasted with "subjective".
Parfit, in *Reasons and Persons (1984)*, speaks instead of
"agent-relative" and "agent neutral" reasons,
and subsequently Nagel himself adopted these terms. The critique of
egoism in *The Possibility of Altruism* rests on the thesis
that all genuine reasons are agent neutral.



What Nagel's position and utilitarianism have in common is a
perspective that is the opposite of the self-centered world of
rational egoism: from the point of view of this self-less perspective,
each individual is just a tiny part of a vast universe of moral
subjects, each of no more importance or value than any other. Our
common sense point of view, moving from our inner life looking
outward, lulls us into a massive kind of insularity--a tendency
to downplay or ignore the fact that we are just one individual of no
greater importance than any other. We put ourselves at the center of
our world, and this can only be corrected by stepping back, leaving
out of our picture the particular individual one is, and making
general judgments about how human beings should behave towards each
other. From this perspective, when one person ought to do something,
some related requirement is imposed on all others as well -some
"ought" statement applies to each. 



Nagel is faced with the problem of how to explain why self-interest is
not regularly swamped by agent-neutral reasons. If anyone's pain
imposes on *all* other moral agents a requirement of some sort,
then one person's pain is everyone's problem. As Nagel
says in *The View From Nowhere*, (using the term
"objective standpoint" for the impersonal standpoint),




> 
> 
> when we take up the objective standpoint, the problem is not that
> values seem to disappear but that there are too many of them, coming
> from every life and drowning out those that arise from our own. (1986:
> 147)
> 
> 
> 



It would be consistent with this picture to add that the weight of
reasons that derive from the situation of other people is extremely
small and becomes increasingly so, as they are added together.
Therefore, it might be said, they do not often outweigh reasons of
self-interest. But that would be an *ad hoc* stipulation, and
would differ only slightly from the egoist's thesis that the
good of others has *no* independent weight. It is hard to
believe that we are forced to choose between ethical egoism (which
says that only one's own pain ought to be one's direct
concern) and Nagel's conception of impartiality (according to
which everyone's pain ought to weigh on me, because that of
others is as bad as my own). The first demands no altruism of us, the
second too much.


### 4.4 Sentimentalism and fellow feeling



Some philosophers would say that the approaches to altruism discussed
thus far are missing an important--perhaps the most
important--ingredient in moral motivation. These approaches, one
might say, make altruism a matter of the head, but it is much more a
matter of the heart. The eudaimonist can say that we should have a
certain amount of fellow feeling, but justifies that emotional
response by giving a self-interested reason for being so motivated.
The consequentialist seems to leave no legitimate room in our moral
thinking for the friendly feelings and love we have for particular
individuals, for these sentiments are often at odds with the project
of increasing the total amount of good in the world. The weak
impartialist says that in certain situations we are to be moved by the
good of others, but that is only because there is a moral rule,
striking a reasonable balance between oneself and others, that
requires one to do so. All three approaches--so the objection
goes--are too cold and calculating. They call upon us to treat
others in accordance with a formula or rule or general policy. What is
most important in human relationships cannot be captured by an
approach that begins with a general rule about how to treat others,
and justifies a certain way of treating each particular individual
simply by applying that general rule. 



It would miss the point of this critique if one said, in response,
that having an emotional response to the good of others is an
effective means of getting oneself to give them the aid they need.
(For example, the consequentialist can say that this doctrine does
call upon us to act on the basis of friendly feelings and love towards
particular individuals, because over the long run relationships
solidified by such sentiments are likely to result in a greater
balance of good over bad than would colder relationships.) But a
defender of the critique put forward in the preceding paragraph would
reply that one's emotional response to the good or ill of others
can be assessed as appropriate independently of the effectiveness of
one's emotions as motivators of action. When we feel compassion
for the suffering of a particular individual, that reaction is already
justified; the suffering of another ought to elicit such a response
simply because that is the appropriate reaction. Consider, as an
analogy, the proper reaction to the death of a loved one; this calls
forth grief and ought to do so, even though grief cannot undo
one's loss. In the same way, it could be said that altruistic
feelings are the appropriate response to the good and ill of others,
quite apart from whether those feelings lead to results. That does not
imply that it does not matter whether one *does* anything for
the good of others. One ought to alleviate their suffering and seek
their well-being; that is because this is the proper behavioral
expression of one's feeling for them. If, in the face of the
suffering of others, one feels nothing and offers no help, the
fundamental flaw in one's response is one's emotional
indifference, and a secondary flaw is the failure to act that flows
from that emotional defect.



According to this "sentimentalist" approach to altruism,
the question, "why should one act for the sake of others and not
only for one's own sake?" should not be answered by
appealing to some notion of impartiality or some conception of
well-being. That would be no better than trying to justify grief by
way of impartiality or well-being. The sentimentalist simply asks us
to recognize that the situation of this or that human being (or
animal) rightly calls forth a certain emotional response, and the help
we give is the proper expression of that sentiment.


## 5. Kant on sympathy and duty



To assess the role that sympathy should play in our relations with
other human beings, it will be helpful to consider Kant's
discussion of this question in the *Groundwork of the 
Metaphysics of Morals* (1785). He notes that 



> 
> 
> many souls are so compassionately disposed that, without any further
> motive of vanity or self-interest, they find an inner pleasure in
> spreading joy around them. (4:398) 
> 
> 
> 



He is by no means contemptuous of them--on the contrary, he says
that they "deserve praise and encouragement" (4:398). But
not the highest praise or the strongest encouragement. 



What they do not deserve, he says, is our "esteem",
because their motivation "has no genuinely moral worth".
That is because the "maxim" of what they do "lacks
the moral merit of such actions done not out of inclination but out of
duty" (4:398). Kant means that these people are not following a
rule when they help others--a rule, rationally acceptable to all,
according to which all those who are in such and such circumstances
ought to be helped because it is morally right to do so. (The term
"such and such circumstances" is a place-holder for a
phrase stating in general terms what those circumstances are.) These
compassionate people act instead on an emotional basis: they are
pained by the misfortunes of others, and they know that if they offer
their help, they will give themselves pleasure. That is a good motive,
Kant thinks, but it ought not to be one's sole or primary reason
for helping others.



Kant elaborates on his claim by imagining a transformation in one of
these sympathetic and compassionate people: suppose someone's
misfortunes have brought him sorrows that extinguish his feeling for
others. He retains his power to "assist others in
distress" but now "their adversity no longer stir[s]
him". He feels no "inclination" to help them, but
does so nonetheless, simply because he believes he has a moral duty to
do so. Kant says that when this happens, this man's character
and his action have "*moral* worth"--whereas
they had none before. His motive is now "incomparably the
highest"--not only is it better than before, but, because
it is now a moral motive, it has a kind of value that takes priority
over every other kind (4:398).



What should we make of this? To begin with, we should acknowledge that
if someone assists another person because he is aware of that
person's suffering and is distressed by it, he may not be acting
for the most admirable of motives. For example, if you hear someone
crying, and this leads you to help him, you may be motivated solely by
your desire for a good night's sleep, which you could not have
had, had he continued to cry. Alleviating his pain was not your
ultimate end -it was just a way to quiet him down, so that you
could enjoy some peace. We might say that you "did a good
thing", but you don't deserve any praise or admiration for
doing so. But this falls far short of vindicating Kant's claim.
This is not really a case of acting compassionately, because it was
not that other person's suffering you cared about--only his
crying, and only because this distressed you.



Before we move closer to the sort of case that Kant is discussing, it
will be helpful to engage in a thought experiment due to Robert Nozick
(1974: 42-5). He imagines an "experience machine" in
which a neuroscientist manipulates your brain so that you can have any
experiences of your choosing. Those experiences would be illusory, but
they could be as lifelike, rich, and complex as you choose. You might,
for example, enter the machine in order to have an experience exactly
like that of climbing Mt. Everest; you would be lying on a table with
your brain attached to the machine, but it would be exactly as though
you were facing great danger, wind, cold, snow, and so on. Nozick
claimed that we would not choose to plug into the machine, and rightly
so, because there is much of value beyond the experiential component
of our lives.



With this device in mind, let's return to Kant's
compassionate souls who "without any further motive of vanity or
self-interest, ... find an inner pleasure in spreading joy around
them". We can offer them the opportunity to plug into the
experience machine, and it would then seem to them as if they were
"spreading joy around them". They would not in fact be
helping anyone, but it would seem to them as though they were, and
that would fill them with joy. Clearly, there would be little or
nothing to admire in those who would enter the machine on these terms.
But what about a compassionate person who refuses this offer, and
prefers to find joy in actually helping people--not merely in
seeming to help them? To be more precise, we might offer someone the
following choice: (a) You will experience great joy in the machine,
imagining yourself to be helping others; (b) you will experience less
joy outside the machine, but it will be joy taken in actually helping
others. A genuinely compassionate person would choose (b). He would be
giving up a certain amount of pleasure in order to be of use to
others. And there is certainly something admirable about that.



According to Kant, however, there is still something of great worth
that is missing in the motivation of this genuinely compassionate
person, willing though he is to make some sacrifice in his own
well-being for the sake of others. His reason for helping is not that
it would be morally wrong to fail to do so--wrong because he
would be violating a moral rule that makes it a duty for him to help
them. What motivates him to aid others is simply that he is inclined
to do so. If he did not take any pleasure in being of assistance, he
would not do so.



We should agree with Kant that there are situations in which it would
be morally wrong for one person to refuse to help another, whether
that person has fellow feeling for others or not. For example, suppose
a child needs to be taken to the hospital, and it so happens that you
can do so at some small cost or inconvenience to yourself. Although
this child is a stranger to you, you are someone who finds children
adorable and likes to be with them. And so you willingly accompany the
child to the hospital. Your love of children is admirable, but you
would still be subject to criticism, if that were your sole motivation
for assisting this child. By hypothesis, in the situation we are
imagining, it would be wrong to refuse--and yet the wrongness of
refusing, by hypothesis, is not one of your motives.



But Kant's point is of limited application, for there are many
other kinds of situation in which assisting others for their sake is
admirable but not a moral duty. Suppose, for example, a novelist takes
time away from her work each day in order to read to blind people in
her community. She does not have a moral obligation to assist those
people; she helps them because she loves books and she wants to spread
the joy she takes in literature to others. Perhaps at some point in the
future, her interests will change--she might no longer write
novels, and she might get no pleasure from reading to others. She might
then no longer volunteer to read to the blind. Kant must say that the
help given by this writer does not deserve our "esteem"
and "has no genuinely moral worth", because she acts from
inclination rather than duty. But it is implausible to withhold these
words of praise. The author does not read to others merely as a means
to advance her career or her own well-being. Although she enjoys
reading to others, she may believe that it would be better for her to
spend more of her time working on her own writing projects. She makes
some sacrifices because she believes that other people's lives
will improve if she can instill in them the joy she takes in these
books. Surely her motives have "moral worth" in the normal
sense of that term: her reason for acting is to help others.



Recall Kant's thought experiment in which a person full of
sympathy and compassion suffers severe misfortunes that extinguish all
of his feeling for others. He is still able to benefit others, and he
still has a strong sense of duty. Kant seems to be implying that if
such an individual continues to "assist others in
distress" because he sees that he has a duty to do so, then
there is no moral defect in him at all. His motivation, on the
contrary, is exemplary, because it has "moral worth"
(unlike the motivation of the individual who is moved by inclination
and fellow feeling). Surely Kant is right that we ought not to lower
our opinion of him merely because he has experienced severe
misfortunes--assuming that he did not bring them on himself. He
says that the adversity of others "no longer stir[s]" this
poor soul, and presumably he would add that this emotional condition
is not this unfortunate man's fault either. But even if there is
nothing *blameworthy* in this man's emotional
indifference to the good of others, it is also true that his
relationship with others has been *damaged*. He cannot respond
to others as he should. Lacking any inclination to spread joy to
others, when he undertakes projects that fulfill his duty to promote
their happiness or diminish their unhappiness, he will do so in a
joyless, dutiful manner, thereby tarnishing the relationship he ought
to have with them. If, for example, he volunteers to read to the
blind, he will be unable to communicate to them a love of
literature--for he himself feels no "inner pleasure"
when he reads, and has no inclination to help others, due to his own
suffering. When he receives news of his adult children's
misfortunes, he will not respond with sympathy or
compassion--such news will simply leave him cold (although he
will fulfill his parental duties, if his assistance is morally
required). It would be appropriate, then, to say that this man
exhibits significant *moral* defects. He lacks the motivation
to act towards others as he should, and to feel for others as he
should. 


## 6. Sentimentalism revisited



We are now in a better position to sort through the package of ideas
labeled "sentimentalism" in preceding sections, and to
recognize that some are far more plausible than others.



First, we should accept the sentimentalist thesis that one's
feelings can be assessed as fitting or unfitting on grounds other than
their causal effect on one's actions. We should, for example,
care about what happens to our children even when we can do nothing to
help them; that emotional response is appropriate because it is part
of what it is to be a good parent. This point allows us to concede
that in certain situations one ought to try to suppress an emotional
response that would normally be appropriate. If one has a duty to
minister to many people who are suffering, one may be more effective
in aiding them if one keeps oneself from feeling the emotions that are
fitting. A nurse working in a war zone, for example, might save more
lives if she trains herself, for now, to feel little emotion when she
hears the moans and cries of the wounded. She has reason to feel
compassion, but that is overridden by stronger reasons to act
effectively to relieve their burden.



A closely related sentimentalist point that should be accepted is that
aiding someone in need, but doing so in a manifestly cold, affectless,
or hostile manner is, in many situations, a defective response.



A second idea associated with sentimentalism in
 section 4.4
 was this: 



> 
> 
> what is most important in human relationships cannot be captured by an
> approach that begins with a general rule about how to treat others,
> and justifies a certain way of treating each particular individual
> simply by applying that general rule.
> 
> 
> 



The kernel of truth in this statement is that some of the most
valuable components of our lives are not available by following a
rule. We do not fall in love with people by applying a general
principle, standard, or criterion about whom we ought to fall in love
with. We do not develop a passion for mathematics, or history, or
tennis, by seeing these pursuits as specific instances of something
more general that we care about. Some of the most valuable components
of our lives are available to us only if they arise spontaneously from
feelings that respond to the lovable features of the world or the
people in it.



But that leaves a great deal of room for the project of treating
people in accordance with rules that we accept because they survive
our rational scrutiny. For example, it would be absurd to suggest that
we should abstain from torturing someone if (but only if) we have an
untutored and negative emotional reaction to torturing him. With
respect to torture, we need to respond to a general question: are
there circumstances in which it would be justified? (And to answer
that question, we must first ask: what is torture?) The only way to
address these questions is one in which we reason our way towards a
general policy--a rule, however simple or complex, that governs
the use of torture. And surely such a rule should be
impartial--it should be a single rule that applies to all, not
tailored to serve the interests of some nations or factions to which
we belong.



The same point applies to questions about everyday rules that govern
such acts as promise-keeping, lying, theft, and other kinds of suspect
behavior. Here too we rightly expect each other to have a general
policy, one that takes these sorts of actions to be wrong in normal
circumstances. That a promise has been freely made is normally a
decisive reason for keeping it; someone who keeps a promise only if he
has a positive feeling about doing so would not be treating others as
they rightly expect to be treated. (For opposing views, see Dancy
2004; Ridge and McKeever 2006.)



A third question about the relation between our sentiments and
altruism arises when we ask about the proper basis for charitable
giving. Consider, for example, someone who donates money to an
organization devoted to fighting cancer, and chooses to do so because
his mother has died of cancer. His gift is an expression of his love
for her; it is meant, of course, to do good to others, but those
others are chosen as beneficiaries because he takes the reduction of
this disease to be an appropriate expression of his feelings for her.
Utilitarianism cannot easily accept this form of altruism, since it
begins with the premise that charitable acts, like everything else,
are right only if they do the most good--and it could easily be
the case that money allocated to cancer research would do more good if
donated to some other humanitarian cause. But if one does not
presuppose the truth of utilitarianism, it is not difficult to defend
the practice of choosing one charity over another on the basis of
one's sentimental attachments. If friendships and other loving
relationships have a proper place in our lives even if they do not
maximize the good, then sentiment is an appropriate basis for
altruism. (For an opposing view, see Singer 2015.)



That does not entail that it is always right to follow our feelings
when we decide whether to help this person or organization rather than
that. Suppose you belong to a group dedicated to reducing the number
of people who die in drowning accidents, and you are on your way to an
essential meeting of this organization. If you miss the meeting, let
us suppose, the group will have to suspend its operations for many
months--with the result that the number of drownings will remain
high. On your way, you pass a child who is in danger of drowning, and
cries for your help. You must choose: either you can save this one
child, or you can attend the meeting and thereby save many more from
drowning. When you hear the child's cries for help, you cannot
help responding emotionally; it would be cold and calculating to pass him
by, even if in doing so you will be saving many more. What ought you
to do?



The fact that your emotions are fully aroused by the child's
cries does not have the same bearing on this issue as does the love
felt by a son for his departed mother in the previous example. The
drowning child whose cries fill you with compassionate feeling is a
stranger to you. So your alternatives in this case are whether to help
one stranger (the one who is tugging at your heartstrings) or many
(whom you do not see or hear at the moment). It would not be
implausible to hold that sentiment plays an appropriate role in
altruism when it is the expression of a long-term and meaningful bond,
but not when it is a short-lived reaction to the cries of a
stranger.


## 7. Conclusion



We have found no reason to doubt that we both can and should be
altruistic to some extent. To what extent? Utilitarians and
consequentialists have an exact answer to that question: one is to
give equal weight to the good of every human being (or every sentient
creature), counting oneself as just one small part of that universal
good. If that is more altruism than can be required of us, the better
alternative is not to retreat to the other extreme (egoism). Rather,
how much altruism is appropriate for an individual varies according to
that individual's situation in life.



Altruism is not necessarily admirable. It is to be admired only in
circumstances in which it is appropriate to act for another's
sake--and only when what one aims to do for another really does
benefit that individual. If one seeks what one takes to be the good of
others for their sake, but is mistaken about what is really good for
them, one's action is defective. Altruism is fully admirable
only when combined with a correct understanding of well-being.



What is wrong with those who do not care about others for their sake?
It could be the case that such individuals are themselves worse off
for their lack of altruistic motivation. That is what a eudaimonist
must say, and we have not objected to that aspect of eudaimonism. It
could also be the case that there is a failure of rationality among
those who are never altruistic or insufficiently altruistic. But it
should not be assumed that there must be something else that goes awry
in those who are not altruistic or not altruistic enough, beyond the
fact that when they ought to have cared about some individual other
than themselves, they failed to do so.