Key Definitions and Concepts
Altruism: A moral philosophy that prioritizes the needs and well-being of others over the self, often to the point of self-sacrifice. It claims moral superiority by promoting actions for others' benefit without expecting personal gain.
Egoism: The ethical view that moral agents ought to act in their own self-interest, though this may still involve compassion and cooperation with others when beneficial.
Moral Theory: A structured set of principles or rules aimed at guiding human behavior by distinguishing right from wrong in a coherent and justifiable way.
Coherence (in moral
philosophy): Logical consistency within a moral system, such that its principles
do not contradict one another and can be universally and rationally applied.
Moral Neutrality: A state in which an action is considered neither morally
good nor morally bad—neither a duty nor a wrongdoing.
Justice: The
principle of giving each their due, based on merit, rights, or fairness. Often
contrasted with altruism, which disregards personal desert in favor of need.
Self-Sacrifice: A key element of altruism involving the deliberate
forfeiture of one's own interests, needs, or life for the sake of others, often
framed as morally ideal.
Love (in moral context): A deep moral commitment or goodwill toward others, which can take various forms, including compassion, respect, and desire for others' well-being.
Truth: The alignment of belief or action with what is real or factual. Essential for moral reasoning, especially when principles are meant to be universally applied.
THE ARGUMENT
Although altruists claim to permit self-interest, they agree with the idea that, “When there isn’t time to help yourself, you should help others—even if it means risking your own destruction.” For example, if a bomb is about to explode and you know you’ll die by rushing into the building to save children by throwing them out the window, you should still do it.
Altruism should not be described as having truly good intentions. It has pragmatic ones. It contradicts itself and yet it defiantly sustains its claims. Altruism is very off-putting. Today's altruists who advise on including self-interest when you serve others, even at great cost, may be deliberately misrepresenting the doctrine in case they deter people from helping others. Be warned that the truth will always come out and altruism will harm.
Altruism poses as the servant of compassion, love, and justice, etc. So it sees itself as being morality. But moral codes are a different matter and are like laws that try to apply the principles of love, mercy, and compassion, etc. Can a coherent ethic—then a set of rules—be built on altruism?
Be cautioned that some ethical systems that lack coherence may do so on purpose. It can be a sign of corruption rather than mistaken thinking.
What does altruism say about truth?
To say truth does not matter or is just opinion is by default to say that principles such as compassion, love, and justice are unimportant.
Altruism says it puts principles before persons. If so, you would expect it to put truth first, for there can be no valid principles unless they are true. So truth must come first all the time, for altruism comes first. This means that not the slightest risk must be taken of anybody erring or being deceived. The wife has to be told if her husband has cheated on her, even if he will never do it again.
The egoists also believe that truth comes first Since the egoists put the truth that they know they exist ahead of everything else, the truths that are not as provable can be left alone for the sake of a peaceful life. So the egoist for example will not dedicate themselves to a God.
That is wise. Altruism when coupled with the doctrine of a truthful God who hates all error and lies, indicates that he will be the person that will have to come first is very misguided.
And also, altruism as we have seen is not truthful about itself.
What is the justification for altruism?
Altruism claims to be real love.
Altruism claims that I am not here to be happy, but I am here to deserve happiness or become worthy of it by doing good. In other words, it's not unimportant if you never get the happiness. All that counts is deserving it. And altruism says that to love others for myself is not to love them at all, so love is sacrifice. To love others instead of myself is to love lots of people instead of loving one. The more love, the better. And also, if I am not selfless, then I do not love others. If love is good and altruism really is love, then altruism has to be the law, for there is no love of others without it. Altruism says that loving others and not myself is loving myself in the sense that I am doing what should be done with myself. Altruism also says that if I don’t make helping others my chief aim, then I will inevitably become cruel and uncaring.
What happens if altruism is irrational or cannot be defended?
Then it is exposed. And it causes division with those who disapprove of it or don’t practice it. It is slander to accuse people of doing wrong with a measuring rod that has not been proved. Altruism would imply that reason is evil. If reason is evil and wrong, then why care if somebody tortures us all to death?
What will altruists do without rational evidence, for even they admit that they cannot give a reason for why we should be altruistic?
The religious ones will say that God commands altruism and gave us free will to practice it, and that is evidence enough. But even God has no right to order such basic things and fail to provide proof that he has spoken on them and that he is probably right about them. But still their altruism will lead to the worrying and degrading idea that he has. He is a crutch used to support claims that lack support.
What about altruism and justice?
Some say that you should be altruistic only towards those who have done good for you first, and then to others next. But that is not altruism, for it is giving them a benefit for the good they have done and so they should not accept it. It is putting value on their function more than on their personhood. It values yourself more than them, for you are rewarding and blessing them for being good to you. Altruism is not about strict justice—you help the stranger who owes you nothing first.
What about feeling sorry for those who do not deserve it?
Altruism would agree with this provided you help the person not because of the feeling but because of selflessness. The feeling is allowed because it is not pleasant. This permitting the feeling proves that altruism encourages unreasonable sacrifices. It degrades the person who it is for because they do not deserve it, and justice is better than love, for love can’t exist if it despises justice. Egoism avoids these problems. Egoism requires compassion for all because compassion leads to the pleasure of doing good for them and makes the world a better place. It says the bad deserve help too, for goodness melts hard hearts.
Are the altruists inconsistent about suicide?
They say that deliberate suicide is sinful, for it is selfish. To say freely ending your own existence is selfish is absurd, for you lose everything in death. They are the selfish ones for saying something so heartless. Egoists believe that suicide is an egoistic act, but it is not deliberate and free, for there is something seriously wrong mentally or emotionally. Suicides want to kill the pain, not themselves, which appears to support this view. A moral theory that cannot discourage suicide—the biggest question of all—is not a moral theory.
What if you say it is altruistic to think of the future?
Altruism admits that I should put being
altruistic before anybody or anything else. I should put it before my future. If
I am altruistic now, I am surer of being altruistic now than I am of anything to
do with the future. I might not even be around in five minutes’ time. Altruistic
action comes before everything else. This shows leanings towards recklessness.
What about altruism and moral neutrality?
Moral neutrality is when
something is as good as it is evil. It is not immoral or moral but neutral.
And I can be subjectively morally neutral if I merely - even wrongly - think
something is neutral.
Neutrality or perceived neutrality provide you with a justification for doing things—whether present-oriented or future-oriented—that will be as bad as they are good.
I can inject babies
with a terrible disease and worry about how to make this a neutral thing later.
For those who think altruism is the best account of how to be moral,
inspiring people to become altruistic is a priority. So if I think poisoning the
water will do that, then I may and can call it neutral. I think the shock and
the sick people will make others make huge self-sacrifices. So I cannot be
called immoral.
The neutrality problem can arise whether I am an altruist or not.
It is a very big issue for I only see part of everything - everything is a tip of an iceberg. So a lot of things will look neutral to me for I have such limited data.
And if I think God is giving me information, it follows that it might be morally neutral to let a plane crash I know will happen, take place.
Altruism has a dangerous side like egotism does. It has a painful side. That is why anything like that will bring up moral neutrality issues a lot. If morality is risky, it is part of the question: how good is this action when there is so much pain in this goodness? It is like fighting evil with bad things such as sacrifice, pain and suffering.
To avoid one taking advantage of moral neutrality, what must altruism do?
It cannot explicitly abolish the concept of neutrality. That would be a lie and an injustice. It may as well allow people to live like egoists or villains.
If neutrality is adopted, then it is accepted that it may be as good for me to eat my pie as it is to do without and give it to my friend. It follows that I am not to be condemned for eating it myself.
From this, it would follow that the harder it is to help somebody, the less obligation I have to help or I should do nothing. But altruism denies this. Altruism rejects neutrality even if it will not confess to that.
All the traditional religions of the world
see things in terms of holiness or sin, with no neutrality, because they feed
off judgmentalism though it is sometimes well hidden. Altruism is no better.
Can altruism be used to create a valid moral theory?
No. For example, if A commits murder, A deserves to be murdered. If B murders A, it would not be altruistic to punish B. Killing A is hardly the same as killing a good person, so even if it is wrong, it is not very wrong. A deserved it.
This problem is not limited to altruism. We struggle with it on the practical level. We will treat B as the killer of a good person. Altruism, however, wants us to love the sinner and treat the sin as a disease, so A is actually innocent. This is hypocrisy, for what if A is found guilty and has to go to jail? There is a difference between treating B as the killer of an innocent and thinking of him or her as being really the killer of an innocent.
Altruism believes that the most important thing you can do for justice is to be fair to yourself by sacrificing yourself, for if sacrificing is good, then you should be sacrificing all the time. It is unjust to deprive yourself of sacrifice. That is how it is able to justify letting your enemies walk all over you. They may do so out of a dubious motive, but their motive is their problem and not yours, and you can do nothing about it, and it would be good of them to trample on you if they were doing it for disciplining you. You have the most hope of changing their motive by taking it as discipline, for then they are getting nothing from their bad motive.
When you do wrong to a person, there is a sense in which you ask for anything they do to you in return. You deserve it. You know that when you insult A, that A could put you in hospital for the rest of your life. Altruism would incoherently say that any good A then does for you is over and beyond the call of duty. This is incoherent, for we have all done wrong and so there would be no such thing as a duty to anybody.
Altruism implies that it is a duty
to be altruistic, which is uncompelling. The concept of deserving therefore
makes it perfectly okay never to do anything for anybody. It and altruism are in
conflict. So altruism is incoherent. It is ridiculous to say that A is right to
suffer for the greater good of others even if it is not his duty to. When it is
not his duty, they can do without it, so he is inflicting unnecessary suffering
on himself. Altruism implies that unnecessary suffering is good, and therefore
that extreme suffering that is not needed is good. It is wrong to say that X
evil is allowed for it is not too bad, and Y evil is banned for it is worse.
When you believe that doing the best is not always a duty, you are forced to
make an arbitrary list of what acts are duties and what are not. For example,
saving your father’s life would be seen as a duty, but doing the same for a
stranger in the street might not be.
If a coherent moral theory is hard to put together, altruism is one of the reasons it is so hard. Its influence is everywhere.
Its appeal needs explaining. It is best seen as a pretense for nobody who knows that not aiming for happiness and doing good makes you happy, and that this paradoxically should be your method to be happy, is going to be attracted by it.
Altruism is really about acting without love for yourself and without compassion for yourself in the name of love and compassion. This shows the real motive is self-abuse.
Conclusion
In sum, altruism, despite its noble claims of selflessness and love for others, struggles to provide a coherent foundation for moral theory. Its inherent contradictions—such as demanding self-sacrifice without clear justification, denying the legitimacy of self-interest, and conflicting with principles of justice and deservingness—undermine its rational consistency. Moreover, altruism’s dismissal of moral neutrality and its problematic stance on truth and reason further weaken its claim as a universal moral guide. While altruism appeals to ideals of compassion and sacrifice, it ultimately promotes a form of self-abuse masked as morality, making it an unstable and insufficient basis for a coherent, just, and practical ethical system. Thus, any viable moral theory must critically address altruism’s limitations, possibly integrating self-interest and justice in a balanced way rather than elevating altruism as the sole moral law.
Many like the incoherence of altruism; it makes it easier for them to successfully pose as altruistic.