Monday, March 08, 2004
The Inherent Contradiction of Altruism
Altruism is the doctrine which holds that man is a sacrificial animal. The idea is that a human beings moral worth is measured by the extent of their self-sacrifice. Now to be clear, altruism is not the doctrine that you should do nice things for people. It is the doctrine that if you do not put other peoples' ideas, goals, needs, desires, etc... before your own that you are immoral.
If a human being is to fully practice the idea of sacrificing himself, what must be sacrificed? Material goods? Personal happiness? Most certainly, however this is not the full extent of the self. Fundamental to a persons self is their faculty of reason, their ability to form observations about the world that they live in, and how they ought to act of the basis of those observations. In other words, a persons' self is not merely their emotions, or the things that they might produce, but also(especially) entails their judgment which makes all the other aspects of the self possible.
The contradictory nature of this position is as follows, a morality that demands that its practioners give up their judgment leaves its practioners with no rational way to determine what is good or bad. So the morality itself must be taken as an article of faith. To attempt to justfiy altruism rationally amounts to saying "I have rationally determined that I should not use my faculty of rationality."
| If a human being is to fully practice the idea of sacrificing himself, what must be sacrificed? Material goods? Personal happiness? Most certainly, however this is not the full extent of the self. Fundamental to a persons self is their faculty of reason, their ability to form observations about the world that they live in, and how they ought to act of the basis of those observations. In other words, a persons' self is not merely their emotions, or the things that they might produce, but also(especially) entails their judgment which makes all the other aspects of the self possible.
The contradictory nature of this position is as follows, a morality that demands that its practioners give up their judgment leaves its practioners with no rational way to determine what is good or bad. So the morality itself must be taken as an article of faith. To attempt to justfiy altruism rationally amounts to saying "I have rationally determined that I should not use my faculty of rationality."
