DanBuck wrote:
I feel a little Ayn-Randy when I try to answer this question. (To those of you thinking about Austin Powers-shame)
Anyway, every time I try to think of a selfless act, I can't help but find motives on the part of the sacrifice, even if they are "self actualization" or "act of love for someone else" or "For the good of loved ones" that ultimately makes the person feel better.
I guess I have doubts about the existance of pure altruism.
Here is my rebuttal.
When you do something out of love for someone else, yes, the fact that the other person was benefitted and you love them makes you happy.
However, when a person is engaged in a selfless and loving act, from a mother getting up in the night with a sick child to a Maximilian Kolbe laying down his life to save another, it would be wrong and bogus to construe the motives of such a person in any such way as, "If I do this selfless and loving thing, that will make me happy, and I like being happy, it feels good, so therefore for the sake of this happy feeling within myself I will do the thing."
The first reason why this is wrong, I think, is that it involves a mistaken view of happiness. Happiness in itself is not a "reward" or "motive" that can be considered abstractly from the goal or action in question as the motivating factor. Happiness, in this connection, means that we have done something for a reason that mattered to us, and, having now accomplished the thing that mattered to us, we are pleased and satisfied to have done so.
To get to the issue of motive, the real question we must ask is not "Did doing this make us happy?" but
"Why did the thing matter to us in the first place?" If it mattered to us because we were egocentrically concerned about other peoples' opinions of us, or because it comforted our ego to be able to think of ourselves as selfless and noble people, then yes, selflessness is lacking. Perhaps with us fallen creatures this sort of motive is more common than we would like to admit.
Having said that, I don't for a moment believe that such selfish motives are
always even a factor at all, let alone a key or significant factor. (In fact, even concern about other peoples' opinions might be selfless, if we were concerned not for our own sake but out of a desire to avoid giving scandal or causing offense.) And certainly the happiness we feel at having done something loving for someone else is inseparably bound up in
the other person's good in such a way that it cannot be abstracted as a self-contained event or reality and made into a self-interested "reward" or "motive."
Going a bit deeper, I very much doubt that the goods involved in personal interactions can truly be parsed out neatly into "the other person's benefit" and "my benefit," because as social creatures our interactions involve
interpersonal or social goods that subsist precisely in our transactions, not in individually wrapped personal-sized packages that reside solely with either party.
You can't look at a father reading a bedtime story with a child, or a pastor visiting a tiresome shut-in, and dole out what each of the parties is "getting out of" the transaction. You can try, but this reductionistic approach will have missed the specifically social and interpersonal dimension of what is really transpiring.
Actually... my reference to Ayn Rand was to indicate that I'm not sure there is such thing as selfless action... maybe even for God.
Jesus died on the cross because HE wanted some of us to join Him for eternity.
Its okay for him to be selfish though, because he's worthy. Just like its okay for him to be jealous.
No?
No.
Jesus died on the cross for our good, not his. Yes, HE wanted us to join him for eternity... but the REASON he wanted this was not in any way, shape, or form for HIS benefit, but for OURS.
It doesn't even increase his happiness. God is already infinitely and supremely happy and blessed, and his happiness and beatitude cannot in any measure be increased or decreased. He did it because he wanted to, but he wanted it for our benefit, not his. (Don't bother trying to understand it... It doesn't make sense in terms of human psychology, but that's the way it is with God.)
However, even though when we ourselves act for another person's good, it does increase our happiness, it does not follow that we are therefore by desire for our own happiness, as opposed to desire for the other person's good, or that there is anything "selfish" about our happiness.
Consider what absurdities follow from the view of happiness as self-interested motive if we consider scenarios in which the happiness we feel at someone else's good is not a consequence of anything that we have done for them, but simply something that we witnessed or even heard about one person doing for another.
Suppose that it was not ourselves, but our neighbor, that did the good turn for someone, and we saw or heard about that person's benefit, and it made us happy that good had befallen them. In principle, such happiness in the other person's good might be quite the same regardless whether the good turn was done by ourselves or by someone else.
Yet surely once we take the issue of "motive" out of it, it should be obvious that happiness at someone else's good fortune is hardly "selfish," at least in any essential or fundamental way. No one would accuse someone of being "selfish" simply for caring about someone else's well-being, on the grounds that by so caring he enabled himself to experience happiness at the other person's good. No one would say "It is really your own gratification, not the other person's good, that matters to you." Or, if someone did say that, he would be a mean and miserable creature with a parsimmonious and warped view of human nature, which, though itself warped, is not so warped as all that.
If we can take simple and unselfish happiness in another person's good when we ourselves are not the agents of such good, then clearly the other person's good in itself, and not just our own happiness. is a legitimate object of our care and concern. And therefore when we ourselves act for the sake of the other person's good and take happiness in that good once conferred, there is no essential reason to suspect that there is anything fundamentally different or "selfish" going on here than in the other case.
I'm not saying there are never cases of a person taking happiness in another person's good precisely because he himself has brought it about and is therefore proud of himself, or something. I'm simply saying that not all happiness at another person's good is in any way connected to oneself, and that this applies both to cases in which the happy person is not the agent of the good turn, and also to cases in which he is.