Every time we want to speak about ethics and morality in general, the discussion about whether human nature is egoistic or altruistic cannot be omitted. I am going to look at both sides' arguments to see whether any of those can play a key role to understanding the human nature and motives. Firstly however, we have to mention what egoism and altruism is and why it is so important for further discussion.
What we consider as egoism is acting in the way that the only one who benefits from this is the one doing this.There are however some differences between philosophers' way of understanding this term. Hobbes (1962) for example defines it as a kind of the earliest human nature, which we later abandon by willingly accepting the social contract. The other two attitudes differ from each other by whether egoism is or is not morally wrong. The first one is presented to us by Fromm (1957), who defines egoism as something contrary to self-love (and love in general).
He even says it is a way to self-destruction, because it is an opposition to fulfilling our human needs.He is speaking about ethical egoism of course. He denies that maximizing self-interest is morally right. The egoism without moral judgment is presented by Henry Sidgwick (1901). He argues that it is rational to be egoistic, because if any moral rule is to be worthy of accepting, it should be accordant to our mind. What is altruism then? It is commonly recognized as an opposition to egoism.
It involves behaving in the way that brings others some advantages while the behaving person gets none or even suffers from some negative effects of such an act.Here, we can also distinguish altruism with and without a moral judgment. The first one is considered to be a virtue in most of the cultures and is commonly thought as something towards what we should aim at. It is also propagated by most of the biggest religions as a way we should live our lives. What are the arguments for the theory that human nature is strictly egoistic? We can say that it is very easy to explain all the human behaviours by arguing that one is acting in such a way because of its welfare.
Even the most altruistic behaviours can be interpreted as caring about self. For example, we can say about the person saving drowning kid that they did this because they would not be able to live with the guilt that they did not rescue it. We can argue that they surely were not thinking about that when running towards the water, but the main idea remains the same: they (un- or consciously) wish not to be in misery after child's death. The argument from ethical egoism is that we know our needs best.Moreover, we are doing no good when helping others because we do not know what's good for them. The most significant philosopher arguing for ethical egoism was Nietzsche (1896).
Not only did he consider others as the less important part of our lives but also he would not see anything wrong in sacrificing many peoples' welfare or even lives to enhance or improve life of an exceptional individual. Although even Bertrand Russell (1967) did not know how to reject Nietzsche's points, he just wishes them not to be true.The last argument of major significance comes from evolutionary biological stand. It says that human is born selfish (a pleasure-seeking and interested in self child could serve as an example), and that egoistic individuals are those who would be naturally-selected and have a greater chance of passing their genes to the offspring.
However, even Darwin (cited in Wilson and Sober 1998:4) suggested that although egoism is preferred in single cases, individuals' altruism can be preferred and result in group's more effective passing genes.After mentioning philosophers' favourite stands (which is rather different from what is commonly considered to be true) we can move on to arguments for human nature being altruistic. Firstly, we need to say that however most of the human behaviours can be explained by egoistic motives, it does not prove that altruism is false. It is also said that egoism is not falsifiable which means that if a thesis is always true, it is of no use because it cannot be tested. Moreover, there are some acts that are more likely interpreted in commonsense to be altruistic rather than egoistic.
It could be really hard to argue that someone sacrificing their life for someone else is doing that because of the self-interest. Moreover, many altruistic animal behaviours have been recorded and therefore, it cannot be said that they do that for not to feel guilt or any similar emotions. Their altruistic acts can be interpreted as already mentioned instinct for improving its group chances for survival. It also has to be said that most people want the altruism to be true. We are grown in a society in which egoism is so common that altruism has grown out to be an ideal aim for us to reach.Moreover, as already mentioned, religions and authorities also provide us with a positive image of being altruistic.
E. Fromm (1957) thinks of altruism as of love. He considers living in close connection to other people as an essence of human existence and that is why he considers not only altruism but having other people on our minds as what we should do. What is also worth mentioning is that apart from all those theories, there is a common belief about altruism to be a genuine need of human being.
Theories like that cannot be proved and involve an assumption that human is good by its nature which risky and, to be honest, improvable. That is probably why not many philosophers would claim that thought as their own. Altruism-egoism contradiction has faced a fate of the theism-atheism or nature-nurture ones. Due to the fact we have no chances of proving which theory is true and which is false, not much left for us to achieve here.
However, there has emerged an additional stand, which is pluralism.The two styles of living are connected here and it seems that if a discussion between egoists and altruists was not so vivid, pluralism would please most of the people. We know that it is impossible to be essentially egoistic or strictly altruistic. If we wanted to care about our welfare (which is egoism) not being a little bit altruistic would make all of our attempts hopeless. Due to that, we cannot be egoistic without being altruistic.
And it is the other way round too. We cannot be fully altruistic without being egoistic because we must live.We must care about ourselves even in minimal degree. I would say that although egoism and altruism are oppositional terms, they cannot exist on their own.
A conjunction of those two, which is pluralism, is the only possible resolution if we want to be very accurate. However, we should not identify it with some kind of relativism. There is still a major difference in attitudes between altruism and egoism. Making a one term from those two does not imply that we do not have to think about our motives.That is why they are both important for knowing what we are and for further discussion how should we act. We can see that there is no really satisfying solution for the problem of altruism and egoism.
If we choose one of them, we cannot prove it to be true and still, the opposite side has very strong arguments on its hand. However, if we are to choose a solution that can be proved to be right, the importance of the whole discussion that has been made in this topic fades. Therefore, what we should be, not what we are should be now under the debate because this is what ethics is really about.
