Iamblichus

"Happiness" is the sum total of all pleasures. Altruism considers the pleasures and/or happiness of others when considering what is right. Altruism need not be selfless - the self has pleasures, of course, and those pleasures might well be considered when considering what is right for the whole world of selves. If altruism is this nihilism of which you accuse it, then altruism simply isn't working well - if no one is happy, then how is it that the philosophy that advocates happiness is bringing people to that end? EDIT: There may be some confusion on your part. Morality as it applies to the person asks, "What ought I to do?" The actions of others are outside my control. Thus, an altruist who is doing everything he can for others to his own detriment will by unhappy if all that happens to him happens through his action. But of course, in a world of altruists, every action of every other person is tending to the happiness of others, so what is not in his control will be making him happy. If that fallacy of yours is your basis for criticizing altruism, then you might want to take what I have said into account. The otherworldly duty does not come from nowhere, and by the rest of your post, I get the feeling you simply don't have the patience to read and understand Kant. Kant is not difficult if careful study is given to him, and if the special uses he has for words are recognized. Kant is consistent in his vocabulary and avoids as far as possibly that ambiguity that everyday words have, so in a way he's more understandable. Knowing that when Kant says "cognition," he's talking about a specific kind of thinking, and not using that word in a haphazard way to refer to many different uses of the intellect, will help clear any potential confusion about his use of the word. That is just an example.

No, Kant was not interested in grounding morality on happiness at all. The greatest good for the greatest number is a form of altruism, I think we'd all accept. Mill's altruism seems to be the most scientific in that it calls for a moral calculus. Kant did not believe that making any number of people happy was a basis for calling an action good. As I pointed out, though, Kant was not insensitive to the role of happiness in conduct. Kant merely held that the desire for my happiness, your happiness, or everyone's happiness was not a proper motivation for morally sound conduct. I disagree sharply will utilitarianism as an ethical theory, although Judge Richard Posner's law-and-economics theory of adjudication makes extensive use of cost-benefit analysis (a form of utilitarianism) to decide cases, and I have to admit that I respect Judge Posner a great deal as a jurist.

The good will is the only thing that can be put a priori as a motivation. Anything else would be based on empirical grounds. The good will does not change with circumstances, so it is universal. Treating people as ends and not as mere means entails treating them in an objectively-based way, and not considering the private inclinations that may be served by a particular action.

Kant was trying to think of a way to ground morality on something other than the empirical. If you say that morality is whatever makes you happy, then morality can be any number of things, and you certainly cannot tell with absolute certainty what it is before you do it. Grounding morality on happiness would lead to the conclusion that the morality of what you do can only be evaluated a posteriori - one could never tell a person "This is what's right," but one could only say, "Do this, and if it turns out well, it was moral, but if it turns out poorly, it was immoral." The categorical imperative grounds morality on a basis that can be known a priori, and thus can be a motivating basis regardless of effects. The three formulations are the same thing - the imperative is the same, and the formulations are just other ways of expressing it. There could be more, for all I and Kant know. The three he gave are just convenient alternative ways to express the same idea.

Utilitarianism is a form of altruism, and is pretty much the representative of it that is familiar to most people. You could take Hume as representative of it, too, but Mill's philosophy is a lot more convincing. Calculating the extent of suffering and pleasure that will occur from an action is what Mill is all about.

This question is like, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" So, I don't know what to say, really. Sorry? Yes, Kant is against altruism. It's really not hard to show that, so I am unsure why this misunderstanding persists.

The categorical imperative, yo.

The human will is called upon to do what is good because it is good. I mean, we could be animals and just please ourselves, but then we'd just be smart animals. Kant believes otherwise.

You want me to define altruism? The basic premise of altruism is that the effect that causes the most aggregate pleasure is to be pursued by action. Mill is altruism.

Purposely using loaded language to compare Kantianism to nihilism is probably not the rhetorical way to go. Kant believes that morality has a purpose, and that morally sound action should be done for some reason. Nihilism does not believe that there is a reason, or does not believe that any proposed reasons matter anyway. Altruism benefits the majority of mankind and not a single person, so I am unsure why it benefits no one. It benefits a lot more people. Many != zero. Kant does not believe that pleasure or displeasure should come into morally valuable conduct at all. That does not mean self-sacrifice. It simply means putting some other goal than pleasure (even happiness, which is the sum total of all pleasures) as the end of moral conduct. If you are maintaining a pleasure-centered moral outlook, where everything is to be evaulated by the pleasure or pain it causes (and not the motivation of the will before the conduct), then what Kant advises will be painful in some instances, and might be termed sacrificial. But then, if what you are doing is evaluated not by what you know before you do it, but by what effects it has after it's done, then one can never be sure in advance what is morally right. If I have the "best of intentions" and my conduct happens to bring about my own pain, then an egoist will say that I have done wrong - I did not maximize my own pleasure. Kant was not anti-happiness. He explicitly states that the possession of happiness will tend to produce better acts than a state of misery, and thus happiness is a subordinate good (like intelligence, a good but not THE good). A happy man may do evil things, just as an intelligent man may do evil things, but with the proper motivation, a happy or intelligent man has more good effect in the world than a miserable or stupid man, even if that miserable or stupid man has good intentions. So Kant is certainly not against happiness, but he does not view happiness as objectively good or evil in itself.

Let me deal with these in order. There are three Critiques: of Pure Reason, of Practical Reason, and of Judgment. Kant refutes altruism in the Critique of Practical Reason. I don't have my copy near to hand, as I am currently on campus, and internet sources are awkward to search. I am defining "altruism" as an ethical theory predicated on bringing pleasures and/or happiness to others, or to the greatest possible portion of mankind. Kant does not posit happiness, either of the self (egoism) or of the bulk of mankind (altruism) as a morally valuable goal. The altruism/egoism dilemma is a false one. I believe Kant says that any motivating principle with an empirical element mixed in it will not be pure. Again, the source is not handy (second Critique, once again). Actually, the synthesis seen in Hegel was seen first in Fichte, if I recall correctly. Kant merely used the antinomies as demonstrations that the mind led itself to contradictory results if it thought about objects that were outside its purview. His whole point was that a judgment and its opposite could NOT both be true, so he regarded the antinomies not as mutually true statements but as mutually false statements, or more correctly, meaningless statements. It would be like proving that the purple unicorn in the corner is both sleeping and not sleeping at the same time - it just demonstrates that talking about unicorns is nonsense. Kant's arguments in that section of the CPR were not supposed to be taken seriously. Hegel, apparently, had other ideas. Oh, and thank you, it's nice to be here.

I can explain a bit more about Kant! "(II) An action cannot be in accordance with duty (and therefore cannot be moral) if it was also motivated by rational self-interest (even in addition to being motivated by duty)." To Kant, this is a non sequitur. Action cannot have two motivations. If the motivation of an action is self-interest, then the action has no moral content, even if it is the "right" thing to do. If that same action were done merely because it is right, and happened as a consequence to work in one's interest, then it would have moral content. But to say that an action can be motivated by two things at the same time would imply a duality of will that Kant could not tolerate. Kant did not really argue for theses and antitheses in the Antinomy of Pure Reason, but constructed plausible arguments for contradictory positions in order to demonstrate that the objects treated by those positions were not capable of rational insight. The point was not that both arguments were right but that both arguments were consistent, and since the principle of contradiction could not be violated, there must be something wrong not in the conclusions but in the nature of the subject matter.

Of course, Kant was not an altruist at all, and explicitly refuted altruism in the second Critique. It's, like, in the text.