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Questions on the history of altruism

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humptydumpty

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I would like to know the history of altruism. Did it begin with Jesus, or much earlier?

I don't have an extensive knowledge of the early philosophers, but I know questions such as "What is the good life" and "How should a man live his life" were being asked. Then, it seems that altruism hit the scene and ever since it's been pretty much accepted by everyone that a moral man will live for others. (If I'm wrong, feel free to inform me or fill in some gaps)

 

Was there anyone back in ancient times arguing for self-interest? I want to know how the altruist morality has been able to dominate for so long unchallenged and undebatable.

 

Also, does it go back farther than society? What was morality like before people entered society?

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Auguste Comte is your man, born 1798, died 1857. A French philosopher credited for creating Positivism. I will admit, I am no expert on him, but he had a considerable influence on 19th century European thinking. He coined the term altruism.

However, you are right that the ancients had systems of ethics with very deep roots. Most ancient people had some sort of omnipotent force, god(s), for lack of a better term, holding their terms of morality over them. Actually, Jesus did not originate the "golden rule," and again, I don't know from whom he "borrowed" it.

Guys like Comte came along at a time when gods and other superstitions were on their way out of intellectual circles. So, philosophers developed texts with explicit reasons for men to sacrifice for each other.

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Ayn Rand was asked about it once, in a Q&A session.  I don't remember which it was but it's freely available online. 

She said that the earliest reference to altruism that she could find was from the works of Plato- except that Plato picked the idea up from a group of cultists who had travelled all the way from somewhere in Asia.

But she was specifically referring to the value of sacrificing one person to another, there.  Before altruism they were sacrificing people to the gods and that extends as far back as historical documentation goes.

 

And I have a theory about that, if you're interested.  B)

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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Selfishness, in Objectivism, must be based on reason.  Selfish mysticism (such as the desire for a pleasant afterlife) is a contradiction in terms because, as a being which exists of a certain identity, to serve yourself you must first know yourself. 

Now reason is the application of logic to reality, and the crucial realization which makes it possible is the differentiation between yourself and reality; between the objects of introspection and extrospection.  Mysticism is a blurring of that distinction.  And the extent to which someone holds mystical beliefs will stand in inverse proportion to their capacity for selfishness.

So altruism is a symptom of mysticism (which most certainly predates history) and mysticism stems from the confusion of the introspective with the extrospective.

 

Now, in reading everything preceding this very sentence, did you notice your own mind's actions as it superimposed abstract meaning onto literal sensations (namely letters)?

 

Now that you've noticed it, imagine what it would have been like for someone living in the year 5,000 BC, who lacked virtually all of our modern concepts of consciousness (such as the concept of "introspection"); how could you explain any sudden insight you received from [blank]?  What would it have been like to experience a nightmare, an epiphany or an existencial crisis?

Specifically imagine what sort of abstract interpretations they would have assigned these things- without even realizing whose interpretations they were.

 

How much of a difference does that one little distinction make?

 

So my own pet theory is that mysticism probably began when our ancestors first developed the capacity for conceptualization, simply because there was nobody else to help them understand what they saw (the same way you 'see' meaning in these letters) and I doubt they had the time to analyze much of anything in detail.  And with a mystical epistemology, the ethics of selfishness can't even be imagined properly.

 

But thankfully today, in general, our species is working towards discovering what "human" truly means.  :thumbsup:

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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Peikoff said in one of his NBI lectures that Marcus Aurelius was the first to make altruism (whether MA used the actual word or not) a primary virtue.  I've never checked this out.

Hmm, I don't recall coming across that. In his history of philosophy series, almost certainly in the second course, Peikoff points to Fichte as the first consistent ethical altruist. He came right before Comte, but after Kant. But what's among one philosopher's "primary virtues" versus another's "summum bonum" is probably the difference here.

I haven't studied Fichte.

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