Are there any selfless good deeds? — Egoism vs Altruism
Are we as humans always and eternally selfish? Is every selfless act committed by everyone everywhere ultimately for their own good? Moreover, is a biological being like us even capable of acting selflessly? Was Mother Teresa just as selfish as that friend of yours who always gets to pick the restaurant for dinner?
These are some different versions of almost the same question that I think almost everyone might have asked themselves at least once in their lives. We’ve wondered about it when we watched this scene in Friends. We’ve wondered about it when we’re in a fight with someone and we prepare a list of arguments that are gonna prove how selfish the other person is, but when we finally have the closure and hear their side of the story, we realize that it’s not that simple and it seems like we’re just as selfish as the other person.
This post is gonna be a similar experience for you. All the questions I asked above seem fairly simple and I think that most of us have an initial bias for leaning towards one side or the other. (I, for example, used to believe that every human action is, indeed, selfish). You, on the other hand, might lean towards the other side. But, that doesn’t matter. Because ‘this lean’ is just an irrational impulse to believe one thing and not the other based on no information or analysis. And believe me, these questions are so complex and hard to answer or even conceptualize, that we as a species are as far away from answering them as we could be.

Disclaimer: Some of the ideas, structure, and sometimes even whole sentences (mostly definitions) in this post are taken from this amazing article on Psychological Egoism. And, if you’re interested in a more objective and structured analysis of the topic, you might actually be better off reading that post instead of this. Having said that, reading that one has it’s own cons because you’ll struggle more to get through the whole thing with that one(if you have no prior experience in wrestling with philosophical arguments).
This topic shall be divided into five parts and they’re gonna look something like this:
- Introduction
- Understanding the debate (Definitions)
- Major philosophical arguments for egoism and altruism
- My opinion
- Rethinking morality and legal systems if egoism or altruism is true
This post covers the first two of these. As you’re about to read some philosophy stuff, it’s only fair that I start with the definitions (also, otherwise it’s completely pointless). I’d also like to point out that I’m not even remotely close to being an expert in philosophy or in anything for that matter. Now that I’ve proved my credibility, let’s start.
Introduction:
Egoism is a thesis about human actions (intentional) being motivated by self-interest. Altruism means the opposite, acting to further others’ interest(s)(selfless acts). That’s how these terms are used in daily life anyway. More formally speaking, egoism is the theory that one’s self is, or should be, the motivation and the goal of one’s action.
Now, following is the deal with this “is or should be” thing —
A descriptive claim is one that asserts “this is the way things are”. A normative claim is one that asserts “this is the way things should be”. I’ll give you an example —
In India, women should be careful when they’re going out late at night wearing revealing clothes because the chances of something bad happening to them under these circumstances are pretty high.
The above statement contains two claims, the first one being normative and the second one being descriptive. The normative claim is causally linked to the descriptive one (as is usually the case), as the latter has been used to conclude the former. Now, the radical feminists often find statements like these fairly offensive, and that’s probably because they’re not making the above distinction. The latter claim is a descriptive one, so the person who made that claim isn’t trying to say that this is how things should be, or that it’s alright that things are this way. Of course, it seems like s/he is trying to put the blame on women, but no matter how much it seems that way, that’s not what s/he wrote or implied. Now, obviously the situation calls for something much more than just women being careful, and that statement isn’t a complete solution to the current women safety situation in India, but nevertheless, as long as the things are that bad, the above statement makes complete and total sense from what can be done from a woman’s end when and if she’s in a similar situation. When there’s a hurricane outside, you shut the doors and bolt the windows. You don’t go outside late at night alone, drunk and naked.
Chances are that I’ve lost you by now, but I’ll go on anyway. Egoism is of different types. Psychological egoism (a descriptive form of egoism) is a theory that we only (and always) act out of self-interest. Normative egoism (commonly known as “ethical Egoism”) is a theory that we should act in our self-interest. Rational Egoism means that we should act in our self-interest (“should” here is not restricted to the moral “should”).
Let’s look at an example to better understand egoism. Imagine that you’re walking down the street and some random guy walks up to you, asks you for your wallet, stabs you (after you try to fight) and takes all your money and valuable possessions. Pretty selfish thing to do right? I think so. What a dick move. But, it turns out that he needed the money because his only daughter was hospitalized and he needed the money desperately to save her life. Because of my lack of writing skills, just picture a scenario in which he needed the money asap and killing that you was the only way to save his daughter. That little girl is everything to that man, he loved her so much that let alone I, even he can’t put it into words. You, on the other hand, are a nihilistic brat who doesn’t believe that you owe the world anything, who only lives to consume stuff (food, internet, shopping) and has pursued pleasure your whole life, and the only difference that your non-existence is gonna make in the world (if any) is that the traffic on the roads is gonna be a bit less of a headache.
Let me ask again — Pretty selfish move right? If you’re still sticking with yes, you’re an egoist. That guy is ready to kill another human being for his daughter. That doesn’t sound selfish, in fact, what kind of a father would he be if he didn’t commit murder under those circumstances? What kind of a father would value a stranger’s life more than that of his own child? But, here’s the thing, he’s ready to kill another human being not because he’s such a passionate father, but because he wants to see his daughter alive and would be devastated if she died. So, he’s only doing what he wants to do, which makes him a selfish person. And that’s pretty close to what the Psychological Egoism argument essentially is. You never really do anything for anyone, you only do things for “that part of someone” that affects you. You only take care of your best friend or mother when she’s sick because it bugs you that she’s sick and you’d rather see her “not sick” than sick, and that’s not because you’re such a wonderful human being. Also, to classify an act into selfish or selfless, one should only be concerned about the motivation for that action, not the consequences of that action or whether or not that action has harmed/benefited anyone. I, for example, always try to thank people not after they’ve actually helped me, but right after they’ve tried to help me. Also, ordinarily we seem to only apply the term “altruism” to fairly atypical actions, such as those of great self-sacrifice or heroism. But the debate about psychological egoism concerns the motivations that underlie all of our actions
Now that you kinda understand the positions in the debate, let’s dig in and try to understand it fully.
Understanding the Debate
To really understand the Egoism vs Altruism debate, and more importantly, to be able to add substance to it, one has to know exactly what these terms mean. In the philosophical context, I think that these two definitions would suffice:
Psychological egoism: All of our ultimate desires are egoistic.
Psychological altruism: Some of our ultimate desires are altruistic.
Positions in the debate will become more clear once I explain the following —
1. What does it mean to say that a desire is egoistic or altruistic?
2. What is the meaning of “ultimate desires”?
One thing that you might’ve noticed right away is that PE is a monistic thesis, while the latter is a pluralistic one. It means that if someone could prove that even just one of our ultimate desires is altruistic, that’ll settle the debate (kinda). Another noticeable thing is that these theses are contraries, they can’t be both true, but can be both false. For example, if someone can prove the existence of an ultimate desire which is neither egoistic nor altruistic, it’ll prove that PE is false but it won’t prove that PA is true. So, the positions in the debate aren’t exactly the denial of one another. A malevolent ultimate desire for the destruction of an enemy does not concern oneself, but it is hardly altruistic.
Egoistic vs Altruistic desires:
- One’s desire is egoistic if (and only if) it concerns (what one perceives to be) the benefit of oneself and not anyone else.
- One’s desire is altruistic if (and only if) it concerns (what one perceives to be) the benefit of at least someone other than oneself.
For example, suppose that John wants to help put out a fire in the hair of a man who appears to be in front of him, but he doesn’t know that he’s actually looking into a mirror, and it’s his own hair that’s ablaze. If John’s desire is ultimate and is simply to help the man with his hair in flames, then it is necessary to count his desire as concerning someone other than himself, even though he is, in fact, the man with his hair on fire”
Extrinsic (instrumental) vs intrinsic (ultimate) desires:
Classifying our desires into these two classes provides a way to analyze and make conclusions about human motivation. If you think about it, it seems like some of our desires are mere means to fulfill some of our other desires that seem to be more fundamental in nature. Instrumental desires are those desires one has for something as a means for something else; ultimate desires are those desires one has for something as an end in itself, not as a means to something else. For example, a desire to “be in a good shape” might just be a way to fulfill a much more fundamental desire like “have sex and make more of you”, given that people consider this parameter when they’re looking for potential sexual partners (or that the subject believes that people consider it to be a parameter of value).
Making this distinction is important because psychological egoists don’t claim that we never have desires that are altruistic. What they do claim, however, is that these altruistic desires are mere means to satisfy some ulterior desire which is always egoistic in nature.
Similarly, despite its common use in this context, the term “selfish” is not appropriate here either. The psychological egoist claims that we ultimately only care about (what we consider to be) our own welfare, but this needn’t always amount to selfishness (selfishness is usually defined as acting to further your interests at the cost of others’ interests). Consider an ultimate desire to take a nap that is well-deserved and won’t negatively affect anyone. While this concerns one’s own benefit, there is no sense in which it is selfish. The term “self-interest” is more fitting
That’s it for this post folks. Now that we’ve understood the positions in the debate clearly, I’ll discuss major arguments (philosophical and experimental evidence) for and against both of these theses in the next part. And hopefully, by then, I’d be able to form my own opinion on the subject as well.
I’d say something like “Thanks for reading!”, but then again, you probably did it for your own selfish reasons.
