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[Image found at the Volunteering England<\/a> site]<\/em><\/p>\n Yesterday’s New York Times<\/em> (online edition) carried a new entry<\/a> [JES: link now fixed!] <\/em>in their “Opinionator” series of weighty questions: “Is Pure Altruism Possible?”<\/p>\n At a certain level, this is the stuff of unresolvable university-level dorm\/roommate bull-session debate. The arguments against “pure altruism” seem cold-bloodedly obvious — even if taken to the extreme. Someone who knowingly and apparently willingly sacrifices his\/her own life to save someone else’s, well, aren’t they just acting out of a desire to feel good about themselves, to show off as it were, to be noble and be sure we know<\/em> it? The author of the column (Judith Lichtenberg, a Georgetown University professor of philosophy) isn’t so sure, though. She concludes:<\/p>\n Altruism is possible and altruism is real, although in healthy people it intertwines subtly with the well-being of the agent who does good. And this is crucial for seeing how to increase the amount of altruism in the world. Aristotle had it right in his “Nicomachean Ethics<\/a>” [link added]<\/em>: we have to raise people from their “very youth” and educate them “so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But yes: that right there, that troublesome “ought.” How much does altruism just (or “just,” in quotes) fulfill a sense of obligation<\/em> — of mere duty, per society’s “rules” — as opposed to a genuine sense of self-sacrifice?<\/p>\n And if you’re not ready for philosophy today, or at the moment, can a purely altruistic character ever work in fiction? Must they all have dark and selfish sides in order to be believable? Can dark and selfish characters sacrifice themselves without sacrificing credibility?<\/p>\n ______________<\/p>\n