live well. give well.
the altruism of the bold
Saturday, December 1, 2007
mark regouby
december, 2007
tags: atlas shrugged, altruism
abstract:
written for Mark’s course in ‘Ethics; Justice & Love’ at the Harvard Divinity School, this paper explores the ways we might think about poverty, altruism, productivity and pity.
THE ALTRUISM OF THE BOLD
You can’t be hard on a man who needs you, it will prey on your conscience for the rest of your life.
It won’t.
You’ve got to be kind, Henry.
I’m not.
You’ve got to have some pity.
I haven’t.
A good man knows how to forgive.
I don’t.
You wouldn’t want me to think that you’re selfish.
I am.
- Exchange between Henry “Hank” Rearden and his mother in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
Hank Rearden is struggling to communicate across a chasm of values. His mother believes herself to be altruistic and encourages her son to adopt such values in consideration of his brother, Philip. As a self-commanding industrialist, Rearden views his helpless, parasitic, do-gooder brother as a prime example of what’s wrong with society.Hank’s ascetic, Puritan values leave room for compassion on his hapless brother, but his demonstration of compassion toward Philip, or anyone else for that matter, consists of offering him the same opportunity he had – to pull himself up by his own bootstraps.
The question of neighbor-love, debated for millennia, continues to occupy the minds of our greatest philosophers, theologians and ethicists. It takes center-stage in the political arena as we determine foreign policy, charitable giving, health care and our domestic tax and welfare structure. If we conclude that we have a positive responsibility to this “neighbor,” we still must answer the age-old questions of who they are, and how we love them. The decision to help invokes further questions of serving the near-and- dear versus the stranger, seeing altruism as a duty instead of a voluntary action, placing value on our motives versus the impact of our actions, and whether self-regarding actions can at the same time be other-regarding.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested that altruism is corrupted if we take any self-satisfaction in our actions and that altruism requires suppression of self-regard. Aristotle, by contrast, proposed that, “the good person must be a self-lover,” suggesting that we cannot love the world unless we first love - and care for - ourselves. In light of the conflicting perspectives, how do we begin to arrive at a coherent, defensible view of altruistic action? Further, there seems to be a segment of the population forever doomed to exclusion from the ranks of the altruists. While relief workers, saints and missionaries are consistently promoted as exemplars of altruism, business people, the wealthy and the powerful are consistently presented as arch-enemies of the altruist. Can we reconcile the beliefs of Hank Rearden (our fictional proxy for the Bold of the world) with the altruistic principles of pity, love, compassion, self-sacrifice, and other-regard? If a relief worker can be altruistic by giving food to the starving, can a bold, self-creating capitalist be altruistic by giving someone else the opportunity to be self-creating?
Examining Altruism
It was August Comte, the French philosopher and founder of Sociology, who coined the term “altruism.” He defined it as “social behavior that reflects an unselfish desire to live for others.” In their book, The Altruistic Species, Andrew Flescher and Daniel Worthen draw on the disciplines of biology, psychology, philosophy and religion to expose the key concepts that define altruistic behavior:
•The nature of the object of altruism (who represents the ultimate sake for which other-regarding acts are performed?)
•The question of the cost of altruistic conduct (must altruism always be self- sacrificial in some sense, and if so, to what extent?)
•The issue of intention versus consequences with respect to a potentially altruistic deed (are motives more important than results, or vice versa?)
•The designation of the recipient of altruism (who is to be prioritized over whom, the stranger or the kin?)
•The moral status of the performed altruistic deed (is it to be classified as required or above-and-beyond?)
•The normative frequency of altruistic deeds (is altruism a talent with which few are born or a skill that the majority of us, in principle, have the capacity to harness?)
These concepts provide the framework by which we can understand various approaches to altruism. For example, with regard to normative frequency, process theologians hold that altruism is not an exceptional event, rather it can become a norm through the transformation of a person into a loving human being. By contrast, Flescher and Worthen say that Augustinians “emphasize our fall from grace, resultant moral ineptitude, and utter dependence on God to deliver us from sin; without God, altruism remains a virtual impossibility.” Essentially, this view sees us all sharing in a state of helpless spiritual lack, until God addresses our lack in an other-regarding way, teaching us by example to sacrifice for others. Utilitarians, however, don’t address the source of our ability to be altruistic, but emphasize that we must act to, “produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people, regardless of how many sacrifices we have to endure to do so.”
In stark contrast to all of these other-regarding ideals, the “rational actor theory” states that, “the deliberate performance of any action necessarily depends on the maximization of self-regarding preferences.” Essentially, the theory says that we will always seek our own benefit, even when pursuing the good of others – individuals serve ego needs by seeing themselves as generous; countries improve security and foreign relations by strengthening poorer neighbors. Psychologists, economists and philosophers disagree about whether self-interest or self-benefit disqualifies an action as truly altruistic. Many, however, are willing to accept any motivation, so long as another person is helped.
Self-interest and Stoicism
Is it possible that the most good can be done for the largest number of people if we all admit (and even aspire to) self-interest? Hank Rearden thought so. Even when offering to delay collection of an overdue debt from his largest client, Taggart, he cast it in terms of self-interest:
There aren’t any thank-you’s in situations of this kind. I’m not doing it for Taggart Transcontinental. It’s a simple, practical, selfish matter on my part. Why should I collect my money from you now, when it might prove to be the death blow to your company? If your company were no good, I’d collect, and fast. I don’t engage in charity and I don’t gamble on incompetents.
Rearden is demonstrating the tenets of psychological egoism, which state that, “human beings... are inevitably committed to furthering their own aims, interests, and ambitions.” English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, a proponent of psychological egoism, said “There can be no greater argument to a man of his own power than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires but also to assist other men in theirs.” Hobbes’ philosophy opens an opportunity to redeem the charitable nature of people like Rearden by demonstrating how the Bold’s love of achievement and self- command could lead to compassion for another who may be prevented from similar achievement. If another’s chance for self-creation is inhibited by a lack of justice, law or opportunity, the Bold may be moved to help create the basic conditions required to allow for another’s self-interest to maximize his own benefit.
A major hurdle to applying Hobbes’ philosophy to the Bold, lies in their traditionally stoic approach to life. 19th Century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche extolled the virtues of the self-commanding creators, especially their “low estimation of pity.”12 Without pity, the ability to extend compassion to one’s fellow human is quite limited, thus limiting the opportunity for altruism on the part of our archetype, Rearden. Nietzsche’s disdain lies in his belief that the reverence for the supposedly “good,” the “unegoistic” instincts such as “pity, self-abnegation, [and] self-sacrifice”13 represented the very re-valuation and misappropriation of values he was fighting. These “symptom[s] of regression... through which the present was possibly living at the expense of the future”14 were lifting up principles celebrating inaction over action, safety over risk, and were preventing the “advancement and prosperity of man.” Martha Nussbaum believes that Neitzsche’s project was precisely to “bring about a revival of Stoic values of self-command and self-formation.” In order to understand the altruism of the Bold, we must therefore take a deeper look at the dynamics of pity.
Pity and Altruism
Drawing on Aristotle’s original analysis of pity, Nussbaum points out the three beliefs required for pity to exist:
•The belief that the suffering is significant rather than trivial – loss of friends, loss of opportunities for effective action, impending death, etc.
•The belief that the person is without blame for the loss, or if there is an element of fault, that the suffering is out of all proportion to the fault.
•The belief that, when looking at the suffering of another, the possibilities displayed are also possibilities for oneself.
The third point is certainly the most critical for the Bold. If they believe that through disciplined, purposeful action, people ought to raise themselves above any circumstance, then there is no need for pity. The most one could offer the sufferer is an affirmation that self-salvation and relief are possible. However, if the Bold can identify with the sufferer as a proxy for themselves - given different timing or random circumstances - then they may allow themselves to take pity and act accordingly. This does not suggest that the form of action would be complete mitigation of all suffering. The stoic values inherent in the mind of the Bold may still lead them to supply the victim with the means to work out their own salvation from circumstances, rather than complete restoration by the hand of the stronger brother.
Representing the “pro-pity tradition,” Nussbaum describes the benefits accrued to a humanity open to the idea of pity. First, she says it is important to acknowledge the truth that, “human beings are needy, incomplete creatures who rely on circumstances beyond their control in many ways for the possibility of flourishing and complete life.”
Second, she asserts that, “being rich and powerful does not remove one from the ranks of humanity” leading us to consider benevolence regardless of how much power or security we might have. Third, we are led to provide a social safety net and guarantees of rights because, “in pity one acknowledges as important for all human beings certain external things that society can arrange to distribute to those who need them.” These principles are exemplified in Rousseau’s Emile, where he observes: “Why are kings without pity for their subjects? It is because they count on never being human beings. Why are the rich so harsh to the poor? It is because they do not have fear of becoming poor.” These ideals set the stage for not only economic distributive justice, but also rights guarantees and other forms of justice. If we can place ourselves in the position of the pitied, we are much more likely to arrange for their comfort and security.
Stoicism’s Rejection of Pity
“That’s your cruelty, that’s what’s mean and selfish about you. If you loved your brother, you’d give him a job he didn’t deserve, precisely because he didn’t deserve it – that would be true love and kindness and brotherhood. Else what’s love for? If a man deserves a job, there’s no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is the giving of the undeserved.”
- Hank’s mother describing her vision of altruism
Hank’s mother personifies Nietzsche’s “symptoms of regression,” demonstrating her lack of understanding of the values which defined and drove her more ambitious son. Just as Hank refutes his mother’s view of what is best for Philip, Nietzsche offers a detailed critique of pity and what is best for society (as supplied by Nussbaum.) The foundational principles at work here may help to explain why our charities, our health care, and our welfare system have such disparate and sometimes conflicting methods for addressing human lack. While the Bold may know they are uncomfortable with outright hand-outs, they may not even understand why. Relying on Nietzsche’s interpretation of Stoicism to articulate the reasons for their discomfort may provide the Bold with a language for reasonable alternatives. Nussbaum summarizes Nietzsche’s anti-pity arguments as follows:
1.Pity is an acknowledgment of weakness and insufficiency in the pitied - the recipient of too much pity will never become capable of creation and self- command.
2.Pity is an acknowledgment of weakness and insufficiency in the pitier.
3.Pity is not really altruistic, but rather egoistic – the pitier’s deed of pity is an attempt to get rid of his own pain.
4.Pity does no good – it simply increases the amount of suffering.
5.The things for which we pity people are, on the whole, things that are not bad, but good for them – “To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment...”
6.Pity is connected with revenge, and even with cruelty – once we ascribe significance to the events of life that others can harm, we have no end of occasions for envy and resentment against those who cause us to suffer in one way or another.23
Nussbaum leads us from the last argument into Nietzsche’s detailed look at revenge and punishment. Just as the strong individual can eliminate the petty excuses to take offense at those who harm him, Nietzsche argues that a strong community can begin to stand a certain number of offenses, debtors and parasites. He writes:
The justice which began with “everything is dischargeable, everything must be discharged,” ends by winking and letting those incapable of discharging their debt go free: it ends, as does every good thing on earth, by overcoming itself. This self-overcoming of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself – mercy; it goes without saying that mercy remains the privilege of the most powerful man.
The significance of this, according to Nussbaum, is that strength results in the elimination of the need for revenge. The admission of weakness present in both the pitied and the pitier leaves them with the values of the weak, and therefore subject to offense and the need for revenge. Ironically, our straw man, Hank speaks to this question directly. Pleasantly joking with one of his cohorts, he boasts about his ability to suffer parasites without resentment:
“We’re driving an express, and they’re riding on the roof, making a lot of noise about being leaders. Why should we care? We have enough power to carry them along – haven’t we?”
The demonstration of strength, in the end, is not a bullet-proof argument for Nietzsche’s anti-pity position, according to Nussbaum. For the purposes of our analysis, there are two important objections. First, Nietzsche is elsewhere emphatic about the “central importance of the body” but he fails to understand the idea that a “hungry person cannot think well.” 26 It seems that his over-emphasis on self-command misses the point of appreciating the most basic needs of a human body to function. Second, Nussbaum points out that his ideal of strength may not be a picture of true strength:
What should we think about a human being who insists on caring deeply for nothing that he himself does not control... For there is a strength of a specifically human sort in the willingness to acknowledge some truths about one’s situation: one’s mortality, one’s finitude, the limits and vulnerabilities of one’s body, one’s need for food and drink and shelter and friendship.
The monolithic hardness of Nietzsche’s self-commanding individual seems unrealistic and unattainable, if not eerily inhuman. Whatever the fate of his arguments about pity, Nietzsche does articulate many important insights into the Bold’s distaste for pity. If in reality, our subject only subscribes to a fraction of Nietzsche’s ideals, we may now better understand the moral basis on which their argument is based.
Altruism and Puritan Asceticism
That’s the immense selfishness of the Puritan. You’d let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you’d have to be ashamed.
- Lilian Reardan chastising husband Hank’s values
Another barrier to the altruism of the Bold may lie hidden in the Puritanical roots of modern capitalism. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber recounts how Medieval ethics, “not only tolerated begging but actually glorified it... since [the beggars] gave the person of means opportunity for good works through giving alms.”29Wealth was still seen as a spiritual burden, which required works of generous charity to redeem it. By the 19th Century, however, the concept of the evil of wealth had passed, allowing monetary accumulation to shift from a sign of inordinate love of the world, to sure evidence of one’s status as God’s elect. Weber believes that this shift caused modern capitalism to be heavily influenced by Puritan asceticism. The fear of poverty became more than just a fear of temporal physical suffering, it expanded to include the fear of Hell. In fact, the absence of beggars among Protestant sects and strict Puritan communities justified the mindset that “God helps those who help themselves.”
Weber argues that the Puritan underpinnings of capitalism faded, but the resulting practices remain – sometimes without us even understanding the original source. Could it be that the Bold struggle with poverty because a Puritan ethic that equated poverty with damnation has survived in our modern capitalistic structure? At the very least, it seems plausible that we lack consensus on altruism and a coherent policy on poverty because the early implementations of capitalism didn’t have enough poor in its communities to demand a strategy for addressing poverty.
Distributive Justice and Altruism
Human beings have limits to what they can give of themselves to others. If we were a society that held ourselves accountable to the thoroughgoing altruist’s standard, we would over time come to perceive all of morality as a burden the more we became familiar with the experience of falling short of its demands. In time, we would lose respect for even the minimal moral constraints that are necessary to keep society civil and free from chaos, and all of morality would fall into wide neglect.
-British Philosopher J.O. Urmson
Urmson’s point raises a critical question about the institutionalization of altruistic principles.As societies enact compulsory enforcement of altruistic aims, the response of the Bold comes in two forms. First, to the extent one believes that the choices have already been made by the imposition of an income tax and the modern welfare state, the self-commanding individual will likely consider her duty fulfilled, and may even resent the government’s appropriation of her earned income. This resentment may very well negatively impact the willingness of the Bold to participate in voluntary acts of altruism. Second, the Bold are likely to take issue with any form of wealth redistribution funding a theory of economic development divergent from their own.
Although working in a fictional medium, Ayn Rand delivers scathing commentary on the modern revaluation of values, arguing that our welfare state is transferring not just funds, but also rights from those who produce and contribute to those who do not produce yet consume. She highlights this in a capitalist commentary on the modern-day implementations of Robin Hood’s principles:
He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does.... And this brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant – while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is to be in need.
- Modern-day Pirate Ragnar Danneskjöld, explaining the implications of Robin Hood to Hank Rearden
Since modern-day distributive justice requires a greater net contribution on the part of the Bold, should they also have a greater say in the form of its implementation? Does an institutionalized system of altruism ultimately lead to a moral exhaustion at having lost the opportunity to fund and implement projects according to one’s own philosophy of effective economic development? The application of Urmson’s concept of altruistic burnout is certainly present in Rand’s depiction of social policy run amuck.
Conclusion
The complexity of the forces at work within the altruism of the Bold certainly exceeds the scope of what we have considered here. However, surfacing the possibility that our archetype could be capable of altruism in the unlikely mode of the self-commanding capitalist opens interesting new debates. Is it possible that self-interest may be the purest, most honest form of altruism? Is it possible to consciously pursue a better world and still be consistent with the rational-actor theory? Perhaps most importantly, is pity a prerequisite for altruistic action?
Did our Puritan fore bearers’ vilification of and unfamiliarity with systemic poverty cripple our preparation of a capitalistic response, or should we seek to recreate the cultural circumstances of their communities that knew no poverty? Finally, does institutionalized distributive justice decrease the likelihood that the Bold will voluntarily apply their resources and time to altruistic ends? The complexities and interrelatedness of these questions make them difficult to answer with great certainty. If we consider expanding our definition of altruism to include the creation of the opportunity for others to suffer and strive toward a self-created prosperity, then we can certainly welcome the Bold to the ranks of altruists.
PDF with footnotes
NOTES
1 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, (New York: Signet, 1957), 433.
2 Andrew Michael Flescher, Daniel L. Worthen, The Altruistic Species, (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2007), 27.
3 Flescher, 28.
4 Flescher, 8.
5 Flescher, 24.
6 Flescher, 7.
7 Flescher, 7.
8 Flescher, 7.
9 Rand, 212.
10 Flescher, 58.
11 Flescher, 63.
12 Friedrich Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morals, (New York: Random House, 1967), 19.
13 Nietzsche, 19.
14 Nietzsche, 20.
15 Nietzsche, 20.
16 Martha C. Nussbaum, “Pity and Mercy: Nietzsche’s Stoicism,” Nietzsche, Genealogy, & Morality, Richard Schacht, ed., (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 140.
17 Nussbaum, 141-142. 18 Nussbaum, 143. 19 Nussbaum, 143. 20 Nussbaum, 143.
21 Nussbaum, 144. 22 Rand, 197. 23 Nussbaum, 150-154. 24 Nietzsche, 72-73.
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25 Rand, 213.
26 Nussbaum, 158.
27 Nussbaum, 160.
28 Rand, 285.
29 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003), 177.
30 Weber, 178. 31 Flescher, 45. 32 Rand, 532-533.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Flescher, Andrew Michael, and Worthen, Daniel L. The Altruistic Species. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2007.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On The Genealogy of Morals. New York: Random House, 1967. Nussbaum, Martha C. “Pity and Mercy: Nietzsche’s Stoicism.” Nietzsche, Genealogy, &
Morality, Richard Schacht, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Signet, 1957.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003.
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