JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES VOLUME 28, NUMBER 3, 1972

Altruism and Sympathy: Their History in Philosophy

and Some Implications for Psychology

Joseph Katz

State University of New York at Stony Brook

In their attempt to gi<e rational foundations to the commonsense belief that one ought to help other people, philosophers have resorted to a wide range of theories making such diverse factors as self-realiza- tion, pleasure, or duty the motivators of helping behavior. Their theo- retical explorations have led to rethinking the basic concepts of “self” and “other” as preparatory to answering the question of what principles ought to or might govern helping relations between people. Recent psychological investigations fall short in the area of theoretical articula- tion of basic concepts and rely too much on common sense meanings. Refinement of concepts can result from fuller attention to personality factors, personality theory, and the many different social contexts of helping.

The problem of whether there is a moral obligation to benefit anyone other than oneself is a recurring one in the history of philosophy. The philosophers’ “solution” to this problem is similar to their “solutions” to the problems of the existence of God and of the external world. In the face of their own uncertainties they have offered “proofs,” but the proofs were never sufficient to still their doubts and the problem has been an ever-recurring one.

In attempting to provide a rationale for altruism, philoso- phers have run into difficulties. The argument in favor of self-in- terest seems to have a prima facie plausibility; it asserts that in a conflict between one’s own self-interest and the interest of an- other person, no rational case can be made for preferring the interest of another self. Both are selves equally and no reason can be given for preferring somebody else’s satisfaction to one’s

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own. Most philosophers did not long remain convinced of the self-interest argument. The feeling persisted that there must be something wrong, to take a recent example, with such behavior as that of the 38 people who watched Kitty Genovese being mur- dered without as much as lifting the phone to notify the police.

Three major theoretical approaches may be distinguished by which philosophers have tried to give rational foundations to the notion that bystanders ought to do something in such situations. These three approaches can be labeled the self-realira- tion theory, the pleasure theory, and the duty theory. The last two will be described briefly; we will give a somewhat fuller treatment of the self-realization theory.

The pleasure theory, represented in antiquity by the Epicure- ans, such as Lucretius (1964), and in more modern times, among others, by John Stuart Mill (1957), seems at first far removed from being able to offer a rationale for the obligation to benefit other people. Viewing the attainment of pleasure as the supreme, if not the sole goal of conduct, seems to be difficult to reconcile with accepting pain in favor of somebody else’s pleasure. But investigation of the conditions of attaining pleasure has led the hedonists to view it as intertwined with pain and the existence of other people. A certain quantity of pain can be the condition of a larger quantity of pleasure now or later. The foregoing of a “selfish” pleasure can be the condition of a larger personal pleasure, or at least of avoiding pain inflicted by others. Reducing the pains of others can enhance sooner or later one’s private pleasure. The greatest possible good of the greatest possible number thus can be founded on the “calculus of pleasure.” In Mill one even finds a strange combination of hedonism with Victo- rian rectitude based on the argument that the quality of pleasure, not just its quantity, must be counted in the calculus of pleasure. Mill thus prefers Socrates dissatisfied to a pig satisfied.

The duty theory, represented by the ancient Stoics (Diogenes Laertius, 1950), by St. Augustine (1950), and by Kant (1969), asserts an altruistic obligation regardless of the consequences, whether these be pleasure, prestige, pragmatic success, etc. Kant is particularly rigorous. In the strictest sense an act is moral only if it does not serve self-interest (though Kant allows that duty and self-interest may coincide at times). In order to justify the absoluteness of the altruistic obligation, duty theories often resort to a dualistic conception of the nature of man. Kant postulates a “noumenal” or spiritual region in man’s make-up which com- mands us to treat others as ends in themselves and never as

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mere means. Other philosophers have anchored moral obligation in theoretical systems that view man as having originated in an existence superior to this life or that view him as endowed with a transcendental drive to achieve a state of being that lifts him beyond the rules and conditions governing our present empirical existence. Self-transcendence rather than self-realization is the key concept of this approach. At one extreme it leads to the view, such as that of the Neoplatonist Plotinus (1950), that it is the abandonment of the self and the identification with super- personal cosmic existence that is the condition of achieving the supreme human good.

Self-Realization Theory The self-realization theory is represented by Plato (1945) and

Aristotle (1962) in antiquity, Spinoza (1957) and Dewey (1922) in more modern times. Most of the questions and many of the answers concerning the problem of altruism have been stated in one of the first fully preserved documents of Western philo- sophical history, Plato’s Republic (1945). The book begins with the defense of self-interest already referred to. Only actions that serve one’s self can be justified. If there is a conflict between one’s own interest and that of another individual, then, on the assumption that individuals are equal, it makes no sense to prefer another individual’s interest over one’s own, as long as one has the power to serve one’s own interests. This argument is further refined by showing that actions apparently serving someone else’s interest can usually be shown to be in the service of one’s own interest more intelligently conceived. Thus people will fulfill their contractual obligations because nonfulfillment would cause them to lose the kind of credibility they need for continuous business relationships. Enlightened self-interest is the only sound criterion for judging the value of an action; an action labeled altruistic can either be subsumed under the category of self-interest or must be viewed as an act of deliberately preferring pain or self- destructiveness to its opposite, which, it is held, no one would willingly do.

These are the opening propositions of the Republic. The rest of the book is devoted to a discussion and refutation of that position, in the dialectical rather than didactic manner in which Plato usually presents his ideas. Plato’s argument turns on an examination of what is meant by the “self” in whose interest actions are said to be judged. He introduces a series of consider- ations that have become familiar to us again only during the

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last 150 years of social science. He points out the multiple deter- minants that enter into a person’s development, e.g., the influ- ences of father, mother, and other significant figures in the child’s environment, of social structure, of education. The self is a con- glomerate of many different identifications, often in conflict with each other. The person becomes himself a “republic,” a reflection of the society around him. Character is differently formed in different social systems. These considerations shift the question of self-interest to the more sophisticated level of the problem of the nature and integration of the differing and the conflicting constituencies of the individual person.

Further, while on the one side the individual can be viewed as a complex of many parts, he can on the other side be viewed as only an incomplete “part” that achieves integration only in his association with others. This is most clearly seen in sexual union, which Plato in the Symposium (1959) describes as the corn- ing together of two halves, which were originally joined in one body and which in this way once more achieve wholeness. He argues the incompleteness of the individual in the Republic by showing how the gratification of the more sophisticated human desires becomes possible only through division of labor; one can- not be a philosopher unless there are others to talk with, and still others who do the mercantile, administrative, menial, and other work of the society and thus allow the philosopher to pursue his specialty and still be fed, clothed, and secure. The spirit of Plato’s conception of the incompleteness of the individual can be illustrated particularly clearly in the situation of the infant. The infant’s situation is much more adequately conceptualized in terms of mutuality and mutual regulation than of self-interest. The mother is not only a source of food-a situation which could be described in terms of self-interest-but also a source of love, of joint work and play which allows for no sharp distinction of two selves. The mother, of course, simultaneously is a part of other communities, her husband and children, her profession, etc., and those relations, too, unless there is alienation and isola- tion, are characterized by mutuality.

Plato thus transcends the distinction between self-interest and altruism by showing how the social nexus is mirrored within the individual and thus requires harmonization of “self” and “other” within the person. At the same time, the individuality of the human being can be achieved only via affectionate, intellectual, and aesthetic union with others. Because individuality depends on communication with others, Plato returns often to discussions

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of love: love that fosters the fulfillment of an important potenti- ality, another love that is exploitative not only of one’s partner but actually of oneself too, because it implies a reduced function- ing of both parties. Plato saw the desire for wholeness through union with others as a force almost stronger than necessity; he described love as a mixture of poverty and richness and was fond of tracing the power of love in pathology and ecstasy.

Plato’s disciple Aristotle also defined man as an animal that achieves his fulfillment only through active participation in an organized society and through friendship with other people. This view of man has been intermittently abandoned and rediscovered throughout the history of philosophy. Sometimes, in reaction to social systems that were considered oppressive or inhibitory, indi- viduality was viewed as self-sufficient. Thus towards the end of the Middle Ages, with the freeing from past social controls, philos- ophers turned to stressing the sovereignty, dignity, and at times the solitariness of the individual. This led some of them to an assertion of the atomic independence of the individual in politics and in ethics. It also led in epistemology to the thesis that no clear proof existed for the existence of any being other than that of the thinker who was raising the question. These solipsistic preoccupations reach their clearest expression in Leibnitz ( 1925), who sees each individual, human and non-human, as a “monad” which is a replica of the entire universe. Other theories of the individual’s sovereignty conceived relations among individuals as similar to the relations of nations with each other; they were conceived in terms of contract, of safeguarding one’s own sphere of security or pleasure, and of trading goods and services with other sovereignties. In such theoretical contexts, if one wanted to save altruism, it could be saved only by assuming, as in David Hume (1946), the simultaneous presence in the human individual of both self-regarding and other-regarding desires. Being altruis- tic became another way of having one’s selfish pleasure.

The emphasis on the social nexus was reintroduced into mod- ern philosophy with particular strength by Hegel (1942). From Hegel it found its way into Marx and hence influenced political and social theory and the budding sciences of sociology and an- thropology. It found another variant in Dewey who is strongly influenced both by Hegel and by the social sciences. It has come into frequent conflict with individualist theory. One might say that the individualist theory has tended to view the social process on the model of legal interactions, and the social nexus theory, on the model of family interactions. But the complexity that besets

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concepts trying to articulate people’s relations with each other is well illustrated in some of the many further ramifications of these two theories. The individualist approach led in the British philosophical tradition to the theoretical foundations of the con- cept of civil rights, succinctly represented in Mill’s essay On Liberty (1956). It also led to laissez-faire and often hostile competitiveness. The emphasis on the social nexus in the German tradition led to the conception of Gemeinschaft (community) as distinguished from Gesellschaft (society), to trade unions and other forms of collective organization to protect the individual. It also led to the fascist theory of the corporate state and the authoritarian submergence of the individual for the sake of the postulated common good. Many of the battles of the twentieth century in theory and in actual war reflect these two intellectual traditions, their incomplete articulations, and their ambiguities.

Intrapsychic Aspects We have just delineated some of the interpersonal aspects

of altruism and helping behavior. The problem of altruism is further complicated by ambiguities in the intrapsychic aspects. If , as some people hold, strivings towards love and self-realization alone regulate human behavior, then failure to achieve them may be ascribed to ignorance of fact or faulty reasoning. But already before Plato’s time Empedocles (1947) postulated the polar exis- tence of strife or hate beside love. Plato too delineates two independent systems within the personality: one set of impulses expressed in the desire for work, for generosity, the sense of justice, the passion for integrity, and another set of impulses expressed in the desire to overpower others, to overfeed oneself, and to transgress all limits.

Ever since Plato, philosophers and psychologists have tended to one or the other pattern of conceiving human nature, one group seeing hate as reducible to frustrated love and the other group seeing it as an independent non-reducible force. Among the former are such thinkers as William James (1949), who looked for the psychological equivalent of aggression by turning the fight of men against men into the fight against the hardships of nature. Among the latter are such divergent views as Augustine’s (1956) conception of original sin and perhaps some aspects of Freud’s (1963) conception of aggression.

Some philosophers went to the other extreme of denying independent status to love. Hobbes (1962) thought that in the state of nature man to man was a wolf; he thought that socially

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beneficial behavior could be assured by reliance on the emotion of fear which would keep people from mutual destructiveness and would induce them to submit to government for the sake of protecting them from each other. Hobbes stressed man’s drive for gain and glory and Nietzsche (1967) asserted even more boldly that there is sheer pleasure in aggression itself. Some ethologists too have argued that hostile impulses may have their foundations in the history of the race and of animal behavior. Hostility may be a function of the struggle for survival, but it may also be an independent component of inter-species and, in the case of humans, intra-species relations.

N o theoretical discussion can at this stage be decisive concern- ing the strength and ultimacy of the two conflicting drives of love and hate. We know that empirically we find the two in mani- fold fusions and the discovery of “ambivalence” has familiarized us with the simultaneous presence of strongly conflicting emo- tions, particularly in regard to people close to us. Probably the answer lies in finer definitions of the two forces and perhaps in a fresh theoretical vantage point. T o prepare for such fresh perspective we probably need to study the two as they are found in conjunction-and to avoid denying the one at the expense of the other.

PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS As one surveys the psychological literature of the last ten

years concerned with altruism and helping behavior, one finds that the theoretical clarification of basic concepts which has char- acterized many of the philosophers has not yet been undertaken. On the whole psychologists have been content with the common sense meaning of the basic terms. For instance, it seems still quite common to equate altruism with self-sacrificing behavior (Krebs, 1970), yet self-sacrifice may describe only one extreme of “help- ing” behavior and may have sado-masochistic implications. Who (self and other) is helped or hurt and to what extent need to be much more disentangled.

If we stick with common sense meanings of altruism, we have less opportunity to separate altruism from unconscious or less conscious egoistic motivation. Take, for instance, Fellner and Marshall’s (1970) study of kidney donors. They report the intrigu- ing result that these donors experienced an increase in self-esteem as a consequence of their act. This increase in self-esteem seemed to stem from the sense that their life had served a major purpose

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by greatly helping another person. But as one examines the report by the authors themselves one comes across other factors. There was much gratification from the publicity that the donors re- ceived. Their decision was made precipitously and without reflec- tion, which suggests unrecognized compulsions. Moreover, as one reads the donors’ own post-operative statements one gets a sense that they are protesting too much about how much better off they are. One is thus induced to wonder about the deep anxieties (castration and other) that must have been stirred up by this operation but that are not mentioned. Perhaps some of their sense of well-being arose from a feeling of expiation.

We need both conceptual clarification and redefinition of the categories on the basis of empirical investigations. Perry Lon- don’s observations in his study (1970) of Christian rescuers of Jews go counter to what one might have expected on the basis of conventional notions of helping. He suggests the combined effect of several factors: zest for adventure, strong identification with a moralistic parental model, and social marginality. The sug- gestion I derive from his study is that these are somewhat alienat- ed people with perhaps a strong dose of reaction formation. Psy- chological compensations of this sort often characterize other kinds of helpers-reformers, missionaries, physicians-and may imply coercive effects on their recipients. There is also such a phenomenon as identification with the victim. Freud’s concept of “reaction formation” illustrates a formulation that moves, on the basis of theoretical and clinical considerations, beyond com- mon sense categories and allows more microscopic analyses of behavior usually referred to as “kind.” (See Ekstein, 1972.) This is in part due to the fact that the concept of reaction formation functions within a theory of personality.

Part of the problem of current studies of altruism and helping behavior is that they, unlike the philosophers we have referred to, do not work within the framework of a personality theory or a theory of social functioning. Even if one wishes to shy away from theory formation at this point, broadening the theoretical and investigational net is likely to increase our understanding. The 38 bystanders of the murder of Kitty Genovese must all have perceived the situation in different ways. Their inaction must have sprung from different psychological dispositions and must have had quite different effects upon them when they rea- lized the consequences of their inaction. The people in Milgram’s (1965) study who in compliance with authority inflicted what ap- peared to them serious pain on other people may have given

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outwardly similar responses that were the results of quite different dynamics of personality. The more detailed exploration of the personality of the helper, in addition to the more specific variables that studies have focussed on, seems essential for getting at hither- to hidden implications of the helping act.

Because helping is a two-way relation we must also pay more attention to the recipient of help. As I survey the recent studies of altruism, I am impressed by the fact that in almost all of the natural or experimental situations the recipient is something of an inert object. He is often an object of some sort of charity, and the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary is more like that of doctor to patient or welfare worker to client than that of two interacting equals.

The lead from the philosophers is that man is a social animal and differently defined under the impact of different social situa- tions. We need, therefore, to investigate helping in many different social contexts. Helping within the family, among friends, between husband and wife may be different from helping fellow-workers on a job, or strangers with whom one comes in personal contact, or strangers that one observes in a public place, or people geo- graphically or socially distant with whom one has no face to face contact whatsoever. As long ago as Aeschylus (1970) it was realized that different rules of conduct, different concepts of “justice” (altruism) need to be developed for these different situations. The very concept of helping needs much further disentangle- ment, shot through as it now often is with connotations of manipu- lation, domineering, self-serving, and projection of one’s needs onto others.

IN CONCLUSION To sum up, excellent and stimulating as the empirical studies

of the past decade have been, they seem to me to require concep- tual refinements that disentangle still further the multiple and at times contradictory meanings of common sense terms and they need to move beyond common sense terms, both by casting a wider empirical net and by linking investigations to a developing theory of personality and social functioning.

In regard to the conceptual clarification that is needed it seems to me that any definition of altruism which assumes a conflict between serving one’s self and serving others tends, as we have seen, to run into both logical and psychological difficul- ties. I would propose, therefore, that we define altruism as a

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simultaneous satisfaction of the interests of self and others. This sounds like a simple enough definition. But it is made complicated by the fact that in defining the interests or desires of the self and others we need to base ourselves on a holistic conception of the personality. Otherwise the proposed definition of altruism might imply a narrow quid pro quo utilitarianism which would make any business or political deal an altruistic act. If, however, we take into account the multiple dimensions of the personality, among them the affiliative and aesthetic ones, the definition of altruism can achieve the completeness that avoids the horns of defining altruism either as self-sacrificing or as a refined version of selfishness.

I have talked about the implications of philosophical theories for psychological investigations. At the end let me point out that psychology can in turn illuminate the philosophical theories here discussed. I have distinguished the three theories of self-realiza- tion, pleasure, and duty. One may view the centrality given to each of these concepts by different philosophers as stressing one or the other component of the personality. The duty theory stresses such superego functions as obedience to a partially un- conscious authority; the pleasure theory stresses the id’s pursuit of privatist gratification under some control by the reality princi- ple; the self-realization theory stresses such ego functions as the acquisition of competence and the pursuit of the ego ideal. These theories were often developed in response to specific historical situations. Thus the ego-oriented theories of Plato and Aristotle reflected a well-functioning city-state, albeit in its wane, that al- lowed the individual room for expansion. The three theoretical approaches also reflect the personal psychologies of each author, who may single out for emphasis that component of his character that is in need of particular attention if he is to function more adequately.

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