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VersaceEauFraiche t1_iymopim wrote
In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle comments that it is the mark of a virtuous man is to give gifts, but not receive them. Giving gifts denotes one's superior position, their abundance, their surplus, while their inclination towards declining gifts means they are secure in their own position and do not need material goods.
Extrapolated, this means that selfless and altruistic are signs of the superior, excellent, virtuous man while going out of one's way to not demonstrate good will to their fellow man is the sign of a small-souled bugman.
draliene t1_iymncgb wrote
Well selflessness and altruism come from a deep feeling of empathy, where you feel not only your pain, but others as well. So being able to feel more pain than your own, wouldn’t that make you stronger?
mementoTeHominemEsse t1_iympsgn wrote
>Well selflessness and altruism come from a deep feeling of empathy
Not necessarily. Claiming all (or even most) selflessness and altruism stem from empathy is reductionsist.
TheMightyBattleSquid t1_iymug4j wrote
You can't complain it's an assumption and then not provide even a single example as a counterpoint lol
mementoTeHominemEsse t1_iymvd38 wrote
It's not my job to bring counter-examples when they haven't even tried to prove or argue for their point. But one example may be seeking validation, or thinking tbose traits are a moral virtue.
Council-Member-13 t1_iymwj06 wrote
If it is seeking validation, then it isn't an example of selflessness.
mementoTeHominemEsse t1_iymyq7k wrote
Selflessness in the perfect philosophical sense your conceptualizing it doesn't exist. Everything we do has a selfish motive.
Selflessness however in the sense the article is talking about and we talk about in day to day life is simply acting in a way that grants you no non-moral benefits. If someone gives a beggar money an upon being asked why claim they simply wanted to see the beggar smile, we will still call that selflessness. That's simply the way the word has been embedded in our language.
Council-Member-13 t1_iyn1pvu wrote
Again, selflessness isn't seeking validation. They are contradictory. Unless you're ascribing to a very alien philosophy of psychology, you're going to get into trouble if you use validation seeking as an example of selflessness.
mementoTeHominemEsse t1_iyn41yj wrote
Again, selflessness in the way you're conceptualizing it is not only not the selflessness the article or the common person talks about, it literally doesn't exist.
MrVeazey t1_iymzztf wrote
I like helping people and being nice to others. I don't seek acknowledgement or praise because the action is enough. Is that selfish or selfless?
I'm genuinely asking and not trying to be smug.
draliene t1_iymvhrj wrote
Even if it wouldn’t stem from empathy, my point still stands. You do go through more amount of pain/suffering/labour being altruistic anyways. However I don’t see where else it could come from, I would love to hear other reasoning for that.
mementoTeHominemEsse t1_iymxmd1 wrote
>You do go through more amount of pain/suffering/labour being altruistic anyways.
I'd argue that while in the long term this is true, in the short term it's often actually the easier choice, and chasing instant gratification is a sign of weakness. An example may be giving money to a beggar, even though you know it will likely go to waste. It's easier to give him the money than just walk past him. However, long term, we might know we need the money ourselves, and even if we didn't, giving it to charity would have been the better cause.
Alternatively, we might be seeking the approval of others. Or perhaps, because we lack actual power, we try place ourselves above others in an imaginary moral hierarchy by telling ourselves we're better people than them because we're more altruistic.
That isn't to say you should completely abandon altruism, or that all, or even most altruism stems from weakness, but we should at least be more aware of what is really driving us. Because altruism is praised by society, we often let our true motives for altruistic action unchecked.
Sorry for being such an edgelord btw, lol.
draliene t1_iyn3lva wrote
But then it isn’t an act of altruism or selflessness anymore, is it? You are not BEING selfless, you are preforming it.
mementoTeHominemEsse t1_iyn4j4o wrote
Selflessness in the perfect philosophical sense your conceptualizing it doesn't exist. Everything we do has a selfish motive.
Selflessness however in the sense the article is talking about and we
talk about in day to day life is simply acting in a way that grants you
no non-moral benefits. If someone gives a beggar money an upon being asked why claim they simply wanted to see the beggar smile, we will still call that selflessness. That's simply the way the word has been embedded in our language.
le-bone t1_iymtvj8 wrote
Where could I dig into this? Genuinely interested
siskulous t1_iyn393e wrote
Ugh. This is just a reminder of why I view Nietzsche with such distaste.
Which takes a stronger man: To serve his own self-interest or to willingly make the world a better place knowing that he is doing so at cost to himself? The denial of self in the pursuit of a better world undeniably takes more and stronger will than selfish acts. To call such a thing weak is delusion.
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harbinger21 t1_iymnwzd wrote
Sounds like this would make a fine pairing with that prosperity gospel BS.
MrVeazey t1_iyn190j wrote
Essentially, yes. Ayn Rand's entire body of work is a series of high-minded excuses for being a selfish ass and the same people who love prosperity gospel are often huge proponents of Randian "philosophy."
It's super hypocritical because Rand was a militant atheist who had nothing but contempt for any religious person and prosperity gospel is a literal heresy. They're just looking for ways to rationalize their authoritarian worldview and/or their immoral financial excess in face of such widespread poverty.
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SungaRosaChoque t1_iyn2u39 wrote
I believe the author misses Nietzsche's point. "Who is to say who is to say?" Yourself. In Nietzsche's view the individual should rise up against morals created to opress him. Who defines what is opression for each individual? The individual itself. Thus, as we examine a set of collective morals we see that they will mostly favor the "strong" and punish the weak, but in subtle ways. In a way similar to Marx's concept of alienation, where the core moral values of society are produced to justify a social and moral order where a rulling class sits on top of society and a lower class is opressed socially and morally.
Nietzsche views mostly take the questions of morals outside philosophy and put it on a political/power dynamics spectrum. Nietzsche tries to show a way to escape domination by demonstrating that altruism, when collectively morally lauded, may be only a tool of domination. And to escape this domination we should be aware of selfishness. Our own and of others.
He uses the example of cristian morality. In which altruism is revered and exalted, where te position of slave, where the feeling of pain and the act of sacrifice makes you closer to god. Isn't a moral system that puts value on suffering just a way to convince those who suffer that they are blessed a system who deludes people? Isn't a system that puts moral value on the weak a way to convince the weak to stay week?
"The meek shall inherit the earth" more then 2000 years have passed and they still have not. Egoism is treated as a tool to free the individual from the notion that his material weakness is spiritual strength