Some readers have wondered why I’m calling my book “The Origins of Altruism: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West.”  (At least I’m calling it that at this point).   Are you saying Jesus invented altruism?  What??  Hasn’t every ethical teacher from the very beginning stressed that we have to balance “what we want” with “what would be good for another”?  And isn’t that always part of religion: behaving well toward others as a kind of divine mandate?

Answer: well, yes and no.  This will take a few posts to explain.

As it turns out, and to the surprise of many moderns, ethics did not play a large role in ancient pagan religions.  Worshiping the gods normally did not involve any public recognition of bad social behavior or feelings of guilt for mistreating another with requests for forgiveness.  If someone had neglected the god, then apology or confession might be in order; but the gods were not focused on how humans treated one another, not all that concerned about whether you insulted your neighbor, stole their lamp, or slept with their spouse.  There were a few exceptions: as a rule gods did not approve of oath-breaking or patricide, for example.  But by and large, ethics was not their principal interest and the gods did not hand down law codes to prescribe moral behavior.  They were more concerned about whether you worshiped them properly.

That is not to say that the pagan world lacked ethical standards or that pagans were as a rule lawless and licentious.  On the contrary, most ancient pagans were just as ethical as Jews and then Christians.  They loved their families, took care of their kids, helped neighbors in need, looked out for one another in their communities, and worked to promote the social well-being of their villages, towns, and cities.  The human race had always been like that — but always for biological, social, and cultural reasons, not religious. Then, as now, there was a “common sense” about right and wrong, without which human societies, or even the human species, would not have survived. Moreover, dominant social structures had always served to enforced proper behavior in community: “do not murder,” “do not commit adultery,” “do not steal,” are not distinctively Jewish or Christian ideas, but sensible regulations that allow humans to live together and thrive in the face of a hostile world filled with predators and other dangers.

More than that, ethical ideas were widely discussed and moral practices defined in the pagan world — just not in the context of religion.  Ethical thinking and discourse instead lay within the realm of philosophy.  That may seem odd today.  Can we really imagine that ancient people cared in the least about what philosophers had to say?  In our far more highly educated and literate world today, how many people do you know who are genuinely interested in philosophy, who have carefully read, say, Plato or Aristotle or Kant?  Precisely none?  How could philosophy, of all things, have any real impact on ancient society and culture?

It is a sensible objection, but the first thing to stress is that ancient philosophy was important not because people were actually reading it.  For one thing, the vast majority of the population could not read.  And those who could read were rarely digging into the heady intellectual treatises produced by serious philosophers.  That does not mean, though, that philosophical discourse made little impact.  Think of an analogous situation today, in the realm of Christian thinking.  How many religious people do you know who read the heady intellectual stuff produced by the world’s leading academic theologians, past or present?  It’s been a long time since I met a non-academic who has ever seriously studied, or even just read the books of Augustine, Anselm, or Aquinas (just to start with some of the “A’s” of theology).  Yet, Christian ethical views as developed by theologians and other thinkers over the centuries have indeed seeped into the broader conscience of the religious community.  Consider it a trickle-down effect.  It happened widely in antiquity too – particularly when it came to the ethical views developed by Greek and Roman philosophers.

These views differed in many ways from those of Jesus and his followers, and it is the latter views that have shaped the modern Western conscience when it comes to matters of altruism.  The best place to begin understanding the key contrasts is at an early period in the history of philosophical ethical discourse.

 

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was almost certainly the most influential ethical thinker in the Western tradition.   There were certainly important Greek moral philosophers before him; he himself was famously the student of Plato, who was in turn a follower of Socrates, before whom were others, most of them known today only by name or not at all.   But Aristotle is the one who made the greatest impact on ethical thinking.  He continues to be read and studied by ethicists today, over 2300 years after his death.

Aristotle’s most famous book is called the Nichomachean Ethics.  He begins this ten-volume work with essential questions that are still remarkably apt today.  What does it mean to live a good life and how do we do it?  All of us certainly want to enjoy what is good, and many of us want to be good.  But what, actually, is the “good” that we want to have and to be?

Aristotle approaches the question with a brilliant way of reimagining it:  What does each of us consider to be the ultimate good we can have?

Many of us may think we know the answer – we want health, or wealth, or a good job, or a good marriage, or a loving family, or lots of friends, or… or pick your answer.  But Aristotle argues that none of these things singly or collectively, is what we ultimately strive after; they are invariably things we want so we can have something else that we want even more.  You can see this simply by asking yourself “Why do you want more money?”  Or friends or family?  It is always for some other reason.  And so these various “goods” are what Aristotle calls “instrumental” desires, the means by which acquire something further.  Is there anything that we want not in order to get something else but because it is good to have in and of itself and for no other reason?

Let me explain with an example that pushes the reasoning to the limit.  I am talking to an undergraduate student and she tells me she wants to get an A in my class.  I ask her why she wants an A.  She says it’s because she wants to have a high GPA.  I ask why she wants a high GPA?  So she can get into top—level business school.  Why does she want that?  Because she wants a career as a high-level business executive.  And why is that something she wants?  So she can make a lot of money.  Why does she want to make a lot of money?  So she can buy and do anything she wants.  And why is that what she wants?  Because that would make her happy.

At precisely that point there is no longer any further reason to ask “why.”  There is no “why” to why we want to be happy.  We don’t want happiness for some other reason.  It’s the ultimate reason.  The other things we want – the entire string of them – are means to that end.

 

And what does that have to do with ethics and altruism?  I’ll start explaining in my next post.