Altruism

Utilitarianism requires the agent's impartiality toward their own happiness: the maximization of the general good commands that everyone's interest count equally, one's own no more than another's. Bentham's formula, everybody to count for one and nobody for more than one, is explicitly aimed against giving oneself priority.

Mill, Utilitarianism, chapter 2 · Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics

The doctrine of oikeiōsis describes the natural extension of belonging: starting from concern for oneself, it widens in concentric circles to embrace family, city, then all of humanity. The Stoic sage thus comes to treat another's good as his own, beyond narrow self-interest.

Cicero, On Moral Ends, book III · Hierocles, Elements of Ethics

My project takes shape only by disclosing a world, and that world has relief only when peopled with other freedoms that take it up and extend it: this is why to will man free is to will that there be being. The tension between self and other, which tradition resolves by sacrificing one to the other, thus dissolves at the root: my freedom is fulfilled not despite the freedom of others but through it, so that to oppress anyone is to impoverish the very meaning of what I aim at. Hence an altruism that is neither a duty imposed from without nor a renunciation, but the internal requirement of a freedom lucid about its own conditions.

The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), "Ambiguity and Freedom"

Because the value disclosed in revolt is never that of one man alone but the one he shares with all the humiliated, the good of others ceases to be external to my own good: standing in solidarity is no sacrifice of my interest but the consequence of what revolt has taught me about myself. Thus Rieux can heal the plague-stricken without hoping for any salvation, out of plain decency: not by calculation, nor by abstract duty, but by faithfulness to this common value. Camus thereby grounds an altruism without God and without transcendence, anchored in the sole experience of the shared condition.

The Rebel (1951) · The Plague (1947)

The moral end is not the agent's happiness but the general happiness: the utilitarian virtue is altruism, devotion to the good of all. Mill accordingly admires the spirit of sacrifice when it serves another's happiness, while denying any value to a sacrifice that increases no one's sum of happiness.

Utilitarianism, ch. 2 (sacrifice has value only if it increases happiness)

Egoism is the 'colossal' spring of empirical man, who refers everything to himself and would, he says, sooner see the world destroyed than himself. But this spring is precisely amoral: only an action whose motive is another's good has moral worth, and virtue does not consist in reckoning one's interest better but in stepping outside it.

On the Basis of Morality, §14

From the rational and social nature of man, Marcus deduces that my good and the community's are one: endowed with reason like every human being, I am to the city of the world what the limb is to the body, and the limb that severs itself is maimed. Stoic appropriation takes a singular turn here, for it is an emperor who reminds himself at the threshold of each day that his own task is the just act done for the common good: virtue is no solitary perfection but is turned wholly toward cooperation.

Meditations, V, 1 · Meditations, VI, 54 · Meditations, VII, 13

Stoic appropriation extends self-concern to all humans: born for mutual aid, we owe others kindness, clemency and help. Beneficence (On Benefits) and gentleness toward humankind draw Seneca toward altruism, without denying that virtue remains first a perfecting of oneself.

On Benefits, I, 1-4 (the practice of disinterested giving) · On Anger, II, 31 (we are born for mutual aid)

The junzi 君子 (person of noble character) minds righteousness (yi) where the petty man minds gain: humaneness means helping others to stand and not inflicting on them what one would not wish for oneself (the golden rule in negative form, shu, reciprocity). This is an altruistic orientation, without self-renunciation: one raises oneself by raising others.

Analects, IV, 16 (the junzi understands righteousness, the petty man profit) · Analects, XV, 24 and VI, 30 (not inflicting on others what you would not wish; helping others to stand)

Hume rejects the psychological egoism that would reduce all motivation to self-interest: there exists a genuine disinterested benevolence and real sympathy, the sources of moral approval. Interest is therefore not the only spring, though it plays a large part (utility, the origin of justice), hence a moderately altruistic position.

Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix II (of self-love)