Question: If the pursuit of happiness is one of our goals, what if a person enjoys being altruistic?
It's an interesting one. My first reaction is to say, 'If being altruistic makes you happy, then you're doing it wrong!'
Here we're using the term 'altruism' in its philosophical sense; other-ism, altru-ism. It's a moral theory that says the other is the standard of value, not the self; and whether it makes you happy or not, benefits you or not, is entirely irrelevant to the morality of the action. Only the benefit to the other is important, and strong versions of altruism say you should be selfless in the literal sense. The self is of less importance. You should be self-sacrificing, and sacrifice doesn't mean just paying investment costs hoping for a larger return. It means suffering pain, giving-up, losing in the long run.
And so altruism then, as a philosophical theory means that it has to be done as a matter of duty and against yourself-interest, and that is precisely what Objectivism is opposed to.
Stephen R. C. Hicks is a Senior Scholar for The Atlas Society and Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University. He is also the Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford University.
他是《推理的藝術:邏輯分析讀物》(W. W. Norton & Co.,1998)、《解釋後現代主義:從盧梭到福柯的懷疑主義和社會主義》(Scholargy,2004)、《尼采與納粹》(奧卡姆剃刀,2010)、《創業生活》(CEEF,2016)、《自由主義的利弊》(康納·考特,2020)、《藝術:現代、後現代和超越》(與邁克爾·紐伯里合著,2021)和《八大教育哲學》的作者 (2022). 他曾在《商業道德季刊》、《形而上學評論》和《華爾街日報》上發表文章。他的著作已被翻譯成20種語言。
他曾是華盛頓特區喬治城大學商業倫理客座教授,俄亥俄州鮑靈格林社會哲學與政策中心客座研究員,波蘭卡西米爾大帝大學客座教授,英國牛津大學哈裡斯曼徹斯特學院客座研究員和波蘭雅蓋隆大學客座教授。
他的學士和碩士學位來自加拿大圭爾夫大學。他的哲學博士學位來自美國布盧明頓的印第安那大學。
2010年,他獲得了所在大學的卓越教學獎。
他的 開放學院播客系列 由多倫多的可能正確的製作公司出版。他的視頻講座和採訪在 CEE視頻頻道在線,他的網站 StephenHicks.org。
Instagram Takeover Questions:
Every week we solicit questions from our 100K followers on Instagram (a social media platform popular with young people. Once a month we feature Stephen Hicks' answers to select questions, transcripts below:
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