Altruism

Altruism is the principle and practice of disinterested concern for the welfare of others, expressed in voluntary behavior that is intended to benefit another person or organism at some cost, risk, or sacrifice to the actor, without expectation of external reward. The concept occupies a central place in ethics, psychology, evolutionary biology, economics, neuroscience, and the social sciences, each of which asks a slightly different question about it: whether genuinely selfless motivation is possible, how self-sacrificing behavior can evolve by natural selection, and why human beings so often assist strangers, donate resources, or risk their lives for others. Coined as a term in the nineteenth century, altruism has become one of the most intensively studied phenomena at the intersection of the natural sciences and the humanities, and debates over its nature continue to shape research on cooperation, morality, and prosocial behavior.

Etymology and Definition

The word "altruism" was introduced by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in the first volume of his System of Positive Polity (1851). He derived it from the French autrui ("others"), itself from the Italian altrui and ultimately the Latin alter ("other"). Comte, the founder of positivism, used altruisme to denote the impulse to "live for others" (vivre pour autrui), which he regarded as the moral core of his proposed "Religion of Humanity" and as the counterweight to egoism. The term entered English usage through Herbert Spencer and other Victorian writers and soon acquired a broader, secular meaning.

Modern scholarship distinguishes several senses of the term. In behavioral or evolutionary usage, an act is altruistic if it reduces the actor's own fitness or welfare while increasing that of the recipient, regardless of inner motives. In psychological or motivational usage, altruism refers to an ultimate intention to benefit another for the other's sake; an act that benefits others only as a means to self-satisfaction is not altruistic in this sense. Philosophers and biologists Elliott Sober