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[–] Quaestorr 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

Schopenhauer (part Dutch as an aside)

Never knew that, thanks!

 

altruistic acts have a selfish motive if only in the good feeling one acquires in doing a good deed.

This is one of the core ideas of my personal Weltanschauung. (Btw Richard Dawkins (probably not popular in these circles — a pity imho) wrote interesting stuff on this in The Selfish Gene.)

Still, I think it is possible to come to an idealistic morality based on a Nietzschean utilitarianism, that in practice differs little from Christian virtue. (I refer to the Christianity that inspired the medieval poets and troubadours to compose stories and songs about heroic knights; the noble faith practiced by proud Europeans, Americans, South Africans — of course not the self-loathing cult that it has become today in most of the West).