Altruism and Christian Ethics

This book contends that secular altruism is a parody on the self-giving love of Christianity.

Colin Grant (Author)

9780521791441, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 November 2000

288 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.1 cm, 0.456 kg

"It provides a useful introduction to features of and debates surrounding altruism and makes clear the role Christian ethics can play in defending and promoting it." Religious Studies Review

Separated from its anchorage in religion, ethics has followed the social sciences in seeing human beings as fundamentally characterised by self-interest, so that altruism is either naively idealistic or arrogantly self-sufficient. Colin Grant contends that, as a modern secular concept, altruism is a parody on the self-giving love of Christianity, so that its dismissal represents a social levelling that loses the depths that theology makes intelligible and religion makes possible. The Christian affirmation is that God is characterised by self-giving love (agape), then expected of Christians. Lacking this theological background, the focus on self-interest in sociobiology and economics, and on human realism in the political focus of John Rawls or the feminist sociability of Carol Gilligan, finds altruism naive or a dangerous distraction from real possibilities of mutual support. This book argues that to dispense with altruism is to dispense with God and with the divine transformation of human possibilities.

Part I. Alien Altruism: 1. Explanations for altruism
2. Evidence of altruism
3. The elusiveness of altruism
Part II. Ideal Altruism: 4. Contract altruism
5. Constructed altruism
6. Collegial altruism
Part III. Real Altruism: 7. Acute altruism: agape
8. Absolute altruism
9. Actual altruism.

Subject Areas: Christian life & practice [HRCV]