Is Pure Altruism Possible?

 First of all, to have a relevant opinion on this, we need to know what altruism is. Altruism is the practice of a selfless act for the well being of others. In other words its doing something for someone, no matter the risks, for nothing in return. This is what my classmates and I had to discuss in our Theory of Knowledge class and ponder on whether this is possible or not. We were able to come up with several opinions on this and even took sides on the matter. It was an intriguing topic for us. Amazingly however, being so early in the morning, we were able to come up with some rather brilliant presumptions.

I believe pure altruism is not possible. One of the reasons is because what one of my classmates pointed out, we can't tell whether a person is altruistic or not because we don't know what they're feeling. You are not also capable of self judging yourself whether you are showing an act of pure altruism because just thinking about whether you committed that act will show that you really didn't do it for the well being of others, but instead to self acknowledge yourself. Whether it's a big risk you are taking in order for the well being of others, or a simple act of kindness, there will always be some kind of acknowledgement, whether it's from self or other people. You're still getting something in return, whether you want it or not.

Another reason why I don't believe in pure altruism is because of religion related arguments. In Christianity, God is supposedly the ultimate being and that all human beings should believe in him and give thanks to him for everything we have. Clearly this is not pure altruism. So if the "ultimate being" is not able to reach this, how will it ever be possible for a human to reach it. Some other arguments would be how the Christian religion believes that you have to believe in Jesus Christ in order to enter "heaven" because of his sacrifice he did for mankind. This is not a pure altruism either. This is from a religious point of view though.

In the end it was really fun topic to discuss in our class because of the various opinions that most of the time did make sense but would then be contradicted by something else and so on and so on. In my opinion, I would consider this as a paradox because we'll never really know what an act of pure altruism really feels like or tell whether a person is being purely altruistic or not. However, now that I think about it, maybe it is possible. For example, I'm sure most of us have all experienced this, where your parent makes you give your toy to your little brother in order to make him happy but makes you mad. Therefore, you're doing something good and get nothing in return. Unless your parent acknowledges you in some way, then you are getting something in return making it not selfless. Yea it's not possible.