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Articles

Kindness in the Cold

Tony Skillen has an attack of altruism.

A lot of people think that we can never do anything except out of some sort of self-interest. We always act ultimately for our own sake, they say – for material gain, for prestige, to gain power over others, to avoid suffering some kind of pain. While we may like to think differently, to think we are capable of acting unselfishly or out of a disinterested sense of justice, we are really egoists. That is human nature.

If you press these theoretical egoists with apparent counter-examples, a subtle shift of ground often occurs.

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