Response to Tom on Altruism

Tom, a couple of thoughts on your questions about being “hard-wired” for altruism:

It seems like the reductive read on this research – in which morality and immorality boil down to brain chemistry – is its own distinctive problem that has taken numerous forms – as with the “evolution vs. religion” debate, or the “tension” between faith and science, we need to identify that the problem here is, as theologian John Haught put it, an insistence that science “tells the whole story.”  If we can get beyond that insistence, then it doesn’t strike me as strange that there might be some inner harmony between our biological / chemical make up, and the core spiritual and psychological dimensions of human nature.

Re theological resources for dispelling the worries, Trinitarian theology might also be a helpful place to look for an explanation – eg, here’s the beginning of a fascinating section in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church which I think gives a pretty good explanation of why we might be happy when we live for others. 

a. Trinitarian love, the origin and goal of the human person

34. The revelation in Christ of the mystery of God as Trinitarian love is at the same time the revelation of the vocation of the human person to love. This revelation sheds light on every aspect of the personal dignity and freedom of men and women, and on the depths of their social nature. “Being a person in the image and likeness of God ... involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other ‘I'”[36], because God himself, one and triune, is the communion of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

In the communion of love that is God, and in which the Three Divine Persons mutually love one another and are the One God, the human person is called to discover the origin and goal of his existence and of history. The Council Fathers, in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, teach that “the Lord Jesus Christ, when praying to the Father ‘that they may all be one ... as we are one' (Jn 17:21-22), has opened up new horizons closed to human reason by implying that there is a certain parallel between the union existing among the divine Persons and the union of the children of God in truth and love. It follows, then, that if man is the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself (cf. Lk 17:33)”[37].

35. Christian revelation shines a new light on the identity, the vocation and the ultimate destiny of the human person and the human race. Every person is created by God, loved and saved in Jesus Christ, and fulfils himself by creating a network of multiple relationships of love, justice and solidarity with other persons while he goes about his various activities in the world. Human activity, when it aims at promoting the integral dignity and vocation of the person, the quality of living conditions and the meeting in solidarity of peoples and nations, is in accordance with the plan of God, who does not fail to show his love and providence to his children.

A few years ago I did a brief piece which touched on some of these questions after attending a Metanexus conference on the faith-science dialogue.  The argument is not well-developed in the piece, but there are interesting resources in the footnotes. (Can True Altriusm Ever Exist, on p.17 of the PDF linked here).

Amy