Two terms are critical here: “kin selection” and “reciprocal altruism:’ Kin selection means self-help by way of natural selection. But in this paradigm natural selection operates not at the level of individuals but at the level of genes. It is the genes that are programmed to perpetuate themselves, even if we—their survival machines—perish in the process. Richard Dawkins masterfully develops this argument in his book The Selfish Gene.
By this logic, a mother who dives into a burning car to save her two children trapped inside is not acting out of pure altruism. Her children share her genes, and her actions are best explained as an effort to ensure that her genes make it into the next generation. Even if she dies, her genes live on through her children. The power of “kin selection” is that it helps to explain why we take big risks and make big sacrifices for our immediate family: they are genetically closest to us. We take smaller risks and make smaller sacrifices for cousins and other relatives: they too are genetically tied to us, but more distantly. Biologist J. B. S. Haldane once quipped that he would be willing to sacrifice his life for “two brothers or eight cousins.”
What about strangers? Darwinian theory says we should be indifferent to them because they are genetically alien to us. Even so, we do trade with strangers and coexist with them and generally treat them decently and fairly. The Darwinians explain this as a consequence of “reciprocal altruism,” which is the moral equivalent of “I’ll be nice to you, so that you will be nice to me.” This strategy can take various forms—”first be nice to me, and then I’ll be nice to you” or “I’ll continue to be nice to you as long as you are nice to me”—but the general idea is that morality is a strategy we employ for our own long-term benefit. Darwinians go to elaborate lengths to establish these strategies, resorting to game theory and obscure analogies from the behavior of ants and vampire bats, but I don’t need to reproduce those arguments; the underlying logic is clear and persuasive enough.
The problem is that this entire framework of Darwinian analysis does not even come close to explaining morality. It confines itself to explaining altruism, but it only succeeds in explaining what may be termed “low altruism.” But humans also engage in “highaltruism: which may be defined as behavior that confers no reciprocal or genetic advantage. A man stands up to give his seat on a bus to an old lady. She is nothing to him, and he is certainly not thinking that there may be a future occasion when she or someone else will give him a seat. He gives up his seat because he is a nice guy. There is no Darwinian rationale that can account for his behavior.
Richard Dawkins concedes that the Darwinian thesis cannot explain why people give blood, a fact that he puts down to “pure disinterested altruism” that confers no benefit to the genes. Nor can the Darwinian model account for Christ’s maxim “love your enemies.” Or for Patrick Henry’s cri de coeur, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Or for Mother Teresa’s lifelong dedication to the sick and dying on the streets of Calcutta. Or for the biblical story of the Good Samaritan who went out of his way to assist a stranger from a reviled community.
Some time ago, I read the true account of a Catholic priest, Maximilian Kolbe, who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for his anti-Nazi activities. Each day the Nazis would choose one person from the group for execution. One of the first persons they selected was a man who pleaded for his life, saying he had a wife and children who were dependent on him and he needed to live in order to look after them. Just as the Nazis were about to drag him from the room, the priest stood up and said, “Take me in his place.” The Nazis were uncomprehending and refused, but the priest insisted. The man was equally uncomprehending, so the priest told him, “I don’t have a family. I am old, and won’t be missed like you will.” The Nazis finally agreed, and the priest went to his death. The man whose place he took survived the war and returned to his family.
