"The Origins of Altruism" is the title of the first chapter of Peter Singer's The Expanding Circle. The author details the sociobiological concepts of kin altruism, reciprocal altruism, and group altruism to illuminate animal altruism and the evolution of animal altruism. These ideas, however, are not the most interesting part of the chapter for the libertarian bioethicist.
The intriguing portions of the first chapter for the libertarian are the paragraphs in which Singer mocks the social contract theory. Libertarians oppose the social contract theory because statists commonly attempt to legitimize the existence of the state via reference to the false social contract theory. The author lists the following strong objections to the social contract theory: based on "Rousseau's fantasy of isolation as the original or natural condition of human existence", "ethics probably began in ... pre-human patterns of behavior rather than in the deliberate choices of fully fledged, rational human beings" which directly contradicts the social contract theory which "held that our rules of right and wrong sprang from some distant Foundation Day on which previously independent rational human beings came together to hammer out a basis for setting up the first human society", and human ethics does not rely on "the historical myth of the social contract".
The LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger continues to enjoy reading The Expanding Circle.
The intriguing portions of the first chapter for the libertarian are the paragraphs in which Singer mocks the social contract theory. Libertarians oppose the social contract theory because statists commonly attempt to legitimize the existence of the state via reference to the false social contract theory. The author lists the following strong objections to the social contract theory: based on "Rousseau's fantasy of isolation as the original or natural condition of human existence", "ethics probably began in ... pre-human patterns of behavior rather than in the deliberate choices of fully fledged, rational human beings" which directly contradicts the social contract theory which "held that our rules of right and wrong sprang from some distant Foundation Day on which previously independent rational human beings came together to hammer out a basis for setting up the first human society", and human ethics does not rely on "the historical myth of the social contract".
The LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger continues to enjoy reading The Expanding Circle.
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