Altruism and Morals

Altruism is doing something for someone else for their own sake. You can do something morally good for your own sake and still be morally good. One does not have to be altruistic to be morally good, morally good people are virtuous people and altruism is simple a subset of virtue. You can also satisfy your morals of helping other people because you want to be morally good and not because you want to help people. Houchin says that it does not matter as much what someones motives are as long as what they do ends up being good and helping people. Except in the most extreme and rare cases where someone is meaning harm but actually helps someone this rule seems to apply. Whether you want to help someone to satisfy a community service requirement, a guilty conscious, because you want to or so you don't have to go to jail, in the end someone who needs it still gets help. Overall a lack of altruistic traits may make you less appealing to some people you so long as you are still morally correct then you are not a morally bad person because of your lack of altruism.