Founder positive sociology Comte believed that civilization destroyed peculiar animal instinctive altruism that unites the individual and the family, but then again altruism emerges and develops in a civilized society, becoming, in the end, in spontaneously innate property of the people.
Buddhism, Stoicism, Christianity, ethics English 18th century proclaimed altruism moral principle.
Spencer, like Comte, considered altruism as an adaptive quality that arises in the course of human evolution. Nietzsche revised the evolutionism of Spencer, giving it antialtruisticheskuyu orientation. He believed that altruism - it is an escape from the weaknesses of its mediocrity, group selfishness. Ethics Nietzsche threw principle of altruism as "moral weaknesses", "slave morality" and contrasted it "right of the strong" and "will to power". Psychoanalyst Freud saw altruistic motives as neurotic compensation repressed primitive selfishness.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the problems of altruism has been studied in the research "helping behavior" - goodness, charity, solidarity, was developed in the "ethics of care" and evolutionary genetics.
Lodestar, the embodiment of the ideal and perfect altruism was and still is Jesus Christ, the savior and protector of the whole human race. If we take the commandment "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" for the original cornerstone of altruism, the question: "Altruism: good or bad? "- Becomes rhetorical. Moreover, taking into account the effects of the world wars and contemporary global problems, compliance with this commandment is a condition for the survival of humanity.