ABSTRACT
The question how to explain the fact that we are social beings has been a philosophical topic for a long time. If we are individual beings with individual feelings and thoughts, then why do we care for other people? Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) suggested, on the whole, that man cares for others because those others are of use to him. Another explanation was put forward by Adam Smith (1723–1790) and later supported by Westermarck. Smith suggested that we care for others because we have a capacity to imagine ourselves in the other person’s situation. This is the famous argument from analogy. Both these perspectives are still influential today in various fields, such as evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, moral philosophy and economic theory. The present chapter aims to look at the role that these two perspectives have come to play in the thinking of some central modern evolutionary theorists’ conception of altruism.
