Charitable Action and Esteem

In the context of relationships, there arose the notion of gratuitous action: an individual undertakes an action for the benefit of the other party, while having no expectation that the other party would undertake any action in return. However, the topic was set aside, as it is not unique to relationships: there are charitable actions performed for the benefit of others outside the context of a relationship as well.

The motivation to act in the benefit of others was previously matrixed against the motivation to act in self-interest, arriving at the classification of such actions as benevolent (the actor also benefits), charitable (no appreciable consequence to actor), or altruistic (the actor suffers harm).

In the context of a relationship, an action that benefits the other party is done for the sake of strengthening the relationship - and the relationship being of value to the actor, an action that might be characterized as charitable or altruistic could be argued to be merely benevolent, in that the motivation of the actor in providing an unsolicited benefit is to gain for themselves the preservation or reinforcement of a valued relationship.

Outside the context of a relationship, the same argument may be made: a person who acts for the benefit of others may not gain an immediate benefit for himself, but his service of another party gains their favor and thus increases the likelihood that the other party will be inclined to enter into a relationship with the actor in the future.

Even when a relationship with the benefactor of an action seems improbable, there remains the notion of esteem: a person who acts to benefit others without an apparent benefit to himself is seeking to improve his reputation as a "good" person, hence increase the likelihood that others will be inclined to enter into a relationship with the actor in the future.

This is clearly the motivation of conspicuous acts of charity: when a business performs charitable acts, it takes measures to ensure that these actions are publicized in order to gain the benefit of esteem. The same can be said of any individual whose charitable action is overt - the motivation to be charitable is to gain the benefit to their personal reputation as a means of increasing their esteem.

As such, any overt act of charity or altruism is not selfless, but is performed in self-interest, even though the benefit to self may be vague, will not be realized immediately, and may not be realized at all. The motivation of a charitable person is to gain esteem, a line of credit that they may draw upon in future.

It's noted that, in order to generate esteem, an act of charity or altruism must be overt. If no-one is aware of a charitable act, it produces no esteem for the actor. It could be argued that an anonymous act of charity is "truly" charitable, as the actor gains no benefit, or it could be argued that even an anonymous act of charity is done for the sake of self-esteem or self-actualization.

I don't intend to explore the notion of anonymous charitable action further. Since it is internal to an individual, its would seem to be of little relevance to social ethics.