The Good Samaritan and His Genes

27 October 2004

Holmes Rolston, Ph.D.

 

The Good Samaritan has classically been praised as a role model of unselfish behavior, a good neighbor to those in need, embodying compassion and solidarity with victims of injustice, the kind of ethical behavior that makes good social community possible. Recent sociobiological accounts have reinterpreted his behavior as implicitly self-interested, achieving a status that increases the Samaritan's evolutionary adaptability; it also sees the Samaritan as operating under a necessary illusion, with his genetic imperatives veiled from himself, from those he aids, and from all of those who praise and emulate his behavior. Enlarged to an interpretive paradigm, this view of ethics asserts it is "an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate" (Ruse and Wilson). Such behavior, naturally selected, favors individuals within one's tribe, and then one's tribe over other tribes. If so, what should a "wised up" Samaritan do? Does an ongoing communitarian ethic require an ongoing mythology?

An alternative account agrees that the Good Samaritan is building a world in which he is less likely to be harmed: He is a role model of helpfulness, and if others follow him, they will, together, all benefit. The Samaritan and the victim have interests in common: Solidarity benefits both. If such an interpretation is true, however, there is no differential genetic benefit to the Samaritan; at this point, biological accounts approach the Golden Rule. Biological accounts are also powerless to explain the sharing of this ethic in the missionary activity of global faith.

Dr. Rolston discusses these issues at length during the Medical Center Hour.

 

Holmes Rolston is a University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He has written six books, critically acclaimed in both professional journals and the national press, including Genes, Genesis and God (Cambridge, 1999);  Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (Random House, McGraw Hill, Harcourt Brace);  Philosophy Gone Wild (Prometheus); Environmental Ethics (Temple);  and Conserving Natural Value (Columbia).   Editor of Biology, Ethics and the Origins of Life (Jones and Bartlett, Wadsworth), he has written chapters in eighty books and over one hundred articles.  Rolston's work is internationally renowned and has been published in over sixteen languages.

Rolston was awarded the Templeton Prize in Science and Religion in 2003, awarded by H.R.H. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Buckingham Palace.  Among many other awards and invitations, he was a distinguished lecturer at the 28th Nobel Conference in 1992, a speaker at both the World Congress of Philosophy and the Royal Institute of Philosophy conferences in 1993, and he delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1997-1998 academic year.