TY - EJOU AU - Smilansky, S. Saul TI - A Puzzle about Self-Sacrificing Altruism T2 - Journal of Controversial Ideas PY - 2021 VL - 1 IS - 1 SN - 2694-5991 AB - I present a puzzle concerning individual self-sacrificing altruism (SSA) that, to the best of my knowledge, has not been considered before. I develop an argument that challenges the common sense attitudes towards self-sacrificial altruism in typical, paradigmatic cases. I consider SSA involving sacrificing one’s life for other human beings, focusing, for the sake of simplicity, on saving a single person. We have reasons to think that many paradigmatic acts of SSA may, on reflection, be irrational, that typical moral heroes are mistaken, that dispositional self-sacrificers should perhaps resist their good urges to keep saving people, and that the enchantments of heroism should regularly be resisted. KW - self-sacrifice KW - supererogation KW - altruism KW - moral calculation KW - romanticism KW - moral paradoxes KW - crazy ethics DO - 10.35995/jci01010007