Altruism and empathy

Empathy is the ability to recognise the feelings of another creature. Not all human beings demonstrate empathy at all times, so it is surprising to find it in the animal kingdom. The following extract is from a New Scientist article which you can read in full here. You can find out more about bonobos here.
 

For a demonstration of primate empathy consider a zoo bonobo named Kuni. When she saw a starling hit the glass of her enclosure, she picked up the stunned bird and climbed to the top of the tallest tree . She carefully unfolded its wings and spread them wide, holding one wing between the fingers of each hand, before sending the bird like a little toy airplane out towards the barrier of her enclosure. But the bird fell short of freedom and landed on the bank of the moat. Kuni climbed down and stood watch over the starling for a long time. By the end of the day, the recovered bird had flown off safely.

The way Kuni handled this bird was different to anything she would have done to aid another ape. Instead of following some hard-wired helping scheme, she tailored her assistance to the specific situation of an animal totally different from herself. This kind of empathy rests on the ability to imagine the circumstances of another.

The State of Nature from Hobbes to Hume

Hobbes
The idea of the state of nature was developed by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. (1651) Hobbes viewed the state of nature as anarchic with ‘every man against every man’ and in this state he famously said that life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ However, he thought that people had a natural right to preserve their own liberty or safety. People were free to do as they liked but might be willing to give up some of their freedoms in return for greater security.
 

Hobbes also believed that a state of nature still existed in relations between nations.
 

Locke
In his Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690) Locke suggests that ‘The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it’ and that law is reason. Locke believed that social laws arose out of reasonable desires to protect life, health, liberty and possessions. He also thought that those who broke such laws could reasonably be punished. Unlike Hobbes, who started from first principles, Locke was partly influenced by Christian theology.
 

Rousseau
In The Social Contract (1762) Jean-Jacques Rousseau suggested that the bad habits outlined by Hobbes were merely the products of society. Rousseau thought people in the state of nature were neither good nor bad and without either vices or virtues since they had virtually no dealings with each other. However, the conditions of nature forced people to create societies for mutual benefit via social contracts.

Hume
David Hume rejected the neutral view of human nature of Rousseau and the naturally vicious view proposed by Hobbes. He also disagreed with Locke’s reliance on reason as a source of moral behaviour. He suggested that human beings are possessed of natural moral feelings that are then developed within the family and by society.

Descarte's taste in Philosophy

I was especially pleased with mathematics because of the certainty and clarity of its proofs; but I did not as yet realize its true usefulness; and, thinking that it was only useful in the mechanical arts, I was astonished that, since its foundations were so firm and solid, no one had built something higher upon it. To the contrary, I felt that the writings of the ancient pagans who had discussed morality were like superb, magnificent palaces which were built on mere sand and mud: they greatly praised the virtues and made them appear more exalted than anything else in the world; but they did they did not sufficiently teach how to know them. Often that which they called by the fine name of "virtue" was nothing but apathy, or pride, or despair, or parricide. 

Descartes' Discourse on Method

The meaning of things