Description:
The contribution starts anthropologically, following biblical narratives but also modern anthropological research, by assuming that people are fundamentally related to others and that human cultural development is based on fundamentally cooperative processes. Against this background, love of self and love of neighbour are not understood as competing patterns of behaviour; rather, they are mutually dependent. This is confirmed by empirical results with regard to volunteer work, which show that for most volunteers altruism, sociability and self-development do not denote contradictory motives, but rather interpret each other reciprocally.