Altruistic and Virtuous

 Can you be altruistic but not virtuous? Altruistic fits in as sub category of virtue, in other words, an altruistic act is automatically a virtuous act. However this does not work the other way, not every virtuous act is altruistic. You can practice always telling the truth but even though this is a very worthy practice it is not altruistic, it is  usually not directly helping anyone else. Just because you do not fit into the idea of being altruistic does not mean that you are not a virtuous and morally good person, it simply means that your actions do not tend to focus on purley helping others.

Anonymous Charity

Is an anonymous and charitable action any more altruistic than one in which the people benefiting from the action know exactly who is helping them? I think the answerer to this question lies what motivation the reasoning behind staying anonymous. For instance, if you decided to donate money anonymously because you were too shy to face people, there is a much more self- interested interest than simply not caring about recognition. On the other hand, if a well known billionaire decided to give money to a charity and only gave about one million dollars they might be seen as selfish for only giving such a small sum of there riches. For that reason that person may decided to stay anonymous in order so that their donation would still be looked upon as being very generous. In that case their decision to stay anonymous would lean much farther towards being selfish, rather than simply self- interested. So I do not believe that a person is specifically more altruistic to remain anonymous and while a person's decision to remain as an anonymous detonator can in fact be very self-interested, I believe that the action of donating in the first place remains an altruistic act.