ABSTRACT
Altruism is commonly considered as a concept of economic analysis. In order to best identify the difficulties linked to the modelling of altruism in economics, this chapter explains three stages. First, it dwells deeply into the opposition between behaviour and motivation. Then, the chapter examines how economic analysis neglects the delicate issue of morality as a prerequisite to the decision. Finally, it provides information on standard economic methodology's inability to deal with that kind of problem. Economic analysis is completely behaviouralist, since the behaviour supersedes motivation in the study of decision-making processes. Internal motivations refer to motivational altruism whereas external motivations refer to behavioural altruism and the moral motivations is a considerable reduction of human behaviour. The words "internalism" and "externalism" are commonly used to designate two concepts regarding the relation between ethics and motivation. Rational individuals prompted by a universal desire for self-preservation cooperate in such a way that the motivation to cooperate follows from the desire for self-preservation.
