ENIt is argued that the ethics of selflessness expounded by Levinas and Derrida is ultimately incompatible with the principles underlying a free society'. Altruism, as well as the faddish postmodern ‘alterism’, leads to the moral stance of paternalistic arrogance or self-immolation (or both), a stance impossible to sustain. The ethics of self-dependence, as propounded by Adam Smith, is still the best we have. Keywords: altruism, justice, collectivism, individualism.