Maimonides, the Jewish Philosopher, formulated a list of eight levels of giving, correlating to the degree to which the giver is sensitive to the needs and feelings of the recipient.
The second highest level is giving anonymously, where the recipient does not know the giver and vice versa. Receiving mutually anonymous tzedakah takes much of the sting out of being on the receiving end.
The highest level is helping someone become self-sufficient.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/256321/jewish...
- religious prescription
- sincere support for a cause (a motivation other than one's own reputation)
- a desire to prove one's morality in one's own eyes
- desire not to embarrass the recipient
- desire to increase the apparent support for the cause generally
There are probably more.
It is no judgement on the act itself. Of course charity with self promotion is better than no charity in most cases.
Personally I think it's ok to do altruistic things, and conclude from the evidence that you're an altruistic person. It is the most simple and straightforward explanation, and Occam's Razor is as sharp as ever. And given the way cognitive dissonance works, even a person who starts out as ego-driven will likely become more altruistic over time, if they do altruistic things with no concrete reward.
Since the Bible has already been mentioned, here is one key word to (mostly) put to rest this idea from a Christian perspective:
"But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. " James 2.18.
I think from this (and the context) we can conclude that the Bible is very much in favour of putting in the actual work.
That said, a concept that I was introduced to when I was younger is that of "dead works", a concept that is harder to explain in a technical text only forum, but which sounds very much like what you describe based on the explanations I received: "how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" Hebrews 9.14.
Shortly summarized as far as I remember and understand "dead works" was explained to me as things you will do just because you feel you "have to" to please your conscience, not because of a drive inside you to do what is good and right.
Martin Nowak is the same Harvard professor who invited a convicted child rapist by the name of Jeffrey Epstein onto the Harvard University campus and gave him an office and a flattering web page on his program's website for several years until victims of sexual abuse at Harvard forced him to take it down.
This article was probably written to defend MIT president Rafael Reif's decision to mark Epstein's post-conviction donations to MIT as anonymous.
While Epstein was still alive, he was paying Nowak to publish articles about how punishment usually serves "no noble purpose," presumably because Epstein was still scared that he could be indicted on sex-trafficking charges despite attorney Allen Dershowitz' heroic efforts to secure an immunity deal for Epstein that protected him from future prosecution ... as well as all of his co-conspirators (think all of the professors like Prof. Martin Nowak who visited Epstein on "Pedophile Isle" ... some of whom have now also been accused of child rape).
In light of Epstein's "facilitation" of what are widely believed now to have been his own "anonymous" donations to Harvard (after a ban was imposed on accepting money directly from Epstein) through the mega-donations of billionaires Glenn Dubin and Les Wexner, this article is certainly worth reading again:
https://www.chicagojewishnews.com/2019/08/jeffrey-epsteins-j...
1) They might know my name, but they don't really know who I am
2) I don't really get any social status bump for doing this, unless I go around telling people that I made this donation (in which case, i'd agree, it's not really anonymous anymore)