It seems to me that a Buddhist perspective on identity would help resolve a lot of the apparent conflicts Judith Lichtenberg discusses here:
Still, doubting altruism is easy, even when it seems at first glance to be apparent. It’s undeniable that people sometimes act in a way that benefits others, but it may seem that they always get something in return — at the very least, the satisfaction of having their desire to help fulfilled. Students in introductory philosophy courses torture their professors with this reasoning. And its logic can seem inexorable.
The defect of reciprocal altruism is clear. If a person acts to benefit another in the expectation that the favor will be returned, the natural response is: “That’s not altruism!” Pure altruism, we think, requires a person to sacrifice for another without consideration of personal gain. Doing good for another person because something’s in it for the do-er is the very opposite of what we have in mind.
A question: Why? Another one: Sez who? An acerbic response: Maybe the desire for purity is the entire problem here.
No, seriously — why is it a problem to consider that there’s always at least a subtle amount of self-interest factoring in to every decision we make? How does that somehow taint the beneficent effects of our actions? I mean, if I were a pure egoist, I would absolutely love for everyone around me to have been thoroughly inculcated with the idea that they should act to please and benefit others with no thought of reciprocation. If I wanted to create a docile group of pushovers, doormats and slaves, I think I’d find it quite useful to preach the virtues of extreme humility. There can indeed be too much of a good thing (as she admits later on, to be fair).

The point is rather that the kind of altruism we ought to encourage, and probably the only kind with staying power, is satisfying to those who practice it. Studies of rescuers show that they don’t believe their behavior is extraordinary; they feel they must do what they do, because it’s just part of who they are. The same holds for more common, less newsworthy acts — working in soup kitchens, taking pets to people in nursing homes, helping strangers find their way, being neighborly. People who act in these ways believe that they ought to help others, but they also want to help, because doing so affirms who they are and want to be and the kind of world they want to exist. As Prof. Neera Badhwar has argued, their identity is tied up with their values, thus tying self-interest and altruism together.

But phrasing it like that – “I want to help others because it’s part of who I am, and it’s the sort of world I want to live in where my values are embodied” – seems to reinforce the same “empty, unfalsifiable” egoism she wants to undermine, funny enough. To bring it back around to what I said to begin, perhaps a better way to encourage the healthy variety of altruism would be to focus on the lack of any essential separation between self and other. From that perspective, there is no more “I” or “you”, only right action.