Analysis Of Famine, Affluence, And Morality By Peter Singer

In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Peter Singer discusses the moral obligation of humans to prevent bad things from happening. In particular, Singer focuses on the prevention of the famine in East Bengal during November 1971 where many people were dying from poverty. Singer argues that since global poverty may be inhibited through charitable donations, then individual people ought to be morally obligated to donate what Singer defines as their surplus of money to charities that will aid impoverished nations. Singer writes his article in the format of a thought experiment, in which he presents a number of generally agreeable premises that lead up to his conclusion which is to donate as much money to charity as what Singer determines is reasonable. …show more content…
He does this first by presenting a drowning child situation that attempts to convince people to agree with his main moral principle that people are morally obligated to prevent bad things from happening that would not result in a loss of something of equal moral value. Singer claims that should a person agree that one is morally obligated to save a drowning child with the cost of dirtying their clothes, they therefore must also agree to donate their surplus of money until they themselves are in poverty, because doing so would not risk anything of equal moral value. Contrary to Singer’s argument, one might still be able to agree with his main moral principle without donating all of their money to help prevent poverty. It follows logically this main moral principle is equally applicable to other issues such as the environment, as the degradation of the environment is another bad thing that is preventable to the same extent as poverty. With critical analyzes of Singer’s argument, it may be concluded that one may consistently agree with the initial premises of Singer’s argument without agreement to his conclusion of morally obligatory