Thesis: Peter Singer’s assessment of charity and duty in his 1972 article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” calls for a fundamental economic and moral overhaul of western society. I will argue that Peter Singer’s ethical and economic model of the global village, while sympathetic, is strategically misleading, impractical and short-sighted.
In his 1971 article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Peter Singer draws in his reader with a simple analogy. The analogy states that giving money to help prevent starvation in foreign countries is like saving a child drowning in a shallow pool where the only cost is getting one’s clothes muddy. Singer supposes that this is an uncontroversial idea, one that allows us to “prevent what is bad, and to promote …show more content…
Marginal utility, which is the idea of consuming only just what satisfies a consumer’s needs and no more, is at its surface level accessible but whose implications are far more alarming (“Marginal Utility”). This principle is initially articulated in Singer’s critiques of the lack of giving to charity on the individual level. He believes that the individual should part with her income until the point where giving more would cause “as much or more suffering to [themselves] or [their] dependents as would [be] relieve[d] by [their] gift” (7). This idea is compounded by Singer’s own personal utilitarian beliefs which demand that the “moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting consequences” (Epps 4). Meaning that the more one sacrifices, the more morally righteous the action. Singer’s analogy of the child drowning is misleading for the reader because he is not simply asking to accept the consequence of muddy clothes in exchange for a life. Instead he seeks to reinvent the meaning of moral obligation and asks instead for individuals to “reduce [themselves] to very near the material circumstances” of the drowning child …show more content…
His solution to benefiting the global village is to bring down the rich in order to elevate the poor. He argues that giving money away to alleviate the suffering of others should not be considered a gesture of generosity, but rather an act fundamentally wrong not to practice. The concept of what is “comparably important” and the economic views presented in his article is ultimately what is so short-sighted (2). Returning to the analogy of the drowning child, Singer remarks how it should not matter the physical proximity of the event - whether the child is drowning in front of you or some place far away - because the very nature of global access has changed and therefore so have our responsibilities to people all over the world. Singer is keen to see the end of Capitalism because it ideologically supports a mentality to “indulge in luxury instead of giving to famine relief” - something he sees as a primary evil of the affluent western world(4). He even questions the fundamental “value and necessity of economic growth” at all (7). Singer’s anti-capitalist views echo many pillars of Communism- particularly in his desire to see the world’s resources shared so that none will have to suffer. What is problematic about Singer’s critique of the charitable givings of affluent nations is first his assumption that simply giving money will somehow level the economic playing field, and second that the wealthiest of nations have enough
In his 1971 article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Peter Singer draws in his reader with a simple analogy. The analogy states that giving money to help prevent starvation in foreign countries is like saving a child drowning in a shallow pool where the only cost is getting one’s clothes muddy. Singer supposes that this is an uncontroversial idea, one that allows us to “prevent what is bad, and to promote …show more content…
Marginal utility, which is the idea of consuming only just what satisfies a consumer’s needs and no more, is at its surface level accessible but whose implications are far more alarming (“Marginal Utility”). This principle is initially articulated in Singer’s critiques of the lack of giving to charity on the individual level. He believes that the individual should part with her income until the point where giving more would cause “as much or more suffering to [themselves] or [their] dependents as would [be] relieve[d] by [their] gift” (7). This idea is compounded by Singer’s own personal utilitarian beliefs which demand that the “moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting consequences” (Epps 4). Meaning that the more one sacrifices, the more morally righteous the action. Singer’s analogy of the child drowning is misleading for the reader because he is not simply asking to accept the consequence of muddy clothes in exchange for a life. Instead he seeks to reinvent the meaning of moral obligation and asks instead for individuals to “reduce [themselves] to very near the material circumstances” of the drowning child …show more content…
His solution to benefiting the global village is to bring down the rich in order to elevate the poor. He argues that giving money away to alleviate the suffering of others should not be considered a gesture of generosity, but rather an act fundamentally wrong not to practice. The concept of what is “comparably important” and the economic views presented in his article is ultimately what is so short-sighted (2). Returning to the analogy of the drowning child, Singer remarks how it should not matter the physical proximity of the event - whether the child is drowning in front of you or some place far away - because the very nature of global access has changed and therefore so have our responsibilities to people all over the world. Singer is keen to see the end of Capitalism because it ideologically supports a mentality to “indulge in luxury instead of giving to famine relief” - something he sees as a primary evil of the affluent western world(4). He even questions the fundamental “value and necessity of economic growth” at all (7). Singer’s anti-capitalist views echo many pillars of Communism- particularly in his desire to see the world’s resources shared so that none will have to suffer. What is problematic about Singer’s critique of the charitable givings of affluent nations is first his assumption that simply giving money will somehow level the economic playing field, and second that the wealthiest of nations have enough