Morality of Famine Famine or any natural disaster that happens, brings unimaginable pain and suffering upon the people that it affects. The main question to be analyzed in this paper is whether or not people from far away land should help ease the suffering of the people affected by famine. To help answer this question, I will compare two ethical approaches on how to dealing with this problem. The approaches used are John Stuart Mills and Peter Singer’s utilitarian perspective and Immanuel Kant and Onora O’Neill’s Kantian perspective of dealing with ethics. I will also choose the perspective I find suited for this situation and explain its merits. The utilitarian principals originated with Jeremy Bentham who was an English philosopher, social
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Singer gives account that it is just right thing to do and we should give it to the point that we give up something of equal moral significance. On other hand, the Kantian approach requires us to weight whether our giving involves duty of justice or beneficence, and if we are using people as mere means to an end. In my opinion, the better choice for famine relief would be the Utilitarian perspective. Despite all of the Singer’s critics, the Utilitarian approach would be the fastest in getting aid collected and delivered to people. If there is an outcry for people suffering from famine, governments would get involved to relive the situation. The amount of resources donated does not matter, and everyone donates however much they can. The Utilitarian approach would also be more effective in utilizing the resources donated. Things that give the most aggregate happiness would be build and delivered first. Those include clean water, shelter blankets among many other things. On the other hand, O’Neil’s approach treats every person as their own moral agent. Each person would have to go to through categorical imperative process filtering their intentions before deciding to help or not. In my opinion, this requires more thinking about benefits of your actions and even if you decide to help, you are just one person. Ultimately, one person alone cannot stop the
Singer gives account that it is just right thing to do and we should give it to the point that we give up something of equal moral significance. On other hand, the Kantian approach requires us to weight whether our giving involves duty of justice or beneficence, and if we are using people as mere means to an end. In my opinion, the better choice for famine relief would be the Utilitarian perspective. Despite all of the Singer’s critics, the Utilitarian approach would be the fastest in getting aid collected and delivered to people. If there is an outcry for people suffering from famine, governments would get involved to relive the situation. The amount of resources donated does not matter, and everyone donates however much they can. The Utilitarian approach would also be more effective in utilizing the resources donated. Things that give the most aggregate happiness would be build and delivered first. Those include clean water, shelter blankets among many other things. On the other hand, O’Neil’s approach treats every person as their own moral agent. Each person would have to go to through categorical imperative process filtering their intentions before deciding to help or not. In my opinion, this requires more thinking about benefits of your actions and even if you decide to help, you are just one person. Ultimately, one person alone cannot stop the