Moral Obligations To The Poor In The Article by Peter Singer - Assignment Example

According to him, it is essential that human beings bring about a change in their moral conceptual scheme, i.e. the way they perceive moral issues and the commonly accepted way of life. As he remarks, it is commonly accepted at the international level that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are not good. In this background, Singer’s argument has great relevance in wider perspective, i.e. we have moral liability to prevent something bad from happening if it is in our power to do so.

Therefore, it is indubitable that Singer’s article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” raises some of the essential questions of social and moral concerns, and he provides a very convincing argument about this issue. In the background of the Bengal emergency, Singer proposes his argument that “if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it” (Singer, 1972). He also provides convincing evidences and illustrations to support his argument, thereby making the readers agree with his proposition.

Significantly, his principle takes no account of proximity or distance; not the distinction based on how many people can offer the assistance. Through his arguments, Singer upsets the traditional moral categories, because, in this case, the traditional distinction between duty and charity cannot be drawn. Thus, he argues for a moral concept of charity which is higher than that of the traditional acts of charity and disagrees with the present way of drawing the distinction between duty and charity, which makes it an act of charity for a man living at the level of affluence to give money to save someone else from starvation.

(Singer, 1972). In the course of his article, Singer explains three counter-arguments to his position addressed in the article and offers his responses to those counter-arguments. The first objection to his position is that it is too drastic a revision of our moral scheme and they argue that people normally reserve their moral condemnation for those who violate moral norms of society, rather than those who indulge in luxury instead of giving to famine relief. In response to this counter-argument, Singer maintains that the imperatives of duty merely try to prohibit intolerable behavior in the society rather than to cause charity.

Therefore, the present division between acts of duty and acts of charity is a valid argument. The second objection to Singer’s arguments arises from “some forms of utilitarian theory that we all ought, morally, to be working full time to increase the balance of happiness over misery” (Singer, 1972). Singer counters these arguemnts with evidences from writings of Thomas Aquinas and others, and provides practical as well as philosophical arguments. According to the third counter-argument, overseas aid should be a government responsibility.

They also argue that until there is effective population control, relieving famine merely postpones starvation. However, Singer also makes his arguments to counter these views and suggests that methods of preventing famine should be adopted by us while the other organizations work specifically for population control. In support of his arguments, Singer introduces the concept of marginal utility in order to respond to the question of just how much we all ought to be giving away. Marginal utility is the “level at which, by giving more, I would cause as much suffering to myself or my