Famine, Affluence, and Morality - Case Study Example

All Singer has shown is that our moral attitudes are inconsistent with each other, and that some of our moral beliefs are mistaken. But he hasnt shown that the belief that we have no moral obligation to help the needy is mistaken - he hasnt shown us why we should reject that attitude, as opposed to rejecting the view that in certain circumstances (like when watching a child drown) we have duty to try to prevent it. In other words, why should we say our normal moral attitude toward charity is wrong? Why shouldnt we instead say we say our negative reaction to the guy who lets the child drown to save his suit - that the reaction is confused and misguided? The Australian philosopher, Peter Singers argued that people’s tendency to favor ourselves over those who may be more worthy of our attention is morally indefensible and that sacrificing some things in order to help the needy is necessary in order to live the ideally moral life. He discussed this point of view in several of his works and particularly in the paper, Famine, Affluence, and Morality. One reason for the persuasive power of the Singer principle is that its message of helping the poor has long been revered and admired. Politicians who campaign pro-poor platforms of governance are elected by the people regardless of the motives and the actual result of his programs. Even totalitarians such as Mao Zedong have been admired even as Mao had murdered thousands because his acts are committed in the name of justice for the poor. However, when one examines Singer’s arguments closer, one can see that he failed to show why we should reject the belief that we have no moral obligation to help the needy. Singer’s Morality Singer’s principle in regard to helping the needy is anchored on the balancing of interests. This is elaborated by his main focus of aiding people in famine-stricken countries. Singer argues in the face of persistent global hunger and dire poverty, which leads to the avoidable death of millions every year, people in affluent countries are in a comparable position to someone watching a child drown in a pond for fear of getting their trousers wet. If we think it wrong to let millions die from preventable hunger and poverty, then we should help according to our abilities. The idea is that if we have the capacity to help, then we have the obligation to help. Singers formulated the moral principle that establishes such a duty as follows: “if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought to do it.” (Singer 2002, p. 147) In using the analogy of the drowning child again, Singer tells us that we do not have the duty to rescue the child if such act is tantamount to risking our own life. But to relieve suffering caused by lack of food, shelter, and medical care is something fellow-humans ought to participate in. For Singer, each of us who fails to give substantial amounts of money to famine victims, when all we could have sacrificed is some relatively trivial luxuries, is considered a moral failing. Singer, thus, called for a radical shift in our moral outlook. In particular, he said that the traditional distinction between charity and duty cannot be drawn, or at least not in the place we normally draw it. Not Enough A perspective that highlights the inadequacy of Singers notion is that one that considers morality as weaker when weighed against rights. According to Gary Comstock (1996), morality or no, people are unlikely to act in ways they think require them to substantially sacrifice their personal interests and, that as long as most people think that helping others demand too much, they are unlikely to provide help. (p. 128) John Arthur specifically criticized Singer’s proposition since it creates moral rules that require people to abandon important things to which they have a right. To quote: Rights or entitlements to things that are our own reflect important facts about people. Each of us has only one life and it is uniquely valuable to each of us. Your choices do not constitute my life, nor do mine yours… It seems, then, that in determining whether to give aid to starving persons… [agents must assign’ special] weight to their own interests. (1977, p. 43) Arthur’s argument is that people do not have the obligation to assist others when this requires abandoning something of substantial moral significance. He pointed out that “substantial moral significance” has an ineliminable subjective element (p. 47), some individuals naturally come to the conclusion that feeding starving children is too much to ask of them. This is true for most people because they have their own affairs and reasonable interests hat justify completely repressing, or at least, constraining, their natural sympathies for children in need. Furthermore, the utilitarian view that there is an obligation to the needy seems to be weaker when we think about responsibility. There is an important question that people ask themselves in this regard: Are they actually responsible for the plight of the needy, that they have caused them to be hungry or homeless or have created an environment that has facilitated such circumstances? This is the reason why people are not compelled to feel obligated to help. People would only feel responsible to those whom they have actually harmed. Say, I hit a child with my car. I am responsible for the accident so I would pay for his medical bills. The rationale here is that obligation seems to be diluted as the degree of involvement in the cause of harm is lessened. When one is directly involved in the harm caused to another, then the moral responsibility is stronger. If others have contributed to the harm in such a way that there is a collective responsibility, one may feel less obligated. More so when an individual has no involvement in the plight of the needy, there is no responsibility there. This point of view is aligned with the school of thought that renders Singer’s kind of morality as repressive – one that hinders the flourishing of an individual. Nietzsche and Freud are among these kinds of morality critics. For them such kind of morality reinforces and sustains the socio-economic relations that are obstacles to rights and freedom in general. It goes against the very principles that hold the liberal Western societies. Weakness in Substance In general, Singer’s paper raises fundamental questions about the degree of moral complacency in our modern affluent societies. According to John Cottingham (1996), “whether we are guilty as he suggests turns in part on whether the rightness or wrongness of conduct has to be determined from an impartial and universal standpoint, or whether to give a considerable degree of priority to oneself, and those close at hand, can be morally justified. (p. 461) This is an area that Singer did not thoroughly examine. He advocates a radical change in moral outlook but that his main proposition is that we help the needy according to our ability to do so. If we look closer, this proposition has still a taint of self-interest in it. In the deliberation of whether to help others, the main factors to be considered for Singer are that one has an obligation to others and that he has his obligation to himself. An ideal for Singer is a balance of these two – giving without sacrificing too much. It seems to too compromising and accommodating given the fundamentalist goal he has set. It is unfortunate because he, himself argued that “we can never get people to act morally by providing reasons of self-interest, because if they accept what we say and act on the reasons given, they will only be acting self-interestedly, not morally.” (1979, p. 209) If Singer had taken the Kantian perspective to address this aspect, the result could have been different. We find helpful insight from the Kantian view because it stresses that the rightness and wrongness of acts is determined not by their consequences, but by the imperative or rule by which they are guided. (Hearn, p. 74) Here, acts are moral when they conform to moral imperatives, impersonal, universally valid rules whose “oughts” and “should nots” define morally worthy actions. Taking after this perspective the problem about differences and inconsistencies in moral beliefs are addressed because moral principles are given by reason. The moral rules are not equated to the norms that the society enforces on us; it springs from the rational faculty of individuals as human beings. “Moral persons are reasonable, and they use their reason to discover the rules by which they conduct their lives.” (Hearn, p. 74) Singer need not have bothered to dedicate a substantial part in his arguments explaining why self-interest in acts is not morally defensible. It simply is not. For example: A woman signs up to volunteer in her company’s outreach program. In her view, she can afford to lose some of her time, sacrifice her weekend schedule that is spent on friends and leisure so that she can help tend to the homeless. In Singer’s criteria this example constitutes a moral act already. But, in the Kantian perspective, this is just the surface. The woman might be doing a moral act or that she may not. Kant considers the motive and thus, if the woman does volunteerism in order to advance her career, perhaps because involvement in the outreach program is a requirement in order to be promoted, then it is not a moral act. Conclusion According to Singer, moral decency requires that the affluent give up all unnecessary pleasures, all luxuries in order to help the hungry and naked of the world. It seems too superficial and impractical, even defying common sense and common practice. Such criteria are also too shallow in his advocacy for people to radically change their moral values. This paper has argued that Kant’s theories are better off in this pursuit because his arguments have more substance. All in all morality has to do with responsibilities created by connection that people have with each other. The resolution of moral dilemmas requires not the discovery of correct abstract principles and the logical derivation of concrete moral rules from them as Singer seem to enforce upon us. Instead it depends on the presence of people whose capacities for sympathy and care giving sustain the social attachments essential to human dignity. It was Frank Hearn who said: “for the moral person, the coherence of the social world rests on the fulfillment of responsibilities bestowed by relationships, not on adherence to abstract principles; and morality requires the development of those qualities that sensitize people to, and encourage them to meet, these responsibilities, not the development of cognitive complexity.” (p. 76) Bibliography Arthur, John, "Rights and the Duty to Bring Aid." In W. Aiken and H. LaFollette (eds.), World Hunger and Moral Obligation. Prentice Hall, 1977. Comstock, Gary, Life Science Ethics. Blackwell Publishing, 2003. Cottingham, John, Western Philosophy. Blackwell Publishing, 1996. Hearn, Frank, Moral Order and Social Disorder. Aldine Transaction, 1997. Singer, Peter, Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Singer, Peter, Unsanctifying Human Life: Essays on Ethics. Helga Kuhse (ed.). Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Read More