Famine, Affluence, And Morality by Peter Singer
Peter Singer's 1972 article is intended to provoke thought on the issue of the more fortunate's moral obligation toward the less fortunate. Singer uses the famine in East Bengal to claim that affluent countries and individuals have a moral obligation to give far more than they do to help relieve the suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care experienced in the region at the time. Singer argues that people who live in affluent countries must radically change their way of life and their conception of morality so that they will become committed to helping those in need. He asserts that "…the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal cannot be justified; indeed the whole way we look at moral issues -- our moral conceptual scheme -- needs to be altered, and with it the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society" (Singer, 1972).
Singer begins his argument by staking two assumptions. First, that suffering and death are bad, whether from hunger, lack of shelter, or poor medical care. Second, if one is in a position to prevent a morally bad state of affairs, without sacrificing something of roughly equal moral importance, one should do so. Singer notes that he could get by with a weaker version of this argument by replacing "something of roughly equal moral importance" with "something of moral significance." The difference being the degree of sacrifice morally required (Singer, 1972).
If one agrees with the first claim it follows that distance from the
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