Munachonga Banji
David St. Aubin
PHL 102-004
November 10, 2016
Commentary
In the essays “Famine, Affluence and Morality” by Peter Singer and “Poverty and Parenthood” by Stuart Rachel, both authors argue on their different viewpoint of what is morally right when it comes to preventing suffering and what hinders us to prevent or reduce that suffering. They both agree that donation to charity to reduce suffering is a short term solution, while reducing the population on the planet is a permeant solution to the suffering of starvation. They argue that it is our individual duty to make reasonable choices that will help prevent the suffering, but their view on what these choices are differs.
In his essay, Perter Singer argues that affluent nations have the duty to prevent avoidable poverty and death in poorer nations. He states that our negative actions towards the suffering caused by poverty and death are not justifiable. By ignoring the suffering, we as a society are taking life for …show more content…
Rachel’s points out that the reason there is so much suffering is because, the population keeps booming at a faster rate and this adds to the overuse of scarce depletable and environmentally hazardous resources. In line with that in his film, An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore also attributes the increase in global warming to population explosion, which he projected to reach over 9 billion by the year 2050. Rachel’s argues that our decision of having or not having children creates horizons of possibilities that have practical consequences, and these consequences will affect us our entire life time because, parenting has no exist hatch. He adds on to say that our cultural customs of what we think is reasonable restrain our ability to reason critically when it comes to making the decision regarding