How does Singer attempt to justify our obligation to help distant others in need? Does he succeed?
Peter Singer is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century and this has to do with his ideas on poverty, animal rights, abortions and euthanasia. This question is about aid from wealthy countries to poorer ones and therefore is concentrating on his views on poverty and generally, global justice. I will start by outlining what Peter Singer says about helping others in need in far off countries and how he justifies the points he makes. I will then comment on whether I believe this to be a persuasive argument and will critique and support what he believes with my own opinions and justifications.
This question is about global justice, which is the allocation of advantages and disadvantages between governments/states or between individuals of different countries. Therefore, global justice is not something that individuals worry about and the governments do not. Nor is it something that governments strive for but the individual does not value. They should be both working towards the same goal and this is where global justice theorists like Singer have their say.
Singer in the article Famine, Affluence and Morality (1972) says that “Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad” (p. 231) which I think and he thinks that you can take as a granted assumption. No one wants people to suffer from lack of basic amenities like that when most people in Britain and high income countries can have these things without even having to blink an eye lid. Singer even says that “Those who disagree need read no further.” (p. 231 1972) just to drill the point home that he thinks that this is a pretty obvious statement and that those people who do not agree with that will most certainly not agree with the rest of the argument. His second point is “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance we ought, morally, to do it” (p.231 1972) what this quote is saying is that people should help others that need it as long as we are not becoming worse off than the situation that the other person is already in. He also uses an example of the drowning child (p231) where a child is drowning in a pond and you are walking past and to rescue the child would mean to get your clothes dirty from the water and mud. This seems trivial next to the saving of a child’s life and therefore people would do that.
Singer then goes onto develop these points by telling us what the points do not say and therefore what they actually imply. Singer says that these two premises do not imply a distinction between “proximity” or “cases in which I am the only person who could possibly do anything and cases where I am just one of millions” (p232 1972) These mean that Singer does not believe that the proximity of a person in struggle does not mean that one person’s struggle is greater than another. However, he does concede that it would be easier to see the people hurting closer to home but does not take this as a reason to avoid other nations due to the visibility of the struggle of people overseas. I agree with this completely. The media is far too good these days with the internet and twenty four-seven news channels, there is simply too much information easily available to not see the suffering of others overseas. Also, is there ever going to be someone who is the perfect proximity from you to aid them. What is too far away to feel something for another human in need? Where does it stop? Some people will say that the tramp at the end of the street is even too far adrift from them too help but Singer says, suffering is suffering and that proximity to you should not matter. On the case of whether you are on your own or not and whether you can make the difference for people in poverty. Singer draws back on the drowning child and says this should not matter to our moral obligations because “Should I consider less obliged to pull the drowning child out of the pond if on looking I see other people, no further away than I am, who have also noticed the child but are doing nothing? One has only to ask this question to see the absurdity of the view that numbers lessen obligation.” (p.233 1972) Singer makes a good point here. Many people today think ‘There isn’t a lot I can do on my own to help those people overseas. Therefore, I shall not send money to aid them’ In the quote people that do that are just letting that drowning child die as opposed to being the one to take the first step to save this child. It’s a very strong metaphor he is using as he is saying that you are directly letting someone die by not lending aid to the person overseas just as you are letting someone die of starvation in a poverty stricken country. Going back to the point about global justice, it is not an individual’s prerogative to save an entire country from poverty but just an individual. This is because, as Singer says, “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance we ought, morally, to do it” (p.231 1972) therefore, we have a duty to help an individual out there without as long as we do not make ourselves suffer something of moral significance equal to that of the individual overseas. He goes further on the point of duty and says, “The traditional distinction between charity and duty cannot be drawn” (p.235 1972) and this is an important distinction because Singer wants people to point the finger at those who do not send aid to these countries rather than congratulating people who do. He basically states that this is the wrong way to go about beating poverty and people need to blame others who do not give generously instead of buying the luxuries they do not need to have. What Singer is saying here is that there is no visible consequence to the action of not giving. With stealing and murder people are frowned upon and obviously imprisoned because they have broken moral norms of society and yet people who do not aid the poor are seen as the normal when they are standing around watching the suffering unfold in front of their eyes.
Singer wants us to change the moral norms quite radically by changing from a well done you gave some money to a society where we push each other to give more and more and condemn each other for not helping the poor. When it comes to his first premise of “suffering from lack of food, shelter and medical care is bad” (p.231 1972) I find it hard to see where people can reject this as it is such an obvious thing. Would you not want to be helped if you were in the place of someone in Sudan at the moment? War and drought have left you on your own with little medical help, food and shelter. The only help that you can get is from people sending aid over from affluent countries because rather than buying a first or second car they have decided to send money to you to stop your suffering. Would you not want someone to do that for you over their cup of tea and two slices of toast in the morning? The drowning child analogy (p.231 1972) goes a long way for me of persuading me that I would do something in this situation so why would I not do something to help someone overseas? Therefore, I think this premise a very solid one and I have accepted this.
The second premise, “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance we ought, morally, to do it” (p.231 1972) has quite a few more critiques than the first premise. One such critique of Singer is, “You work hard for your money; therefore it belongs to you and you have a right to spend it on yourself” (p. 147 2012) and this seems fair at first. You work for your money, that’s something that people in Sudan do not do, why should they leech off of my work? I didn’t put them in the situation they are in right now so I do not owe them anything. I will use the drowning child analogy as to why I don’t believe this is a sufficient objection and why singer has persuaded me otherwise. If the drowning child had to be saved by a rope which cost 4 pounds to buy which you were going to spend on a pastry from the bakery and a bottle of coke the obvious thing for me to do here would be to buy the rope. However, it does make it harder to empathise with people overseas as you cannot see the drowning child analogy in the flesh.
Another objection is to do with the point about “proximity” (p.232 1972) of the suffering. It does make it harder to understand the suffering when it is not around you on a daily basis. You cannot see the struggle orphans in Uganda go through living on the streets begging and rummaging through bins for food. Even the adverts from the likes of Oxfam and news bulletins telling you what is happening in these countries does not seem to stir me anymore as I am so used to seeing the private charity adverts asking for more and more money. The starving child in the advert no longer seems to pull at my heart strings as it once did because it has become part of the social norm to have these on TV. Does this mean that proximity is a problem then? Surely if I do not have an emotional attachment to someone I would not help them by sending aid. However, this links back to the previous point I made which is that suffering is suffering. Just because I cannot seem to form an emotional bond to the child in the advert, the child in the advert is still there. There is still suffering taking place like that and how can I justify spending money I have earned on a mars bar and a coke every day when this kid hasn’t even got enough food to survive? The answer is I can’t because I agree with Singer that you should have to do what you can for these people. There is a slight problem with Singer’s argument I have though. How can you make someone feel guilty about not giving until you and the Sudanese refugee are at the same level? Surely this is a bit too far but Singer does say that he believes that you should lower yourself almost to “the material circumstances of a Bengal refugee” (p241 1972). For me this is not the ideal situation, you should not have to reduce yourself to that level to save individuals overseas. By all means do not spend money on lots and lots of luxury items like another handbag or a new set of football boots but do not then say well actually I should move out of this 4 bedroom house in south London and move into a 3 bedroom cottage in the country and use the money from the difference to save people all over the world. This is still not lowering you to the level of a “Bengal refugee” and yet that seems quite drastic. So my point here would be that although I agree with Singer by and large about doing everything you can to help these people. My idea of everything you can and his idea are very different.
To conclude, Peter Singer says we have a duty as a human being to not watch suffering around us and do nothing about it, but to have a sense of duty not a sense of heroism to go and help these people. You wouldn’t leave a drowning child in a pond if it meant getting dirty and wasting 10 minutes of your life on your way to work so why would you leave someone to starve to death in Sudan. Proximity doesn’t matter and the number of people willing to help the situation does not matter because you are still in the right since suffering in this way is a bad thing. Singer does succeed on the most part of persuading me round to his views as I do think that it’s important that people see this as a duty and not as a charitable thing to do. However, I do not resign to the level of what he wants us to give, to me, this sounds like he wants us to give our lives up and I do not think this a reasonable level to give aid to.
Bibliography
Singer, 1972 Famine, Affluence and Morality Philosophy and Public Affairs p229 – 243
Camosy 2012 Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization Cambridge University Press: Cambridge