Comparing Singer's Famine, Affluence, And Morality

487 Words2 Pages
In Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Singer offers two simple claims to which objections are hard to come by. He then formulates a conclusion based on the two claims, which is controversial in nature. First, death and suffering due to starvation and malnutrition are very bad; a true, uncontroversial statement. Second, if we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing something of equal importance then we ought to do it; again a legitimate uncontroversial statement. Finally, we ought to give a lot of our money to famine relief; here lies the issue. The conclusion evokes the notion that giving to charity is not optional, but we as human beings that live in a society are morally obliged to aid famine relief. In this paper in order to prove the validity of Singer’s conclusion, I will be reconstructing Singer’s argument where two premises lead to his conclusion, I will explain how a…show more content…
His first premise is, death and suffering due to starvation and malnutrition are very bad. Famine is prominent in many third world countries, and as people living on the same planet it is horrible to know that those less fortunate do not have the amount of food needed to survive. This is a fact, not an argument. Moving on to the second premise which states, if we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing something of equal moral importance then we ought to do it. I previously stated death and suffering from malnutrition are bad, therefore if we can prevent famine without harming ourselves we ought to do it. Ought is a misleading term so I am going to replace it with “morally obliged”. The logical force driving Singer’s construction of his second premise is simply if an individual has the ability to prevent something bad from happening without causing comparable damage and loss of moral integrity, the individual has a duty as a human being living on earth to do
Open Document