Peter Singer Famine Essay

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Rationally, I agree with Peter Singer’s ode to fight famine and his claim that, as affluent beings, we are morally obligated to contribute in fighting it. My qualm with Singer’s argument is that it implies we need to fulfill this obligation all the time in saying “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” (Singer 231). It’s easy to derive from this statement that if we are, in essence, always affluent, then we are to always make our donation to fights against famine. However, I do not agree that this must be the case always—giving our share at every moment we live our lives as affluent beings.

First, consider the view provided by Immanuel Kant in which he derives our moral obligations or “maxims” by means of willingness and rational universal application: “I ought never act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim [(duty or guiding principle)] should become a universal law” (Kant 4:402). If we then consider a maxim to never help people then such a world is certainly plausible, but isn’t rationally desirable. Kant would then say that our duty to help others is an imperfect one: we ought to fulfill this duty, but only sometimes—not necessarily all the time. It seems that there is, perhaps, a tad bit off irrationality to donating a significant portion …show more content…
Acting for our own welfare or in maximizing our self-interest may be alright with devoting a significant portion of our income—but what if, in effect, this deters our ability to maximize the benefit of our own well-being or welfare? The usefulness of this significant sum to be donated is blurred by where else it could be used to improve our well-being, or in other words, where this sum would be better suited in satisfying our self-interests or

Summary Of Peter Singer's Essay On Famine

Peter Singer’s essay was written in 1972. It has been 45 years, and yet famines are still an unfortunate reality. In fact, we are currently witnessing another mass-starvation event in South Sudan, where, according to the U.N., “the greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945 is unfolding.” (CITE). The famine has impacted nearly 5 million people, and I expected to get severely worse. And the U.N. has also warned of imminent famines in Yemen and Nigeria. Singer’s belief that we can save humanity by donating…

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During the 1970s Peter Singer wrote Famine, Affluence and Morality, which covered Singer’s thoughts on how we should treat those starving in poverty stricken countries. He outlined what John Arthur later called the greater moral evil rule. That is we should do everything we can to stop something bad from happening “without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance.” Taken at its strongest degree this would mean giving away everything you have until you are only just better off than those…

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Peter Singer, an Australian moral philosopher, opposes to the way people perceive and deal with poverty, famine and the sufferance of the less fortunate. In his essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, he argues that we are failing to perform our moral duties insofar as we live lives of relative luxury while others are suffering and dying due to diseases, famine. He believes that it’s possible to reduce the pain and the sufferance of people and to avoid it if we give up our nonessentials. He states…

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The topic of this essay which I will be discussing is whether the moral obligations of a citizen ought be extended only to national boundaries, and therefore, moral agents have a rational obligation only to people of their own country. My argument in support of this claim is that by donating aid to countries outside our own we are in fact, doing more harm than good in the long run one reason being that we are setting up a countries reliance on aid and the other being that we are potentially inviting…

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At the beginning of Famine, Affluence, and Morality by Peter Singer, the author states that he is in Bengal. Bengal is a city in India that is has a crumbling economy. According to his essay, “the people are dying from lack of food, shelter, and medical care.” In general humans haven’t been helping themselves by ignoring this ongoing problem in their societies. People will hold protest and demonstrate for other causes but not ones that are directly visible. It seems that people have turned a blind…

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