Ethics and Moral Reasoning

Ethics and Moral Reasoning

In the article known as “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, Peter Singer has critiqued the normal ways of thinking about charity, relief from famine and morality in general. The arguments presented by Singer proposes that the people, who reside in wealthy countries must thoroughly alter their way of living life and their outset of morality, so that they would get more focused at helping the ones in need. He initiates his argument by presenting a case of Bengal, which took place in the year 1971. It was a time when the people suffered relentlessly and no one, neither the people themselves, nor the governments took any steps in making the situation better. At this, he highlighted two of his principles (White, J. E. 2009).

The first principle highlighted that suffering is not a good thing, whether the cause of it is insufficient medical care, scarce housing or hunger. The 2nd principle highlighted that someone has the capability or the means of preventing such a bad state morally and the cost of it is not of equal importance, then that particular someone should go ahead with the prevention plan (White, J. E. 2009). Focusing on the 1st principle, Singer highlighted that coming to the aid of someone does not depend on the distance of the helper, as whether the distance is big or small, the suffering of the person is not affected, unless it is helped. Thus, he stated that if there are people who are close, but not willing to help, then they are no better than the people who are far, but cannot help.

For the second principle, Singer presented an example. He stated if an individual has the power to save a child from drowning, then it should do so, regardless of its cloths getting dirty. This is because the morally, the dirtying of the cloths is not a very big cost, but the death of a child would be an extremely terrible state of affairs (Cullity, G. 2006).

There have been a few objections to Singer's point of view. However, Singer managed to answer these objections in his own way. One states that if every person donates to the relief of famine as it should, then a small amount would be needed of every individual. But Singer considered this irrelevant as every individual does not donate as it should and it is not ...