Introduction to Political Theory

Famine

Singer on famine

How individuals and states respond – or should respond – to famine throws into

sharp relief central issues in the global justice debate. Peter Singer, in an influential

article (1972), argues that if you are passing a pond and see a drowning child then

so long as you are not in danger of sacrificing something morally equivalent to that

child’s life you have an obligation to wade in and save the child. There may be a

cost to you – perhaps you will ruin your expensive suit – but that cost has to be

weighed against the loss of a life, and in the balance it is clear what you should

do. The failure to make a significant financial contribution to relieve famine on the

other side of the world is in all important respects no different to the refusal to

jump in and save the drowning child.

Singer’s argument is, on the face of it, very simple and he seeks to build it on

two assumptions that any reasonable person would accept: (a) ‘suffering and death

from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad’; (b) ‘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, 1972: 231).

Proximity to suffering is irrelevant – the child starving 7,000 kilometres away is no

less important than the child drowning 50 metres from you. The potential number

of rescuers is of no moral significance – that potentially millions could help the

starving child but only you could save the drowning child may alter howyou assist

but not that you shouldassist. Imagine that you are among a group of onlookers

seeing the child drowning: that others could help but are not helping in no degree

reduces your responsibility to save the child. That there are millions of potential

donors capable of relieving a famine does not reduce your obligation to donate to

famine relief.

There are, of course, coordination problems in the case of famine that – assuming

you are the only potential rescuer – do not exist in the pond example. The cost of

saving the drowning child can be calculated as the loss of your $1,000 suit, while

the costs of relieving famine are less clear. If we are all willing to give whatever is

required to end the famine but lack communication we may end up giving too

much. However, the existence of a mass media solves this problem. And prisoner’s

dilemma-type situations do not arise here, because we are assuming that we have

a moral obligation to help, such that even if nobody else gave any money you should

still donate. The only sense in which the non-donors are ‘free-riding’ on your

donation is that they are relying on youto fulfil theirobligations to the starving.

Sen on famine

To explore the problems with Singer’s argument I will contrast it with another

discussion of famine, advanced by Amartya Sen. Sen’s work is not a response to

Singer and the two explorations of famine are different rather than mutually

incompatible: Singer is advancing an argument in moral philosophy about our

Chapter 22 Global justice 483