Critical Analysis Of Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence, And Poverty

In his 1972 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Poverty”, Peter Singer tackles what seems on the surface to be a fairly simple debacle. He opens his essay by discussing the lack of food, shelter, and medical care in East Bengal. It is a given that every human deserves, in the very least, food, a place to sleep, and basic medical care. Singer claims that the problems involving poverty around the world is not an inevitable problem. He alleges that if we all pitched in what we can, these problems could be abolished. But unfortunately many people do not want to give up what they have for the sake of others. For these people, Singer put forth his seemingly obvious argument. It goes as follows:

The lack of food, shelter, and medical attention is bad.

If it is within our power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it.

It is within our power to prevent this bad thing.

We can prevent this bad thing without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance

Therefore, we ought to prevent the lack of food, shelter, and medical attention. To back up this argument, Singer gives a simple example. Imagine you are walking home one day and you see a young child drowning in a shallow pond. Singer obviously says that you ought to walk over to the water and save the child in danger.

Say that someone donates their excess money to charity, and a short time later a sudden illness comes up and they need expensive medical treatment. What then? If this situation were to actually happen, the person who donated just put themselves in the same exact situation as the people they were originally trying to help. Corbett claims that following Singer’s absolutist principle is not a moral obligation, but quite simply decent human