World hunger and the moral requirements of self-sacrifice

Abstract

In “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” Peter Singer holds that there are circumstances in which morality requires affluent individuals to reduce themselves to the level of marginal utility, and thus to live in poverty, to prevent the suffering and death of those who are starving or malnourished. In this paper I defend Singer’s position. I argue that such self-sacrifice can be justified in theory and that the principle Singer relies on yields the correct results in “rescue” cases involving a single actor. Additionally, I address the worry that such cases are not sufficiently analogous to cases involving aid to the hungry.