Moral Obligation to Donate to Charity?
PHIL 27: Ethics & Society
Paper Assignment #2 on World Hunger
1788 Words
The UN World Food Program (WFP) has had to cut rations to refugees from Darfur because of a funding shortfall. I shall argue in this paper that ordinary citizens like John have the moral obligation to donate money to WFP or similar charities to help those refugees, even if it means sacrificing something morally insignificant like a holiday trip to Cabo San Lucas. In arguing for this conclusion, I will borrow Singer’s argument and show that we have the moral obligation to prevent something bad from happening if we are able to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. I will then argue that while our moral obligations may not be practical by some people’s standards today, keeping high standards have great benefits to society and lowering them to meet people’s practical considerations should never be an option.
My argument starts with the assumption that suffering and death from hunger is bad. My next premise is that we have the moral obligation to prevent something bad from happening if we have the ability to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. We can illustrate this principle with an example from our everyday life. On his way to class, Andrew meets a fragile old lady who has difficulty crossing a busy road which has no pedestrian crossing in sight. Something bad will likely happen if Andrew ignores the old lady; she may be knocked down when crossing the road on her own, or she may be accosted by unkind strangers. Despite the importance of getting to class on time, Andrew is morally obliged to assist the old lady because ensuring the lady’s safety has a greater moral importance than getting to class on time. Similarly, when John faces the decision to either donate his money to WFP or spend it on a holiday, he has the moral obligation to donate it to WFP because saving the lives of Darfur refugees has a greater moral importance than enjoying a holiday in Cabo San Lucas.
As with Richard Watson , I believe that this moral obligation to help is object-neutral; that is, we have a duty to help even though we do not know who those refugees are, what they may do for us, or what relationship we have with them. John Arthur puts forth an interesting counter-argument which suggests that not all lives are morally equal. He cites the great disparate moral contributions between Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and equal rights champion Martin Luther King, and appeals to our “common-sense” that we have a greater moral obligation to help “do-gooder” King rather than “evil” Hitler. Although our instinctive urge for revenge may jump to agree, one must not forget one of our foundational moral rules which reject that argument. The universally accepted Golden Rule states that we should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Note that this moral law does not discriminate against the kind of recipient we help, and clearly reflects the moral ideology of equal treatment to all people. The moral duty to help thus applies to friends, strangers, politicians and refugees alike. Therefore, despite the fact that those Darfur refugees are total strangers whom we may never meet, we have the same obligations to help them as we help our closest friends in their times of needs.
Some may argue that the moral obligation as mentioned is a collective duty, not an individual duty. This argument assumes that everyone who is capable of donating will put in his or her fair share. In this way, each person is only obligated to make a small donation and John will not be obligated to give up his entire Cabo trip to obtain the amount of money required. (He can perhaps simply buy one less drink at the bar in Cabo to save the required amount.) This line of reasoning is invalid because it implies that our moral obligations can be shared with other people. However, our moral code demands compliance from each and every one of us individually, and does not allow us to offload all or part of our moral responsibilities onto others. Imagine that David’s mother is severely sick and needs to be sent to urgent care immediately. Our moral code will demand that David sends her to hospital immediately. What happens if David decides to share the burden of transportation with his brother such that each person will drive half the distance to the hospital, simply because he would rather play Grand Theft Auto on his PSP? Most people will undoubtedly find this utterly absurd. Similarly, our moral code demands that John helps the Darfur refugees by donating money to WFP. It is also equally absurd for John to call on everyone to donate a fair share simply because he is unwilling to sacrifice a holiday trip in order to do so.
My stand is that we have a moral obligation to prevent something bad from happening if we have the ability to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. Arthur attempts to raise the bar by claiming that we have such an obligation only if and when we can do so at no substantial cost to ourselves, i.e. regardless of whether the cost to ourselves is of a moral origin. He invokes our negative rights to property, which protects us from interference from others on how we should utilize our property. Arthur claims that we sometimes are “entitled to invoke our own rights to justify our inaction”, and without any prior promises to help, “need not give away our savings to help distant strangers”. However, I argue that rights do not dissolve obligations and the following example will show that his argument does not hold water. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in American history. Imagine that Frank, the owner of a well-stocked supermarket in New Orleans, survived through the storm with his supermarket mostly intact. Many homes were destroyed, but fortunately many people survived. Although Frank has legal and negative property rights to everything in the supermarket, he would be morally hard-pressed not to provide the storm survivors with basic necessities freely (or at least, cheaply) from his supermarket. Despite Frank’s clear entitlement to his goods, most people will consider Frank immoral if he asks for payment from survivors who have just lost everything. This moral judgment derives from the fact that providing food and other necessities to storm survivors has a higher moral importance than earning some extra money, in spite of the substantial cost that Frank will have to incur personally. This thus supports my argument that moral importance is a more crucial factor than monetary or other costs when considering moral obligation. John therefore has no defense of not donating simply because he has the rights to his money.
Arthur suggests that a moral code should include incentives to work by respecting people’s rights to their property and allowing them to enjoy the fruits of their labor. However, as we observed from Hurricane Katrina and the Darfur genocide, natural or man-made disasters beyond our control do not respect property rights and can potentially destroy everything that we have worked for. I suggest that our moral obligation to donate to victims of such disasters will actually increase people’s incentives to work because we can be confident of similar help should such random and unfortunate disasters befall us. With this “insurance”, we need not worry about losing everything that we have worked for overnight and be confident of bouncing back to our present state faster than we could without external help. John should thus have no reservations when sacrificing a simple holiday in exchange for the assurance of the future help that he might need.
Despite the sound reasoning which supports our obligation to help, some people may still have conflicts with this ideal because drastic and fundamental changes will have to be made to our current way of life if we are to live strictly by this moral code. Alternative arguments have called for a lower moral code and argued that our ideal social moral code should not include this obligation simply because we have difficulty in upholding it. Arthur again puts up interesting arguments, suggesting that our ideal moral code must be one which can win public support, be practical and enforceable. This suggestion completely defeats the purpose of having a moral code in the first place. What Arthur fails to understand is that a moral code is different from a legal code, which is a set of rules which strictly governs our behavior with severe consequences should we break the rules. A moral code, on the other hand, is designed to be personal guiding principles with high, unwavering standards that constantly encourage each and every one of us to strive towards achieving the perfect humane attitude when dealing with fellow human beings. In fact, it is very plausible that the original invention of a moral code is society’s way to civilize human interactions and prevent a descent into a brutal community where everyone operates purely in selfish ways and neglects the needs of others. Any attempts to lower these standards must thus be vehemently rejected to prevent a slippery slope down the path to anarchy.
Arthur also suggests that some people may feel guilty if they are unable to meet the high standards, and that this may result in unhealthy tensions between those who met the standards and those who don’t. This point is unsupported while we can clearly see the benefits of having high moral standards in our society. Mother Teresa, an Albanian-born Indian nun, is often regarded as a “moral giant” for dedicating her life to relieving the suffering of India's desperately poor and dying people. It is hard to imagine any tension between a normal person and Mother Teresa simply because she has dedicated her life to charity. In fact, even though the majority of us may not have the tenacity to contribute to that extent, Mother Teresa’s inspirational work continues to encourage many people to help the needy in our own little ways, generating positive ebb of goodwill throughout society. This goes to show that setting high moral standards is beneficial to our society.
In conclusion, I have argued and addressed many potential objections to my central argument that we all have moral obligations to prevent something bad from happening if we are able to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. Ordinary citizens like John thus have the moral responsibility to sacrifice a holiday trip to Cabo San Lucas because the lives that will be saved from this action have far greater moral importance than a holiday.
Paper Assignment #2 on World Hunger
1788 Words
The UN World Food Program (WFP) has had to cut rations to refugees from Darfur because of a funding shortfall. I shall argue in this paper that ordinary citizens like John have the moral obligation to donate money to WFP or similar charities to help those refugees, even if it means sacrificing something morally insignificant like a holiday trip to Cabo San Lucas. In arguing for this conclusion, I will borrow Singer’s argument and show that we have the moral obligation to prevent something bad from happening if we are able to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. I will then argue that while our moral obligations may not be practical by some people’s standards today, keeping high standards have great benefits to society and lowering them to meet people’s practical considerations should never be an option.
My argument starts with the assumption that suffering and death from hunger is bad. My next premise is that we have the moral obligation to prevent something bad from happening if we have the ability to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. We can illustrate this principle with an example from our everyday life. On his way to class, Andrew meets a fragile old lady who has difficulty crossing a busy road which has no pedestrian crossing in sight. Something bad will likely happen if Andrew ignores the old lady; she may be knocked down when crossing the road on her own, or she may be accosted by unkind strangers. Despite the importance of getting to class on time, Andrew is morally obliged to assist the old lady because ensuring the lady’s safety has a greater moral importance than getting to class on time. Similarly, when John faces the decision to either donate his money to WFP or spend it on a holiday, he has the moral obligation to donate it to WFP because saving the lives of Darfur refugees has a greater moral importance than enjoying a holiday in Cabo San Lucas.
As with Richard Watson , I believe that this moral obligation to help is object-neutral; that is, we have a duty to help even though we do not know who those refugees are, what they may do for us, or what relationship we have with them. John Arthur puts forth an interesting counter-argument which suggests that not all lives are morally equal. He cites the great disparate moral contributions between Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and equal rights champion Martin Luther King, and appeals to our “common-sense” that we have a greater moral obligation to help “do-gooder” King rather than “evil” Hitler. Although our instinctive urge for revenge may jump to agree, one must not forget one of our foundational moral rules which reject that argument. The universally accepted Golden Rule states that we should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Note that this moral law does not discriminate against the kind of recipient we help, and clearly reflects the moral ideology of equal treatment to all people. The moral duty to help thus applies to friends, strangers, politicians and refugees alike. Therefore, despite the fact that those Darfur refugees are total strangers whom we may never meet, we have the same obligations to help them as we help our closest friends in their times of needs.
Some may argue that the moral obligation as mentioned is a collective duty, not an individual duty. This argument assumes that everyone who is capable of donating will put in his or her fair share. In this way, each person is only obligated to make a small donation and John will not be obligated to give up his entire Cabo trip to obtain the amount of money required. (He can perhaps simply buy one less drink at the bar in Cabo to save the required amount.) This line of reasoning is invalid because it implies that our moral obligations can be shared with other people. However, our moral code demands compliance from each and every one of us individually, and does not allow us to offload all or part of our moral responsibilities onto others. Imagine that David’s mother is severely sick and needs to be sent to urgent care immediately. Our moral code will demand that David sends her to hospital immediately. What happens if David decides to share the burden of transportation with his brother such that each person will drive half the distance to the hospital, simply because he would rather play Grand Theft Auto on his PSP? Most people will undoubtedly find this utterly absurd. Similarly, our moral code demands that John helps the Darfur refugees by donating money to WFP. It is also equally absurd for John to call on everyone to donate a fair share simply because he is unwilling to sacrifice a holiday trip in order to do so.
My stand is that we have a moral obligation to prevent something bad from happening if we have the ability to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. Arthur attempts to raise the bar by claiming that we have such an obligation only if and when we can do so at no substantial cost to ourselves, i.e. regardless of whether the cost to ourselves is of a moral origin. He invokes our negative rights to property, which protects us from interference from others on how we should utilize our property. Arthur claims that we sometimes are “entitled to invoke our own rights to justify our inaction”, and without any prior promises to help, “need not give away our savings to help distant strangers”. However, I argue that rights do not dissolve obligations and the following example will show that his argument does not hold water. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in American history. Imagine that Frank, the owner of a well-stocked supermarket in New Orleans, survived through the storm with his supermarket mostly intact. Many homes were destroyed, but fortunately many people survived. Although Frank has legal and negative property rights to everything in the supermarket, he would be morally hard-pressed not to provide the storm survivors with basic necessities freely (or at least, cheaply) from his supermarket. Despite Frank’s clear entitlement to his goods, most people will consider Frank immoral if he asks for payment from survivors who have just lost everything. This moral judgment derives from the fact that providing food and other necessities to storm survivors has a higher moral importance than earning some extra money, in spite of the substantial cost that Frank will have to incur personally. This thus supports my argument that moral importance is a more crucial factor than monetary or other costs when considering moral obligation. John therefore has no defense of not donating simply because he has the rights to his money.
Arthur suggests that a moral code should include incentives to work by respecting people’s rights to their property and allowing them to enjoy the fruits of their labor. However, as we observed from Hurricane Katrina and the Darfur genocide, natural or man-made disasters beyond our control do not respect property rights and can potentially destroy everything that we have worked for. I suggest that our moral obligation to donate to victims of such disasters will actually increase people’s incentives to work because we can be confident of similar help should such random and unfortunate disasters befall us. With this “insurance”, we need not worry about losing everything that we have worked for overnight and be confident of bouncing back to our present state faster than we could without external help. John should thus have no reservations when sacrificing a simple holiday in exchange for the assurance of the future help that he might need.
Despite the sound reasoning which supports our obligation to help, some people may still have conflicts with this ideal because drastic and fundamental changes will have to be made to our current way of life if we are to live strictly by this moral code. Alternative arguments have called for a lower moral code and argued that our ideal social moral code should not include this obligation simply because we have difficulty in upholding it. Arthur again puts up interesting arguments, suggesting that our ideal moral code must be one which can win public support, be practical and enforceable. This suggestion completely defeats the purpose of having a moral code in the first place. What Arthur fails to understand is that a moral code is different from a legal code, which is a set of rules which strictly governs our behavior with severe consequences should we break the rules. A moral code, on the other hand, is designed to be personal guiding principles with high, unwavering standards that constantly encourage each and every one of us to strive towards achieving the perfect humane attitude when dealing with fellow human beings. In fact, it is very plausible that the original invention of a moral code is society’s way to civilize human interactions and prevent a descent into a brutal community where everyone operates purely in selfish ways and neglects the needs of others. Any attempts to lower these standards must thus be vehemently rejected to prevent a slippery slope down the path to anarchy.
Arthur also suggests that some people may feel guilty if they are unable to meet the high standards, and that this may result in unhealthy tensions between those who met the standards and those who don’t. This point is unsupported while we can clearly see the benefits of having high moral standards in our society. Mother Teresa, an Albanian-born Indian nun, is often regarded as a “moral giant” for dedicating her life to relieving the suffering of India's desperately poor and dying people. It is hard to imagine any tension between a normal person and Mother Teresa simply because she has dedicated her life to charity. In fact, even though the majority of us may not have the tenacity to contribute to that extent, Mother Teresa’s inspirational work continues to encourage many people to help the needy in our own little ways, generating positive ebb of goodwill throughout society. This goes to show that setting high moral standards is beneficial to our society.
In conclusion, I have argued and addressed many potential objections to my central argument that we all have moral obligations to prevent something bad from happening if we are able to do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. Ordinary citizens like John thus have the moral responsibility to sacrifice a holiday trip to Cabo San Lucas because the lives that will be saved from this action have far greater moral importance than a holiday.
