Topics Ethics

Question Where should we draw the line between conduct that is required and conduct that is good although not required? If we have the means to alleviate poverty for example (knowing how serious poverty an issue is), and we did not help alleviate it (or at least the help we gave them was not sufficient enough), should we feel guilty?

Accepted:
August 11, 2011

Comments

While some conduct is clearly morally required and some other conduct is clearly morally good but not required, I don't think there is a line separating the two kinds of conduct. If there were such a line, then there would be -- given all the relevant empirical facts about poverty in the world today and all the relevant empirical facts about your situation -- some precise amount that you would be required to contribute to poverty alleviation. I don't think there is such a precise amount, though it may be helpful to have some reasonably precise guidelines of the sort Peter Singer has proposed (in "What Should a Billionaire Give -- and What Should You?"). There's a grey zone, much like there is about baldness and heaps.

Of course poverty is a horrible thing. Out of seven billion, over one billion human beings are so poor that they are chronically undernourished, more than ever before. Right now in East Africa people are dying by the thousands from famine. Of course we are required to act in the face of such extreme suffering, especially when we find that the structure of the world economy, designed and imposed by the more powerful countries, plays a substantial role in the persistence of poverty. (The poorest quarter of humanity has been reduced to 3/4 of one percent of global household income, the poorest half to less than 3 percent -- while the top twentieth has grown its share to nearly half.) Here what matters is not merely that we act, nor that we make a substantial "sacrifice", but that we make a difference, that what we do is effective. Giving money to an ineffective charity, for example, may be no better -- or even worse -- than giving nothing at all.

Most of us fail to help alleviate poverty or make a contribution that is clearly much less than what would be morally required. Should they feel guilty? Clearly, what they should do is change their conduct so that they will henceforth contribute effectively to the reduction of severe poverty. Feeling guilty is like sacrificing: it may accompany what really matters, but it isn't part of what matters. If you can contribute substantially to the reduction of severe poverty without making any sacrifice (perhaps because you really enjoy working with like-minded people in an important anti-poverty project in a poor area) and without feeling guilty about your lack of action in the past, then you're doing what you ought to do and should not worry about adding in some painful experience of sacrifice or guilt. (For a nice essay on this, see Rudiger Bittner: "Is It Reasonable to Regret Things One Did?"). This is not about us developing the right kinds of feelings but about us doing what's morally required: allowing the poor to share at least the natural wealth of this world. People in the poorest quarter of humanity are surely entitled to more than their present 1/300th of the average income of the richest 5 percent.