Peter Singer The Life You Can Save Analysis

In a world where an increasing amount of emphasis is put on globalization, the Western world has become aware of the plights of those who lead different lives. Extreme levels of poverty, malnourishment, lack of access to basic and lifesaving health care are all daily obstacles for the over one billion people referred to as the world’s ‘absolutely poor.’ With a large amount of the world’s population dying from conditions that have preventable causes, how much should individual countries and global organizations like the United Nations (UN) step in to give much needed aid to countries who struggle? In ‘The Life You Can Save’ by Peter Singer and ‘Domination and Destitution in an Unjust World’ by Ryoa Chung, both philosophers propose two different options on how we can address our obligation to the global poor.
For Singer our obligation follows the principle that we ought to help those less fortunate as much as we can without causing any harm to our own well-being, but Chung takes a wider approach arguing that we have duties based on the fact that the absolutely wealthy have a responsibility to help the absolutely poor due to our financial and economic institutions. Both articles provide valuable discourses on the obligations we bear for the global poor, this essay will compare the two and seek to prove that Singer’s work has importance in the field of Bioethics. ‘The Life You Can Save’, by Peter Singer recognizes an important principle in order to decide how we should decide our obligations to the global poor, while also addressing two concerns that can potentially affect the application of this principle.
For Singer, the absolutely wealthy should assist in a way that is not detrimental to us morally, when we are obligated to do so, just from a moral standpoint. As long as what we are sacrificing to assist others does not have the same magnitude of negative impact on us as those we are helping, we can morally obligated to serve out this responsibility. However, if what we are doing crosses that threshold of negative self-impact, then we must reconsider what our actions are to create less risk. Ultimately the argument is that “we ought to be doing more to save the lives of people living in extreme poverty [that] presupposes that we can do it, and at a moderate cost.” Anticipating doubts, Singer recognizes the two issues that this principle is hard to follow through. The first being that it is difficult to consistently apply such a high moral principle, and secondly that it is more demanding on us than other
theories.