Famine, Affluence, and Morality
Author(s): Peter Singer
Source: Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Spring, 1972), pp. 229-243
Published by: Blackwell PublishingStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052
Accessed: 02/01/2010 20:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Blackwell Publishing is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy andPublic Affairs.

http://www.jstor.org

PETERSINGER

Famine, Affluence, andMorality

As I write this, in November Ig7I, people are dying in East Bengal
from lack of food, shelter, and medical care. The suffering and deaththat are occurring there now are not inevitable, not unavoidable inany fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and acivil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond the capacity of the richer nations
to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to very small
proportions. The decisions and actions of human beings can prevent
this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not madethe necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very
few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any significant way.
Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds;
they have not written to their parliamentary representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in
the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward
providing the refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs.
At the government level, no government has given the sort of massive
aid that would enable the refugees to survive for more than a few days.
Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It
has, to date, given ?I4,750,ooo.

For comparative purposes, Britain's

share of the nonrecoverable development costs of the Anglo-French
Concorde project is already in excess of ?275,ooo,ooo,
and on present
estimates will reach ?440,000,000.

The implication is that the British

government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as230

Philosophy & Public Affairs

highly as it values the lives of the nine million refugees. Australia is
another country which, on a per capita basis, is well up in the "aid to
Bengal" table. Australia's aid, however, amounts to less than onetwelfth of the cost of Sydney's new opera house. The total amountgiven, from all sources, now stands at about ?65,ooo,ooo. The estimated cost of keeping the refugees alive for one year is ?464,000,000.
Most of the refugees have now been in the camps for more than six
months. The World Bank has said that India needs a minimum of?300,000,000
in assistance from other countries before the end of theyear. It seems obvious that assistance on this scale will not be forthcoming. India will be forced to choose between letting the refugees
starve or diverting funds from her own development program, which
will mean that more of her own people will starve in the future.'
These are the essential facts about the present situation in Bengal.
So far as it concerns usi here, there is nothing unique about this situation except its magnitude. The Bengal emergency is just the latest andmost acute of a series of major emergencies in various parts of theworld, arising both from natural and from man-made causes. There
are also many parts of the world in which people die from malnutrition and lack of food independent of any special emergency. I take
Bengal as my example only because it is the present concern, andbecause the size of the problem has ensured that it has been given
adequate publicity. Neither individuals nor governments can claim to
be unaware of what is happening there.
What are the moral implications of a situation like this? In what
follows, I shall argue that the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal cannot be justified; indeed,
the whole way we look at moral issues-our moral conceptual scheme-needs to be altered, and with it, the way of life that has come to betaken for granted in our society.
In arguing for this conclusion I will not, of course, claim to be
morally neutral. I shall, however, try to argue for the moral position
i. There was also a third possibility: that India would go to war to enable therefugees to return to their lands. Since I wrote this paper, India has taken thisway out. The situation is no longer that described above, but this does not affectmy argument, as the next paragraph indicates.

231

Famine, Affluence, andMoralitythat I take, so that anyone who accepts certain assumptions, to bemade explicit, will, I hope, accept my conclusion.
I begin with the assumption that suffering and death from lack offood, shelter, and medical care are bad. I think most people will agree
about this, although one may reach the same view by different routes.
I shall not argue for this view. People can hold all sorts of eccentric
positions, and perhaps from some of them it would not follow thatdeath by starvation is in itself bad. It is difficult, perhaps impossible,
to refute such positions, and so for brevity I will henceforth take thisassumption as accepted. Those who disagree need read no further.
My next point is this: if it is in our power to prevent something badfrom happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable
moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it. By "without sacrificing
anything of comparable moral importance" I mean without causing
anything else comparably bad to happen, or doing something that iswrong in itself, or failing to promote some moral good, comparable insignificance to the bad thing that we can prevent. This principle
seems almost as uncontroversial as the last one. It requires us only
to prevent what is bad, and not to promote what is good, and it requires
this of us only when we can do it without sacrificing anything that is,from the moral point of view, comparably important. I could even, as
far as the application of my argument to the Bengal emergency isconcerned, qualify the point so as to make it: if it is in our power toprevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. An
application of this principle would be as follows: if I am walking pasta shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in andpull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but thisis insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be avery bad thing.
The uncontroversial appearance of the principle just stated is deceptive. If it were acted upon, even in its qualified form, our lives, oursociety, and our world would be fundamentally changed. For the principle takes, firstly, no account of proximity or distance. It makes nomoral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child

232

Philosophy & Public Affairs

ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten
thousand miles away. Secondly, the principle makes no distinction
between cases in which I am the only person who could possibly doanything and cases in which I am just one among millions in thesame position.
I do not think I need to say much in defense of the refusal to takeproximity and distance into account. The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, may makeit more likely that we shall assist him, but this does not show that weought to help him rather than another who happens to be further
away. If we accept any principle of impartiality, universalizability,
equality, or whatever, we cannot discriminate against someone merely
because he is far away from us (or we are far away from him).
Admittedly, it is possible that we are in a better position to judge whatneeds to be done to help a person near to us than one far away, andperhaps also to provide the assistance we judge to be necessary. If
this were the case, it would be a reason for helping those near to us
first. This may once have been a justification for being more concernedwith the poor in one's own town than with famine victims in India.
Unfortunately for those who- like to keep their moral responsibilities
limited, instant communication and swift transportation have changed
the situation. From the moral point of view, the development of theworld into a "globalvillage" has made an important, though still unrecognized, difference to our moral situation. Expert observers and supervisors, sent out by famine relief organizations or permanently stationed in famine-prone areas, can direct our aid to a refugee in Bengal
almost as effectively as we could get it to someone in our own block.
There would seem, therefore, to be no possible justification for discriminating on geographical grounds.
There may be a greater need to defend the second implication of
my principle-that the fact that there are millions of other people inthe same position, in respect to the Bengali refugees, as I am, does
not make the situation significantly different from a situation in which
I am the only person who can prevent something very bad from occurring. Again, of course, I admit that there is a psychological difference
between the cases; one feels less guilty about doing nothing if one can

233

Famine, Affluence, andMorality

point to others, similarly placed, who have also done nothing. Yet thiscan make no real difference to our moral obligations.2 Should I consider that I am less obliged to pull the drowning child out of the pond
if on looking around I see other people, no further away than I am,
who have also noticed the child but are doing nothing? One has only
to ask this question to see the absurdity of the view that numbers
lessen obligation. It is a view that is an ideal excuse for inactivity;
unfortunately most of the major evils-poverty, overpopulation, pollution-are problems in which everyone is almost equally involved.
The view that numbers do make a difference can be made plausible
if stated in this way: if everyone in circumstances like mine gave ?5to the Bengal Relief Fund, there would be enough to provide food,shelter, and medical care for the refugees; there is no reason why I
should give more than anyone else in the same circumstances as I
am; therefore I have no obligation to give more than ?5. Each premisein this argument is true, and the argument looks sound. It may convince us, unless we notice that it is based on a hypothetical premise,
although the conclusion is not stated hypothetically. The argument
would be sound if the conclusion were: if everyone in circumstances
like mine were to give ?5, I would have no obligation to give more than
?5. If the conclusion were so stated, however, it would be obvious thatthe argument has no bearing on a situation in which it is not the casethat everyone else gives ?5. This, of course, is the actual situation. It
is more or less certain that not everyone in circumstances like mine
will give Q5. So there will not be enough to provide the needed food,shelter, and medical care. Therefore by giving more than ?5 I will
prevent more suffering than I would if I gave just ?5.
It might be thought that this argument has an absurd consequence.
Since the situation appears to be that very few people are likely to give
2. In view of the special sense philosophers often give to the term, I should
say that I use "obligation" simply as the abstract noun derived from "ought," sothat "I have an obligation to" means no more, and no less, than "I ought to."This usage is in accordance with the definition of "ought" given by the Shorter
Oxford English Dictionary: "the general verb to express duty or obligation." I do
not think any issue of substance hangs on the way the term is used; sentencesin which I use "obligation" could all be rewritten, although somewhat clumsily,
as sentences in which a clause containing "ought" replaces the term "obligation."

234

Philosophy & Public Affairs

substantial amounts, it follows that I and everyone else in similar
circumstances ought to give as much as possible, that is, at least up
to the point at which by giving more one would begin to cause serious
suffering for oneself and one's dependents-perhaps even beyond thispoint to the point of marginal utility, at which by giving more one
would cause oneself and one's dependents as much suffering as one
would prevent in Bengal. If everyone does this, however, there will be
more than can be used for the benefit of the refugees, and some of thesacrifice will have been unnecessary. Thus, if everyone does what heought to do, the result will not be as good as it would be if everyone
did a little less than he ought to do, or if only some do all that theyought to do.
The paradox here arises only if we assume that the actions in question-sending money to the relief funds-are performed more or lesssimultaneously, and are also unexpected. For if it is to be expectedthat everyone is going to contribute something, then clearly each is
not obliged to give as much as he would have been obliged to had
others not been giving too. And if everyone is not acting more or lesssimultaneously, then those giving later will know how much more isneeded, and will have no obligation to give more than is necessary toreach this amount. To say this is not to deny the principle that people
in the same circumstances have the same obligations, but to point out
that the fact that others have given, or may be expected to give, is arelevant circumstance: those giving after it has become known thatmany others are giving and those giving before are not in the same
circumstances. So the seemingly absurd consequence of the principle
I have put forward can occur only if people are in error about theactual circumstances-that is, if they think they are giving when others
are not, but in fact they are giving when others are. The result of
everyone doing what he really ought to do cannot be worse than the
result of everyone doing less than he ought to do, although the resultof everyone doing what he reasonably believes he ought to do could be.
If my argument so far has been sound, neither our distance from a
preventable evil nor the number of other people who, in respect tothat evil, are in the same situation as we are, lessens our obligation
to mitigate or prevent that evil. I shall therefore take as establishedthe principle I asserted earlier. As I have already said, I need to assert

235

Famine, Affluence, andMorality

it only in its qualified form: if it is in our power to prevent something
very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else
morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it.
The outcome of this argument is that our traditional moral categories are upset. The traditional distinction between duty and charity
cannot be drawn, or at least, not in the place we normally draw it.
Giving money to the Bengal Relief Fund is regarded as an act of charity in our society. The bodies which collect money are known as "ccharities." These organizations see themselves in this way-if you send thema check, you will be thanked for your "generosity." Because giving
money is regarded as an act of charity, it is not thought that there isanything wrong with not giving. The charitable man may be praised,
but the man who is not charitable is not condemned. People do not
feel in any way ashamed or guilty about spending money on new
clothes or a new car instead of giving it to famine relief. (Indeed, thealternative does not occur to them.) This way of looking at the mattercannot be justified. When we buy new clothes not to keep ourselves
warm but to look "well-dressed"we are not providing for any important need. We would not be sacrificing anything significant if we were
to continue to wear our old clothes, and give the money to famine
relief. By doing so, we would be preventing another person from starving. It follows from what I have said earlier that we ought to givemoney away, rather than spend it on clothes which we do not needto keep us warm. To do so is not charitable, or generous. Nor is it thekind of act which philosophers and theologians have called "supererogatory"-an act which it would be good to do, but not wrong not to
do. On the contrary, we ought to give the money away, and it is wrong
not to do so.
I am not maintaining that there are no acts which are charitable,or that there are no acts which it would be good to do but not wrong
not to do. It may be possible to redraw the distinction between duty
and charity in some other place. All I am arguing here is that the present way of drawing the distinction, which makes it an act of charity
for a man living at the level of affluence which most people in the"developed nations" enjoy to give money to save someone else fromstarvation, cannot be supported. It is beyond the scope of my argument to consider whether the distinction should be redrawn or abol-

Philosophy & Public Affairs236ished altogether. There would be many other possible ways of drawing
the distinction-for instance, one might decide that it is good to makeother people as happy as possible, but not wrong not to do so.
Despite the limited nature of the revision in our moral conceptual
scheme which I am proposing, the revision would, given the extent ofboth affluence and famine in the world today, have radical implications. These implications may lead to further objections, distinct fromthose I have already considered. I shall discuss two of these.
One objection to the position I have taken might be simply that it is
too drastic a revision of our moral scheme. People do not ordinarily
judge in the way I have suggested they should. Most people reserve
their moral condemnation for those who violate some moral norm,such as the norm against taking another person's property. They do
not condemn those who indulge in luxury instead of giving to famine
relief. But given that I did not set out to present a morally neutral
description of the way people make moral judgments, the way people
do in fact judge has nothing to do with the validity of my conclusion.
My conclusion follows from the principle which I advanced earlier,and unless that principle is rejected, or the arguments shown to beunsound, I think the conclusion must stand, however strange it
appears.
It might, nevertheless, be interesting to consider why our society,and most other societies, do judge differently from the way I have suggested they should. In a well-known article, J. 0. Urmson suggeststhat the imperatives of duty, which tell us what we must do, as distinct from what it would be good to do but not wrong not to do, function so as to prohibit behavior that is intolerable if men are to live
together in society.3 This may explain the origin and continued existence of the present division between acts of duty and acts of charity.
Moral attitudes are shaped by the needs of society, and no doubt
society needs people who will observe the rules that make social existence tolerable. From the point of view of a particular society, it is3. J. 0. Urmson, "Saints and Heroes," in Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed.
Abraham I. Melden (Seattle and London, 1958), p. 214. For a related but
significantly different view see also Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics,
7th edn. (London,

1907),

pp.

220-221,492-493.

237

Famine, Affluence, andMorality

essential to prevent violations of norms against killing, stealing, andso on. It is quite inessential, however, to help people outside one's own
society.
If this is an explanation of our common distinction between duty
and supererogation, however, it is not a justification of it. The moral
point of view requires us to look beyond the interests of our own society. Previously, as I have already mentioned, this may hardly havebeen feasible, but it is quite feasible now. From the moral point ofview, the prevention of the starvation of millions of people outside oursociety must be considered at least as pressing as the upholding ofproperty norms within our society.
It has been argued by some writers, among them Sidgwick andUrmson, that we need to have a basic moral code which is not too far
beyond the capacities of the ordinary man, for otherwise there will bea general breakdown of compliance with the moral code. Crudelystated, this argument suggests that if we tell people that they ought
to refrain from murder and give everything they do not really needto famine relief, they will do neither, whereas if we tell them that theyought to refrain from murder and that it is good to give to famine
relief but not wrong not to do, so, they will at least refrain from murder. The issue here is: Where should we drawn the line between conduct that is required and conduct that is good although not required,
so as to get the best possible result? This would seem to be an empirical question, although a very difficult one. One objection to the Sidgwick-Urmson line of argument is that it takes insufficient account of
the effect that moral standards can have on the decisions we make.
Given a society in which a wealthy man who gives five percent of his
income to famine relief is regarded as most generous, it is not surprising that a proposal that we all ought to give away half our incomes
will be thought to be absurdly unrealistic. In a society which heldthat no man should have more than enough while others have lessthan they need, such a proposal might seem narrow-minded. What it
is possible for a man to do and what he is likely to do are both, I think,very greatly influenced by what people around him are doing andexpecting him to do. In any case, the possibility that by spreading theidea that we ought to be doing very much more than we are to relieve

238

Philosophy & Public Affairs

famine we shall bring about a general breakdown of moral behavior
seems remote. If the stakes are an end to widespread starvation, it isworth the risk. Finally, it should be emphasized that these considerations are relevant only to the issue of what we should require fromothers, and not to what we ourselves ought to do.
The second objection to my attack on the present distinction
between duty and charity is one which has from time to time been
made against utilitarianism. It follows from some forms of utilitarian
theory that we all ought, morally, to be working full time to increase
the balance of happiness over misery. The position I have taken here
would not lead to this conclusion in all circumstances, for if there
were no bad occurrences that we could prevent without sacrificing
something of comparable moral importance, my argument would
have no application. Given the present conditions in many parts of theworld, however, it does follow from my argument that we ought, morally, to be working full time to relieve great suffering of the sort that
occurs as a result of famine or other disasters. Of course, mitigating
circumstances can be adduced-for instance, that if we wear ourselves
out through overwork, we shall be less effective than we would otherwise have been. Nevertheless, when all considerations of this sort havebeen taken into account, the conclusion remains: we ought to bepreventing as much suffering as we can without sacrificing somethingelse of comparable moral importance. This conclusion is one which
we may be reluctant to face. I cannot see, though, why it should be
regarded as a criticism of the position for which I have argued, rather
than a criticism of our ordinary standards of behavior. Since most people are self-interested to some degree, very few of us are likely to do
everything that we ought to do. It would, however, hardly be honest
to take this as evidence that it is not the case that we ought to do it.
It may still be thought that my conclusions are so wildly out of linewith what everyone else thinks and has always thought that there
must be something wrong with the argument somewhere. In order toshow that my conclusions, while certainly contrary to contemporary
Western moral standards, would not have seemed so extraordinary atother times and in other places, I would like to quote a passage from awriter not normally thought of as a way-out radical, Thomas Aquinas.

239

Famine, Affluence, andMorality

Now, according to the natural order instituted by divine providence,material goods are provided for the satisfaction of human needs.
Therefore the division and appropriation of property, which proceeds from human law, must not hinder the satisfaction of man'snecessity from such goods. Equally, whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance. So Ambrosius says, and it is also to be found in the Decretum
Gratiani: "The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry;
the clothing you shut away, to the naked; and the money you buryin the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless."4
I now want to consider a number of points, more practical thanphilosophical, which are relevant to the application of the moral conclusion we have reached. These points challenge not the idea that weought to be doing all we can to prevent starvation, but the idea thatgiving away a great deal of money is the best means to this end.
It is sometimes said that overseas aid should be a government
responsibility, and that therefore one ought not to give to privately
run charities. Giving privately, it is said, allows the government andthe noncontributing members of society to escape their responsibilities.
This argument seems to assume that the more people there are who
give to privately organized famine relief funds, the less likely it is thatthe government will take over full responsibility for such aid. This
assumption is unsupported, and does not strike me as at all plausible.
The opposite view-that if no one gives voluntarily, a government willassume that its citizens are uninterested in famine relief and would
not wish to be forced into giving aid-seems more plausible. In any
case, unless there were a definite probability that by refusing to give
one would be helping to bring about massive government assistance,
people who do refuse to make voluntary contributions are refusing toprevent a certain amount of suffering without being able to point to
any tangible beneficial consequence of their refusal. So the onus ofshowing how their refusal will bring about government action is on
those who refuse to give.
4. Summa Theologica, II-II, Question 66, Article 7, in Aquinas, Selected Political Writings, ed. A. P. d'Entreves, trans. J. G. Dawson (Oxford, 1948), p. 171.

240

Philosophy & Public Affairs

I do not, of course, want to dispute the contention that governmentsof affluent nations should be giving many times the amount of genuine, no-strings-attached aid that they are giving now. I agree, too, thatgiving privately is not enough, and that we ought to be campaigning
actively for entirely new standards for both public and private contributions to famine relief. Indeed, I would sympathize with someone
who thought that campaigning was more important than giving oneself, although I doubt whether preaching what one does not practicewould be very effective. Unfortunately, for many people the idea that"it's the government's responsibility" is a reason for not giving which
does not appear to entail any political action either.
Another, more serious reason for not giving to famine relief funds
is that until there is effective population control, relieving famine
merely postpones starvation. If we save the Bengal refugees now, others, perhaps the children of these refugees, will face starvation in a
few years' time. In support of this, one may cite the now well-known
facts about the population explosion and the relatively limited scopefor expanded production.
This point, like the previous one, is an argument against relieving
suffering that is happening now, because of a belief about what might
happen in the future; it is unlike the previous point in that very goodevidence can be adduced in support of this belief about the future. I
will not go into the evidence here. I accept that the earth cannot support indefinitely a population rising at the present rate. This certainly
poses a problem for anyone who thinks it important to prevent famine.
Again, however, one could accept the argument without drawing theconclusion that it absolves one from any obligation to do anything toprevent famine. The conclusion that should be drawn is that the bestmeans of preventing famine, in the long run, is population control.
It would then follow from the position reached earlier that one ought
to be doing all one can to promote population control (unless one heldthat all forms of population control were wrong in themselves, or
would have significantly bad consequences). Since there are organizations working specifically for population control, one would then support them rather than more orthodox methods of preventing famine.
A third point raised by the conclusion reached earlier relates to thequestion of just how much we all ought to be giving away. One pos-

241

Famine, Affluence, andMorality

sibility, which has already been mentioned, is that we ought to give
until we reach the level of marginal utility-that is, the level at which,by giving more, I would cause as much suffering to myself or mydependents as I would relieve by my gift. This would mean, of course,that one would reduce oneself to very near the material circumstancesof a Bengali refugee. It will be recalled that earlier I put forward botha strong and a moderate version of the principle of preventing bad
occurrences. The strong version, which required us to prevent bad
things from happening unless in doing so we would be sacrificing
something of comparable moral significance, does seem to require
reducing ourselves to the level of marginal utility. I should also saythat the strong version seems to me to be the correct one. I proposed
the more moderate version-that we should prevent bad occurrences
unless, to do so, we had to sacrifice something morally significantonly in order to show that even on this surely undeniable principle agreat change in our way of life is required. On the more moderate
principle, it may not follow that we ought to reduce ourselves to thelevel of marginal utility, for one might hold that to reduce oneself andone's family to this level is to cause something significantly bad tohappen. Whether this is so I shall not discuss, since, as I have said,
I can see no good reason for holding the moderate version of the principle rather than the strong version. Even if we accepted the principle
only in its moderate form, however, it should be clear that we would
have to give away enough to ensure that the consumer society,dependent as it is on people spending on trivia rather than giving tofamine relief, would slow down and perhaps disappear entirely. There
are several reasons why this would be desirable in itself. The value
and necessity of economic growth are now being questioned not only
by conservationists, but by economists as well.5 There is no doubt, too,that the consumer society has had a distorting effect on the goals andpurposes of its members. Yet looking at the matter purely from thepoint of view of overseas aid, there must be a limit to the extent towhich we should deliberately slow down our economy; for it might be
the case that if we gave away, say, forty percent of our Gross National
Product, we would slow down the economy so much that in absolute
5. See, for instance, John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston, I967); and E. J. Mishan, The Costs of Economic Growth (London, I967).

242

Philosophy & Public Affairs

terms we would be giving less than if we gave twenty-five percent of
the much larger GNP that we would have if we limited our contribution to this smaller percentage.
I mention this only as an indication of the sort of factor that one
would have to take into account in working out an ideal. Since Western societies generally consider one percent of the GNP an acceptablelevel for overseas aid, the matter is entirely academic. Nor does it
affect the question of how much an individual should give in a society
in which very few are giving substantial amounts.
It is sometimes said, though less often now than it used to be, thatphilosophers have no special role to play in public affairs, since mostpublic issues depend primarily on an assessment of facts. On questionsof fact, it is said, philosophers as such have no special expertise, andso it has been possible to engage in philosophy without committing
oneself to any position on major public issues. No doubt there aresome issues of social policy and foreign policy about which it can truly
be said that a really expert assessment of the facts is required before
taking sides or acting, but the issue of famine is surely not one ofthese. The facts about the existence of suffering are beyond dispute.
Nor, I think, is it disputed that we can do something about it, either
through orthodox methods of famine relief or through population control or both. This is therefore an issue on which philosophers are competent to take a position. The issue is one which faces everyone who
has more money than he needs to support himself and his dependents,
or who is in a position to take some sort of political action. These categories must include practically every teacher and student of philosophy in the universities of the Western world. If philosophy is to deal
with matters that are relevant to both teachers and students, this is an
issue that philosophers should discuss.
Discussion, though, is not enough. What is the point of relating
philosophy to public (and personal) affairs if we do not take our conclusions seriously? In this instance, taking our conclusion seriouslymeans acting upon it. The philos-opherwill not find it any easier thananyone else to alter his attitudes and way of life to the extent that, if
I am right, is involved in doing everything that we ought to be doing.

243

Famine, Affluence, andMoralityAt the very least, though, one can make a start. The philosopher who
does so will have to sacrifice some of the benefits of the consumer
society, but he can find compensation in the satisfaction of a way oflife in which theory and practice, if not yet in harmony, are at least
coming together.