Peter Singer is a supporter of ethical utilitarianism, supported by animal rights organizations, much controversial because he states that killing disabled people can be morally just and that bestiality is not normal or natural but that it should not be frowned upon as humans are also are animals. Here is my opinion on ,Famine, Affluence, and Morality,. In Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Peter Singer addresses the problem of poverty due to lack of food, shelter, or medical care (reflecting the constant poverty in Bengal). He states that suffering and death from any of these causes is bad. Moreover, if it is in our power to prevent something bad without sacrificing something of comparable moral importance, then we should do so, he says. He concludes that it is indeed within our power to avoid suffering and death from the above causes without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. By giving money to charities we can prevent suffering and death without having to sacrifice something equally worthy ourselves.
“All well and good, but what have I to do with the situation in Bengal?” you can think then. According to Singer, we are as obliged to help someone on the other side of the world as we are to help someone in our own village, and it does not matter how many other people are involved (however many people are able to provide help). You can’t excuse yourself from your duty by saying that the rest of the world isn’t doing anything either, the fact that no one is doing it doesn’t change anything and doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it either. Ultimately, Singer comes to the conclusion that we are obliged to donate a large part of our income to aid organizations. In principle, one should be able to give so much to the point where by giving even more one would cause suffering to oneself or one’s own family.
“Why should we give so much?” is then the question that arises. ,Isn’t it enough if we all gave 5 euros?, Singer shows that this is not the case as there are always people who do not fulfill their duty. Those who do want to fulfill their obligation will not be able to get by with 5 euros per person.
Singer also points out that our understanding of the difference between charity and duty is incorrect. What we see as charity, namely donating money to the Bengali Relief Fund, is actually a duty according to him. So we urgently need to change our views according to Peter Singer.
In the following pages I will demonstrate that Singer’s theory is impossible to put into practice. I will show how he neglects almost all of human psychology and seems to reduce man to a means. His intentions are undeniably good, but we will see that he is willing to sacrifice too much for those intentions.
Blood and what it means to us
When someone is in need, the distance between myself and that person is not important, whether we are close by or half a world away, the obligation to help remains the same, says Singer. My or my family’s desires are not more important than those of someone far away from me. It is my duty to ensure that I do not starve my family and to ensure that they have access to life-saving medical care, but beyond that I should not treat them better than others. That is Singer’s view in Famine, Affluence, and Morality. However, this goes very much against our human intuitions, there are people for whom we feel friendship and affection, how can we be expected to treat them the same as someone we do not know?
Blood relations have an important symbolic meaning for humans that should not be neglected. Because of this symbolic meaning, many people even go through fire for their family. My family and friends, no matter how few qualities they may possess, are worth much more to me than any random individual in the world, no matter how many qualities that individual has. There is a certain meaning we give to family and friendship, which may not be rationally justifiable, but which we cannot or do not want to ignore. However, Peter Singer pays no attention to this or at least states that we must try to free ourselves from this meaning, that we must realize that it is ridiculous to place family above others. However, this is impossible for man, when one demands man to give up something like this, one demands that he give up his individuality, his humanity.
On the one hand, it seems as if Singer wants us to become more sensitive, because we have to sympathize with people on the other side of the world, but on the other hand, we have to become numb, we have to give up a large part of our feelings for specific individuals.
Thus we see that just by invoking the idea of consanguinity, Singer’s theory becomes problematic. However, Singer could note that we also seem to be able to sacrifice things for our own community, of which not every individual is known to us, so why not for someone far away from us? Here too, I think blood relations can still provide an answer. Although our community is of course not made up of blood relatives, we still have a special bond with the people who live there. This can be explained by the fact that it is difficult to determine who is and who is not your blood relatives in the community. How often do you discover that someone is distantly related to you? It is precisely because of this uncertainty that we develop a certain feeling for our community. We know that not all of them are our blood relatives, but we realize that many of them may be and this also creates a bond between us and our community. This bond is less strong than that for our family and friends, but it is still clearly visible because we are willing to give up a large part of our income for redistribution. We thus see how the sense of community is actually based on a symbolic meaning, which means that this cannot simply be eliminated. Moreover, it is impossible for the whole world to cherish this feeling.
The unjust love
Singer argues that if a person believes in impartiality, equality and universality, he must also accept that, as far as the duty of assistance is concerned, one may not distinguish between individuals close to us and individuals far away from us. An impartial man who regards all men as equal will agree with the theory he defends in Famine, Affluence, and Morality. I will try to show here that that is not the case. If Peter Singer wants to logically substantiate this argument, he will inevitably have to use a fallacy of multiplicity, moving from ,being human, in a universal sense to ,being human, in a particular sense. In other words, Peter Singer cannot logically justify his argument.
Undoubtedly, ,man, must be impartial and regard everyone as equal. However, this is not the case for a private person, I realize that all people are equal, but in my personal experience things are a bit different.
Law is universal, abstract and blindfolded, it is the fundamental recognition of everyone by everyone, everyone is equal. Every just person also recognizes justice and sees that people must be treated impartially and equally.
However, there is a tension between law and reality, a tension that is also reflected in people. Law is abstract and the same for everyone, but reality is concrete, everyone is different. In justice man is not recognized in his particularity. People are more than just just beings, a person also feels love and affection. Man is just but is confronted with concrete reality, in which not everyone is equal. A person is capable of love and love goes beyond justice, love has an eye for the particularity of an individual and is therefore no longer blind and impartial. One can safely believe in equality and impartiality and at the same time recognize that in personal experience not everyone is equal and that you are not always impartial. A person is not a blindfolded judge, who judges impartially in all circumstances.
When, as Singer wishes, one really starts to regard everyone as equal, one is no longer allowed to love. Because one cannot possibly feel love for all of humanity, one can only feel real love for someone one really knows (and I personally don’t know a Bengali so I can’t love him/her either). Singer clearly misunderstands an essential element of being human here.
Man has brittle shoulders
To what duty is man bound? If we follow Peter Singer’s opinion, man is obliged to do an enormous amount. We are not only obliged to care for our neighbors, but we must care for the whole world. We are not only obliged to donate part of our income to the community, no, we must share our wealth with everyone. It seems as if the whole world rests on our shoulders, some of us may be broad-shouldered, but the world is still very heavy. Even a tough bodybuilder is easily crushed under that kind of weight. When we have to worry about so much, how can we be happy?
It seems to me that Singer expects too much from people here, a person is just a person and he seems to overlook that a bit here. How many duties can one impose on a person? That is an important and difficult question that arises here. I do not know an answer and will therefore not attempt to give it, but I do believe that it would not be as much as the duty that Singer tries to ascribe to us.
(survive) or live happily?
Another important question we must ask ourselves is what we find most important, living or living happily? According to Singer, life is clearly the most important. As a utilitarian, he advocates the greatest possible general happiness, for which many people will have to compromise on their own happiness. But undoubtedly most of us disagree with his answer to this question. People want more than just life, people want to realize projects, recognition and respect, people want a successful life, they want a happy life for themselves and their loved ones.
Would we be morally better beings if we cared about the happiness of all? Certainly! Would we be happy if we had to constantly worry about the happiness of all and do everything we could to make everyone happy? Probably not. If we assume that people find a happy life more important than just living, then we must also assume that we cannot expect them to care about the whole world. If we do expect that, they will have to sacrifice things that would have made them personally, or their loved ones, happier. Man is not made to make others (strangers) happy, man is made to chart his own path in life, to develop himself, to share his happiness with the people he loves.
If we put Singer’s theory into practice, many people would no longer achieve self-development and life would no longer be worth anything. Who wants to live when life means nothing more than living and making sure others live? Living for the sake of living, that means nothing to us.
Western man as a slave to the public good
According to Singer’s theory, Western people must donate a large part of their income to aid organizations. It is not our own projects and goals, but the projects and goals of humanity that are important.
In this view, Western man is no longer an end in himself, but he becomes a means to achieve better prosperity for the entire world. Man is here reduced to an object, just as a coffee maker is used to make coffee, a person is used to save lives and increase general happiness. Man must no longer think of himself, but must always think of the whole of humanity and what will benefit it most.
It is as if the Westerner is being punished because he is better off and is therefore called in to save the rest of the world with the resources and technology at his disposal. It may be quite unfair that the average Belgian is much richer than the average Bangladeshi, but should he really pay for this if he or his family are not directly responsible for this?
Conclusion
I think that when we take all of the above into consideration, we cannot help but say that Singer’s theory is alienating to humans. Singer ignores so much of human nature that his theory becomes completely inhuman. Man is no longer seen as an end in itself, but as a means to achieve greater general happiness. He does not take certain human intuitions into account at all, he attaches no importance to symbolic meaning, he seems to ignore human feelings of love, self-development is not in his list of concepts, … When you first read his theory, it seems as if he is a is a philanthropist, after some thinking it soon turns out the opposite is true.
I think it is impossible to build a theory of justice without taking human nature into account. Man is not just a block of clay that you can mold however you want, you have to take man as he is. If you do not take human psychology into account, you fall into a utopia. Peter Singer has clearly made this mistake, he expects something inhuman from humans. When you ask a person to give up their individuality, you are clearly asking too much, yet this is what Singer does. It seems as if he has an image of what humans should be and then develops a theory based on this, instead of looking at what humans are and/or can be and developing a theory from there. When you build a theory on an illusion, the theory can be nothing but an illusion.