Distance, Relationship and Moral Obligation

Abstract

How can we justify partiality to those near to us, such as our own families, friends, neighbours and colleagues, when we could act in much more morally valuable ways by helping others who are merely distant from us?1 In 1972 Peter Singer used two now-famous examples, Pond and Overseas, to challenge our complacent partiality. In both examples, we know of a grave and urgent need and can easily meet it. In Pond, a nearby toddler needs to be retrieved from a pond; in Overseas starving children for whom we have received an appeal need our money for food. All we need do is wade in and get the child out; all we need do is send a cheque. Yet in Pond we say the need is morally obligating, and in Overseas we doubt it. This is an inconsistency, Singer charges. If a need is morally obligating, then it must be so regardless of distance. What is worse, our practice of partiality is not limited to saving near lives rather than distant ones?it extends to spending money on luxuries for the near that could be used to save the lives of the distant. The charge of neglect of an obvious moral duty to meet distant grave needs is refined and developed by Peter Unger (1996). Although Singer is a consequentialist, he intends the problem of distance to challenge all moral thinkers irrespective of their theoretical commitments. This is why he uses the phrase comparable moral worth to describe the different kinds of helping actions in Pond, Overseas and other examples, rather than speaking more straightforwardly to the converted in terms of maximising the interest-satisfaction of sentient beings. He wants to challenge virtue ethicists, deontologists and contractarians as well as consequentialists. His target is all who have both the impartial intuition that people matter as much wherever they are, and the partialist intuition in favour of preferential treatment for kin, loved ones, colleagues, friends, neighbours, co-nationals etc.2 Singer's challenge has somehow to be met,