What Does Kindness Require Us to Do About Global Poverty?

Peter Singer has famously argued that the affluent of the world have a moral responsibility to give away their wealth surplus to aid those living in poverty [1]. His argument turns on the following principle:

• If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, then we ought to do so.

However, this principle, and Singer's justification for it, have been widely criticized (see John Arthur, "Rights and the Duty to Bring Aid," Igneski, "Defending Limits on the Sacrifices We Ought to Make for Others," and Wisor, "Against Shallow Ponds"). Without relying on the above principle, Garrett Cullity has argued that different reasons may support a similar conclusion [2]. Rather than appealing to the above principle, his argument appeals to the virtues of kindness and justice. Here's the argument:

1.  It is immoral to be unkind and unjust.
2. An affluent person's not contributing money or time to international aid organizations is unkind and unjust. 
3. (Therefore) It is immoral for affluent persons not to contribute money or time to international aid organizations.
4. (Therefore) the affluent ought to contribute money or time to international aid organizations.

Cullity describes Kindness as a general concern for the welfare of other's. Essential to the concern is a motivation to uphold a person's welfare when it is in jeopardy, so long as there are no countervailing reasons for doing so. Finally, for the concern to properly reflect kindness, the motivation to uphold their welfare must be a final reason -- there are no other reasons motivating the action. One way for kindness to manifest itself, Cullity argues, is as a concern to avert the threats to another person's life. Naturally, then, kindness can be manifested toward those living in poverty, since extreme poverty threatens lives. Moreover, it would be unjust for a person to give unreasonable preferential treatment to their own interests, when doing so neglects (or, worse, hurts) the welfare of others. This motivates a sub-premise that supports premise 2 in Cullity's argument:

• 2.1. When one is aware of threats to other people's lives, the failure to take steps to avert those threats is unkind and unjust, unless there are countervailing considerations.

Crucial to the soundness of Cullity's argument is that there be no countervailing considerations that justify affluent people in obstaining from doing something about the threats to impoverished people's lives. If there are countervailing considerations, the failure to avert the threat would not be unkind or unjust, per premise 2.1. Call this the condition of countervailing considerations. Here would be some reasonable countervailing considerations, were they true: contributing to international aid endangers the life of the giver or contributing to international aid perpetuates or creates worse evils than the poverty itself.

Sometimes it is argued that the non-immediacy of the threat diminishes one's reason to safe-guard the welfare of another person. For example, I do something wrong when I come across a drowning child and decide not to save her simply because I'm interested in staying dry. In addition to her welfare and the irrelevance of my interest to stay dry, there's an additional factor that gives me strong reason to help her: she's right in front of me! The need and threat are both immediate. Yet, intuitively, if I learn of a drowning child in a remote and distant country, I seem to lose a key reason for acting to avert the threat -- the threat is not immediate. So I may still be virtuous without helping. Is the same true of those living in global poverty? Do we acquire a countervailing reason to exercise kindness and justice toward the distant impoverished simply because their threat is not immediately before us? Cullity thinks not. It is hard to see, he claims, how the immediacy of a threat could outweigh or annul the relevance of impoverished people's welfare and the need to be fair towards them. The above consideration lead Cullity to affirm a second sub-premise:

• 2.2. The fact that affluent people are not immediately presented with the threats in question is not a countervailing consideration (and there aren't any other good countervailing considerations).

That there aren't other countervailing considerations is not a claim Cullity tries to defend in the paper. His task is more modest, aiming to show that we need not rely on Singer-like arguments (which have tended be utilitarian-like in nature) in order to argue that moral obligations towards impoverished people exist. In the absence of countervailing considerations, kindness and justice are sufficient. 

_______________________________________________________________
Works cite:

[1] See Singer, "Famine, Affluence and Morality."
[2] Cullity, "International Aid and the Scope of Kindness" (1994).