From Class Wednesday
On Wednesday, I mentioned an essay that makes the argument that makes the case that everyday forms of "moral favoritism"--duties to families, communities, and even nations aren't opposed to the idea of international duty, but are rather complementary with it, and can be understood as the source of any sense of cosmopolitan obligation. Per one student's request, here is the citation.
Richard W. Miller, "Moral Closeness and World Community," in The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy (edited by Deen Chatterjee), Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp.101-122.
From the intro:
...in ordinary moral thinking, I have as an American citizen, a much more demanding duty to support tax-financed aid to the poor in the U.S. than to support such aid to the foreign poor. I have a duty t osave a drowning toddler I encounter at the cost of ruining my 400 dollar suit, but not a duty to donate 400 dollars to save children in a distant village....One of my goals is to defend these biases, showing that they express a deep commitment to moral equality. The other is to show that proper understanding of their justification establishes substantial, if less demanding duties to help the foreign poor. In this way, a vindication of ordinary moral favoritism toward closeness grounds a case for extensive foreign aid that could be believable to the vast majority of non-philosophers, who find it unbelievable that a strong duty of impartial concern for neediness, whether near or far, determines what should be done to help needy strangers.
Here's a link to the book (amazon). It's got a number of excellent essays on the topic we're discussing, including essays by Peter Singer (see post below on his view) and Thomas Pogge, following up on the argument he makes in the book we're reading soon. I seriously considered assigning this book.
posted by David Watkins @ 10:32 AM
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