The Life You Can Save: How To Do Your Part To End World Poverty

Part 4, “A New Standard of Giving,” concerns the development and implementation of a radically different approach to charity in affluent nations. Singer’s first step is to get affluent people to reconceptualize their responsibilities to the global poor by contrasting this duty with the duty to one’s own children. Singer opens with a story of a mother who was willing to sacrifice her own child (and herself) so that thousands of other would survive a flood. In Singer’s estimation this could be morally meritorious, though many would find it unnatural and would assume that the mother should put her child above all else.

Many are skeptical of very selfless people, like Zell Kravinsky (who among other things donated a kidney to a stranger). Singer provides several additional examples of exemplary philanthropists who have sacrificed much of themselves and their families to make the world a better place for those at the bottom. He writes of people who have sold off most of their assets or who volunteer at Haitian hospitals. Singer’s students at Princeton have mixed reactions to this. Some of the philanthropists themselves struggle with the fact that they have love their own children more than other children. The moral question concerns whether all children are equal and how one should approach their care.