INTRODUCTION

The Singer-Unger thesis

Is giving up all one's “unnecessary” pleasures, all one's luxuries, in order to help the hungry and naked of the world essential to leading a morally decent life, or even the ideally moral life? Peter Singer and Peter Unger would have us believe that it is. According to these two theorists, moral decency requires that the affluent—and nearly all residents of affluent countries count as affluent—donate all their surplus to relieving poverty and its consequences. Although Singer also calls for higher levels of government-to-government aid, his main concern, like Unger's, is to exhort us as individuals to give more.

Despite the clash of this view with common sense and common (almost universal) practice, it seems to have strong popular and philosophical appeal. Singer's provocative 1972 article “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” written at the time of the civil war in East Pakistan, led to the establishment of Oxfam America and spawned dozens of articles and comments, both supportive and critical. Since its original publication, Singer's article has been reprinted in over two dozen books. It also inspired Unger to write Living High and Letting Die in the hope of providing a stronger and more detailed defense of Singer's thesis against actual and possible objections. Unger's book also generated intense discussion in philosophy journals, and Singer himself has written on the topic several times since his 1972 article and has talked about it in interviews in the print media.