The Drowning Child
Singer · 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality' · 1972
You are walking past a shallow pond when you notice a child drowning in it. You could wade in and save the child at no danger to yourself: you would lose only your clothes, muddied or ruined, and a missed appointment. No one else is in sight. Everyone judges that a passer-by who walked on to stay dry would be a monster. Yet at that very moment, elsewhere in the world, children are dying of hunger or preventable disease, whom a modest donation might suffice to save.
If the omission is a wrong at the edge of the pond, is it also one at a distance? What exactly does morality require of us?
What it does in the debate
Objects to Minimalismattacks the position
The minimalist himself judges monstrous the passer-by who lets the child drown to stay dry; yet that passer-by harmed no one. 'Do no harm' thus fails to cover what the minimalist himself demands.
- A child is drowning in a shallow pond before you; saving him costs only muddied clothes. The minimalist himself judges that a passer-by who refrained in order to stay dry would be a monster — yet that passer-by has harmed no one.
- That judgment commits us to a principle: when one can prevent a great harm at the cost of a minor sacrifice, refraining is a wrong. 'Do no harm' thus fails to cover all that we ourselves judge to be required.
- And neither distance, nor number, nor the fact that others could act seems a moral reason to erase that principle: the distant child whom a donation would suffice to save is in the situation of the one in the pond.
Therefore So minimalism fails its own test: since it condemns the indifferent passer-by, it already grants that morality demands more than not harming.