Living high and letting die by Peter K. Unger
Review by Josh100/100Read February 1, 2007
Argues that non-consequentialist moral theories collapse into intuitionism, which gives self contradictory and unhelpful guidance on what to do.
By sending a few hundred dollars to a group like UNICEF, any well-off person can ensure that fewer poor children die, and that more live reasonably long, worthwhile lives. But even when knowing this, almost all of us send nothing and, among the contributors, most send precious little. What's the moral status of this behavior? To such common cases of letting die, our untutored response is that, while it's not very good, neither is the conduct wrong. How can we best explain this lenient intuitive assessment? In this hard-hitting new book, philosopher Peter Unger argues that, all too often, our…
Living high and letting die by Peter K. Unger, and books like it