What would you do to save a child’s life?
SCENARIO
By chance you are passing a pond and you notice a very small child who is in difficulties. He is drowning. Neither parents, nor nanny, nor any other bystander is in the vicinity to come to his aid. You could very easily save his life. All you have to do is to run immediately toward him without taking the time to strip off and drag him as swiftly as possible to the bank. You do not even need to know how to swim, for the pond really is not too deep and in fact resembles a large puddle. If you enter it, you merely risk ruining the beautiful shoes you have just treated yourself to and arriving late for work. Would it not be monstrous to let the child die in order to preserve your new shoes and to avoid being under some pressure at work?
If you answer yes to the above question, you should also answer yes to the question as to whether it is monstrous to allow children from the poorest countries to die of hunger when you would simply have to devote a tiny part of your income to saving them. We are in fact concerned here with
like cases having to be treated alike.
1This thought experiment very plainly refers to the two basic notions in moral thought, namely, intuitions and rules.
The intuition may be phrased as follows: “letting a person die before our very eyes when we could very easily save them is monstrous.”
The rule of reasoning is “like cases must be treated alike”
It may be applied as follows: if it is monstrous to let a drowning child die before your very eyes in a pond when you could easily save him by grabbing him by the hand, it is likewise monstrous to let a starving child die in a faraway country when you could easily save him by sending a small check to Oxfam.
This thought experiment may lead us to draw on two other elementary rules of moral reasoning: (1) “One cannot derive an ought from an is.” It may be applied as follows: from the fact that the rich have a tendency not to devote of their own free will a significant part of their income to helping the poorest, it does not follow that this is good, or that it is what we must do. (2) “Ought implies being able to” (or, in more everyday terms, “no one is held to the impossible”). It may be applied as follows: Is it not completely unrealistic to demand of people that they sacrifice a significant part of the time and resources that are at their disposal and at that of those close to them in order to devote them to distant people whom they do not know? Is it not a psychological impossibility?
When all is said and done, this thought experiment may lead us to reflect upon three elementary rules of moral reasoning. Yet it is the rule “like cases must be treated alike” that bears the brunt of the argument.
We should be on our guard, however.
It is possible to dispute the value of the moral intuition (“letting a person die before our very eyes when we could very easily save them is monstrous”) and the pertinence of the rule (“like cases must be treated alike”).
THE INTUITION
It is far from being obvious that the failure to render assistance to a person in danger is a monstrous crime, that is, as serious as or more serious than, for example, a murder preceded by barbarous acts (although in this particular instance it would be a somewhat difficult case to defend).
One could add that no one has a
duty to act like a saint or like the Good Samaritan. If the cost is too high, rendering assistance to a person in danger may be deemed discretionary. If, moreover, deciding what is “too high a cost” is left to each individual, the duty to assist a person in danger risks being reduced to almost nothing.
THE RULE
It is not obvious that the two situations described are sufficiently alike for it to be just to treat them alike.
One could, for example, point out that it is absurd to equate an act that you alone are able to do (save the child) with another that numerous people could also carry out (send a check to a charity combating famine).
Can the question of knowing if situations are sufficiently alike to be treated in the same fashion be given an absolutely definite answer in each case? Is it not more reasonable to hold that we will never be able to do better than find pragmatic solutions, recipes which allow us to judge that situations are sufficiently alike for it to be just to treat them in the same fashion?
MORAL QUESTIONS
Is not helping someone as serious morally as doing him harm?
Can the failure to render assistance to a person at risk of death, which amounts to not causing a good, be put on the same moral plane as murder, which amounts to causing an evil?
Are not saving a child who is drowning before our very eyes and letting thousands of children very distant from you die really similar cases?
Is our responsibility the same in both cases?
THE PROBLEM OF NEGATIVE RESPONSIBILITY
For a utilitarian, the fact that we have not personally committed any act aimed at causing hunger in the world in no way absolves us from our responsibility for this state of affairs, insofar as, at any rate, we could act to change it. Admittedly we are concerned here with a
negative responsibility, but a responsibility nonetheless.
2For the critics of utilitarianism, this idea of negative responsibility empties the notion of responsibility of any content, because it applies the notion to something other than what we have voluntarily or intentionally caused. They admit only
positive responsibility, that is to say, responsibility for something of which we are voluntarily the cause.
To which the utilitarian replies by insisting upon the absurd implications of deontological doctrines that only admit positive responsibility. Thus, Kant asserts that it is categorically forbidden to lie. According to him, we have to do here with a moral duty that, as such, admits of no exceptions. It even applies to the dramatic circumstance in which, when you are sheltering in your house an innocent pursued by cruel assassins, these latter present themselves at your door and ask you if their victim is within.
3It is hard to grasp Kant’s position unless we take into account the fact that, for him, we are only responsible for what we do intentionally. The immoral acts that others perform while taking advantage of our moral commitments cannot morally be chalked up to us personally. In the circumstance in question, we are absolutely not responsible for what the criminals will do. Besides, we can never be sure of what they will do after our intervention, whereas we can be sure of having defiled our souls if we lie.
Finally, it is because Kant excludes negative responsibility that he can allow himself to assert that we must always tell the truth, no matter what the consequences may be, and even to criminals lacking all scruples. Is the absurd—or, at any rate, counterintuitive—nature of Kant’s argument definitive proof of the validity of the idea of negative responsibility? The utilitarians, for their part, certainly think so. Yet is this argument as counterintuitive as all that? This is a point that does perhaps merit further scrutiny.
