Unveiling the Fallacies: A Critical Examination of Peter Singer’s Book ‘The Life You Can Save’
- 1 The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Peter Singer’s book The Life You Can Save highlights the global concern of child mortality resulting from poverty and its profound impact on the well-being of children. Singer urges affluent individuals to give proportionate to their financial status to global aid organizations in the interest of alleviating poverty among children. However, Singer’s proposal is not entirely flawless. Poverty, particularly in the present, rapidly advancing world, not only poses moral and ethical dilemmas, but also impedes human development, fosters inequality, and undermines social stability. As a result, it needs to be handled with the utmost caution. This paper critically analyzes the flaw in Singer’s argument, emphasizing that individual donations alone are insufficient to solve complex societal issues and highlights the dependency issues and ineffective targeting of charitable efforts, ultimately revealing that while charitable giving has some positive impact, poverty cannot be significantly reduced without addressing non-cash issues, such as medical care, and implementing international laws and policies to incentivize investment in developing countries.
Keywords
giving, poverty, children, charity, policies
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Cite this article
Sheng,Z. (2023). Unveiling the Fallacies: A Critical Examination of Peter Singer’s Book ‘The Life You Can Save’. Communications in Humanities Research,13,100-104.
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