Abstract

The discovery that people far away are in bad shape seems to generate a sense of guilt on the part of many articulate people in our part of the world, even though they are no worse off now that we’ve heard about them than they had been before. I will take it as given that we are certainly responsible for evils we inflict on others, no matter where, and that we owe those people compensation. Not all similarly agree that it is not in general our duty to make other people better off, and therefore not in general our fault when people are not better off than they happen to be, even if perhaps we could have made them so by efforts of our own. Nev ertheless, I have seen no plausible argument that we owe something, as a matter of general duty, to those to whom we have done nothing wrong. Still, morally commendable motives of humanity and sympathy support beneficence, and if we wish to call those “duties,” there is something to be said for that, too. I shall, in fact, try to say it later in this essay.