The Topic

2017 November/December Topic

Resolved: Wealthy nations have an obligation to provide development assistance to other nations.

Negative

No Moral Obligation

Difficult to Articulate Moral Theory Necessitating ObligationDIFFICULT TO FIND A MORAL GROUNDING FOR OBLIGATIONS TO ASSIST OTHERS THAT ONE HAS NO CONNECTION WITHDaniel Callahan, Director Hastings Institute, 1976, Lifeboat Ethics: the moral dilemmas of world hunger, ed. G. Lucas, Jr. & T. Ogletree, p. xii-xiii

But the moral problem remains. At its deepest level that problem reduces to one of moral obligation. To whom are we obligated and under what circumstances? As a basis of moral obligation, humanitarianism and benevolence are very weak. They depend almost entirely upon the goodwill of those with power or money. It is not that one does something to those one helps—it is just that one wants, out of charity or kindness to help them. But, by definition, it is a one-way relationship. As soon as people show themselves ungrateful (and that has been one of the main charges against the recipients of US aid), then the giver feels perfectly justified in stifling the original impulse of kindliness. The old phrase, “the deserving poor,” captures perfectly the dynamism—those poor who are, among other things, respectful and grateful. When the humanitarian impulse is combined with a deliberate calculation of self-interest on the part of the giver, then the stage is set for abuse.

Yet it is by no means easy to find a higher ground, at least one that will command the kind of consensus needed to make massive aid available to others. By a higher ground, I mean a theory of moral obligation toward others which places the emphasis on a duty toward those others, a duty which does not depend upon the vagaries of the way in which, at any given moment, we may feel toward those others. The problem here is an old one. It is not difficult to show that parents have obligations toward their children, or that families have obligations toward each other, or that other citizens have obligations toward their nation. In each of these cases, the basis of the obligation is that of mutual need and interdependence. But is it possible to posit duties toward those outside ones family, community, or national circle? What possible obligations could I have toward total strangers living in another part of the world?

FEW MORAL THEORIES ADEQUATE TO EXPLAIN THE SPECIFICS OF OUR OBLIGATIONS TO DISTANT OTHERS IN NEEDOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p.

It is not only Christian ethics that leaves many problems about distant famines unanswered. Other moral theories are more adequate in dealing with some of the problems, while others do best at different problems. Few of these theories are applied to the alleviation of distant miseries, or show us how to work out who should help whom, to what extent, at what point, and at what cost to themselves or others. Because of this, I shall adopt an exploratory approach and tone in this essay. I shall try both to show something about how particular moral theories can deal with some questions about famine (and not with others) and to use considerations of famine to show some of the strengths and limitations of these theories.

SINGLE MORAL PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE ACTIONS DIFFICULT – ALWAYS FRAUGHT WITH PROBLEMSKwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 161-2

The larger point, of course, is that our conviction that we should save the drowning child doesn’t by itself tell us why we should do so. I have already argued that our mortal intuitions are often more secure than the principles we appeal to in explaining them. There are countless principles that would get you to save the drowning child without justifying your own immiseration. Here’s one:

“If you are the person in the best position to prevent something really awful, and it won’t cost you much to do so, do it.”

Now this principle—which I am inclined, for the moment, to think may be right—simply doesn’t have the radical consequences of the Singer principle. I’m not especially well placed to save the children that UNICEF has told me about. And even if I were, giving away most of my means would radically reduce my quality of life. Perhaps this principle suggests that Bill Gates should give millions to save poor children from dying around the world. But, come to think of it, he does that already.

This principle—I’ll call it the emergency principle—is a low-level one that I think is pretty plausible. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if some philosopher came up with a case where the emergency principle gave what I thought was the wrong answer. That’s because figuring out moral principles, as an idle glance at the history of moral philosophy will show you, is hard . I have talked often in this book about values, in part because I think it is easier to identify values than to identify exceptionless principles. One reason that life is full of hard decisions is precisely that it’s not easy to identify single principles, like the Singer principle, that aim to tell you what to do. (Even the Singer principle tells you what to do only if you can reduce all values to their contributions to the badness in the world, which is something I seriously doubt.) Another reason is that it’s often unclear what the effects will be of what we do.

NO MORAL THEORY JUSTIFIES MORAL OBLIGATION TO REDRESS GLOBAL POVERTYJudith Lichtenberg, Philosophy Professor, University of Maryland, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 81-2The secular philosopher who rejects Anscombe's theistic framework may have an answer to the "or else" question: or else you will be a bad person, a person below the moral minimum. But however common and tempting a reply it is (and I've made it myself many times), it is not very satisfactory. And this brings us to the second theme that can be drawn out of Anscombe's argument. Although Anscombe does not put it in precisely these terms, to explain to someone who is not already convinced that she has a moral obligation to make substantial sacrifices in order to help the poor requires a moral theory of which that is the conclusion.

Not all moral concepts are equally theory-dependent, but the concept of moral obligation is especially so. It cries out for explanation, justification. That is why it is intuitively plausible to say, as Thomson does, that one who doesn't help when he easily could is "indecent" (or, alternatively, a jerk) — less theory-dependent ideas — while at the same time denying that he violates a moral obligation. The claim of moral obligation demands a more robust account. The most popular account is probably a contractual/libertarian one according to which positive obligations arise only from agreements, implicit or explicit.

The theistic views that Anscombe describes contain robust theories of the appropriate kind. But which secular moral theory is it that entails a strong moral obligation to assist the world's poor? Some interpretations of consequentialism or utilitarianism (such as Singer's) may imply such an obligation, but others do not. Some

deontological views may, but others do not. Some virtue theories may demand significant sacrifices of the good person, but — depending on their particular conception of virtue — others do not.

So to establish that people have strong moral obligations to help the world's poor, we would have to settle on an acceptable moral theory. The search to establish one is certainly a legitimate enterprise, but it is not one that

interests everyone. One may be skeptical of such theorizing because one believes it misguided in one way or another - because one does not believe that the construction and development of moral theories, as these are usually understood, is the most useful way to reflect on and understand moral matters. One may also be impatient with such theorizing because of a concern to reform our practices and a belief that theorizing of this kind does not help us in this endeavor.

Common Human Identity Doesn’t Justify ObligationCOMMON HUMAN IDENTITY DOESN’T JUSTIFY OBLIGATION TO THE NEEDS OF OTHERSMichael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p. 27-8

What is it then which binds those who have more than enough and those with less than enough in the ties of obligation? For most people, obligations are a matter of custom, habit and historical inheritance as much as a matter of explicit moral commitment. But might there not be something more than custom, habit and inheritance? Whatever the customs of a country, it would seem ‘unnatural’ for a father to deny his duty towards the needs of his children, unnatural for a daughter to refuse to give shelter to her homeless father. Beneath all these, there is nature: the natural feeling which ought to exist between father and children and more mysteriously between human beings as such.

The language of human needs is a basic way of speaking about this idea of a natural human identity. We want to know what we have in common with each other beneath the infinity of our differences. We want to know what it means to be human, and we want to know what the knowledge commits us to in terms of duty. What distinguishes the language of needs is its claim that human beings actually feel a common and shared identity in the basic fraternity of hunger, thirst, cold, exhaustion, loneliness or sexual passion. The possibility of human solidarity rests on this idea of natural human identity. A society in which strangers would feel common belonging and mutual responsibility to each other depends on trust, and trust reposes in turn on the idea that beneath difference there is identity.

Yet when one thinks about it, this is a puzzling idea. For who has ever met a pure and natural human being? We are always social beings, clothed in our skin, our class, income, our history, and as such, our obligations to each other are always based on difference. Ask me who I am responsible for, and I will tell you about my wife and child, my parents, my friends and relations, and my fellow citizens. My obligations are defined by what it means to be a citizen, a father, a husband, a son, in this culture, in this time and place. The role of pure human duty seems obscure. It is difference which seems to rule my duties, not identity.

DIFFERENCES MORE IMPORTANT THAN COMMON IDENTITY IN GIVING MEANING TO LIFEMichael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p. 29

The natural identity of need helps one to understand why the new language of universal claims—the language of universal human rights—makes so little headway against the claims of racial, tribal, and social difference. The needs we actually share we share with animals. What is common to us matters much less than what differentiates us. What makes life precious for us is difference, not identity. We do not prize our equality. We think of ourselves not as human beings first, but as sons, and daughters, fathers and mothers, tribesmen, and neighbors. It is this dense web of relations and the meanings which they give to life that satisfies the needs which really matter to us.

GROUNDING THE RATIONALE FOR OBLIGATIONS TO OTHERS IN SHARED HUMANITY INEFFECTIVE AND DANGEROUS Michael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p. 51-3

Lear thought that our social duties, like the duty of father to daughter, must be built upon a natural human duty which every human being accepts. He thought, as many of us think, that our social duties to specific persons in this time and place – our duties as fathers, sons, daughters or citizens – build up in a pyramid that rests on the solid shared ground of natural duty. That is how it ought to be. Beneath the social there ought to be the natural. Beneath the duties that tie us to individuals, there ought to be a duty that ties us to all men and women whatever their relation to us. In fact, beneath the social, the historical, there is nothing at all.

When a Jew could no longer appeal to his fellow German as a neighbor, as a friend, as a relation, as a partner, as a fellow Jew even, when at the end, naked at the barbed wire, he could only appeal to the man with the whip as a fellow human being, then it was more than too late. When men confront each other as men, as abstract universals, one with power, the other with none, then man in certain to behave as a wolf to his own kind.

To bring justice to the heath, to protect the Tom O’Bedlams hurled into no-man’s-land by war and persecution, there has arisen the doctrine of universal human rights and the struggle to make murderers and torturers respect the inviolability of human subjects. If we all have the same needs, we all have the same rights.

Yet we recognize our mutual humanity in our differences, in our individuality, in our history, in the faithful discharge of our particular culture of obligations. There is no identity we can recognize in our universality. There is no such thing as love of the human race, only the love of this person for that, in this time and not in any other.

These abstract subjects created by our century of tyranny and terror cannot be protected by abstract doctrines of universal human needs and universal human rights, and not merely because these doctrines are words, and whips are things. The problem is not to defend universality, but to give these abstract individuals the chance to become real, historical individuals again, with the social relations and the power to protect themselves. The heath must be ploughed up, put under the sovereignty of a nation armed and capable of protecting its people. The people who have no homeland must be given one; they cannot depend on the uncertain and fitful protection of a world conscience defending them as examples of the universal abstraction Man. If nations cannot feed their people, they must seize the means to achieve autarky and self-sufficiency in the satisfaction of basic need within the international economy. Woe betide any many who depends on the abstract humanity of another for his food and protection. Woe betide any person who has no state, no family, no neighborhood, no community that can stand behind to enforce his claim of need. Lear learns too late that it is power and violence that rule the heath, not obligation.

APPEALS TO COMMON IDENTITY AS HUMANS FAIL – WE ARE TOO DEPENDENT ON EMBRACING OUR DIFFERENCESMichael Ignatieff, Professor Human Rights Policy-Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, 1984, The Needs of Strangers: An essay on privacy, solidarity and the politics of being human, p. 130-1

Yet—and with this we return to Lear, to the “poor, bare, forked animal” – it is doubtful that our sense of identity as members of a species is strong enough to overcome our sense of identity based on differences. We are the first generation to have seen our planet under the gaze of eternity, not from this mountain top or that city tower, but from an astronaut’s window, revolving mist-wrapped in the cobalt darkness of space. We are the first generation to have lived under the shared threat of ecological and nuclear catastrophe. Progress, the passage from savagery to civilization, now conveys us towards apocalypse, the end of time. The tragic history of need, of which Smith and Rousseau were the great visionaries, has finally made us one: every part of the planet is now subject to the spiraling dialectic of need and human labor, and every part of the planet is under the same threat of extinction. Yet—and this is the truth before which thinking about politics has stalled—the more evident our common needs as a species has become, the more brutal becomes the human insistence on the claims of difference. The centripetal forces of need, labor and science which are pulling us together as a species are counter-balanced by centrifugal forces, the claims of tribe, race, class, section, region, and nation, pulling us apart.

Millions of people have perished since 1945 in the wars, revolutions, and civil strife safely conducted under the umbrella of a nuclear peace, under the watching gaze of our imperial policemen. Most of this dying has been in the name of freedom, in the name of liberation from a colonial tribal, religious or racial oppressor. It is a waste of breath to press the claims of common human identity on men and women prepared to die in defense of their claims of difference. There will be no end to the dying, and no time for the claim of our common species being, until each people is safe within its borders, with a sovereignty which makes them master of their needs. Only when difference has its home, when the need for belonging in all its murderous intensity has been assuaged, can our common identity begin to find its voice.

Drowning Child Analogy/Singer Principle FlawedSINGER’S “SHALLOW POND” STORY AND PRINCIPLE HAS MANY SHORTCOMINGS AS AN ACCEPTABLE BASIS FOR A MORAL OBLIGATIONKwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 162-5

The emergency principle may or may not be sound, but it tells me nothing about what I should do when UNICEF sends me a request for money. I think that a cosmopolitan who believes that every human being matters cannot be satisfied with that. So let’s start with the sort of core moral ideas increasingly articulated in our conception of basic human rights. People have needs – health, food, shelter, education—that must be met if they are to lead decent lives. There are certain options that they ought to have: to seek sexual satisfaction with consenting partners; to have children if they wish to; to move from place to place; to express and share ideas; to help manage their societies; to exercise their imaginations. (These are options. People should also be free not to exercise them.) And there are certain obstacles to a good life that ought not to be imposed upon them: needless pain, unwarranted contempt, the mutilation of their bodies. To recognize that everybody is entitled, where possible to have their basic needs met, to exercise certain human capabilities, and to be protected from certain harms, is not yet to say how all these tings are to be assured. But if you accept that these basic needs ought to be met, what obligations have you incurred? I want to offer some constraints on an acceptable answer.

First, the primary mechanism for ensuring these entitlements remains the nation-state. There are a few political cosmopolitans who say they want a world government. But the cosmopolitanism I am defending prizes a variety of political arrangements, provided of course, each state grants every individual what he or she deserves. A global state would have at least three obvious problems. It could easily accumulate uncontrollable power, which it might use to do great harm; it would often be unresponsive to local needs; and it would almost certainly reduce the variety of institutional experimentation from which all of us can learn. Accepting the nation-state means accepting that we have a special responsibility for the life and the justice of our own; but we still have to play our part in ensuring that all states respect the rights and meet the needs of their citizens. If they cannot, then all of us—through our nations, if they will do it, and in spite of them, if they won’t –share the collective obligation to change them; and if the reason they fail their citizens is that they lack resources, providing resources can be part of that collective obligation. That is an equally fundamental cosmopolitan commitment.

But, second, our obligation is not to carry the whole burden alone. Each of us should do our fair share; but we cannot be required to do more. This is a constraint, however inchoate, that the Shallow Pond theorists do not respect. The Singer principle just doesn’t begin to capture the subtlety of our actual moral thought. A different philosopher’s story, this one offered by Richard W. Miller, makes the point. An adult is plummeting from a tenth-story window, and you, on the sidewalk below, know that you can save that person’s life by cushioning his fall. If you did so, however, you would very likely suffer broken bones, which would heal, perhaps painfully and imperfectly, over a period of months. (Suppose you know all this because you’re an orthopedic surgeon.) To Miller it’s clear that you can do your “fair share in making the world a better place while turning down this chance for world-improvement.” Since the

death you failed to prevent is worse than a few months of suffering, the Singer Principle, of course, says otherwise. Our ordinary moral thinking makes distinctions the principle doesn’t capture.

Now, I agree that it’s not easy to specify what our fair share might be, and especially how it might be affected by the derelictions of others. Suppose we had a plan for guaranteeing everyone his or her basic entitlements. Let’s call the share that I owe—suppose it would be as a development tax—my basic obligation. Even if we could get everyone to agree on the virtues of the plan; and even if we could determine how each of us, depending on our resources, should contribute his or her fair share, we can be pretty confident that some people would not give their fair share. That means there would still be some unmet entitlements. What is the obligation of those who have already met their obligations? Is it enough simply to say, “I know there are unmet entitlements, but I have done my part”? After all, the unmet entitlements are still unmet, and they’re still entitlements.

Third, whatever our basic obligations, they must be consistent with our being, as I said at the beginning, partial to those closest to us: to our families, our friends, our nations; to the many groups that call upon us through our identities chosen and unchosen; and, of course, to ourselves. Whatever my basic obligations are to the poor far away, they cannot be enough, I believe, to trump my concerns for my family, my friends, my country; nor can an argument that every life matters require me to be indifferent to the fact that one of those lives is mine. This constraint is another that the Shallow Pond theorists are indifferent toward. They think that it is so important to avoid the bad things in other lives that we should be willing to accept for ourselves, our families and friends, lives that are barely worth living. This third constraint interacts, I think with the worry that I expressed about the second. For if so many people in the world are not doing their share—and they clearly are not—it seems to me I cannot be required to derail my life to take up the slack.

UNGER & SINGER’S PRINCIPLE JUSTIFYING ASSISTING THE DROWNING CHILD IS A FLAWED JUSTIFICATION FOR A GENERAL MORAL OBLIGATIONKwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 160-1

How does Unger get us from where we are to where he want us to be? By starting with that drowning child. No decent person will want to conclude that not muddying my trousers justifies letting a child drown, not even if my suit was hand-tailored in mohair in Savile Row. But to go anywhere with this judgment about a particular case, you have to draw a moral; and clearly how far you can get will depend on exactly which moral you draw. Unger’s most extreme statements require both drawing a very general principle and making some strong empirical assumptions. I think that both the principle and the assumptions are wrong.

Here’s a principle that connects the drowning child to the conclusions I quoted above.

“If you can prevent something bad from happening at the cost of something less bad, you ought to do it.”

There seems, at first, no doubt that this principle—which since it appears to motivate some of Peter Singer’s arguments, I’ll call the Singer Principle requires you to prevent bad things from happening if the cost is something less awful. Upon reflection, however, it’s not so clear that the principle even gets the

drowning case right. Saving the child may be preventing something bad; but not saving the child might, for all we know, prevent something worse. After all, shouldn’t I be busy about saving those hundreds of thousands of starving children? And wouldn’t selling my suit raise a few hundred dollars? And wouldn’t ruining it mean that I couldn’t raise those dollars? The principle says that, if this kid right here has to drown for me to save my suit for sale so I can save, say, ninety other children, so be it; though it also leaves me free to let the ninety die, if I can find something worse to prevent. As for that hiker with the bleeding foot, he’s plainly out of luck: why hurt the sedan’s resale value, given all the good in the world we could do with the money? The seeming moderation of the principle hides a powerful claim: it’s really a way of saying you should do the most you can to minimize the amount of badness in the world. I have no idea how I would do that. But there’s no reason to think it involves bankrupting myself to send a large check to UNICEF. There’s bound to be at least one thing I can do with the money that would do more good. The problem would be working out what that was.

“SAVING LIVES” IS NOT THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS – IMPOSING AN OBLIGATION FOR THIS CROWDS OUT THE OTHER THINGS WE SPEND MONEY ON THAT ENRICH OUR LIVESKwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 166

Let me add one final, general constraint. Any plausible answer to the question of what we owe to others will have to take account of many values; no sensible story of our obligations to strangers can ignore the diversity of the things that matter in human life. Cosmopolitans, more than anyone else, know this. Imagine a drab totalitarian regime with excellent prenatal health care. After a “velvet revolution,” a vibrant democracy emerges and freedom reigns. But perhaps because the health care system is a little wobblier (or perhaps because some pregnant mothers exercise their newly won right to smoke and drink), the rates of infant mortality are a little higher. Most people would still plump for the velvet revolution. We think the death of a child is a very bad thing; but clearly we don’t think it’s the only thing that matters. This is part of why the child in the pond isn’t adequate to the real complexity of our thinking.

What would the world look like if people always spent their money to alleviate diarrhea in the Third World and never on a ticket to the opera (or a donation to a local theater company, gallery, symphony orchestra, library, or what have you)? Well, it would probably be a flat and dreary place. You do not need to say –as Unger would invite you to—that the lives of the children you could have saved were just worth less than your evening at the ballet. That answer presupposes that there is really only one thing that matters: that all values are measurable in a single thin currency of goodness and badness. It was terribly wrong that slaves were worked to death building the pyramids – or, for that matter, in building the United States – but it not therefore terrible that those monuments, or this nation, exist. Not all values have a single measure. If the founders of this nation had dealt only with the most urgent moral problems facing them – and let us suppose that it was, indeed, slavery—they would almost certainly not have set in motion the slow march of political, cultural, and moral progress, with its sallies and its retreats, that Americans justly take pride in. Would you really want to live in a world in which the only thing anyone had ever cared about was saving lives?

UNGER’S ARGUMENT THAT FAILING TO GIVE TO STRANGERS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF KILLING THEM IS FLAWEDKwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 166-7

I realize that, to some, what I have just said is shocking. I have defended going to the opera when children are dying, children who could be saved with the price of admission. It is, perhaps almost as counterintuitive to say this as it is to say, with Unger, that we should sacrifice nearly everything we value to save the poor. So remember, when you go to the opera, others are spending money, too; money that could save the same children. You have no special relationship to their deaths, as you would if you ignored the emergency principle. Nor is this like willing the mandarin to death. You are not killing anyone by going to the opera. Part of the strategy of Unger’s argument is to persuade us that not intervening to save someone because we have something else worth doing is morally equivalent to killing him in the name of those other values. We should resist the equation.

SINGER’S BENEVOLENCE PRINCIPLE UNWORKABLE – PEOPLE DON’T SUPPORT THE UNLIMITED NATURE OF THE OBLIGATIONRichard J. Arneson, Philosophy Professor U. California @ San Diego, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 33-4But this principle of benevolence is far more stringent than commonsense opinion, for even after one has donated most of one's income each month to world poverty relief, one could still donate more, and should do so according to the principle. For after all, the further reduction in one's available spending money does not incur anything that is comparable in badness to the loss that occurs to those in need of charitable relief if one's extra monthly donation is not forthcoming. The Singer Principle thus entails that one should continue to give until the point at which the marginal value of the next bit of money one might give would do equal good as famine relief and as an increment to one's available spending money . Very few inhabitants of affluent industrialized societies today act as though they believe that the morality of benevolence is anywhere near this demanding. Hence the puzzle: what distinguishes the case of the drowning child nearby from the case of the distant starving stranger? This chapter considers three strategies of argument that aim to set moral limits on the requirements of beneficence. In the end none of these strategies proves viable, so the Singer Principle is embraced. But of course from the fact that some arguments for rejecting a moral principle are unsuccessful it does not follow that the principle is correct . My aim is limited to showing that

it is harder than one might think to translate our intuitive revulsion against some implications of broadly consequentialist principles of beneficence such as the Singer Principle into a theoretically satisfying rationale for rejecting the lot. Still, the revulsion persists. Toward the end of this essay I attempt to lessen the counterintuitive sting of consequentialist beneficence principles by distinguishing between what one morally ought to do and what one is morally obligated to do and should be punished in some way for failing to do.

NO MORAL BLAME FOR FAILURE TO ADHERE TO THE SINGER PRINCIPLE OF BENEVOLENCERichard J. Arneson, Philosophy Professor U. California @ San Diego, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 51-2In response to the claim that affluent people should entirely devote their lives to the relief of the suffering and crippling poverty of the worst-off persons on the globe, one's initial response is not so much that this claim is unjustified as that affluent people cannot be blamed for failing to live up to this

austere ideal of self-sacrifice. Given human nature, which strongly inclines us to put ourselves and those near and dear to us

first in our priorities when we decide how to act, it would be at the least extremely difficult for people to adhere to the Singer Principle, and given the great difficulty of complying with this code, it is no great sin that we do not, and priggish

to act as though it were. There is the further consideration that people are not trained to accept anything close to the demands of the Singer Principle, so their intuitive responses instilled by processes of socialization pull against acceptance of it and compliance with it. So we should sharply distinguish what it is right and wrong to do and what we

should be praised and blamed for doing and not doing. It is morally right to do the optimal act and morally wrong to do anything else, but in many circumstances including the context in which issues of famine relief and relief of global poverty arise, one is not (or hardly at all) blameworthy for failing to do what is morally right.

Ethical Egoism/Objectivism Negates Moral ObligationETHICAL EGOISM ARGUES THAT WE ONLY HAVE MORAL OBLIGATIONS TO OURSELVESJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 76-7

But one person’s common sense is another person’s naïve platitude. Some thinkers have maintained that, in fact, we have no “natural” duties to other people. Ethical Egoism is the idea that each person ought to p pursue his or her own self-interest exclusively. It is different from Psychological Egoism, which is a theory of human nature concerned with how people do behave—Psychological Egoism says that people do in fact always pursue their own interests. Ethical Egoism, by contrast, is a normative theory—that is, a theory about how we ought to behave . Regardless of how we do behave, Ethical Egoism says we have no moral duty except to do what is best for ourselves.

It is a challenging theory. It contradicts some of our deepest moral beliefs—beliefs held by most of us, at any rate—but it is not easy to refute. We will examine the most important arguments for and against it. If it turns out to be true, then of course that is immensely important. But even if it turns out to be false, there is still much to be learned from examining it – we may, for example, gain some insight into the reasons why we do have obligations to other people.

ETHICAL EGOISM ARGUES THAT THE SOLE OBLIGATION PEOPLE HAVE IS TO THEMSELVESJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 77

But before looking at the arguments, we should e a little clearer about exactly what this theory says and what it does not say. In the first place, Ethical Egoism does not say that one should promote one’s interests as well as the interests of others. That would be an ordinary, unexceptional view. Ethical Egoism is the radical view that one’s only duty is to promote one’s own interests. According to Ethical Egoism, there is only one ultimate principle of conduct, the principle of self-interest, and this principle sums up all of one’s natural duties and obligations .

ETHICAL EGOISM POSITS THAT ALL OUR OBLIGATIONS DERIVE FROM THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SELF-INTERESTJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 82

The third line of reasoning takes a somewhat different approach. Ethical Egoism is usually presented as a revisionist moral philosophy , that is, as a philosophy that says our common-sense moral views are mistaken and needs to be changed. It is possible, however, to interpret Ethical Egoism in a much less radical way, as a theory that accepts common-sense morality and offers a surprising account of its basis.

The less radical interpretation goes as follows. In everyday life, we assume that we are obliged to obey certain rules. We must avoid doing harms to others, speak the truth, keep our promises, and so on. At

first glance, these duties appear to be very different from one another. They appear to have little in common. Yet from a theoretical point of view, we may wonder whether there is not some hidden unity underlying the hodgepodge of separate duties. Perhaps there is some small number of fundamental principles that explain all the rest, just as in physics there are basic principles that bring together and explain diverse phenomena. From a theoretical point of view, the smaller the number of basic principles, the better. Best of all would be one fundamental principle, from which all the rest could be derived. Ethical Egoism then, would be the theory that all our duties are ultimately derived from the one fundamental principle of self-interest.

EACH PERSON SHOULD ACT TO MAXIMIZE HIS OR HER SELF-INTEREST IN THE LONG TERMMoreland, 97 (J.P., “Ethical Egoism and Biblical Self-Interest”, WTJ 59 (1997) 257-698)The most plausible form of ethical egoism, embraced by philosophers such as Ayn Rand and John Hospers, is called universal or impersonal rule-egoism (hereafter, simply ethical egoism). Since Hospers is the most prominent philosopher to advocate ethical egoism, his definition is the most pertinent: each person has a moral duty to follow those moral rules that will be in the agent's maximal self-interest over the long haul . 5 For the ethical egoist, one has a duty to follow "correct" moral rules. And the factor that makes a rule a "correct" one is that, if followed, it will be in the agent's own best interests in the long run. Each person ought to advance his own selfinterests and that is the sole foundation of morality. Ethical egoism is sometimes confused and identified with various distinct issues. First, there is individual or personal ethical egoism which says everyone has a duty to act so as to serve my self-interests. Here, everyone is morally obligated to serve the speaker's long term best interests. Second, there is psychological egoism, roughly, the idea that each person can only do that act which the person takes to maximize his or her own self- interest. Psychological egoism is a descriptive thesis about motivation to the effect that we can only act on motives that are in our own self-interests. As we shall see shortly, psychological egoism is sometimes used as part of an argument for ethical egoism, but the two are distinct

theses. Third, ethical egoism is not the same thing as egotism —an irritating character trait of always trying to be the center of attention. Nor is it the same as what is sometimes called being a wanton. A wanton has no sense of duty at all, but only acts to satisfy his or her own desires. The only conflict the wanton knows is that between two or more desires he cannot simultaneously satisfy (e.g. to eat more and lose weight). The wanton knows nothing about duty. Arguably, animals are wantons. Fifth, ethical egoism is not to be confused with being an egoist, i.e. being someone who believes that the sole worth of an act is its fairly immediate benefits to the individual himself . With this understanding of ethical egoism as a backdrop, let us look at the arguments for and against ethical egoism that have been preeminent in the literature. A detailed treatment of these arguments is not possible here, but by looking briefly at the main considerations usually brought to bear on ethical egoism, a feel for its strengths and weaknesses as a normative ethical theory emerges.

Ethical Egosim/Objectivism is the Best Moral PolicyAYN RAND ARGUES THAT ETHICAL EGOISM IS THE ONLY MORAL PHILOSOPHY THAT RESPECTS THE INTEGRITY OF THE INDIVIDUALJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 80

The second argument was put forward with some force by Ayn Rand, a writer little heeded by professional philosophers but who nevertheless was enormously popular on college campuses during the 1960s and 1970s. Ethical Egoism, in her view, is the only ethical philosophy that respects the integrity of the individual human life. She regarded the ethics of “altruism: as a totally destructive idea, both in society as a whole and in the lives of individuals taken in by it. Altruism, to her way of thinking, leads to a denial of the value of the individual. It says to a person: your life is merely something that may be sacrificed. “If a man accepts the ethics of altruism,” she writes, “his first concern is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.” Moreover, those who would promote this idea are beneath contempt – they are parasites who, rather than working to build and sustain their own lives, leech off those who do. Again, she writes:

“Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes, and thugs can be of no value to a human being—nor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to their needs, demands, and protections, a society that treats him as a sacrificial animal and penalizes him for his virtues in order to reward them for their vices, which means: a society based on the ethics of altruism.”

By “sacrificing one’s life” Rand does not necessarily mean anything so dramatic as dying. A person’s life consists (in part) of projects undertaken and good earned and created. To demand that a person abandon his projects or give up his goods is also a clear effort to “sacrifice his life.” Furthermore, throughout her writings Rand also suggests that there is a metaphysical basis for egoist ethics . Somehow, it is the only ethics that takes seriously the reality of the individual person . She bemoans “the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men’s capacity to grasp…the value of an individual; it reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out.”

MULTIPLE PROBLEMS WITH TRYING TO ACT FOR OTHERS – BEST POLICY IS TO LOOK OUT FOR OURSELVESJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 78-9

The first argument has several variations, each suggesting the same general point:

a. Each of us is intimately familiar with our own individual wants and needs . Moreover, each of us is uniquely placed to pursue those wants and needs effectively. At the same time, we know the desires and needs of other people only imperfectly, and we are not well situated to pursue them. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that if we set out to be “our brother’s keeper,” we would often bungle the job and end up doing more mischief than good.

b. At the same, the policy of “looking out for others” is an offensive intrusion into other people’s privacy; it is essentially a policy of minding other people’s business.

c. Making other people the object of one’s “charity” is degrading to them; it robs them of their individual dignity and self-respect. The offer of charity says, in effect, that they are not competent to care for themselves; and the statement is self-fulfilling—they cease to be self-

reliant and become passively dependent on others. That is why the recipients of “charity” are so often resentful rather than appreciative.

What this adds up to is that the policy of “looking out for others” is self-defeating. If we want to promote the best interests of everyone alike, we should not adopt so-called altruistic policies of behavior. On the contrary, if each person looks after his or her own interests, it is more likely that everyone will be better off, in terms of both physical and emotional well-being. Thus Robert G. Olson says in his book The Morality of Self-Interest (1965), “The individual is most likely to contribute to social betterment by rationally pursing his own best long-range interests.” Or as Alexander Pope said more poetically: “Thus God and nature formed the general frame

And bad the self-love and social be the same.”

ETHICAL EGOISM IS A SOUND MORAL PHILOSOPHY THAT RESPECTS THE INDIVIDUALJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 80-1

What then of the starving people? It might be argued, in response, that Ethical Egoism “reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out”—namely the human being who is starving. Rand quotes with approval the evasive answer given by one of her followers: “Once, when Barbara Brandon was asked by a student: ‘What will happen to the poor...?—she answered: ‘If you want to help them, you will not be stopped.’”

All these remarks are, I think, part of one continuous argument that can be summarized like this:

1. A person has only one life to live. If we place any value on the individual—that is, if the individual has any moral worth—then we must agree that this life is of supreme importance. After all, it is all one has, and all one is.

2. The ethics of altruism regards the life of the individual as something that must be ready to sacrifice for the good of others.

3. Therefore the ethics of altruism does not take seriously the value of the human individual. 4. Ethical Egoism , which allows each person to view his or her own life as being of ultimate value,

does take the human individual seriously—in fact, it is the only philosophy that does so. 5. Thus, Ethical Egoism is the philosophy that ought to be accepted.

ETHICAL EGOISM IS A USEFUL MORAL BASIS FOR JUSTIFYING WHAT WE OUGHT TO DOJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 82-3

Taken in this way, Ethical Egoism is not such a radical doctrine. It does not challenge common-sense morality; it only tries to explain and systematize it. And it does a surprisingly successful job. It can provide plausible explanations of the duties mentioned above, and more:

a. If we make a habit of doing things that are harmful to other people, people will not be reluctant to do things that will harm us . We will be shunned and despised; others will not have us as friends and will not do us favors when we need them. If our offenses against others are serious enough, we may even up in jail. Thus it is to our own advantage to avoid harming others.

b. If we lie to other people, we will suffer all the ill effects of a bad reputation. People will distrust us and avoid doing business with us. We will often need for people to be honest with us, but we can hardly expect them to feel much of an obligation to be honest with us if they know we have not been honest with them. Thus it is to our own advantage to be truthful.

c. It is to our advantage to be able to enter into mutually beneficial arrangements with other people. To benefit from those arrangements, we need to be able to rely on theirs to keep their parts of the bargains we make with them—we need to be able to rely on them to keep their promises to us. But we can hardly expect others to keep their promises to us if we are not willing to keep our promises to them. Therefore, from the point of view of self-interest, we should keep our promises.

Pursuing this line of reasoning, Thomas Hobbes suggested that the principle of Ethical Egoism leads to nothing less than the Golden Rule: we should “do unto others” because if we do, others will be more likely to “do unto us.”

AT: Objections to Ethical EgoismETHICAL EGOISM DOESN’T FORBID ACTIONS THAT HELP OTHERS AS LONG AS THE MOTIVE FOR ACTING IS TO HELP YOURSELFJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 77

However, Ethical Egoism does not say that you should avoid actions that help others, either . It may very well be that in m any instances your interests coincide with the interests of others, so that in helping yourself you will be aiding others willy-nilly. Or it may happen that aiding others is an effective means for creating some benefit for yourself. Ethical Egoism does not forbid such actions; in fact, it may demand them. The theory insists only that in such cases the benefits to others is not what makes the act right. What makes the act right is, rather, the fact that it is to one’s own advantage.

ETHICAL EGOISM DOESN’T ENDORSE ACTIONS THAT CAUSE SHORT TERM PLEASURE BUT LONG TERM HARMJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 77-8

Finally, Ethical Egoism does not imply that in pursuing one’s interests one ought always to do what one wants to do, or what gives one the most pleasure in the short run. Someone may want to do something that is not good for himself, or that will eventually cause himself more grief than pleasure—he may want to drink a lot or smoke cigarettes or take drugs or waste his best years at the race track. Ethical Egoism would frown on all this, regardless of the momentary pleasure it affords. It says that a person ought to do what really is to his or her own best advantage over the long run . It endorses selfishness, but it doesn’t endorse foolishness.

BAIER’S OBJECTION THAT ETHICAL EGOISM CAN’T RESOLVE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST FLAWEDJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 85

But a defender of Ethical Egoism might reply that he does not accept this conception of morality . For him, life is essentially a long series of conflicts in which each person is struggling to come out on top; and the principle he accepts—the principle of Ethical Egoism—simply urges each one to do his or her best to win. On his view, the moralist is not like a courtroom judge who resolves disputes. Instead, he is like the Commissioner of Boxing, who urges each fighter to do his best. So the conflict between B and K will be resolved not by the application of an ethical theory but by one or the other of them winning the struggle. The egoist will not be embarrassed by this—on the contrary, he will think it no more than a realistic view of the nature of things.

ARGUMENT THAT IT IS LOGICALLY SELF-CONTRADICTORY WRONGJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 87

When the argument is set out in this way, we can see its hidden flaw. The logical contradiction—that it is both wrong and not wrong for K to prevent B from liquidating him—does not follow simply from the principle of Ethical Egoism. It follows from that principle and the additional premise expressed in step (5) –namely, that “it is wrong to prevent someone from doing his duty.” Thus we are not compelled by the logic of the argument to reject Ethical Egoism. Instead, we could simply reject this additional premise, and the contradiction would be avoided. This is surely what the ethical egoist would want to do, for the ethical egoist would never say, without qualification, that it is always wrong to prevent someone from doing his duty. He would say, instead, that whether one ought to prevent someone from doing his duty depends entirely on whether it would be to one’s advantage to do so . Regardless of whether we think this is a correct view, it is, at the very least a consistent view, and so this attempt to convict the egoist of self-contradiction fails.

Psychological Egoism Negates Moral ObligationPSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM POSITS THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO ACT UNSELFISHLY – THEREFORE THERE IS NO MORAL OBLIGATION TO DO SOJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 62

Morality and psychology go together. Morality tells us what we ought to do; but there is little point to if we are not able to do as we ought. It may be said that we should love our enemies, but that is empty talk unless we are capable of loving them. A sound morality must be based on a realistic conception of what is possible for human beings.

Almost every system of morality recommends that we behave unselfishly. It is said that we should take the interests of other people into account when we are deciding what to do: we should not harm other people; in fact, we should try to be helpful to them whenever possible – even if it means forgoing some advantage for ourselves.

But are we capable of being unselfish? There is a theory of human nature, once widely held among philosophers, psychologists, and economists, and still held by many ordinary people, that says we are not capable of unselfishness. According to this theory, known as Psychological Egoism , each person is so constituted that he will look out only for his own interests. Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect people to behave “altruistically.” Human nature being what it is, people will respond to the needs of others only when there is something in it for themselves. Pure altruism is a myth – it simply does not exist.

If this view is correct, people are very different from what we usually suppose. Of course, no one doubts that each of us cares very much about his own welfare. But we also believe that we care about others as well, at least to some extent. If Psychological Egoism is correct, this is only an illusion—in the final analysis, we care nothing for other people. Because it so contradicts our usual conception of ourselves, this is a shocking doctrine. Why have so many believed it to be true?

CHARITABLE INSTINCT AND BEHAVIOR DOES NOT REFUTE PSCYHOLOGICAL EGOISMJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 64

Charity. This is the most general motive that we ascribe to people when we think they are acting from a concern for others. The Oxford English Dictionary devotes almost four columns to “charity.” It is defined variously as “The Christian love o our fellowman” and “Benevolence to one’s neighbors.” But for the psychological egoist, such neighborly love does not exist, and so charity must be understood in a radically different way. In his essay “On Human Nature,” Hobbes describes it like this: “There can be no greater argument to a man, of his own power, than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs: and this is that conception wherein consisteth charity.”

Thus charity is a delight one takes in the demonstration of one’s powers. The charitable man is demonstrating to himself and to the world that he is more capable than others. He can not only take care of himself, he has enough left over for others. He is really just showing off his own superiority.

NO SUCH THING AS UNSELFISH ACTS – WE ARE SEEKING PLEASURE IN DOING THEMJames Rachels, Philosophy Professor University of Alabama @ Birmingham, 1993, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 67-8

The second general argument for Psychological Egoism appeals to the fact that so-called unselfish actions produce a sense of self-satisfaction in the person who does them. Acting “unselfishly” makes people feel good about themselves . This has often been noted and has been put in various ways: “It gives him a clear conscience” or “He couldn’t sleep at night if he had done otherwise” or “He would have been ashamed of himself for not doing it” are familiar ways of making the same point. This sense of self-satisfaction is a pleasant state of consciousness, which we desire and seek. Therefore, actions are “unselfish” only at a superficial level of analysis. If we dig deeper, we find that the point of acting “unselfishly” is really to achieve this pleasant state of consciousness. Jones will feel much better about himself for having given the money for famine relief – if he had gone to the movies, he would have felt terrible about it—and this is the real point of the action.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM PROVES ALL OTHER ETHICAL SYSTEMS ARE INCOHERENTMoreland, 97 (J.P., “Ethical Egoism and Biblical Self-Interest”, WTJ 59 (1997) 257-698)Among the arguments for ethical egoism, two have distinguished themselves, at least in textbook treatments of the position. 6 First, it is argued that ethical egoism follows from psychological egoism in this way: psychological egoism is true and this implies that we always and cannot help but act egoistically. This is a fact about human motivation and action. Further, ought implies can. If I ought to do x, if I have a duty to do x, then I must be able to do x. If I cannot do something, then I have no duty or responsibility to do it. Applied to egoism, this means that since I can act egoistically, then I have a duty to do so and since I cannot act non-egoistically, then I have no duty to do so. Thus, ethical egoism is the correct picture of moral obligation in keeping with what we know about human motivation.

Obligation Limited to Those Who Have a Right to Make Demands on Us

MORAL OBLIGATIONS LIMITED TO THOSE THAT HAVE A RIGHT TO OUR PERFORMANCE OF DUTYOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 282

John Stuart Mill claims that utilitarians can make this distinction. Obligations of justice are, he says, those to whose performance some other has a right. For example, justice requires that we not assault others without cause and that they have a right to our controlling ourselves and not doing so. Duties of justice can be contrasted with other duties to whose performance others have no right. As a utilitarian, one may have an obligation to share one’s good fortune with needy others, since doing so would presumably increase the total happiness of humankind. But one cannot share with all others, since they are too many, and it is not possible to tell who has the best claim to beneficience. So none of the needy can be said to have a right to acts of justice. If a utilitarian gives no help to anyone needy, then he or she has done nothing unjust, though one who has some time to spare ought to do further acts that produce happiness.

MORAL OBLIGATION FRAMED IN TERMS OF HUMAN RIGHTS DOES NOT JUSTIFY AN OBLIGATION AGAINST ANY PARTICULAR ACTORCharles R. Bietz, Politics Professor Princeton, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 208 The relevant idea of assistance will plainly be fairly broad and will leave considerable room for quasi-empirical dispute about how it would be best accomplished. Among other things, this means that an individual whose human right is violated does not necessarily have a claim-right, against any specific individual agent for direct provision of the substance of the right – for food, for example, or for shelter or health care. This seems to depart from the ordinary understanding of a right and might therefore prompt an objection. What could be the practical value of human rights if they cannot be depended on to serve as grounds of claims? To reply: human rights do indeed serve as grounds of claims – just not, or not necessarily, claims against particular agents for direct provision of the substance of the right. Human rights are standards for law and public policy whose breach on a sufficient scale constitutes a pro tanto justification of remedial international action. If an individual whose human right is unsatisfied has a claim – that is, a moral claim – it is a claim, in the first instance, on her own society to undertake whatever public policies would be required to ensure the satisfaction of the right, and derivatively, on capable and appropriately placed external agents for political action to remedy the breach.41 This is not odd, once we grasp the political role of human rights.

LACK OF LEGAL CONSEQUENCES FOR FAILURE MEANS THERE IS NO MORAL OBLIGATIONJudith Lichtenberg, Philosophy Professor, University of Maryland, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 80-1 G. E. M. Anscombe's classic article "Modern Moral Philosophy" sheds some light on the issue. Anscombe argues that the concept of moral obligation makes no sense outside a legal or juridical framework.' Terms like "obligation," "is

required to," and even the moral "ought," she says, come from Christianity, which has a "law conception of ethics" deriving from the Torah. She contrasts Aristotle's conception of ethics. Why does Anscombe believe this? She thinks terms like "obligation" imply a lawgiver who imposes the obligation or moral requirement, and metes out punishment for disobedience. If God is not at the helm, these concepts no longer make sense. Secular philosophers may find Anscombe's claim unconvincing, either because they accept Kant's view that the rational individual can replace God as the lawgiver, or because they understand the moral requiredness of an act to mean simply that not performing it would be wrong. Nevertheless, there is something important in Anscombe's argument. I find two strands that can be drawn from her discussion. First, to speak of moral obligation is to speak of moral necessity. The implication is that you must act (or not act), or else. Or else what? Or else you will be punished; or else there will be consequences. In the case of most standardly accepted moral obligations — not to kill or to torture or to take what is not yours — there are external consequences of transgression in the way of legal punishment and/or social disapproval , as well as internal effects such as guilt and self-recrimination. But suppose there are none of these. We are to imagine that Jane has a moral obligation to do something, but that she will not be punished she fails to act, she will not be the object of strong social disapproval, and she will feel no guilt. In this case, the or else condition of moral obligation seems to be unmet.In our society (perhaps in most societies) the "or elses" that normally accompany moral obligation are lacking in the case of charitable giving. There are no legal consequences; social disapproval is largely absent; and few people feel much guilt about not giving more (for reasons I shall pursue shortly). For these reasons we must be skeptical of the assertion that people have such moral obligations. >

No Moral Obligation: RawlsRAWLS DOES NOT ESTABLISH BASIS FOR MORAL OBLIGATION TO “FOREIGNERS”Peter Singer, Bioethics Professor Princeton, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 26-7 Rawls does, in The Law of Peoples, urge that "well-ordered peoples have a duty to assist burdened societies," that is, those societies that "lack the political and cultural traditions, the human capital and know-how, and, often, the material and technological resources needed to be well-ordered." The duty extends ,

however, only to the requirement of assistance to help the societies to become "well-ordered", and for this

purpose Rawls places emphasis on the need for societies to develop a suitable culture, for he conjectures "that there is no society anywhere in the world — except for marginal cases — with resources so scarce that it could not, were it reasonably and rationally organized and governed, become well-ordered." This conjecture may or may not be

correct, but it leaves untouched the plight of individuals who are dying from starvation, malnutrition, or easily

preventable diseases, in countries that presently lack the capacity to provide for the needs of all their citizens. The same is true of Rawls' further discussion, a few pages later, of the reasons for reducing inequalities in the domestic situation and between peoples:In itself, it doesn't matter how great the gap between rich and poor maybe. What matters are the consequences. In a liberal democratic society that gap cannot be wider than the criterion of reciprocity allows, so that the least advantaged (as the third liberal principle requires) have sufficient all-purpose means to make intelligent and effective use of their freedoms and to lead reasonable and worthwhile lives. When that situation exists, there is no further need to narrow the gap. Similarly, in the basic structure of the Society of Peoples, once the duty of assistance is satisfied and all peoples have a working liberal or decent government, there is again no reason to narrow the gap between the average wealth of different peoples.Rawls does say, in the course of discussing contrary views of international justice by Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge, that he shares their goals “of attaining liberal or decent institutions, securing human rights and meeting basic needs,” and he believes that these goals "are covered by the duty of assistance." But he nowhere suggests that wealthy nations ought to try to assist poor nations to meet the basic needs of their citizens, except in so far as this is part of a much broader project of helping those peoples to attain

liberal or decent institutions. The probability that, in the real world in which we live, tens of millions will starve or die from easily preventable illnesses before such institutions are attained, is not something to which Rawls directs his attention.

No Moral Obligation to Foreigners – Duty to Strangers Trumped by Duty to Those Close to Us

OUR INDIVIDUAL ROLE IN US POLICY FORMATION MEANS WE HAVE GREATER MORAL DUTY TO THE POOR IN THE US THAN THE POOR IN AFRICARichard W. Miller, Philosophy Professor Cornell, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 104-5<In ordinary moral thinking, one has a duty to put needy compatriots first in political choices concerning tax-

financed aid, even if one lives in a per-capita rich country, one knows that the most desperately poor mostly live abroad, in countries lacking adequate resources to relieve their dire burdens, and one thinks that it is typically cheaper to relieve a burden on a poor foreigner through foreign aid than a burden on a needy compatriot through domestic aid. How can this bias be reconciled with an appreciation of the equal worth of all?

When I make political choices, a morally central difference between my relationship to poor compatriots and my relationship to poor foreigners is that I take part, and willingly so, in the creation of laws and policies that my compatriots are forced to obey. Proper valuing of the compatriot relationship provides a reason for the patriotic bias, partly because of the special requirements for justifiable participation in a project of coercion>

SHARED POLITICAL ARRANGEMENTS JUSTIFY DUTY OF SPECIAL CONCERN FOR AMERICANS OVER FOREIGNERSRichard W. Miller, Philosophy Professor Cornell, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 105-6<The duty of special concern for disadvantages• imposed by shared political arrangements limits the pursuit of globally impartial beneficence, not just the pursuit of self-interest. A participant in the process of collective self-rule ought to treat the relief of an important burden suffered by a compatriot due to the system of laws that she helps to impose as a stronger reason to change the laws than an unmet need of a foreigner, even one that can be satisfied more efficiently than her compatriot's need. To fail to accept this special responsibility for reducing burdens that one would otherwise help to impose coercively is to fail properly to disvalue political subordination. It is as disrespectful as an overlord's telling his exploited serfs that his exactions are justified by his using them to improve the well-being of the more miserable serfs of a fellow-baron.

MUTUAL STAKE IN INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS NOT EQUIVALENT TO THAT OF THE DOMESTIC POLITICAL SYSTEM – DOES NOT DISPUTE GROUNDS FOR INCREASED DUTY TO COMPATRIOTSRichard W. Miller, Philosophy Professor Cornell, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 110Despite their importance, these considerations dictate less aid than their domestic analogues . In all or virtually all countries,

even those with average income that is high on a world scale, the duties deriving from the need to justify domestic coercion produce much larger claim on resources for aid than the corresponding international duties . Suffering due to transnational political coercion that could be supported by someone who has equal respect for all is a relatively small part of world poverty. For example, sovereign control over natural resources is rarely a major determinant of national prosperity or poverty which largely depends, instead, on commercial and technological capacities. Similarly, while immigration restrictions significantly affect the prospects of some, most of the world's poor would be in no position to take advantage of

the removal of those obstacles; they might, indeed, be hurt by the flight of specially skilled and productive compatriots. In any case, in a country which is among the best-off per-capita, aid needed to compensate for burdens imposed by immigration restrictions is apt to be far less than aid needed to compensate for imposed domestic disadvantages . Since all per-capita well-off countries with substantial immigration restrictions jointly contribute, to suffering due to the blocked opportunities, they share in the duty to

alleviate it. In contrast, people in a per-capita well-off country have a unique duty to attend to the social

disadvantages of their own compatriots; and this can be extremely expensive: consider how expensive it is to provide victims of the severest social disadvantages in such a country with access to secure; interesting, valued work.

As for the relevant duties of mutual loyalty: they are proportionate to potential demands of the needed institutional loyalty and the impact of the shared institutions. Since international institutions are less important on both dimensions, duties of loyalty will dictate less concern for fellow-participants in international institutions than for compatriots.

DUTY TO REDRESS GLOBAL POVERTY DOES NOT TRUMP OTHER COMPETING PRIORITIES AND CAUSESRichard W. Miller, Philosophy Professor Cornell, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 118-9If good causes that would crowd out aid to the foreign poor are close to the benefactor's heart, what compelling moral reason could there be for such a person to allocate a substantial portion of his aid to needy people in poor countries? This question has great practical importance. In the actual charitable donations of typical affluent people in the per-capita best-off countries, the allocation to needy people in poor countries is not substantial. In the United States in 2001, only 2 percent of donations to tax-exempt non-profit organizations went to those whose primary interest was international, including those concerned with international security, foreign affairs and cultural exchange as well as those concerned with

development assistance and humanitarian relief. Only about 7 percent of households made any contribution to any of these international agencies.'° Development assistance by private voluntary agencies based in the United States amounted to $46 per US resident." In implementing the demands of sympathy, someone who regards the lives of all as equally valuable must count efficiency in relieving the burdens of the neediest as a significant reason to donate to a cause. Still, it does not seem that this consideration – which I take to favor poor people in poor countries – must play an important role, in the final analysis, in the benefactions of affluent people in per-capita rich countries, given the pressure of competing good causes which are close to their hearts. What does require a substantial allocation of aid to desperately needy people in poor countries is a more specific obligatory concern, the proper valuing of willing cooperation, entailing a concomitant disvaluing of exploitation.>

AT: “Our Contribution to the Need Justifies Our Moral Obligation to Assist”

OFTEN THERE IS NO CLEAR LINK BETWEEN THE ACTIONS OF AN INDIVIDUAL THAT CAUSE ANOTHER TO NEED ASSISTANCEDaniel Callahan, Director Hastings Institute, 1976, Lifeboat Ethics: the moral dilemmas of world hunger, ed. G. Lucas, Jr. & T. Ogletree, p. xiii

A variety of strategies have surfaced to cope with this question (though the question is not necessarily phrased in the kind of normal moral language I have used). One of the strategies has taken the form of contending that, because of our historical exploitation of the natural and other resources of others, we are therefore obliged to provide compensation. We are rich in great part precisely because we helped to make others poor. Simple justice requires that we right the balance. This is not an altogether easy case to sustain. For one thing, it is often very difficult to find a straight causal relationship between the wealth of our country and specific poverty of another country. It is not enough to invoke a generalized charge of colonialism and imperialism to explain away any and all starvation and malnutrition in developing countries. For another, even if some vague historical correlation can be shown, it is still no clear why the present generation has a specific obligation to make right those wrongs which may have been done by past generations.

AT: “Utilitarianism Justifies Moral Obligation”

MULTIPLE WAYS THAT THE EFFECTS OF TRYING TO ASSIST THE NEEDY IN POOR COUNTRIES ARE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE – WORSENING MISERYOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 279-80

Alternatively, consider some of the following dilemmas that individual utilitarians might meet while thinking about famine. In all of these examples, suppose that A is a moderately prosperous utilitarian who sincerely wants to use his extra money to help relieve famine and save lives, which h reasonably judges would greatly reduce human misery. A might wonder whether to try to send money to a poor family in a poor country. But how is he to be sure that they get the money, and that it doesn’t fall into the hands of some nonneedy local official, who uses it to worsen the situation of others, perhaps by buying imported goods, leaving those who formerly sold to him without a customer? Might not the result of A’s generosity also worsen the position of those needy families whom he cannot benefit, who find that the going price of goods has risen beyond their means because benefited families can afford to pay more and have driven up the price? Or suppose A thinks that the way to benefit the poor is to purchase products of needy nations and areas. Might not this encourage production for fickle export markets, retard the development of local self-sufficiency, and make people more vulnerable in hard years? If A buys Brazilian coffee despite its high price, can he be sure whom he is benefiting? Might not he be encouraging the development of a one-crop economy with all its potential for disaster? Or suppose that in order to encourage development in the Arab world, A advocates (and as a consumer, follows) policies that are heavily dependent on importing OPEC oil. May not this policy fuel nothing more productive of human happiness and life than the Middle East arms race? Or suppose A hopes to assist, through work in a multinational corporation, the introduction of more modern industrial processes in some underdeveloped economy. How can he be sure this will not lead to a developed enclave within a traditional economy that, on the whole, causes friction for many, unemployment for some, and gain for a few who were not in the first place the most needy? Or suppose that A is an economic planner in a socialist country. Hoping to improve welfare by raising per capital meat consumption, he institutes heavy grain purchases (for animal fodder) on the world market which prevent increase cereal production from benefiting the hungrier peoples and drive up world cereal prices. Once more, the net effect of an act intended to increase happiness may be to increase rather than reduce human misery. The conundrums can be multiplied again and again. The point is that if we are to try to work out the consequences of our actions as utitliaran theory demands we should, we shall repeatedly find ourselves confronted with impossible calculations. Utilitarianism offers us spurious precision in moral argument.

UNPREDICTABILITY OF THE EFFECTS OF ONE’S ACTIONS AND UNCERTAINTY THAT THEY WILL MEET ONE’S INTENTIONS, RENDERS UTILITARIANISM SUSPECT AS THE BASIS FOR A MORAL OBLIGATIONOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 280-1

The reasons for these difficulties lie deep in the structure of utilitarian theory and are not likely to be remedied by further research. For utilitarians do not say that one should look just at the fairly local effects of one’s own act. After all, if the aim is to maximize human happiness and to minimize human misery, then there is no point in basing one’s calculations on the false assumption that the consequence of one’s own act can be isolated. There is no point, for example, in aiding poor countries if the good effects of the aid are outweighed by bad effects, such as propping up a regime that opposes change and economic growth. There is no point, on utilitarian calculations in spending all one’s efforts in lobbying for reduced “defense” spending so that swords can be beaten into plowshares if the result is likely to be either that no reduction takes place but that one has no time to make more modest contributions to human happiness, or, on the other hand, that a reduction takes place but produces increased unemployment and no plowshares, while leading arms purchasers to turn to different sellers. For utilitarianism, it is results , not intentions , that count, and the calculation of results must therefore be taken seriously. I can know my intentions fairly clearly, but I can never be sure about all the effects of my own acts or of an institution’s policies.

The very comprehensive and systematic structure that makes utilitarian moral theory attractive to many people becomes on reflection one of its nightmares. We may often be fairly clear about the short-term effect on nearby people of what we propose to do. But we are seldom clear about the total effect of tendency of acts of policies in an economically interdependent world where we might affect the lives of persons thousands of miles or many generations away. We face in our own time decisions about energy policy that will deeply affect future lives. If we leave a world of nuclear radiation or terrorism, or of fossil-fuel famine, or of health-and crop-destroying pollution, we shall make future persons more miserable—or less happy—than they might have been had we made different decisions. Yet, which of us can be sure (including the disputing experts) which decision is likely to have the happiest results? Difficulties of calculations affect persons and agencies (from corner stores to nation states to the United Nations). They produce an uncomfortable feeling that we cannot make the most needed calculations, so can never say: “This is the way to minimize misery, so this ought to be done.” Where there is no limit to the number of consequences, nearby or remote, that we ought to consider, conclusions seem to evaporate, not to crystallize. Utilitarians may start out wanting to be realists who soberly calculate the outcomes and the odds; but there seems to be no natural stopping pint before they find themselves trying to be futurologists who seek to uncover the impact of their actions, or that of their institutions, in a vast and complex causal web that extends indefinitely into the future.

UTILITARIANISM INEFFECTIVE TO ESTABLISH MORAL OBLIGATION – THE DEMAND ON THE INDIVIDUAL AND LIMITLESS AND TO IMPRECISE TO BE A REASONABLE GUIDEOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 281-2

A serious utilitarian faces a morally strenuous life. Every decision is a moral decision, since any act affects human happiness or prevents another act that might affect human happiness. A utilitarian can never say “I’ve done my duty.” However great one’s contribution has been, it is likely that there are further miseries one could in pat reduce without causing oneself or others comparable misery. As each misery is vanquished, there will be another waiting for one’s ministrations. And so utilitarianism comes to seem not the most precise but at once the vaguest and the most demanding of moral theories.

Utilitarian arguments founder, not just occasionally but systematically, on our uncertainty about calculating the effects of our own acts when combined with others’. Research might help a bit, but it would not resolve this indeterminacy in all cases. This is a standard difficulty of utilitarian moral theory, but it appears much graver in thinking about a problem like famine, where particularly long and intricate causal chains nearly always be considered . Utilitarians can get nowhere unless they are reasonably sure about the effects acts they consider are likely to have. If utilitarians do not know this, then they have no way of telling whether a proposed act or policy is obligatory, forbidden, or neither. I shall turn no to a move that may help utilitarians overcome some of these difficulties. If this move fails, utilitarian thought about famine has achieved little. In spite of the theory’s imposing scope, it cannot guide action unless reasonably precise calculations about happiness and misery can be made.

UTILITARIANISM CREATES A LIMITLESS DEMAND ON THE INDIVIDUALOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 282

Many moral theories offer us a less ambitious view of what our duties are than does the simplified utilitarianism we have so far been considering. On that simplified theory, it seemed that however many good works one threw oneself into, more would be required of one. Duty would not be fulfilled until one was so exhausted in its pursuit that further striving would cause greater misery than any one could alleviate, or would make one less efficient in future relief of misery. Many moral theories, however, distinguish between a number of acts that are stringently required and a larger number of acts that are meritorious but not so strictly required. This distinction is often thought to amount to a distinction between the demands of justice and those of beneficence.

INDIVIDUALS FOLLOWING UNGER AND SINGER’S RULES COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO HELPING THE POOR – DECREASES PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FUNDS FOR ASSISTANCEKwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 168-9

Once you start thinking about the facts—which play a large role in Singer’s arguments, but rather little in Unger’s—the dilemmas about intervention proliferate. There are, to begin with, problems of timing. If Bill Gates had followed Peter Unger’s advice when he was in his twenties, he wouldn’t have been in a position to give billions to good causes today. He didn’t now that he’d be a billionaire, of course. (He thought he would be, no doubt, that’s the way with entrepreneurs; but he didn’t know). One of the things wealth is good for is generating more wealth. I can probably do more good later by saving and investing now. Peter Singer would tell me that, if that’s my argument, I should be saving and investing more. But that would mean less expenditure now; fewer people—some of them in the poorest countries of the world—would be earning dollars by making the goods and providing the services I pay for. Indeed, if all Americans or Europeans stopped buying consumer goods, the result would almost certainly be a collapse of the global economy. Government income from taxation would fall, and government development assistance would fall with it. Given the role of consumption in driving the American economy, creating the wealth that the U.S. government taxes in order to pay, among other

things, for development assistance, you’d have to be a pretty good economist to figure out if Singer was right.

AT: “Christian Ethics/Good Samaritan Justify Moral Duty”

GOOD SAMARITAN PARABLE INAPPLICABLE TO DISTANT FAMINESOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 261-2

The more we reflect on these questions the more we see how important it is in the Christian parable that the Good Samaritan directly encountered an isolated person in distress, for whose relief he had sufficient means. In saying this, we belittle neither the Samaritan’s kindness nor his courage (he too might have been mugged). But we realize that famines in faraway places confront us with moral problems to which the Christian parable does not provide obvious answers. The parable leaves the answers to the above question undetermined , and if we are looking for a moral theory that will help us work out what we may or ought to do, then we shall need one whose answers to these questions are determinate . Indeterminate answers to problems may rule out some solutions, but don’t propose any solutions specific for us to act on them.

CHRISTIAN ETHICS ARE LIFE DENYING AND PRODUCE AN ABSOLUTE ENEMY—THE USE OF RELIGION TO JUSTIFY POLITICAL ACTION HAS EMPIRICALLY JUSTIFIED COLONIALISMRasch, 03 (Cultural Critique 54 (2003) 120-147, William Rasch is the Henry H. H. Remak Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University, Human Rights as Geopolitics Carl Schmitt and the Legal Form of American Supremacy). "To preach and announce the Gospel in the lands of the barbarians," Vitoria admonishes us, is not just a right; it is also a Christian duty. "Brotherly correction is as much part of natural law as brotherly love; and since all those peoples are not merely in a state of sin, but presently in a state beyond salvation, it is the business of Christians to correct and direct them. Indeed, they are clearly obliged to do so" (1991, 284). Though it is wrong to convert the barbarians forcibly—here, as almost everywhere, Vitoria follows Aquinas—it is right and just to force them to listen, whether they accept the truth or not. Accordingly, if the barbarians obstruct or prevent the Spaniards in any way from exercising their Christian duty to spread the truth, then the Spaniards may "take up arms and declare war on them, insofar as this provides the safety and opportunity needed to preach the Gospel." They may even " lawfully conquer the territories of these people, deposing their old masters and setting up new ones and carrying out all the things which are lawfully permitted in other just wars by the law of war, so long as they always observe reasonable limits and do not go further than necessary" (285-86). It was Vitoria's sad and sincere belief that Spaniards had not observed "reasonable limits" and had, in fact, "gone beyond the permissible bounds of justice and religion," but their excesses neither cancelled their rights to use force when necessary nor vitiated the legal and moral principles involved (286). Christians had the right and the duty to travel wherever they pleased, take the gold and other goods that they found to be unused and unclaimed, and preach their way of life, by force if necessary, in order to bring the barbarians of the New World out of their self-imposed immaturity and into civic adulthood as full members of the Christian community. Vitoria is careful to specify that the barbarians of the Americas had nearly all of the same rights as the Spaniards, for instance, the right to travel to Spain and receive the full protection

of Spanish law. But, for all of Vitoria's concern with reciprocity—granting the Indians the same rights of travel and trade—he cannot grant them equal rights when it comes to religion. Here, as Schmitt is quick to point out, one finds Vitoria's, and Christendom's, central and inescapable asymmetry. The ultimate justification for the Spanish conquests lies in Christ's command to the apostles to "teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you ... even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:19-20). In more secular terms, the Church's evangelical mission becomes Spain's "civilizing" mission, a mission for which, perhaps because of his lingering Catholicism and his adamant Eurocentrism, Schmitt cannot help but have some sympathy. It is worth listening to what Schmitt has to say here at some length: However, that the result [of his investigations] still leads in the Wnal analysis to a justiWcation of the Spanish conquest lies in the fact that Vitoria's objectivity and neutrality do indeed have their limits and in no [End Page 134] way extend so far as to ignore or deny the distinction between believing Christians and non-Christians. On the contrary: the practical result is grounded completely in Vitoria's Christian conviction, which Wnds its real justiWcation in the Christian mission. That non-Christians could demand the same right of free propagation of and intervention for their idolatry as the Christian Spaniards for their Christian mission—that really does not occur to this Spanish monk. Here, then, is the limit both of his absolute neutrality and his general reciprocity and reversibility of concepts. Vitoria is perhaps an Erasmist, but he is not representative of absolute humanity in the style of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries; he is no Voltarian and no Rousseauist, no free thinker and no socialist.... For Vitoria, Christian Europe is still the center of the world, historically and concretely located in Jerusalem and Rome. (1988, Der Nomos der Erde, 83, 84) Yes, this passage attests to the antiliberal prejudices of an unregenerate Eurocentric conservative with a pronounced affect for the counterrevolutionary and Catholic South of Europe. It seems to resonate with the apologetic mid-twentieth-century Spanish reception of Vitoria that wishes to justify the Spanish civilizing mission in the Americas. 8 But the contrast between Christianity and humanism is not just prejudice; it is also instructive, because with it, Schmitt tries to grasp something both disturbing and elusive about the modern world—namely, the apparent fact that the liberal and humanitarian attempt to construct a world of universal friendship produces, as if by internal necessity, ever new enemies. For Schmitt, the Christianity of Vitoria, of Salamanca, Spain, 1539, represents a concrete, spatially imaginable order, centered (still) in Rome and, ultimately, Jerusalem. This, with its divine revelations, its Greek philosophy, and its Roman language and institutions, is the polis. This is civilization, and outside its walls lie the barbarians. The humanism that Schmitt opposes is, in his words, a philosophy of absolute humanity. By virtue of its universality and abstract normativity, it has no localizable polis, no clear distinction between what is inside and what is outside. Does humanity embrace all humans? Are there no gates to the city and thus no barbarians outside? If not, against whom or what does it wage its wars? We can understand Schmitt's concerns in the following way: Christianity distinguishes between believers and nonbelievers. Since nonbelievers can become believers, they must be of the same category of being. To be human, then, is the horizon within which the distinction between believers and nonbelievers is made. That is, humanity per se is not part of the distinction, but is that which makes the distinction possible. However, once the term used to describe the horizon of a distinction also becomes that distinction's positive pole, it needs its negative opposite. If humanity is both the horizon and the positive pole of the distinction that that horizon enables, then the negative pole can only be something that lies beyond that horizon, can only be something completely antithetical to horizon and positive pole alike— can only, in other words, be inhuman. As Schmitt says: Only with the concept of the human in the sense of absolute humanity does

there appear as the other side of this concept a specically new enemy, the inhuman. In the history of the nineteenth century, setting off the inhuman from the human is followed by an even deeper split, the one between the superhuman and the subhuman. In the same way that the human creates the inhuman, so in the history of humanity the superhuman brings about with a dialectical necessity the subhuman as its enemy twin.9

Obligation to Reduce Poverty Problematic to Implement

Moral Obligation to Reduce Global Poverty Undermined by Problems with Other Governments

BELIEF THAT AID GETS DIVERTED BY CORRUPT GOVERNMENTS UNDERMINES PEOPLE’S SENSE OF AN ETHICAL OBLIGATION TO AFRICA’S POORJudith Lichtenberg, Philosophy Professor, University of Maryland, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 85Another typical feature of many such cases - one we would rather not acknowledge - is their recalcitrance. It is harder to help people than we may at first believe. One reason (there are others as well) is that the external problems people suffer from - poverty, lack of education, ill-health - often cause internal, psychological problems that make it even more difficult to extricate from adversity than it would otherwise be. Sometimes internal, psychological problems are responsible for the external problems. Often it's hard to know which came first. So the well-meaning thought that "if one only did this . . ." then someone's problems would be solved is overly optimistic. One-shot solutions, few-shot solutions, rarely work. Unlike holding out your hand to save the drowning child, helping someone in need generally requires a major investment of time and resources. This problem applies not only to the individual, face-to-face cases I have just been considering, but also to the cases of large-scale aid that are our primary focus here. We wonder what proportion of our charitable contributions lines the pockets of bureaucrats, or corrupt dictators. We hear many stories about how aid does not go to the people it is intended for. If we believe these stories, that will certainly dampen our incentive to give aid. Of course, it is convenient for us to believe them. But it is also likely that many people would give more if they were convinced that their contributions would go where they ought to go, and for good purposes. Such belief about the effectiveness of aid are beliefs about facts, about how things are rather than about how they ought to be. But such beliefs have important consequences for people's behaviors.

OUR MORAL OBLIGATION IS LESSENED BY THE AMOUNT OF RESPONSIBILITY AFRICANS AND THEIR GOVERNMENTS BEAR FOR THEIR POVERTYDavid Miller, Political Theory Professor-Oxford University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 136Does acceptance of national responsibility mean that global poverty should not be our concern, because it is the people whose lives are poor who are themselves responsible for their own condition? By no means, for reasons we shall come to shortly. What does follow, however, is that international inequality may not itself be unjust, when the inequality can be traced back to actions and decisions for which the people in question can properly be held responsible . And indeed this is something that we accept, when our attention is turned away from societies that fall below the decency threshold towards inequalities between comparatively rich nations. It is rarely argued that differences in living standards between, say, the Germans and the Greeks are unjust, because these differences are in part explicable by cultural and political differences between the two nations in question. Such cases are not morally problematic.

AFRICAN COUNTRIES CHOSE POLICIES THAT HAVE CREATED THEIR POVERTYThomas W. Pogge, Professor Moral & Political Philosophy, Columbia University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 261Rawls suggests why he opposes any relative target: once a people has attained the modest economic capacities necessary to sustain a liberal or decent institutional order, it is morally free to decide whether to make further net savings. If it does not, then its per capita income may fall further and further behind that of other peoples who

save and invest more. It has a right to make this decision. But it also must then accept responsibility for the consequences. It cannot plausibly complain later about the evolved discrepancy in affluence –let alone demand a share of the much greater incomes other societies have become able to generate .

Couching Actions as Moral Obligations When Unnecessary Undermines Actual Moral Obligations

OVERUSE OF “MORAL OBLIGATION” UNDERMINES DESIRE TO ACT MORALLYPeter Singer, Bioethics Professor Princeton, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 28Still, it might be argued that it is poor policy to advocate a morality that most people will not follow . If we come to believe that we are doing wrong when we do not give nearly all we have to assist those who are starving, then our response, following the maxim of "damned for a penny, damned for a pound," may be, not to give more, but to be less observant of other moral rules that we had previously followed. Thus making morality so demanding threatens to bring the whole of morality into disrepute .

SETTING MORAL OBLIGATIONS HIGHER THAN PEOPLE ACCEPT DECREASES DESIRE OF PEOPLE TO ACT MORALLYRichard J. Arneson, Philosophy Professor U. California @ San Diego, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 53Raising the level of moral obligation will generally tend to produce two effects that pull in opposite directions. Setting the level higher will tend to improve the outcomes of the actions of those people who conscientiously strive to comply with the higher norm. But setting the level higher , above some point, will also

tend to reduce the numbers of people who conscientiously strive to comply with moral requirements . As the level of requirements becomes ever more demanding, more people will tend to become alienated from the enterprise of morality and to become less disposed to carry out even its minimal requirements. At some level of obligation these two effects balance, so that any raising or lowering of the level of obligation would produce worse consequences overall; at this point the level of obligation is optimal. But there is no particular reason to think the optimal level of obligation will hold that people are always morally obligated to do what according to act-consequentialism is morally right.

“Moral Obligation” Discourse Unnecessary – Can Argue that we Should Assist without Arguing we are Obligated to Assist

NOZICK’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A MORAL OBLIGATION DOES NOT DENY THAT FAILURE TO ASSIST IS WRONGPeter Singer, Center for Human Bioethics-Monash University, 1993, Practical Ethics, p. 234

Does the argument for an obligation to assist others therefore presuppose one of these other theories of property rights, and not an individualistic theory like Nozick’s? Not necessarily. A theory of property rights can insist on our rights to retain wealth without pronouncing on whether the rich ought to give to the poor. Nozick, for example, rejects the use of compulsory means like taxation to redistribute income, but suggests that we can achieve the ends we deem morally desirable by voluntary means. So Nozick would reject the claim that rich people have an “obligation” to give to the poor, in so far as this implies that the poor have a right to our aid, but might accept that giving is something we ought to do and failing to give, though within one’s rights, is wrong—for there is more to an ethical life than respecting the rights of others.

Assistance to the Needy in Other Countries Problematic: Lifeboat Ethics

ASSISTANCE TO PEOPLE IN POOR COUNTRIES OFTEN COUNTERPRODUCTIVE – PERPETUATES AND EXACERBATES THE PROBLEMS THAT CREATE THE NEED IN THE FIRST PLACEGeorge R. Lucas, Jr. Research Associate –Peace Institute, 1976, Lifeboat Ethics: the moral dilemmas of world hunger, ed. G. Lucas, Jr. & T. Ogletree, p. 23

Both donative and development strategies, say proponents of selective allocation, represent the best possible intentions producing the worst possible results. All donative schemes, as well as development strategies which focus on supply and ignore the problems of excessive demand, artificially interfere with the natural life cycle, permitting populations in afflicted countries to exceed the “carrying capacity” of their environments Thus, instead of the natural equilibrium normally established between population growth and the limits of a given environment, donative and development assistance create a “ratchet effect”; temporarily postponing disaster for the present---but at the expense of permanent and irreparable damage to the environment, causing the inevitable human disaster to be all the more tragic and massive in the end. Thus, such forms of assistance are not only ill-advised from a practical standpoint they are ultimately immoral as well. This is the delicate point and disturbing claim which Mssrs. Fletcher, Englehardt, and Hardin articulate in the present volume,

Dale Runge, doctoral student of MIT Professor Jay Forrester (“Limits to Growth” project) apparently concurs. In an unpublished paper entitled, “The Ethics of Humanitarian Food Relief,” Runge argues with the aid of computer simulations that donative and development relief are “not ethical” because by themselves they create more misery over the long run than they alleviate – leading Wade Green of the New York Times to wonder “Is the good then good?”

HOW YOU RESPOND TO THE NEEDS OF THE POOR MATTER Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 170

I am not arguing – I do not believe – that we should throw up our hands in despair. Nor do I think that because past aid has not raised the standard of living in much of Africa, we should abandon attempts to help. We are not in danger of being excessively generous; indeed, most of us are in no danger of meeting what I called our basic obligation. But what’s wanted, as Adam Smith would have anticipated, is the exercise of reason, not just explosions of feeling. Charitable giving in the wake of the tsunami of Christmas 2004 was remarkable and heartening; but two million people die each year of malaria; 240,000 a month die of AIDS; 136,000 of diarrhea. And practical-minded economists, like Jeffrey Sachs, starting with real data, have made arguments that really concerted and well-orchestrated efforts to alleviate poverty in the Third World have a good shot at success. They rebut the usual defeatist assumptions. Too many people, for example, are reflex Malthusians, worried that saving hungry children can only result in more hungry adults. But that depends on how you do it. If you save children by creating opportunities for their parents and so raising overall affluence, then, history affirms, fertility rates ultimately decline. On the other hand, if you “save” the children by dumping free grain into the

local economy and putting the local farmers out of business—who can compete with free?—you may, indeed, be doing more harm than good.

SIMPLY PROPOSING A MORAL OBLIGATION TO SAVE THE STARVING CHILDREN IN AFRICA IGNORES COMPLEX ISSUES ABOUT WHY THIS IS A PROBLEMKwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 171-2

When you spend your dollars—or Euros or pounds-isn’t it worth also spending a moment or two to ask whether they are being spent intelligently? However much you give, doesn’t it matter that none of it is wasted? Part of the trouble with Peter Unger’s focus on those starving children is that it blocks thought about the complexity of the problems facing the global poor. Ask the people at OXFAM of UNICEF whether they think that all that matters is keeping children alive a while longer.

The juxtaposition of Western affluence with Third World poverty can sometimes lead activists to see the two as causally linked in some straightforward way, as if they are poor because we are rich. So it’s worth remembering that poverty is far less prevalent today than it was a century ago. Since 1950, life expectancy and literacy rates in the developing world have increased quite dramatically. In 1990, some 375 million people in China were living in what the World Bank calls “extreme poverty,” an income of less than a dollar a day. By 2001, that figure declined by more than 160 million, even as the total population continued to rise. The number of South Asians living in extreme poverty declined by tens of millions. But Africa has been left behind, and it is Africa that presents the greatest challenge to our development experts—and to our sense of global obligations.

LIFEBOAT ETHICS JUSTIFY TRIAGE POLICY – NEGATE OBLIGATION TO ASSIST THOSE IN POVERTYPeter Singer, Center for Human Bioethics-Monash University, 1993, Practical Ethics, p. 235-6

Perhaps the most serious objection to the argument that we have an obligation to assist is that since the major cause of absolute poverty is overpopulation, helping those now in poverty will only ensure that yet more people are born to live in poverty in the future.

In its most extreme form, this objections is taken to show that we should adopt a policy of “triage”. The term comes from medical policies adopted in wartime. With too few doctors to cope withal the casualties, the wounded were divided into three categories: those who would probably survive without medical assistance, those who might survive if they received assistance, but otherwise probably would not, and those who even with medical assistance probably would not survive. Only those in the middle category were given medical assistance. The idea, of course, was to use limited medical resources as effectively as possible. For those in the first category, medical treatment was not strictly necessary; for those in the third category, it was likely to be useless. It has been suggested that we should apply the same policies to countries, according to their prospects of becoming self-sustaining. We would not aid countries that even without our help will soon be able to feed their populations. We would not aid countries that, even with our help, will not be able to limit their population to a level they can feed. We

would aid those countries where our help might make the difference between success and failure in bringing food and population into balance.

Advocates of this theory are understandably reluctant to give a complete list of the countries they would place into the ‘hopeless” category; Bangladesh has been cited as an example, and so have some of the countries of the Sahel region of Africa. Adopting the policy of triage would, then, mean cutting off assistance to these countries and allowing famine, disease, and natural disasters to reduce the population of those countries to the level at which they can provide adequately for all.

In support of this view Garret Hardin has offered a metaphor: we in the rich nations are like the occupants of a crowded lifeboat adrift in a sea full of drowning people. If we try to save the drowning by bringing them aboard, our boat will be overloaded and we shall all drown. Since it is better that some survive than none, we should leave the others to drown. In the world today, according to Hardin, “lifeboat ethics” apply. The rich should leave the poor to starve, for otherwise the poor will drag the rich down with them.

ASSISTING PEOPLE IN POOR COUNTRIES NOW EXACERBATES PROBLEMS IN THE FUTUREOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 275-6

Hardin’s argument can be summarized as follows: The citizens of affluent countries are like passengers in a lifeboat around which other, desperate, shipwrecked persons are swimming. The people in the lifeboat can help some of those in the water. But if the citizens of affluent countries help some of the starving, this will, unlike many lifeboat rescues, have bad effects. To begin with, according to Hardin, the affluent countries will then have less of a safety margin, like the overladen lifeboat. This alone might be outweighed by the added happiness of those who have been rescued. But the longer-run effects are bad for everyone. The rescued will assume that they are secure, will multiply their numbers and so make future rescues seem impossible. It is better, from a utilitarian point of view, to lose some lives now than to lose more lives later. So no rescue attempt should be made.

CRITICISMS OF THE LIFEBOAT METAPHOR DO NOT DISPUTE HARDIN’S CENTRAL ARGUMENT THAT OVERPOPULATION MEANS THAT MORALS DEMAND WE NOT RESPOND TO THE NEED OF THOSE IN FAMINE AS IT IS SELF-DEFEATINGOnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 276

Hardin’s (and others) use of the lifeboat metaphor has been widely criticized. Persons in lifeboats have (often) some title to their seats. Rescue operations in lifeboats endanger the rescuers. There are few interests that those inside a boat share with the drowning. By contrast, it is not clear that affluent persons and nations are entitled to all they have. Some of it may have been acquired by exploiting poorer nations or persons; even if it has been acquired by standard market procedures, the terms of trade are often (and perhaps unfairly) weighted in favor of the powerful. Further, it is not clear that

attempts at famine relief present any serious danger to the affluent. Some forms of famine relief may even benefit the donors – for example, if by sending more food relief, the prosperous give up diets that leave them fat and prone to heart attacks, then they too will be healthier. Finally, the interests of the rich and poor are often congruent, while those of the rescued and the drowning are diametrically opposed. Everybody has an interest in the preservation of peace and in the prevention of ecocatastrophes. But though the analogy between affluent nations and lifeboats has these limitations, Hardin’s main point can be stated without depending on the metaphor.

His main claim is that famine relief encourages population growth to a level that cannot be indefinitely sustained. If we pool our resources with the poor of this world, soon nobody will have a safety margin and even local and temporary crop failures will have a drastic effect. If we pooled resources, we should all, aptly enough, be in the same boat; and the boat would probably not be stormworthy.

Hardin’s view is that once population has been increased by the added children of those who would otherwise not have survived to have children at all, the total amount of suffering will be larger than the suffering from unrelieved famine of a smaller number of people. He writes: “If poor countries received no food from outside, the rate of their population growth would be periodically checked by crop failures and famines. But if they can always draw on a world food bank in time of need, their population can continue to grow unchecked, and so will their ‘need’ for aid. In the short run a world food bank may diminish that need, but in the long run it actually increases the need without limit.”

Hardin’s view of famine is harsh, but reasoned. He thinks that feeding the hungry is merely likely to lead to population growth and greater suffering in the future. Feeding the hungry preserves lives and happiness now, but costs great loss of life and misery in the future. The prosperous not merely may but ought, if they are utilititarians, to leave the starving to themselves, to die or to survive as best they may.

Development Assistance as Obligation Assuages Guilt of the Rich

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE ALLOWS PEOPLE IN RICH COUNTRIES TO ASSUAGE THEIR GUILT FOR CREATING A SYSTEM THAT DISADVANTAGES MUCH OF THE WORLDDamien Kingsbury, Director Centre for Citizenship-Deakin University, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 2-3

As many countries and their peoples reacted to the failure to achieve the often over-estimated promise of independence from colonialism, various analysts started to look for the causes of such failure. One such answer was that while colonial exploitation might have ended, neo- colonial exploitation continued and indeed was stripped of the nominal duty of care that was in some cases associated with late colonial political authority. From this derived the idea that there was an unequal structural dependency built into the relationship between developed and developing states. Further, there was, and to some extent remains, an assumption that aid programmes were actually a part of enhancing that sense of dependency. There is some evidence to support the theory that populations that receive aid may come to rely on it, that traditional livelihoods may be forgotten and only temporarily replaced by short-term development projects leading to a consequent collapse in livelihoods, that official development assistance (ODA, or aid) is just a blind to assuage the guilty consciences of (largely OCED) peoples who benefit from the suffering of others and that much aid was so poorly conceived and inappropriately delivered that it caused more problems than it resolved. There has, disturbingly, been at least some truth in all of this.

Obligation to Assist Counterproductive

Band-aid Approach that Ignores/Masks Systemic Causes of Poverty

RICH COUNTRIES CAN’T SECURE JUSTICE – THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PROBLEMS OF THE POOROnora O’Neill, Cambridge University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 243The lamentable but strong evidence that states have failed to secure justice, and in particular economic justice, beyond their borders, should not surprise us. Although "humanitarian interventions" to curb major violations of human rights have become more numerous since the ending of the Cold War, even massive violations do not always lead to intervention (and there can be good prudential reasons for refraining: non-intervention in Chechnya or in China is wholly realistic).' Even when there has been intervention it has often been late or ineffective, or both (consider former Yugoslavia or Somalia). And the supposed attempts of richer states and of international agencies to reduce poverty in less developed countries have also been ineffective. In the 1990s the gap between rich and poor

has grown rather than shrunk.' Assigning obligations to secure justice beyond their borders to states may be no more sensible than assigning obligations to supervise hen houses to foxes.

VIEWING OUR ROLE IN GLOBAL POVERTY AS A DUTY TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE MASKS THE HISTORY OF COLONIALISM AND GENOCIDE THAT CREATED THE CONDITIONS OF POVERTY IN AFRICAThomas W. Pogge, Professor Moral & Political Philosophy, Columbia University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 262 <These passages suggest that poverty is due to domestic factors, not to foreign influences. This empirical view about poverty leads rather directly to the important moral error to be exposed: to the false idea that the problem of world poverty concerns us citizens of the rich countries mainly as potential helpers. I will therefore examine in detail the empirical view of the domestic causation of severe poverty, showing why it is false and also why it is so widely held in the developed world. It is well to recall that existing peoples have arrived at their present levels of social, economic and cultural development through an historical process that was pervaded by enslavement, colonialism, even genocide. Though these monumental crimes are now in the past, they have left a legacy of great inequalities which would be unacceptable even if peoples were now masters of their own development. Even if the peoples of Africa had had, in recent decades, a real opportunity to achieve similar rates of economic growth as the developed countries, achieving such growth could not have helped them overcome their initial 30:1 disadvantage in per capita income. Even if, starting in 1960, African annual growth in per capita income had been a full percentage point above ours each and every year, the ratio would still be 20:1 today and would not be fully erased until early in the twenty-fourth century. It is unclear then whether we may simply take for granted the existing inequality as if it had come about through choices freely made within each people. By seeing the problem of poverty merely in terms of assistance, we overlook that our enormous economic advantage is deeply tainted by how it accumulated over the course of one historical process that has devastated the societies and cultures of four continents.

FOCUS ON THE MORAL DUTY TO ASSIST DETRACTS FROM THE MORE STRINGENT DUTY TO DO NO HARMThomas W. Pogge, Professor Moral & Political Philosophy, Columbia University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 264-5 If the global economic order plays a major role in the persistence of severe poverty worldwide and if our governments, acting in our name, are prominently involved in shaping and upholding this order, then the deprivation of the distant needy may well engage not merely positive duties to assist but also more stringent negative duties not to harm. Yet, this obvious thought is strangely absent from the debates about our relation to the distant needy. Even those who have most forcefully presented the eradication of severe

poverty as an important moral task for us are content to portray us as mere bystanders. Thus, Peter Singer argues that we should donate most of our income to save lives in the poor countries. He makes his case by telling the story of a healthy young professor who, walking by a shallow pond, sees a small child in it about to drown. Surely, Singer says, the professor has a duty to save the child,

even at the cost of dirtying his clothes. And similarly, he argues, we have a duty to send money to poverty relief organizations that can, for each few dollars they receive, save one more child from a painful hunger death.19 It is, in one way, a virtue of Singer's argument that it reaches even those who subscribe to the Purely Domestic Poverty Thesis (PDPT), the view that the persistence of severe poverty is due solely to domestic causes. But by catering to this empirical view, Singer also reinforces the common moral judgment that the citizens and governments of the affluent societies, whom he is addressing, are as innocent in regard to the persistence of severe poverty abroad as the professor is in regard to the child's predicament .

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE IS A BAND-AID Damien Kingsbury, Director Centre for Citizenship-Deakin University, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 239-40

In particular, the aid industry and its role in development processes has been re-assessed and found wanting in a number of important areas. The ‘bandaid’ approach to development – to apply doses of dressing to the problem until removing the covering has, to extend the metaphor, often left the societies in question no better off and in some cases worse off where they have been encouraged away from low-technology sustainable livelihood models to unsustainable models and forms of technology.

ENTIRE STRUCTURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM BIASED AGAINST POOR COUNTRIES IN A WAY THAT IMPOSES A HUGE BURDEN OF SUFFERING AND DEATH – NO JUSTICE WITHOUT REDRESSING SYSTEMIC INEQUITIESThomas W. Pogge, Professor Moral & Political Philosophy, Columbia University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 275-6 Even if our global order fails to meet compelling absolute or relative requirements, it may still be defended on the grounds that this failure is unavoidable. An assessment of its justice must be sensitive then to information about what alternatives are feasible and about the conditions such feasible alternatives would engender. With regard to alternatives that diverge greatly from the existing global order, it may be impossible to establish such information in a rigorous way. It is quite possible, however, to estimate the impact of the existing global order relative to its nearby institutional alternatives. We saw such estimates in the Economist passage quoted

above: the developing countries are missing out on some $700 billion annually in export revenues because the developed countries insisted on grandfathering heavy protections of their markets – through tariffs, quotas, anti-dumping duties and subsidies to domestic producers. It is quite possible, though unseemly among economists, to extend this estimate to the number of poverty deaths that would have been avoided by a more symmetrical opening of markets. The number is large, as $700 billion annually is nearly 12 percent of the gross national incomes of all developing countries, representing 84.4 percent of humankind.Many features of the existing global order embody similar trade-offs between the interests of the high-income countries and their citizens on the one hand and the global poor on the other. An unconditional resource privilege gives us access to a larger, cheaper and more reliable supply of foreign resources, because we can acquire ownership of them from anyone who happens to exercise effective power without regard to whether the country's population either approves the sale or benefits from the proceeds. Advantageous also to putschists and tyrants in the developing world, broad resource and borrowing privileges are much worse, however, for the global poor than would be narrower such privileges conditional on minimal domestic legitimacy. The existing TRIPs agreement is better for us and worse for the global poor than an alternative that would have required the rich countries to supply funds for shielding the global poor from exorbitant mark-ups on drugs and seeds. The existing Law of the Sea Treaty is better for us and worse for them than an alternative that would have guaranteed the poor countries some share of the value of harvested seabed resources. It is better for us and worse for the global poor that we do not have to pay for the negative externalities we impose on them: for the pollution we have produced over many decades and the resulting effects on their environment and climate, for the rapid depletion of natural resources, for the contribution of our tourists to the AIDS epidemic and for the violence caused by our demand for drugs and our war on drugs. The cumulative impact of all these trade-offs upon the global poor is likely to be staggering. In the fourteen years since the end of the Cold War, some 250 million human beings have died prematurely from poverty-related causes, with 18 million more added each year (note 27). Had the developed countries shaping the global rules given more weight to the interests of the global poor, the toll in early deaths and deprivations would certainly and foreseeably have been vastly lower at negligible cost to our affluence. It is then very hard to see how we might defend the trade-offs manifested in our global order as compatible with justice . And if this order is unjust,

then it follows, without appeal to any historical or state-of-nature baseline, that we are harming the global poor – by imposing on them an unjust global order under which the incidence of severe poverty, malnutrition, and premature death is much higher than it would be under any just alternative

FOCUS ON DUTY TO ASSIST THE POOOR DETRACTS FROM DUTY TO NOT IMPOSE HARMSThomas W. Pogge, Professor Moral & Political Philosophy, Columbia University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 278 The questions concluding the last two paragraphs indicate more precisely how, with the collapse of the PDPT, conventional discussions of world poverty under the assistance label are misleading. The label is not inaccurate: as affluent people and countries, we surely have positive moral duties to assist persons mired in life-threatening poverty whom we can help at little cost. But the label detracts from weightier, negative duties that also apply to us: We should reduce severe harms we will have caused; and we should not take advantage of injustice at the expense of its victims. These two negative duties apply to us if we (sometimes together with third world elites) are imposing a global order whose unfairness benefits us while exacerbating severe poverty abroad . We must then at least

compensate the global poor. Failing to do this, we would be harming them and profiting from injustice at their expense. And insofar as we do compensate, we are not merely "assisting" the poor abroad, but reducing the impact of unfair rules that bring us unjust gains at their expense. We are not "redistributing" from the rich to the poor, but offsetting an unjust institutional redistribution from the poor to the rich - re-redistributing, if you like.

GREATER MORAL DUTY TO EXAMINE AND REDRESS OUR OWN CONTRIBUTION TO ANOTHER’S POVERTY THAN TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE TO THAT PERSONThomas W. Pogge, Professor Moral & Political Philosophy, Columbia University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 278-9 Imagine further a society in which an aboriginal minority suffers severe discrimination in education and employment, reducing their wages far below those of their compatriots. As an affluent foreigner, you may think that perhaps you ought to do something to assist these people. But if you are profiting from the discrimination (by employing an aboriginal driver at half the wage other drivers receive, for instance), then more is morally at stake: we judge ourselves more harshly for taking advantage of an injustice by pocketing such gains than for failing to spend other assets we have on supporting the poor. As we do so, we should also judge ourselves more harshly insofar as assets we fail to use toward reducing severe poverty abroad constitute gains we derive from the unfairness of a global order that also contributes to the persistence of this poverty. Negative duties not to support and not to pocket gains from an unfair institutional order that foreseeably contributes to severe deprivations are not only weightier than the positive duty to help relieve such deprivations. They are also much less sensitive to variations in community and distance. Duties to assist are strongest toward the near and dear and weakest toward foreigners in distant lands. But duties not to harm do not fade in this way. Consider again the driver who hits a child and then leaves her unattended by the side of the road. We do not upgrade our moral assessment of him when we learn that he did this far away from his home to a child with whom he had no communal bond of nationality, language, culture, or religion. If the unfairness of the global order we impose causes poverty to persist in the poor countries, then our moral responsibility for the associated deaths and deprivations is not diminished by diversity of nationality and geographical or cultural distance. It might be so diminished, perhaps, if harming foreigners were necessary to save ourselves from a comparable fate. But in the real world, the global poverty problem - though it involves one third of all human deaths - is quite small in economic terms: though 2,812 million persons are living below the higher ($2 / day) international poverty line, and 43 percent below it on average, their collective shortfall amounts to only 1.13 percent of the incomes of the 955 million people in the high-income economies. Clearly, we could eradicate severe poverty - through a reform of the global order or through other initiatives designed to compensate for its effects on the global poor - without "sacrificing" the fulfillment of our own needs or even mildly serious interests.

TECHNICAL FIXES TO THE SYSTEM OF FOOD DISTRIBUTION ONLY DEPOLITICIZES THE QUESTION OF HUGER BY REDUCING IT TO A QUESTION OF LOGISTICS, A QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED BY EXPERT PLANNERS. THIS OBFUSCATES THE FACT THAT MUCH MORE RADICAL CHANGE IS NEEDED IN ORDER TO ADDRESS SYSTEMATIC DEPRIVATION.Nustad, Dept. of Social Anthropology at Oslo U., 2001 [Knut G., http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436590120071731, Third World Quarterly, Vol 22, No 4, pp 482-484]

Agriculture linked to simple technology manufactures for the home market is the appropriate emphasis at this point in West Africa’s history. But for this strategy to be realized as an effective force for development, existing political structures will have to be drastically changed: The boundaries on the map will have to be redrawn to permit more inclusive political and economic units to emerge; and the composition and priorities of the entrenched ruling classes will have to be altered (Hart, 1982: 154). This programme is clearly out of reach for a development organisation with limited funds and time constraints, which needs to show donors that they have achieved ‘development’ for their money. What a development organisation can do is to identify the lack of some specific piece of technology (a well, a community centre, houses) as a problem and concentrate its efforts on delivering it. This explains the widespread emphasis on technical solutions and the construction of the problem as localised . In this way, the depoliticising effect of development is produced.

Systemic Changes More Important

QUESTION OF THE TOPIC IS PART OF THE PROBLEM NOT THE SOLUTION – WE SHOULD ASK HOW WE CAN GET OUT OF THE WAY INSTEAD OF WHAT WE ARE OBLIGATED TO “DO”Angus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 312-3

The aid endeavor is inspired by the question of what we should do, or by its imperative version that we must do something . Yet this may be precisely the wrong question, and asking it may be part of the problem, not the beginning of a solution. Why is it we who must do something? Who put us in charge? As I have argued throughout this chapter, we often have such a poor understanding of what they need or want, or of how their societies work, that our clumsy attempts to help on our terms do more harm than good. The stories of agricultural aid in Lesotho, or “helping” the world’s poor control their population, and of the horrors of humanitarian aid in time of war are leading examples. Negative unintended consequences are pretty much guaranteed when we try. And when we fail, we continue on because our interests are now at stake—it is our aid industry, staffed largely by our professionals, and generating kudos and votes for our politicians—and because, after all, we must do something .

What surely ought to happen is what happened in the now-rich world, where countries developed in their own way, in their own time, under their own political and economic structures. No one gave them aid or tried to bribe them to adopt policies for their own good. What we need to do now is to make sure that we are not standing in the way of the now-poor countries doing what we have already done. We need to let poor people help themselves and get out of the way – or, more positively, stop doing things that are obstructing them. The previous generation of escapees has done its part by showing that escape is possible and developing the methods of escape, some (if not all) of which are still useful in different circumstances.

Aid, paradoxically enough, is one of several things that we are doing that gets in the way, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and a few other countries, where aid is so large that it undermines local institutions and blights long-term prosperity. Aid that maintains extractive politicians or political systems to create alliances against communism or terrorism is aid that impoverishes ordinary citizens of poor countries for our benefit. That we pretend it is helping them merely adds insult to injury. An ocean of aid from abroad can corrupt even potentially good leaders and good political systems.

So one thing that we need to do is to stop asking what it is we need to do. We also need to help citizens of the rich world understand that aid can be harmful as well as helpful, and that it is nonsense to set targets such as giving 1 percent or 0.75 percent of our GDP irrespective of whether the money is helping or harming them. Such blind targetry is what leads ambassadors and aid administrators to plead for a cease-fire, and to mourn that the careers they dedicated to helping others have turned into careers of mitigating harm.

MANY OTHER SOURCES OF FUNDS AND STRUCTURAL FACTORS MORE IMPORTANT TO POVERTY THAN ASSISTANCEAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 280

This brief portrait of aid flows takes no account of the many other ways in which rich countries affect poor countries, for good or ill; indeed aid is one of the least important of these links. Rich countries provide capital in the form of private investment, often more readily and with less bureaucratic fuss than does the World Bank. As a result, there is less demand for World Bank aid than once was the case, especially among middle-income countries. Private remittances from rich to poor countries, for example, from immigrants to their families at home, are twice as large as ODA. Basic science—discoveries of new classes of drugs, of vaccines, or of the mechanisms underlying disease—has almost always come from rich countries but has also brought benefits to poor countries. So have inventions like cell phones or the Internet. At the same time, trade restrictions or patent enforcement can restrict poor countries’ access to wealthy markets or important treatments. These non-aid links are often much more important – for good or ill—than is foreign aid, and I will return to this issue at the end of the chapter. Of course, this is not to deny that aid is important in those individual countries where it is the biggest game in town.

GOVERNMENT POLICIES MORE IMPORTANT THAN MORAL PHILOSOPHIES IN ACTUALLY MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE POOROnora O’Neill, Philosophy Professor-University of Essex, 1980, Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, p. 296

Utilitarian and Kantian moral theories are not the only possible ones. There is no space here to examine further possibilities, but one basic criticism of our enterprise cannot be avoided. It is this: Many people would hold that no moral theory is appropriate for considering famine. These critics would assert that famine can be averted only by economic change and that these can be produced only by political action, whether of a reforming or a revolutionary sort. They would point to China, where control over famine that was widespread and endemic has been achieved not by action on a moral theory but by enormous social and political changes. They would hold that the theories relevant for controlling famine and political and social theories and many would see Marxist theories of social change as particularly important.

TRADE AND IMMIGRATION POLICIES MORE EFFECTIVE WAY TO MEET MORAL OBLIGATION TO THE POOR THAN DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCEAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 323-4

Trade restrictions in rich countries often harm farmers in poor countries. Farming accounts for nearly three-quarters of employment in Africa, and rich countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year to support their own farmers. For sugar and cotton, for example, subsidies to producers in rich countries lower world prices and restrict opportunities for poor farmers. They also hurt consumers in

rich countries, and their existence is a testimony to the political power of well-organized minorities against the majority. For agricultural goods for which poor countries are net importers, such as many foods, rich-country subsidies can actually help poor consumers by lowering world prices. American biofuel subsidies do the opposite. International collective action to limit or eliminate the harmful supports would help reduce poverty in the world.

The effects of migration on poverty reduction dwarf those of free trade. Migrants who succeed in moving from poor countries to rich countries become better off than they were at home, and their remittances help their families do better at home. Remittances have very different effects than aid, and they can empower recipients to demand more from their government, improving governance rather than undermining it. Of course, the politics of migration is even tougher than the politics of free trade, even in countries where the urge to help is most strongly developed. A helpful type of temporary migration is to provide undergraduate and graduate scholarships to the West, especially for Africans. With luck, these students will develop in a way that is independent of aid agencies or of their domestic regimes. Even if they do not return home, at least at once, the African diaspora is a fertile (and internal) source of development projects at home.

These are all strategies to reduce global poverty in a way that current aid arrangements do not, and in some cases to do so at modest or no cost to rich countries Some are likely to be more politically feasible than others, and some – such as advance market commitments—are already working on a small scale. None involves aid delivery to poor countries with all of the attendant problems. When Princeton students come to talk with me, bringing their deep moral commitment to helping make the world a better, richer place, it is these ideas that I like to discuss, steering them away from plans to tithe from their future incomes, and from using their often formidable talents of persuasion to increase the amounts of foreign aid. I tell them to work on and within their own governments, persuading them to stop policies that hurt poor people, and to support international policies that make globalization work for poor people, not against them. These are our best opportunities to promote the Great Escape for those who have yet to break free.

SYSTEMIC CHANGES MORE IMPORTANT THAN DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCEAna Swanson, World Economic Forum, 2015, “Does foreign aid always help the poor?” October 23, [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-always-help-the-poor/]

But mostly, he said, the rich world needs to think about “what can we do that would make lives better for millions of poor people around the world without getting into their economies in the way that we’re doing by giving huge sums of money to their governments.” Overall, he argues that we should   focus on doing less harm in the developing world, like   selling fewer weapons to despots, or ensuring that developing countries get a fair deal in trade agreements, and   aren’t harmed by U.S. foreign policy decisions.

Changing Trade Policies More Important than Aid

TRADE RULES – PARTICULARLY AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES – INFLICT HUGE WELFARE LOSSES ON DEVELOPING COUNTRIESJohn Degnbol-Martinussen & Poul Engberg-Pedersen, Danish Association for International Cooperation, 2003, Aid: understanding international development cooperation, p. 290The most serious area in this respect is probably the trade restrictions maintained by OPEC countries on developing countries' exports of both industrial and agricultural commodities. There can be no doubt that from the

point of view of developing countries the negative effects of these restrictions more than equal the total value of official development assistance, perhaps even double that value. This should inspire considerations about compensation or the reduction of trade barriers. Rich countries' high duties on agricultural commodities alone are estimated to inflict an annual loss of welfare on developing countries of US$19.8

billion, equal to about 40 per cent of all foreign aid (World Bank 2001a: 180).

TRADE POLICY MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN BILATERAL ASSISTANCE TO REDUCING POVERTYLael Brainard, Brookings Institute, 2007, Security by Other Means: foreign assistance, global poverty and American leadership, ed. Lael Brainard, p. 27As middle-income countries such as Brazil and Mexico develop increasingly sophisticated production capacities and economic systems, favorable access to the global marketplace through trade and investment opportunities and technical assistance on policy, legal, and regulatory frameworks are far more powerful drivers of transformation than bilateral foreign assistance. (Nonetheless, a case can be made for limited, targeted foreign assistance in some middle-income countries that are home to large concentrations of the world's poorest citizens.) More broadly, advancing economic and political modernization in the developing world increasingly requires a seamless web of policies encompassing foreign assistance (where appropriate), along with trade and investment, technical assistance, debt relief, and financial stabilization. To be an effective partner, the U.S. government will need a much more coherent approach, not only across its foreign assistance programs but also across the entire portfolio of policies affecting the prospects of developing countries

Changing Debt Servicing Policies More Important than Aid

DEBT SERVICING BURDEN IS A MAJOR IMPEDIMENT TO REDUCING POVERTY AND IMPROVING HEALTH IN AFRICA – OUTWEIGHS TOTAL AID THEY RECEIVERonald Labonte et al, International Development Research Center, 2004, Fatal Indifference: The G8, Africa and Global Health, p. 18

The urgency of debt relief as a precondition for achieving various social, economic and environmental policy objectives was identified more than a decade ago by the WCED (1987) and UNICEF. More recently, a review prepared for the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights documented the destructive consequences of the debt crisis and the role of the industrialized world in perpetuating it, and argued for a program of debt cancellation as part of a broader package of initiatives combining sustainable economic growth with social justice. In the same year UNCTAD argued that the “debt overhang” of the LDCs continues to be the major obstacle to their economic growth and development. It is also a major impediment to their ability to invest in health, education, water, sanitation, and other essential human development infrastructures. For example, scheduled debt service in Zambia and Tanzania exceeds 40 percent of their governments’ budgetary resources. African countries as a whole are currently paying over US$15 billion annually in debt servicing charges to rich country creditors, an amount that exceeds the total aid they receive.

Obligation Argument Perpetuates Violence/Bad Programs

OBLIGATION ARGUMENT PERPETUATES AID THAT DIRECTLY INCREASES VIOLENCEAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 300

Sometimes the agencies knew that aid is going wrong and are alarmed by what they see, but can do nothing about it. The director of one national aid agency gave me a bloodcurdling account of how aid funds had gone to gangs of murderers –people who had already carried out one massacre and were training and arming themselves to return to finish the job. I asked him why he continued to supply aid. Because, he replied, the citizens of this country believe that it is their duty to give and will accept no argument that aid is hurting people. The best that he could was to try to limit the harm.

DOMESTIC PRESSURE TO DO “SOMETHING” ABOUT GLOBAL POVERTY PERPETUATES BAD AID PROGRAMSAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 301-2

Domestic policies in the donor countries can also make it difficult to turn off aid. Government aid agencies are under pressure from their domestic constituencies to “do something” about global poverty – a pressure that is stoked by a well-intentioned but necessarily poorly informed domestic population—and this makes it hard for government agencies to cut back on aid even when their representatives on the ground know that it is doing harm. Politicians in both donor and recipient countries understand this process. Recipient governments can use their own poor people as “hostages to extract aid from the donors.” In one of the worst such cases, government officials in Sierra Leone held a party to celebrate the fact that UNDP had, once again, classed their country as the worst in the world and thus guaranteed another year’s worth of aid.

Discourse of “Moral Obligation” to the Poor Used as a Tool of Domination

THE MOTIVE OF THE POWERFUL IN ARTICULATING A MORAL OBLIGATION TO ASSIST THE POOR WAS TO CEMENT A SYSTEM OF DOMINATIONDavid Gauthier, Philosophy Professor-University of Pittsburgh, 1986, Morals by Agreement, p. 313

The idea that a contractarian morality invites use as an instrument of domination is introduced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discous sur l’inegalite. Beginning from an essentially Hobbesian state of nature, he argues that:

“The rich especially soon came to feel the disadvantages of a perpetual war in which they bore all the costs, for although everyone risks his life, they risked also their goods…Lacking reasons adequate to justify himself and forces sufficient to defend himself…the rich man, spurred by necessity, finally conceived the most profound project ever to enter the human mind: to employ in his favor the very forces that attacked him, to make defenders of his adversaries...’Let us unite,’ he said to them, ‘to protect the weak from oppression, to restrain the ambitious, and to give each secure possession of what belongs to him: let us institute rules of justice and peace to which all shall be obliged to conform, excepting no one, and which will compensate to some degree for the caprices of fortune, in placing powerful and weak alike under mutual duties’…Such was, or might well have been, the origin of society and of laws, putting new fetters on the weak and conferring new powers on the rich…establishing forever the law of property and inequality, converting a clever usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the benefit of the ambitious few, subjecting from that time forth all humankind to work to slavery, and to misery.”

Agreement institutes a society of unequals in which wealth confers power and ultimately mastery. In accepting constraints, the rich acquire an instrument of domination and the poor are subjected to an instrument of suppression. One may question the rationality of the poor in disposing themselves to comply with such constraints. But rationality itself becomes a privilege of the dominant, who then rationally encourage the irrationality of their fellows.

IN A WORLD OF INEQUALITY – MORALITY IS USED AS A TOOL OF DOMINATIONDavid Gauthier, Philosophy Professor-University of Pittsburgh, 1986, Morals by Agreement, p. 315

To the extent to which this ideological concealment is effective, we may suppose that the idea of morals by agreement, the idea of society as a co-operative venture for fair mutual advantage, masks the reality of a society based on the false agreement sketched by Rousseau. Those who are not deceived by the façade, and who are in favored positions, may see themselves as able to avoid the constraints of morality. To them morality will appear, not as the price to be paid for effective cooperation, but only as a constraint to be accepted by those insufficiently strong or clever to do better for themselves. And this brings us back to the thesis stated by Glaucon. Among equals, morality would be a necessary evil. But in the real world morality is an instrument of domination, representing as equal what is not, and as mutual constraint what is one-sided oppression. Justice is conventionally acknowledged to be superior to injustice, and indeed, a society of unjust persons must do worse than a society of just persons. But

the strong and clever person, recognizing the natural superiority of successful and unrequited injustice, is able to use the moral beliefs of her fellows as a means for freeing herself from the constraints them impose.

MORALITY DISCOURSE MANIPULATED BY THOSE WHO SEEK TO DOMINATE OTHERSDavid Gauthier, Philosophy Professor-University of Pittsburgh, 1986, Morals by Agreement, p. 312

But although MacIntyre rejects the conceptual coherence of the Sophists’ core insight, he seems to understand it and to grasp its implications with great acuity. For he realizes that the Sophistic argument does more than represent morality as a necessary evil reluctantly accepted by those unable either to dominate their fellows or to live without them. Rather, MacIntyre argues, the Sophist portrays morality as a smoke-screen, a device by which the clever are able to free themselves from the very constraints that it seems to impose.

MacIntyre notes:

“Natural man portrayed in Thrasymachean guise [and it will be remembered that Glaucon takes up Thrasymachus’ argument] has two main characteristics. His psychological make-up is simple: he is out to get what he wants, and what he wants is narrowly circumscribed. Power and pleasure are his exclusive interests. But to get what he wants this wolf has to wear the sheep’s clothing of the conventional moral values. His masquerade can only be carried through by putting the conventional moral vocabulary to the service of his private purposes. He must say…what people want to hear, so that they will put power in his hands. Thus…[he must] learn the craft…of molding people by rhetoric. He must take them by the ear before he takes them by the throat.”

Treating morality as the product of agreement among asocial persons may seem to represent it as a necessary evil. MacIntyre paints a darker picture. Not only may the clever cast off morality’s chains, but they may use them to fetter their fellows. Morality may seem to make reluctant co-operators of us all. In fact it divides us into foxes and gulls.

THE APPEAL TO A MORAL OBLIGATION TO ALLEVIATE POVERTY THROUGH DEVELOPMENT ENSURES THAT SELF-DEFEATING AND ULTIMATELY DESTRUCTIVE PRACTICES WILL SIMPLY CONTINUE UNABATED – THEIR ETHICAL STANCE IS MERELY A HYPOCRITICAL FAÇADE FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF THE STATUS QUO.Latouche, professor of Economics at U of Paris, 1997 [Serge, ‘Paradoxical Growth’, The Post-Development Reader]

Finally, what makes economic growth an indisputable good in the eyes of most people is that it is the result of behaviour that, in itself, is also moral. The utilitarian principle of justice found in the dominant morality (even including an author like John Rawls) can be reduced to: that is right which maximizes , first the GNP, and second the quantity of life itself. According to the analysis of Max Weber,' the take-off of the Western economy was a result of the generalization of an ethic: one of work and the entrepreneurial spirit, practised with scrupulous honesty, of enjoyment in making an effort, of rectitude, of punctuality, of renouncing sensual pleasures, and of the habit of saving. Unlimited material

accumulation bears clear testimony to the accentuation of merits and the irrefutable proof of divine blessing. In spite of the repeated and striking failures of development projects in the Third World during the last four decades, the spectacle of 'mal-development' in numerous countries, they still seem to be incapable of challenging the model. It is true, as Marie-Dominique Perrot has said, that `by systematically transforming nature and social relations into the marketing of goods and services ... development seems to be the greatest and most comprehensive undertaking of dispossession and expropriation for the benefit of the dominating minori ties that has ever happened .' However, all these well-founded criticisms gloss over the hardened and impermeable myth of good development and good growth. The reality of the `good' of well-being, which is proposed as an objective, is not the quality of life but the quantity of gadgets considered as useful by the mere fact that they are being produced and consumed. Growth is a collection of `things'; well-being is nothing else but 'well-having'. Development disenchants the world by expelling the values from things. By reducing the universe of creatures to the production of utilities, economic growth degrades ethics it self . Well-being is saturated by goods and, in the process, becomes confused with them. There is no escaping from vulgar utilitarianism. Morality is more a hypocritical facade than a reality: in fact, deceit is everywhere. Business ethics exalts the will to power and egoism, and scorns the weak and the losers.10 It falls back glibly into Social Darwinism when it is caught red-handed. Too bad for the losers! The advocates of `good' develop ment know all this and admit it. But the spectacle of the fantastic power of technical society inhibits all fundamental questioning — proof of its totalitarianism. And recourse is made to growth to dress the wounds that it has inflicted in the first place.

ARGUMENTS THAT THE LEVEL OF POVERTY AND SUFFERING NECESSITATES A MORAL DUTY IS GROUNDED IN COLONIALIST ASSUMPTIONSDavid Miller, Political Theory Professor-Oxford University, 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 127What drives the thought that justice may require us to provide aid to distant strangers? It is surely our sense that people in many places are forced to live lives that we regard as intolerable. We cannot see how anyone could lead a worthwhile life without physical security, adequate food, the opportunity to work, and so forth. Presented with concrete cases, we have no doubt about what justice demands. But it is harder to set down the principles that guide such judgments, particularly in the light of what has been said already about cultural difference. How can we be sure that our notions of decency do not simply reflect our own culturally specific conceptions of the good life?

“Assistance” Discourse Entrenches System of Domination

THE AFFIRMATIVE PARTICIPATES IN THE MODERNIZATION OF POVERTY, WHERE THE IMAGE OF THE POOR MASSES PROMPTS A KNEE-JERK IMPULSE FOR ASSISTANCE. THIS ALLOWS THE DOMAIN OF DEVELOPMENT TO CONQUER NEW DOMAINS, TURNING THE POOR INTO OBJECTS OF MANAGEMENT.Escobar, Associate professor of anthropology at the university of Massachusetts, 95 (Arturo, “Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World,” P. 22-24)

Without attempting to undertake an archaeology of poverty, as Rahnema (1991) proposes, it is important to emphasize the break that occurred_in the conceptions and management of poverty first with the emergence of capitalism in Europe and subsequently with the advent of development in the Third World. Rahnema describes the first break in terms of the advent in the nineteenth century of systems for dealing with the poor based on assistance provided by impersonal institutions. Philanthropy occupied an important place in this transition (Donzelot 1979). The transformation of the poor into the assisted had profound consequences. This "modernization" of poverty signified not only the rupture of vernacular relations but also the setting in place of new mechanisms of control. The poor increasingly appeared as a social problem requiring new ways of intervention in society. It was, indeed, in relation to poverty that the modern ways of thinking about the meaning of life, the economy, rights, and social management came into place. "Pauperism, political economy, and the discovery of society were closely interwoven" (Polanyi 1957a, 84). The treatment of poverty allowed society to conquer new domains. More perhaps than on industrial and technological might, the nascent order of capitalism and modernity relied on a politics of poverty the aim of which was not only to create consumers but to transform society by turning the poor into objects of knowledge and management. What was involved in this operation was "a techno-discursive instrument that made possible the conquest of pauperism and the invention of a politics of poverty" (Procacci 1991, 157). Pauperism, Procacci explains, was associated, rightly or wrongly, with features such as mobility, vagrancy, independence, frugality, promiscuity, ignorance, and the refusal to accept social duties, to work, and to submit to the logic of the expansion of "needs." Concomitantly, the management of poverty called for interventions in education, health, hygiene, morality, and employment and the instillment of good habits of association, savings, child rearing, and so on. The result was a panoply of interventions that accounted for the creation of a domain that several researchers have termed "the social" (Donzelot 1979, 1988, 1991; Burchell, Gordon, and Miller 1991). As a domain of knowledge and intervention, the social became prominent in the nineteenth century, culminating in the twentieth century in the consolidation of the welfare state and the ensemble of techniques encompassed under the rubric of social work. Not only poverty but health, education, hygiene, employment, and the poor quality of life in towns and cities were constructed as social problems, requiring extensive knowledge about the population and appropriate modes of social planning (Escobar 1992a). The "government of the social" took on a status that, as the conceptualization of the economy, was soon taken- for granted. A "separate class of the 'poor—(Williams 1973, 104) was created. Yet the most significant aspect of this phenomenon was the setting into place of apparatuses of knowledge and power that took it upon themselves to optimize life by producing it under modern, "scientific!' conditions.The history of modernity, in this way, is not only the history of knowledge and the economy, it is also, more

revealingly, the history of the social.1 As we will see, the history of development implies the continuation in other places of this history of the social. This is the second break in the archaeology of poverty proposed by Rahnema: the globalization of poverty entailed by the construction of two - thirds of the world as poor after 1945. If within market societies the poor were defined as lacking what the rich had in terms of money and material possessions, poor countries came to be similarly defined in relation to the standards of wealth of the more economically advantaged nations. This economic conception of poverty found an ideal yardstick in the annual per capita income. The perception of poverty on a global scale "was nothing more than the result of a comparative statistical operation, the first of which was carried out only in 1940" (Sachs 1990, 9). Almost by fiat, two-thirds of the world's peoples were transformed into poor subjects in 1948 when the World Bank defined as poor those countries with an annual per capita income below $100. And if the problem was one of insufficient income, the solution was clearly economic growth. Thus poverty became an organizing concept and the object of a new problematization. As in the case of any problematization (Foucault 1986), that of poverty brought into existence new discourses and practices that shaped the reality to which they referred. That the essential trait of the Third World was its poverty and that the solution was economic growth and development became self-evident, necessary, and universal truths. This chapter analyzes the multiple processes that made possible this particular historical event. It accounts for the `developmentalization' of the Third World, its progressive insertion into a regime of thought and practice in which certain interventions for the eradication of poverty became central to the world order. This chapter can also be seen as an account of the production of the tale of three worlds and the contest over the development of the third. The tale of three worlds was, and continues to be despite the demise of the second, a way of bringing about a political order "that works by the negotiation of boundaries achieved through ordering differences" (Haraway 1989a, 10). It was and is a narrative in which culture, race, gender, nation, and class are deeply and inextricably intertwined. The political and economic order coded by the tale of three worlds and development rests on a traffic of meanings that mapped new domains of being and understanding, the same domains that are increasingly being challenged and displaced by people in the Third World today.

THE AFFIRMATIVE ATTEMPT TO “SAVE” THE THIRD WORLD FORM ITS DARKNESS IS A RUSE FOR WESTERN DOMINANCE AND EXPLOITATION—THEIR NEUTRAL SOLUTIONS ARE THE SUBSATANCE OF THAT RUSEEscobar, Associate professor of anthropology at the university of Massachusetts, 95 (Arturo, “Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World,” P. 25-26)

The messianic feeling and the quasi-religious fervor expressed in the notion of salvation are noticeable. In this representation, "salvation" entails the conviction that there is one right way, namely, development; only through development will Colombia become an "inspiring example" for the rest of the underdeveloped world. Nevertheless, the task of salvation/development is complex. Fortunately,-adequate tools (science, technology planning, and international organizations) have already been created for such a task, the value of which has already been proved by their successful application in the West. Moreover, these tools are neutral,. desirable, and universally applicable. Before development, there was nothing: only "reliance on natural forces," which did not produce "the most happy results." Development brings the light, that is, the possibility to meet "scientifically ascertained social requirements." The country must thus awaken from its lethargic past and follow the one way to

salvation, which is, undoubtedly, "an opportunity unique in its long history" (of darkness, one might add). This is the system of representation that the report upholds. Yet, although couched in terms of humanitarian goals and the preservation of freedom, the new strategy sought to provide a new hold on countries and their resources. A type of development was promoted which conformed to the ideas and expectations of the affluent West, to what the Western countries judged to be a normal course of evolution and progress. As we will see, by conceptualizing progress in such terms, this development strategy became a powerful instrument for normalizing the world. The 1949 World Bank mission to Colombia was one of the first concrete expressions of this new state of affairs.

FOCUSING ON PAIN AND SUFFERING IN FAR OFF PLACES ALLOWS US TO MAINTAIN A DISTANCE AND SUPERIORITY. THE WEST BECOMES SEPARATE AND BENEVOLENT AND REFUSES TO ACTIVELY ENGAGE THE CIRCUMSTANCES. TOSSING AID JUSTIFIES OUR INACTION TO STRUCTURAL CHANGES. THE AFF HAS NO LONG TERM SOLVENCY, THEY JUST WANT TO FEEL GOOD. Fair and Parks 01 [Jo Ellen Fair and Lisa Parks, Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of

California-Santa Barbara, Africa on Camera: Television News Coverage and Aerial Imaging of Rwandan Refugees, Africa Today 48.2, pg. 35-37]

THE DESIRE TO EMPATHIZE WITH THE OPPRESSED AND GIVE AID IS HOW WE COMPENSATE WITH IMAGES OF MISERY. BUT TRYING TO BECOME ONE WITH THE OPPRESSED DOESN’T HELP THEM. ALL IT DOES IS WISH AWAY OUR FEELINGS OF

GUILT. Jackson 04 (Michael, The Prose of Suffering and the Practice of Silence, Spiritus: A Journal of Christian

Spirituality, http://muse.uq.edu.au.ts.isil.westga.edu/journals/spiritus/v004/4.1jackson.html, prof. of Anthropology at Univ of Copenhagen)

U.S. news organizations' earlier experiences, particularly in Ethiopia and Somalia, demonstrated that at least for a few weeks U.S. news viewers would be content to watch the pain and suffering of others as long as the story remained an uncomplicated one of U.S. benevolence. Simplifying humanitarian stories for domestic audiences in terms of what the West is doing for Africans allows journalists and news consumers alike to assume a certain superiority. As a result, the West is made separate and distant from Africa, which permits journalists to ignore questions about how historical and contemporary western involvement contributes to current problems (Hawk 1992; Fair 1996; Girardet 1996; Myers, Klak, and Koehl 1996). Speaking of how the U.S. media simplified its Rwandan coverage, ABC's Ted Koppel explained: Maybe it's a natural outgrowth of the age of television, but we do prefer to keep our crises simple, stories with a definable beginning and a predictable end. We like our villains to be foreign and our heroes home-grown. What we do not like are long, open-ended, complicated involvements far from home, in which America's good intentions are misunderstood. By those standards, we will not much like even our limited involvement in Rwanda. It is one thing to respond with American skill and generosity to a human disaster, fly in the food and the medicine, build the roads, set up the water purification plans. But at that point, our national attention span starts to lag. If people are no longer dying at the rate of 2000 a day

But men like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Owen, and John Adams, though exposed to the spectacle of mass suffering, did not themselves suffer the hardships, pain, and deprivations that moved them so deeply. What was it, then, that drove these men to want to alleviate the suffering of "the people," en masse, and to create a world in which equal rights included the right to wellbeing and happiness, as well as the right to decide how one was governed? For the Americans, "the abject and degrading misery" of slavery and African-American labor "was present everywhere."7 For European intellectuals, urban poverty and misery was equally ubiquitous and unavoidable, and it is possible that their revolutionary thinking was driven as much by the sheer awfulness of coexisting with such large numbers of distressed human beings as by enlightenment and compassion. This situation reflected the changes that had taken place in Europe as a result of industrialization. By

the 18th century, the dense concentrations of people in cities, and the intensification of urban misery, meant that the effects of poverty, disease, overcrowding, and pollution could not be ignored. [End Page 48] In 1818, the English poet John Keats visited the city of Belfast in northern Ireland. The scenes that met his eye are pretty much the same that a traveller encounters in many Third World cities today, crowded with youngsters from rural areas seeking their fortune or people displaced by war. Since the turn of the century, rural poverty and the effects of the Industrial Revolution had "sucked so many people into Belfast that its population had expanded by 50 per cent."8 Keats, travelling with a close friend, Charles Brown, was deeply troubled by the suffering he saw. "What a tremendous difficulty," he wrote his brother Tom, "is the improvement of the condition of such people—I cannot conceive how a mind

'with child' of Philosophy could gra[s]p at possibility—with me it is absolute despair."9 But Keats' despair at how this suffering might be alleviated gives way to an acceptance of life's unavoidable hardships, and a fascination with how one might "convert the brutal facts of life into perceptions which might 'do the world some good.'"10 Subtly, the desire to reform a barbarous social system is tempered by a more fervent desire to transmute the suffering around him into a form that improves his own soul. "Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?" he wrote to his brother George in 1819, observing that this "system of salvation" was very different from Christianity, and

did not "affront our reason and humanity."11 This turn to inwardness is, of course, characteristic of romanticism. But it is a turn that is born of a frustration to change the world politically. Faced with entrenched inequality, and the impossibility of social change, the romantic falls back on his own emotions, his own thoughts, his own suffering—what Coleridge called "inner

goings-on" and Luc Boltanski calls a "metaphysics of interiority,"12 and Sartre calls "magical action."13 That is to say, when action on the world around us proves impossible, we have recourse to action on our own emotions and thoughts, thereby transforming the way we experience the world. Unable to flee an assailant, a person may faint. Unable to win an argument, a person may resort to verbally abusing his opponent. Unable to do anything about an impending crisis, a person may worry himself sick about it, as if this increase in anxiety will make some real difference. Unable to stop thinking about a traumatic event, a person may refuse to speak of it, as if silence will make the event go away—a view contained in the English saying "Least said, soonest

THE BELIEF THAT HELP IS ALTRUISTIC AND PURE IS NAÏVE AT BEST. AID IS ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED BY AN IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL AGENDA. THE AFF CLAIMS THAT THEY JUST WANT TO “SAVE AFRICA” DON’T ACCURATELY REPRESENT THE REASONING BEHIND SUCH INTERVENTION. Narman 97 [Anders, Development Thinking: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice, Geografiska

Annaler: Series B, Human Geography v79 n4 Current Development Thinking, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=04353684%281997%2979%3A4%3C217%3ADTBTGB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C, Ass. Prof. at the Dept of Human and Economic Development Goteberg University]

mended." Time does not allow me to review all these magical strategies, but a brief summary of two may be helpful. One such strategy is to magic the problem away by merging oneself with it—identifying so completely with the misery around you that the boundary between oneself and the object of one's concern is effectively dissolved. Van Gogh provides a poignant example of this empathic identification. Writing to his brother Theo in the winter of 1880, Vincent confesses that his "only [End Page 49] anxiety is: how can I be of use in the world?" At this time he is preparing himself to be an evangelist among the coal miners of the Borinage region, west of Mons. In order to commit himself body and soul to the poor, he feels he must cut himself off from his family, to "cease to exist" for them. He neglects his appearance, goes hungry and cold, and gives the little he has to peasants and workers. But who is helped by this self-abasing sympathy? What good can come of this identification with the oppressed? Vincent feels imprisoned and melancholic. Frustrated in his efforts to alleviate the misery of humankind, he ends up seeking to annihilate his anguish by steeping himself in the suffering around him. But nothing is really changed. In his act of martyrdom, the martyr has simply made his own troubled conscience disappear by a sleight of hand, donning the sackcloth of those he had set out to save.

Regarding the question of what development stands for, students just entering the course normally take a rather neutral stand. To most of them development means a process of change, which hopefully moves in a positive direction. Often it is also claimed that embedded in the concept of development we find environmental concern, individual well-being, self-articulation and peace. If asked to identify common barriers to development we find, at that stage, a list of basic needs, e.g. education, health and infrastructure. This is coupled to normatively positive words, such as peace and democracy. In some cases the dependency structures and power relations are also mentioned as essential. In the majority of cases, students of Development Studies consider that a general interest, coupled with the need to overcome a general lack of knowledge on international issues, motivated them to apply for this particular course. A major role in sensitizing the students to development issues before their enrollment in the university is often played by various television programmes. Commonly, this is through pictures of starving children or other disaster pornography. In most cases students have found that the analysis of why a certain problem has come about is seriously lacking. Even if the times of intensive solidarity manifestations of 1968, with the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa, are not prevalent today, students are influenced by major debates--on the European Union, nuclear power etc. Discussions on the concept of development, on the basis of the issues mentioned, tend to turn into a virtual shopping list on what we in the north can do to assist the poor people of the world. Somehow the notion acquired during such a debate seems to be that we still live largely in a harmonic environment, in which we in the north are willing to give up part of our material well-being in favour of the less advantaged. For those continuing the course up to the field visit, many are taken aback from this idealistic naiveti. When returning to the same issue, i.e. the meaning of development, during the end of the field course another picture emerges. Most of the students, at that stage, mention that their visions of development have become increasingly complex. Contributing to this has been the academic reading, as well as the confrontation with African reality. Suddenly the gap between theory and practice has widened enormously. Attempts to establish a universal ground to explain development are constantly challenged during the time in the field. Development tends to acquire more of relativity, in the dialogue with the other.

Government Obligation Trades Off with Individual Action

Government Obligation Undermines Individual Obligation

GOVERNMENT POLICIES RENDER THE EFFORTS OF INDIVIDUALS TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE INEFFECTIVE AND POTENTIALLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVEKwame Anthony Appiah, Professor Philosophy-Princeton University, 2006, Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, p. 167-8

But the Shallow Pond arguments raise more empirical concerns, to which, as I promised, I now return. Consider the factual claim that UNICEF can save the lives of thirty children for $100. What does this mean? It doesn’t of course, mean that you can keep them alive forever. Part of the reason UNICEF or OXFAM—both well-run organizations full of well-intentioned people doing much good—can keep sending those letters is that they have to save the same children over and over again. You send the check. Even if, per impossible , your money could be traced to a particular village in Bangladesh, rehydrating thirty particular children who would otherwise have died of their diarrhea, you are not thereby making a serious contribution to the real improvement of their life chances. Death isn’t the only that matters. What matters is decent lives. And if what you save them for is just another month or another year or another decade of horrible suffering, have you really made the best use of your money? Indeed, have you really made the world less bad?

This isn’t to criticize the particular organizations that Unger has chosen to celebrate. I am confident that they, and organizations like them, are doing much genuine long-term good. But responding to the crisis of a child dying because her frail body cannot absorb fluids faster than they pour out of her is not really saving her, if tomorrow she will eat the same poor food, drink the same infected water, and live in a country with the same incompetent government; if the government’s economic policies continue to block real development for her family and her community; if her country is still trapped in poverty in part because our government has imposed tariffs on some of their exports to protect American manufacturers with a well-organized lobbying group in Washington, while the European Union saves jobs for its people by placing quota on the importation of others.

Collective Responsibility Undermines Individual Action

COLLECTIVE RESONSIBILITY ARGUMENT BECOMES AN EXCUSE FOR INACTION AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVELKristin Shrader-Frechette, Philosophy Professor-Notre Dame, 2007, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, p. 175

But what collective responsibilities do people have, if they cannot always specify them precisely? Ethicist Robert Goodin says that, regardless of their specific duties, many people probably err in collective responsibility because they fail to join with others in ways that might make a difference. Joining with others, to make a difference, is precisely what the APHA recommends when it calls for “advocacy and litigation” to protect public health; it asks citizens “to work in coalition” to achieve public‐health goals, and it specifically promotes action through public‐interest law groups. To help prevent life‐threatening pollution, people could work with some non‐governmental organization (NGO)—like Physicians for Social Responsibility. Yet often people do not. Often they assume such work is purely optional. Yet if people ought to follow the responsibility argument, and if the only realistic way of achieving effective institutional reform is through such NGOs, then people have duties to work within these NGOs. As Goodin puts it, “in the real world, it is these failures to organize [so as to coordinate individual action] to which collective responsibility most often attaches.” 59 People are thus collectively responsible for harms like pollutant ‐ induced deaths, whenever they fail to work with a group capable of preventing them, and whenever such groups are the only realistic ways of preventing harms. They are especially responsible whenever there is an embarrassing wealth of appropriate collectives—Human Rights Watch, Public Citizen, and so on.

Individual Action EffectiveINDIVIDUAL HAS OBLIGATION TO ACT TO ASSIST THOSE IN ABSOLUTE POVERTYPeter Singer, Center for Human Bioethics-Monash University, 1993, Practical Ethics, p. 222

If these are the facts, we cannot avoid concluding that by not giving more than we do, people in rich countries are allowing those in poor countries to suffer from absolute poverty, with consequent malnutrition, ill health, and death. This is not a conclusion that applies only to governments. It applies to each absolutely affluent individual, for each of us has the opportunity to do something about the situation; for instance, to give our time or money to voluntary organizations like OXFAM, CARE, War on Want, Freedom from Hunger, Community Aid Abroad, and so on. If, then, allowing someone to die is not intrinsically different from killing someone, it would seem that we are all murderers.

INDIVIDUAL ACTION IS CRITICAL TO PROMOTE JUSTICEKristin Shrader-Frechette, Philosophy Professor-Notre Dame, 2007, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, p. 148-9

This chapter argues that the three “excuses” fail, and thus that the responsibility argument has at least a prima facie plausibility. How should people respond to this argument? What should they do? Chapter 6 begins to address both these questions in more detail. For now, it is important to remember that what this argument requires is the efforts of ordinary people. The museum of Yad Vashem, established in Jerusalem to commemorate victims of the Holocaust, is a dramatic reminder of what ordinary people can accomplish. Leading toward Yad Vashem is a long, tree‐lined avenue, the Alée des Justes, on which every tree commemorates a non‐Jewish person who risked her life to save a Jew during the Nazi era. Each helper's case is carefully evaluated by a committee before a tree is planted. In many cases, these ordinary people who helped Jews were helping complete strangers. Only those who helped without hope of any reward have a tree planted for them. There are now more than 6,000 trees, spilling over onto a hillside, but the trees needed may number 500,000. Most of those who helped Jews were not famous—like businessman Oskar Schindler, who rescued those who were being taken to concentration camps by arguing that their special skills were needed for his factory. The Yad Vashem stories instead are mainly those of ordinary citizens who helped Jews. One was a Dutch mother of eight who, during 1944, went hungry herself and rationed food for her own children so that she could feed her hidden Jewish guests. 81

The power of ordinary people also was evident in the American Revolution. Commenting on the era, some historians claim that only about 17 percent of the colonial population supported breaking away from the British. The merchant and industry class did not because it was bad for business. 82 The task of fighting for justice was left to others, just as it is today. What would happen today if 17 percent of people became aware of environmental‐health threats and their responsibility for them? What would happen if they were convinced by the health data, inspired by ethics, and committed to do something about them? This book argues for another revolution, an ethical transformation directed at full citizen participation and institutional reform, to “make democracy work.” The preceding arguments show that this is not a revolution recommended merely by charity, but one demanded by justice. It also is not a revolution that relies on accepting some new ethics. Instead it asks only that people rededicate

themselves to same goal that inspired our ancestors more than two centuries ago—universal human rights.

INDIVIDUAL ACTION KEY TO ELIMINATING EXTREME POVERTY—WE SHOULD BECOME THE CHANGE WE SEEKKristin Shrader-Frechette, Philosophy Professor-Notre Dame, 2007, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, p. 206

Bellah's community - based vision of a just social order is rooted firmly in the populism of Thomas Jefferson. When he visited France, Jefferson was appalled at the extremes of wealth and poverty that he found. He believed the United States had hope for the future only because it lacked such extremes. Following Jefferson, Bellah says crumbs from rich people's tables will not eliminate poverty. These crumbs also will not reduce life‐threatening pollution. Instead, justice requires that extreme poverty and extreme pollution be eliminated. But how can anyone begin such a monumental task? One answer is that the task already has been begun by many, already moderately successful, NGOs. Others can join their efforts. Another answer is that people can try to become the change they seek—as the Barthles have done and as Gwen Pearson, Karen Silkwood, Reason Warehime, Adam Finkel, Adolph Coleman, and Juana Gutierrez have done. A third answer is given by Robert Bellah. He says people can begin the work of creating a just and healthy society by becoming less attached to the extrinsic rewards, like money, associated with work. Instead, he says, people can dedicate themselves to their own communities and to work that has intrinsic rewards.

“SMALL WINS” STRATEGY EFFECTIVE ROUTE FOR SOCIAL CHANGEKristin Shrader-Frechette, Philosophy Professor-Notre Dame, 2007, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, p. 179-81

A small - wins strategy also enables citizens seeking social change to be “hardy.” According to social psychologist S. C. Kobasa, hardy people have at least three characteristics: commitment, control, and challenge. They have commitment, or a sense of purpose that enables them to impose meaning on things. They have control, or the tendency to act as if they can influence situations. They also accept challenge—the belief that change is an incentive to grow rather than a threat to their security. Small wins promote hardiness because they promote commitment and the vision of an orderly series of steps to an ultimate goal. They reinforce control through achievable successes that provide incentives to realize bigger and bigger wins. Especially in a policy world with few clear solutions, small wins make political sense because they make achieving consensus easier. Of course, more radical social reformers may accuse small - wins strategists of being naïve or optimistic, especially about the necessity to play political hardball. This supposed naïveté, however, might better be described as openness and optimism. Both traits are necessary, over the long haul, for addressing serious social problems, such as environmental threats to life and public health. Suppose some small win seems too easy, ineffective, or naïve? Psychologically resilient reformers—who can tolerate high levels of problem‐concern and stress—should go for bigger wins. But for those facing frustration, powerlessness, and possible failure, it makes sense to work for small wins.

Together the Polish workers effectively set up an alternative set of educational, informational, financial, medical, and legal institutions that was able to meet many of the needs of individual workers. The totalitarian government met virtually none of these needs. The Polish Workers Defense Committee, however, enabled workers to build community among themselves, to “restore social bonds outside official institutions.” It enabled them to avoid trying to seize power, in the hope that they could use it to do good. Instead, they largely ignored state power and themselves devised ways to do good, through their own collective action. Pursuing their own personal transformation, they did not expect to be able to overthrow their oppressors directly. They realized that, by transforming themselves, they could blunt the force of their oppression. How did the Polish Workers Defense Committee encourage this personal transformation? It allowed members great autonomy, the ability to act freely. It imposed no detailed lists of what members could and could not do. Instead, it encouraged people to do whatever they could to help workers, provided it was not contrary to the few principles on which they had all agreed. By encouraging workers to behave autonomously, when government recognized no rights to autonomy, the Polish Workers Defense Committee encouraged community and personal transformation. This community began as individuals' forming different small groups organized around particular issues that were of concern to them, like pollution or working conditions. These practices of autonomy, community, and mutual trust, in turn, created empowered, hopeful workers. They were committed to small local actions on behalf of “militant decency,” rather than waiting for large‐scale political change to help accomplish good. The Polish Workers Defense Committee encouraged a strategy of personal transformation through which each worker was encouraged to “start doing the things you think should be done—start being what you think society should become.” The organization's assisting in the personal transformation of thousands of workers thus resulted in a visible, day‐to‐day community of free people. They were filled with “angerless wisdom.” They did not wait for either their own violence or the government to change things. Instead, they ignored their oppressors and became the change themselves. The depth of this personal transformation—especially the humility and lack of vanity of the organization's members—became apparent after Solidarity was formed. Once the union, Solidarity, was organized and successful, the Polish Workers Defense Committee voted to abolish itself because it was no longer needed.

At the heart of these steps leading to the workers' organized action was the small - wins strategy, using the successes of many small victories—like publishing newsletters and helping other members with medical needs. These small victories helped to build community, to energize and empower members, and to provide alternative, freeing institutions in the face of totalitarian ones. They proved that evolution is a powerful form of revolution. They created an alternative society within which workers behaved as if Poland were already free. Why was this organized action ethical and successful? It created community instead of strangers, responsibility instead of despair, agreements instead of disagreements, personal virtue instead of wasted anger, enthusiasm instead of hopelessness, autonomy instead of rigid rules, and persistent acts of decency instead of naïve hopes for an impossible “big win.”

EMPIRICALLY – INDIVIDUALS HAVE BEEN EFFECTIVE WHEN ORGANIZING WITH OTHERSKristin Shrader-Frechette, Philosophy Professor-Notre Dame, 2007, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, p. 196

Organizing themselves as consumers, through NGOs that use the small ‐ wins strategy, ordinary people can be especially powerful in preventing threats to life and to human rights. They can use consumer boycotts to make it more costly for firms not to use, than to use, worker ‐ safe and environmentally safe technologies. By boycotting lettuce from nonunion farmworkers and boycotting Nestlé because of its infant ‐ formula practices, as APHA has recommended, well ‐ organized Western consumers have sent corporations a powerful message via their pocketbooks. The message? If companies jeopardize life and human rights, in the long run citizens will force them to reform or to go out of business. 36 Many university students have kept their institutions from buying goods made in sweatshop conditions of unsafe, slave, child, or underpaid labor. 37 Likewise people can force governments and manufacturers to recognize human rights. They can lobby to stop all forms of assistance to governments and to companies that do not recognize rights to life, to bodily security, to organize labor groups and to enjoy equal environmental protection. 38 One example of such needed lobbying is forcing abolition or reform of the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Designed to promote economic growth at home and abroad, OPIC gives American firms taxpayer funds for up to 75 percent of financing, plus investment insurance for overseas projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars. In reality, however, OPIC often helps firms locate abroad so they can avoid U.S. public‐health, environmental‐, and occupational‐safety regulations. Once abroad, the firms impose serious health risks on those in poor nations who are unable to protect themselves. For example, although such plants are outlawed in the United States, OPIC has used taxpayer dollars to help U.S. companies build dangerous, asbestos plants in India and substandard smelting complexes in Africa.

MANY EXAMPLES OF PEOPLE WILLING TO GIVE TO THOSE IN NEED IN LINES WITH THE RESPONSIBILITY ARGUMENTKristin Shrader-Frechette, Philosophy Professor-Notre Dame, 2007, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, p. 206-7

Princeton ethicist Peter Singer gives examples of many ordinary people whose lives show that they live by intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, rewards. He tells the story of a major donor to the Australian Conservation Foundation, a man who regularly sent the foundation checks for $1,000. When the head of the foundation went to the man's home, to thank him for his large donations over many years, he thought he must be at the wrong address. It was a small suburban home owned by an employee of the state department of public works, David Alsop. Despite his modest government salary and small home, Alsop donates 50 percent of his income to environmental causes. Whether or not people share Alsop's commitment, there is something ennobling about the way he lives his life.

There also is something ennobling about the numbers of ordinary citizens—in Britain, for instance, roughly 6 percent of those eligible to donate—who repeatedly give blood to blood banks in Britain, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the Americas. This is the only supply of blood for medical purposes. Giving it requires about an hour of one's time, mostly from ordinary people who typically remain unknown and unheralded. In about 25 countries, there also are bone ‐ marrow donor registries. There people offer to undergo anesthesia, stay overnight in a hospital, and donate their marrow to cancer victims—strangers—who need a match. In the United States, 650,000 donors are in the registry. In France, 63,000. In England, 180,000. Ordinary people also are often generous with their money. American surveys indicate that nearly 90 percent of Americans donate some money to charities. Indeed, at least 20 million families give at least 5 percent of their income to charity. And nearly half of all Americans donate their time to some charity. In addition, 82 percent of all Americans say they are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products. This all suggests that many people are ready to take on the duties of the responsibility argument.

AT: “Individual Responsibility Trades Off with Government/ Community Responsibility”

BURDEN OF PROOF ON THOSE WHO WOULD ARGUE THAT INDIVIDUAL GIVING DECREASES GOVERNMENT GIVING – PUBLIC AND PRIVATE OBLIGATIONS ARE NOT COMPETITIVEPeter Singer, Center for Human Bioethics-Monash University, 1993, Practical Ethics, p. 241-2

We often hear that overseas aid should be a government responsibility, not left to privately run charities. Giving privately, it is said, allows the government to escape its responsibilities. Since increasing government aid is the surest way of making a significant increase to the total amount of aid given, I would agree that the governments of affluent nations should give much more genuine, no-strings-attached, aid than they give now. Less that one-sixth of one percent of GNP is a scandalously small amount for a nation as wealthy as the United States to give. Even the official UN target of 0.7 percent seems much less than affluent nations can and should give—though it is a target few have reached. But is this a reason against each of us giving what we can privately, through voluntary agencies? To believe that it is seems to assume that the more people there are who give through voluntary agencies, the less likely it is that the government will do its part. Is this plausible? The opposite view—that if no one gives voluntarily the government will assume that its citizens are not in favor of overseas aid, and will cut its program accordingly—is more reasonable. In any case, unless there is a definite probability that by refusing to give we would be helping to bring about an increase in government assistance, refusing to give privately is wrong for the same reason that triage is wrong: it is a refusal to prevent a definite evil for the sake of a very uncertain gain. The onus of showing how a refusal to give privately will make the government give more is on those who refuse to give. This is not to say that giving privately is enough. Certainly we should campaign for entirely new standards for both public and private overseas aid. We should also work for fairer trading arrangements between rich and poor countries, and less domination of the economies of poor countries by multinational corporations more concerned about producing profits for shareholders back home than food for the local poor. Perhaps it is more important to be politically active in the interests of the poor than to give to them oneself – but why not do both? Unfortunately, many use the view that oversea aid is the government’s responsibility as a reason against giving, but not a reason for being politically active.

EMPIRICALLY – ACTING AS AN INDIVIDUAL CAN CONVINCE PEOPLE OF THE NEED FOR INCREASED GOVERNMENT ACTIONKristin Shrader-Frechette, Philosophy Professor-Notre Dame, 2007, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, p. 191

Although earlier discussions have outlined both conditions for ethical action (like those for whistleblowing) and iterative steps to follow (getting information, cooperating with others, evaluating alternatives, and pursuing organized action), there is no simple recipe for how to fulfill the responsibility argument. This is partly because, as already emphasized, following this argument requires a personal, as well as a political, transformation. This personal transformation must be dictated, in part, by each person's unique abilities, experiences, and relationships—as illustrated by one well‐to‐do retiree, a

former corporate executive and friend of the author. Critical of increased government funding for health, education, and welfare, he spent a year as a part ‐ time volunteer in a public grammar school in Florida. He went into this service work as a person deeply committed to private enterprise and to the corporate model that had made him a multimillionaire. After seeing the inadequately funded schools, the overcrowded classes, the poor equipment, the poorly paid teachers, and many children whose basic needs were not met, he had a conversion experience. Slowly he became an outspoken proponent of improved public education, smaller class sizes, higher teacher pay, and increased health, education, and welfare funding. His own firsthand experience—like that of Gwen Pearson, Kate Burns, Reason Warehime, and others in this book—changed him. His service work personally transformed him in ways that years of study or reading, alone, probably could never do. As a result, he learned what he needed to do, as a citizen, and who he needed to become. The same is probably true for most people. Earlier chapters have tried to supply part of the ethical why for this personal and political transformation. The service itself and the hearts of the servers themselves will teach people much of the how.

INDIVIDUAL ACTION KEY TO EFFECTIVE COLLECTIVE ACTION – CREATES COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITYKristin Shrader-Frechette, Philosophy Professor-Notre Dame, 2007, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, p. 173-4

May's arguments provide grounds for believing the collective-responsibility objection is flawed. Why? People typically are able to influence the institutions of which they are members. As a result, people are responsible for institutional behavior, even if it is not always possible to pinpoint their precise levels of responsibility. Nevertheless, that responsibility is proportional to the degree of influence an individual has or could have on the group, if she developed her character in the ways she ought. Emphasizing that social groups enable individuals to do more harm or good than they otherwise could do, May explains that the benefits of community membership are possible only because of increased responsibility on the part of members. This responsibility is heightened because groups often are able to transform individual values, and individuals often are able to transform group values, as in the case of racism. Psychological studies show, for example, that racism is in part the result of groups' influencing individuals, and individuals' influencing groups. Thus, individuals bear some responsibility for group actions and omissions. As Joel Feinberg warns: No individual person can be blamed for not being a hero or a saint …but a whole people can be blamed for not producing a hero when the times require it, especially when the failure can be charged to some discernible element in the group's “way of life” that militates against heroism. 53 The issue here, of course, is not heroism but compensating for the harm done by institutions in which one participates. For example, to the degree that people help produce a “way of life,” a climate of social insensitivity, they are collectively responsible for harms like the murder of Kitty Genovese. Although 58 residents of a New York apartment building heard Genovese's screams for help, during an attack lasting 55 minutes, they did nothing. She was beaten, stabbed, and eventually killed. This “Genovese syndrome” again occurred when Breann Voth was brutally murdered in 2003 in Vancouver, British Columbia. At least three nearby residents heard Breann's screams. They continued for 10 minutes. Again residents did nothing. After her daughter's death, Mrs. Voth returned to the scene of the crime and posted several lines of the famous anti-Nazi poem of Pastor Martin Niemoller. “When they came to get the slaves, I did nothing. When they came to get the Jews, I did nothing. When they

came to get me, what did you do? I did nothing.” German philosopher Hannah Arendt probably would say that those who heard Kitty Genovese's and Breann Voth's screams, but did nothing, are not the only ones responsible for their deaths. Arendt does not believe members' direct causal responsibility for harm is necessary for making them responsible for institutional harm. Her starting point is that all people are members of communities that they influence. Because they share their lives and influence, she says, “this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we are entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live our lives not by ourselves but … [within] a human community.” Her rationale for collective responsibility is that the world is one we have all created, that “we all share, wrong - doer, wrong -s ufferer and spectator. ” She also believes that people must be collectively responsible, for practical reasons. The world itself “is at stake”. Gandhi echoed a similar theme: community interconnectedness creates responsibility for other members of the community. “Whenever I live in a situation where others are in need … whether or not I am responsible for it, I have become a thief.”

Poverty Impact Answers

Development Assistance High and Increasing

ODA INCREASINGAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 275

The largest component of foreign aid is what is known as official development assistance (ODA); the term covers funds donated by the governments of rich donor countries for the welfare and development of poor recipient countries. According to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, which is the scorekeeper, total ODA in 2011 was $133.5 billion. There are twenty-three DAC countries, who contributed between 0.1 percent of national income (Greece and Korea) and 1 percent of national income (Norway and Sweden); the 2011 average was just under 0.5 percent of national income. ODA rose rapidly through the 1960s and 9170s and doubled in real value from 1960 to 1980. The end of the Cold War brought substantial reductions—in itself an indication of donor intent—and the 1997 total was below the 1980 value. Since then, ODA has increased by more than 50 percent. The cumulative amount of aid since 1960 is approximately $5 trillion (at 2009 prices).

Level of Poverty Exaggerated

UNDP DELIBERATELY EXAGGERATES POVERTY IN POOR COUNTRIESAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 223-4

The United Nations Development Programme made this mistake for many years, opening itself to charges of deliberately exaggerating the poverty in poor countries. Any time we read about living standards in poor countries – whether a wage rate, what it costs to visit a doctor, or the price of food or transportation—and make the obvious conversion using a market exchange rate, the results will be too small by a factor of two to three. Wages are certainly low in poor countries – just another way of saying these countries are poor—but nothing is served by exaggerating just how poor they are relative to the rich countries of the world.

Development Assistance Bad/Counterproductive

Development Assistance Generally Counterproductive to Reducing Poverty

FOREIGN AID IS AN OBSTACLE TO ELIMINATING POVERTYAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 269-70

These calculations, including the one with which I began, are examples of what I call the aid illusion , the erroneous belief that global poverty could be eliminated if only rich people or rich countries were to give more money to poor people or to poor countries. I shall argue that, far from being a prescription for eliminating poverty, the aid illusion is actually an obstacle to improving the lives of the poor.

EMPIRICALLY – DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE HAS UNDERMINED ECONOMIC GROWTH AND POVERTY REDUCTIONAna Swanson, World Economic Forum, 2015, “Does foreign aid always help the poor?” October 23, [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-always-help-the-poor/]

Deaton wasn’t the first economist to challenge these assumptions, but over the past two decades his arguments began to receive a great deal of attention. And he made them with perhaps a better understanding of the data than anyone had before. Deaton’s skepticism about the benefits of foreign aid grew out of his research, which involved looking in detail at households in the developing world, where he could see the effects of foreign aid intervention. “I think his understanding of how the world worked at the micro level made him extremely suspicious of these get-rich-quick schemes that some people peddled at the development level,” says Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT. The data suggested that the claims of the aid community were sometimes not borne out. Even as the level of foreign aid into Africa soared through the 1980s and 1990s, African economies were doing worse than ever, as the chart below, from a paper by economist Bill Easterly of New York University, shows. The effect wasn’t limited to Africa. Many economists were noticing that an influx of foreign aid did not seem to produce economic growth in countries around the world. Rather, lots of foreign aid flowing into a country tended to be correlated with lower economic growth, as this chart from a paper by Arvind Subramanian and Raghuram Rajan shows. The countries that receive less aid, those on the left-hand side of the chart, tend to have higher growth — while those that receive more aid, on the right-hand side, have lower growth.

AID COUNTERPRODUCTIVE – OVERSTRETCHES CAPACITY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS Angus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 293

Aid agencies often place a heavy administrative burden on over-stretched local governments. Government agencies have to approve projects; they have to monitor the activities of NGOs; and they have to come to meetings with the dozens if not hundreds of foreign agencies that are working in their

countries. State capacity and regulatory ability are scarce in many poor countries, and this, by itself, limits development and poverty reduction. It is ironic when aid, in an attempt to help, distracts government officials from more important tasks and undermines the state capacity that is central for successful development. As we shall see, this is only one example of aid diverting government away from its own citizens and toward the aid agencies themselves. Such diversions have more serious consequences and the smaller is the country, the less competent is its government, and the greater is the volume of aid.

AID COUNTERPRODUCTIVE FOR THE COUNTRIES THAT REALLY NEED IT – SUCCESSES OCCUR IN COUNTRIES THAT DIDN’T NEED THE AID IN THE FIRST PLACEAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 272-3

The opening calculation is an example of the “hydraulic” approach to foreign aid: if water is pumped in at one end, water must pour out of the other end. Fixing world poverty and saving the lives of dying children is seen as an engineering problem, like fixing the plumbing or repairing a broken car. We need a new transmission, at so much, and two new tires, at so much each, plus labor costs. Children’s lives are saved by providing insecticide-treated bed nets (which protect against malaria) at a few dollars each, or by oral rehydration therapy at $0.25 a dose, or by administering vaccinations at a few dollars each. Investing in projects, programs, and machinery can fire up economic growth, and growth is the best cure for poverty. Statistical analysis shows a robust correlation between economic growth and the share of national income that is invested, so it is straightforward to calculate how much additional capital a country “needs” in order to grow faster and eliminate poverty more quickly.

That such calculations are wrong has been argued for a long time, though it does not remove their seductiveness to many even today. Peter Bauer, writing in 1971, made a crucial point: “If all conditions for development other that capital are present, capital will soon be generated locally, or will be available to the government or to private businesses on commercial terms from abroad the capital to be serviced out of higher tax revenues or from the profits of enterprise, If, however the conditions for development are not present, then aid—which in these circumstances will be the only source of external capital—will be necessarily unproductive and therefore ineffective.” The availability and size of international private capital flows today dwarfs anything that Bauer could have dreamt of; if the argument was correct in 1971, it is stronger still today.

This is one central dilemma of foreign aid. When the “conditions for development” are present, aid is not required. When local conditions are hostile to development, aid is not useful, and it will do harm if it perpetuates those conditions. We shall see many examples of what happens when this dilemma is ignored. Development agencies again and again find themselves impaled on its horns; aid is effective only when it is least needed, but the ultimate donors are insistent on effective aid for those who need it most. While Bauer’s formulation is about capital for investment and growth, it applies more widely. If poverty is not a result of lack of resources or opportunities, but of poor institutions, poor government, and toxic politics, giving money to poor countries –particularly giving money to the governments of poor countries – is likely to perpetuate and prolong poverty, not eliminate it. The hydraulic approach to aid is

wrong, and fixing poverty is nothing like fixing a broken car or pulling a drowning child out of a shallow pond.

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE CAUSES MANY PROBLEMS FOR THE RECIPIENT COUNTRYSouth China Morning Post, 2010, “Do developed countries have an obligation to help the poor?”, April 28, [http://www.scmp.com/article/712693/do-developed-countries-have-obligation-help-poor-ones]

Developed countries should help less developed ones. But whether this is an obligation is a matter for debate. I believe the government of a country should be responsible for the well-being of its people. It is wrong to allow outsiders to influence the development of a country. This could lead to serious problems. A developed country faces various difficulties when choosing who to help. First, its choice could leave a lot of people unhappy and damage its relationship with other

countries. Second, allowing foreigners to have a significant influence on a nation could lead to negative consequences. Some donors do not have the best intentions. They could use their power for their own advantage. This could lead to corruption and financial loss in the less developed country. Third, a developing nation may become dependent on foreign aid. And some donors might charge a hefty interest for their financial assistance. This could pose a bigger headache than not receiving aid at all.

Empirically Africa Proves Development Assistance Counterproductive

EMPIRICALLY AFRICAN GROWTH HAS DONE BETTER WHEN AID WAS LOWAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 285

What do these two figures tell us about aid and growth in Africa? Obviously, other things are going on, but there is much to be said for starting with a simple-minded view, and once again, things look bad for aid. Growth decreased steadily while aid increased steadily. When aid fell off, after the end of the Cold War, growth picked up; the end of the Cold War took away one of the main rationales for aid to Africa, and African growth rebounded. There is bitter joke to the effect that “the Cold War is over, and Africa lost.” But the graph suggests that a more accurate punchline would be “the Cold War is over, and Africa won,” because the West reduced aid. While this makes sense for Mobutu and Zaire, it is clearly too strong as a general proposition.

Development Assistance Ineffective at Reducing Poverty

NO GUARANTEE THAT ECONOMIC GROWTH WILL REDUCE POVERTYAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 41-2

Material living standards are improving in most countries of the world. Yet there is nothing in logic that guarantees an automatic link between growth and reductions in global poverty; it might be that the poorest countries in the world are not growing at all—as was true in much of Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s – or it might be that, where there is growth, it has benefited only the already well-to-do within each country. Those who believe that globalization and economic growth are benefiting only the rich often make one or both of these arguments. Certainly, as we have already seen, there are almost unimaginable differences in average material living standards between countries, and the gaps between rich and poor within each country are hardly less wide. Are these inequalities getting wider with general economic progress? Is everyone benefiting or is it only the already rich who made the Great Escape, leaving the less fortunate behind?

LITTLE EVIDENCE THAT AID HAS HELPED PROMOTE ECONOMIC GROWTH OR REDUCE POVERTYAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 281-2

Aid is not given person to person; most if it is government to government, and much of it is not designed to lift people out of poverty. My brief sketch of the actual aid system tells us that, but it does not tell us whether aid has helped or hindered economic growth and poverty reduction over the past fifty years. There are plentiful data on aid, from the DAC and other sources, as well as information on economic growth and poverty. Different countries are treated differently; some get more aid than others; and the amount of aid has changed from year to year. Surely we can use those data to find out what aid does? Or more precisely, do countries that receive more aid – per person or in relation to their national incomes – grow more rapidly? Of course, poverty reduction and growth are different things, but both theory and experience suggest that economic growth is the surest and most lasting solution to poverty. The description in the previous section should make it clear that there is no easy answer, or at least no easy positive answer. China and India, which got very little aid relative to the sizes of the economies, are the two great success stories, while the much smaller countries of Africa, which have received a great deal of aid relative to their sizes, have much less impressive records of economic growth. Because agencies tend to spread out their aid, with something for everyone, smaller countries get more aid than larger countries, so that if aid is important for growth, smaller countries should grow more rapidly. By this test alone, aid has been a resounding failure. Of course, this is too quick a conclusion. There may be other reasons—having nothing to do with aid—why larger economies can grow faster; we saw some of these in Chapter 6. Even so, this is hardly a positive finding for the idea that aid helps countries grow more rapidly.

GENERATIONS OF DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE HAVE BEEN A FAILUREDamien Kingsbury, Director Centre for Citizenship-Deakin University, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 1-2

The end of World War II and the beginning of the period of decolonisation is generally regarded as marking the era of ‘development’. Development, in this sense, is intended to imply the economic and social growth of impoverished communities. This is measured through human development indicators, in particular in the postcolonial and other states of what was once known as the ‘third world’. Through assistance and their own careful planning, it was intended that ‘third world’ countries could lift themselves out of poverty and other limitations on the capacity of their citizens to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. The idea for this development was based on the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe and Japan following the widespread destruction of World War II. The intention for newly independent and other emerging states was similar to that of a more varied set of post-war schemes that was intended to both draw newly emergent states out of poverty as well as secure them against (or within) Cold War rivalry. However, for very many, across three generations, these processes have failed.

6 DECADES OF ASSISTANCE HAVE FAILED TO SOLVE POVERTYDamien Kingsbury, Director Centre for Citizenship-Deakin University, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 90

The process of a conscious effort to alleviate poverty, for both humanitarian and strategic reasons, has been underway since about 1950 and over the intervening period it has gone through a series of development models or paradigms. Yet six decades later, while absolute global poverty has been reduced, the benchmarks of what constitutes poverty, or escape from it, remain abysmally low while more than a billion of the world’s population continues to be mired in an absolute poverty (Collier 2007). Where absolute poverty has been alleviated it has been primarily though the implantation of new crop technologies, i.e. the ‘green revolution’ of the 1970s, or through the transfer of industrialisation from developed countries to developing countries, in most cases with significant and often unsustainable environmental costs, e.g. China. Despite these gains, the Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015 and ending it by 2025 appears, at best, overly ambitious. That is to say, over six decades of work to date, a further decade and a half of work by global and bilateral institutions, and the best intentions of a host of international non-government organisations, the process of development has at best been only partially successful. Moreover, such success as has been achieved has been measured as ‘conglomerative’ rather than as ‘deprivational’, or based on group averages rather than ‘who is missing what’. According to Anand and Sen (1997), more than just conglomerative understandings are required for inclusion in any meaningful analysis. Indeed, much more than just ‘who gets what’ is required for meaningful analysis of whether, to what extent, and how development is taking place.

TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF ASSISTANCE OVER DECADES HAS FAILED TO ADDRESS POVERTY – MDGs JUST ANOTHER FAILURESimon Fenby, Advisor to Prime Minister of Timor, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 42

Easterly has lamented the ‘tragedy’ of the West’s expenditure of $2.3 trillion over five decades failing to address even the most basic needs of the world’s poor (Easterly 2006: 4). Likewise Sachs notes that even

with the commitment to the MDGs, ‘development continues to fail’ (Sachs 2005: 83). The work of Sachs provides hope and possibility and is inspired by his firm belief in the prospect of ending global poverty through adherence to a development programme. He advocates an economically orthodox approach that examines a broad range of economic, infrastructure, governance and poverty measurements before adopting a corresponding market based and managerial solution coupled with the provision of adequate aid (Sachs 2005: 83 and 364–8). This ahistorical prescription to achieve development reflects a Rostowian approach in which traditional society can be transformed through setting the groundwork for economic ‘take-off’. The foundation of this approach is a view that the reasons states remain ‘un-developed’ are primarily internal and that development can be achieved in large part through domestic reforms, appropriate (generally market based) policy settings and aid. While Klein perceptively refers to this belief in free market policies supported by generous aid to be a hybrid ideology (Klein 2007: 144), what such proposed programmes do manage is to avoid consideration of external, political and cultural factors that shape much of the developing world today. In doing so they often fail to recognise that the real expertise for solving the problems of fragile nations is actually situated within these nations and that an understanding of the domestic causes of instability requires a deep examination of local stress factors and tensions as a necessary precursor to the formulation of possible solutions.

EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF AID NEGATIVEAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 289

Where does this leave us? Different scholars draw the balance in different ways. One position is that the statistical analysis is so murky that no answer can be found; looking at aid and performance over time and across countries simply cannot answer the question. My own view is a little more positive on the literature, and a good deal more negative on aid. Many donors still cling to the hydraulic idea that aid provides capital to poor countries that cannot otherwise afford it and thus gives them a better future. But this is contradicted by the data, because aid does not work like investment, and indeed the whole idea makes no sense given the access that many poor countries have to private international capital markets. The fact that neither smaller countries nor politically favored countries grow faster is also evidence against aid, certainly not decisive—there may be other reasons why large countries grow quickly, or why politically favored countries do badly—but still quite suggestive. That the governments of many politically favored countries are corrupt is not an excuse, unless we can show that giving unrestricted aid to “better” government is different, a topic to which I shall return.

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE HAS BEEN A MAJOR FAILURESue Kenny, Center for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 164-5

Others have criticised development interventions on the basis of efficacy. One view is that even in its own terms, international development has failed. For example, Edelman and Haugerud (2008) explain how development has come to be understood as a destructive, failed chapter of Western modernity. For Sachs (1992), the discourse of development is anachronistic – the whole idea of development is a ruin that has not worked. Development interventions have failed, both in terms of responsibilities to donors to spend aid money effectively and to meet goals (Wallace et al. 2006), and to recipients of aid to improve their lives (McGregor 2009). At their worst, development interventions, overlaid as they are on

artificial nation-states carved out in the process of colonisation, have led to deepening exploitation and oppression. Moreover, in so far as development professionals work with governments and elites, they actually reinforce the structures of inequality that development programmes are meant to overcome (Wallace et al. 2006). They have blocked the nurturing of ordinary people’s own capacities (Nair 2003) and have sometimes led to the actual destruction of people, places and spaces (McGregor 2009). Such understandings highlight how far, then, development has come to be seen as ‘a dream turned sour’ (Schuurman 2000). The idea of development as a ‘dream turned sour’ has perhaps been most strongly applied in regard to the economism that has dominated development policy right into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The emphasis on economic growth, for example, has in practice contributed to the overuse of the earth’s resources, environmental degradation, global warming and climate change (Rist 2008, Stern 2006).

FOREIGN AID RARELY TRIES TO REDUCE POVERTYAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 273

One reason why today’s aid does not eliminate global poverty is that it rarely tries to do so. The World Bank flies under the flag of eliminating poverty, but most aid flows come not through multilateral organizations like the Bank but as “bilateral” aid, from one country to another, and different countries use aid for different purposes. In recent years, some donor countries have emphasized aid for poverty relief, with Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) one of the leaders. But in most cases, aid is guided less by the needs of the recipients than by the donor country’s domestic and international interests. This is hardly surprising given that donor governments are democratic and are spending taxpayers’ money. Although there is a strong domestic constituency for global poverty reduction in many countries—Britain being a good example—donors must balance a number of considerations, including political alliances and maintaining good relationships with ex-colonies where donors often have important interests. Domestic donor interests include not only citizens with humanitarian concerns but also commercial interests that see both opportunities (sales of their goods) and threats (competition from developing countries) from foreign aid. Even so, several countries, including Japan and the United States, cite general objectives like creating a prosperous and democratic world, and these are clearly consistent with global poverty reduction.

AID IS FUNGIBLE – NO GUARANTEE IT WILL BE SPENT AS INTENDEDAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 274-5

The stated purpose of aid may be less important than it might seem. Aid is typically fungible across uses, so that even military aid can conceivably free up funds for schools or clinics, if the government would otherwise have brought tanks and planes. Diversion in the other direction is typically more of a concern. One of the pioneers of economic development, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, noted in the 1940s that you might think you are building a power station when you actually financed a brothel. If the United States gives to an ally to cement its political support, there is nothing to prevent that ally from spending the funds on poverty reduction, health, or education. So classifying aid by its purpose may not make much sense.

AID HAS A NEGATIVE EFFECT ON LONG TERM MACRO-ECONOMIC POLICIES AND DEVELOPMENT GOALSJohn Degnbol-Martinussen & Poul Engberg-Pedersen, Danish Association for International Cooperation, 2003, Aid: understanding international development cooperation, p. 240-1Right-wing opponents of aid emphasize the first two groups of criticism: aid has not promoted economic growth, which is primarily due to the fact that it allows and leads to a laissez-faire policy in developing countries, so that the necessary reforms are not made and the correct policies are not carried out. The argument is that there is no direct connection between the size of aid (large or small) given to the individual developing country, and economic growth (high or low) and the size of savings and investments in the same country. This, together with the fact that evaluations of individual projects for most donors have given positive results in up to 60-70 per cent of cases, led Mosley (1986) to point to a micro–macro paradox. Economists generally see a strong correlation between high savings and economic growth. The main problem for economists is therefore to find explanations for why the sum of aid, in the form of resources of considerable size, did not lead to economic growth in developing countries. Economists gave three explanations. First, aid is not exclusively distributed according to need and effectiveness criteria, which would give most aid to the poorest countries that implement growth-generating economic policies and have the capacity to make use of aid. Historic, strategic, political, commercial and other motives influence donors' aid distribution (as described in Chapter 2). Figures 12.1 and 12.2 show that to a large extent aid has gone to middle-income countries rather than to the low-income countries with the largest number of poor people. Below, we consider the attempts of some World Bank economists to calculate the effects of the ineffective distribution of aid. The economists' second explanation for the micro–macro paradox was that aid (like

commercial loans) is used here and now for consumption or poor investments. Therefore, aid is not well enough integrated into the necessary use of domestic and foreign savings for long-term investments to improve production and capacity and thereby create a basis for future economic growth . Furthermore, aid makes it possible for recipient governments to postpone necessary solutions to the country's problems, especially in relation to imbalances in the economy (foreign trade and debt, inflation and state deficits). The third

explanation is the so-called 'Dutch disease'. All resource transfers from one country to another cause the exchange rate in the recipient country to be revalued, which reduces its export opportunities and ability to compete. This is a problem that the oil-exporting countries have run into, and which has resulted in a high living standard but low growth. In order to avoid this situation, which is seldom sustainable in the long run, recipient countries must use resource transfers for investments rather than consumption. This can be difficult in a developing country that is often in the midst of several crisis situations that demand transfers of income for consumption. The main argument of these economists was that (a) there are always policies that are out of balance and must be adjusted; (b) adjustments often cost political popularity; (c) foreign aid allows countries not to adjust; (d) thus, small imbalances can grow large; and (e) aid thereby causes macro damage in addition to whatever else it does. On the basis of this logic, the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), which the World Bank and IMF have supported and insisted upon since the beginning of the 1980s, were ideal for removing the micro–macro paradox and increasing the impact of aid on economic growth. Through SAPs, donors made conditions requiring strong adjustments of economic and other macro policies. The results, however, have been quite ambiguous.

NO CONSENSUS ON THE LEGITIMACY OF DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCEDamien Kingsbury, Director Centre for Citizenship-Deakin University, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 4

There is nothing inherently wrong with different definitions of development co-existing within the development community. But what too often happens is that individuals and groups within the development community are blind to, and not sufficiently reflective of, alternative definitions. Some see development as inherently good, others as inherently bad. Do we need to throw out the whole idea of ‘development’? Is the idea of assisting others fundamentally flawed? Or is the problem with assuming that our knowledge is appropriate for others, that we have answers when, sometimes, it appears that we do not even know what the right questions are. Consensus and co-operation in this context is made difficult, and lessons learnt from the activities of different groups and individuals cannot be shared.

Increased Development Assistance Fails: Fragmentation

FRAGMENTED NATURE OF AID FROM MULTIPLE DONORS ARE DIFFICULT FOR RECIPIENT COUNTRIES TO MANAGEAdetokunbo O. Lucas, Harvard School of Public Health, 2001, Critical Issues in Global Health, eds. C. Koop, C. Pearson & M. Schwarz, p. 18

Colonial governments and foreign missions built the foundations of modern health services in most African countries. Foreign agencies continue to exert much influence on their subsequent development. WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank,

and other multilateral UN agencies provide technical support, guidance, and substantial resources. Bilat eral donor agencies, international nongovernmental development agencies, and other foreign donors make significant contributions to the health sector in Africa. On the whole, such external aid has been valuable both for routine services and for

dealing with epidemics and other emergencies. However, the relationship of national health authorities to these external agencies is in need of review. Ministries of health often have difficulty coping with the varying demands of their foreign partners. Conflicting recommendations and competing programs sometimes tend to distort national priorities and disrupt the orderly development of the health sector . In recent years, major

donors are experimenting with new mechanisms based on sectorwide programming as a means of rationalizing external aid. External support should promote self-reliance rather than increased dependence on foreign aid. Some external agencies do not give sufficient priority to strengthening national capacity, and some of their policies undermine the advancement of national experts and institutions. The Commission on Health Research for Development (1990) recommended that 5 percent of the budget for large externally funded programs should be assigned to capacity strengthening. This approach should be the focus of external aid to Africa in the twenty-first century.

INCREASED PROJECT-SPECIFIC ASSISTANCE EXACERBATES FRAGMENTATIONAdam Wagstaff & Mariam Claeson, Research Analysts, The World Bank, 2004, The Millennium Development Goals for Health: Rising to the Challenges, [http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2004/07/15/000009486_20040715130626/Rendered/PDF/296730PAPER0Mi1ent0goals0for0health.pdf], p. 18More than 20 donors involved in health—including bilaterals, multilaterals, global programs, foundations, and large NGOs—can operate in a single low-income country. Donors are starting to acknowledge that the demands on recipient countries can be huge and that individual project management units have not made sustainable contributions. Donor-funded units have sometimes run parallel to local structures, fostered a sense that the project staff were accountable to the financier rather than the government, and redirected the most qualified human resources away from government employment toward employment in development assistance agencies.

MULTILATERAL AGENCIES DO NOT COORDINATE ASSISTANCEJeffrey D. Sachs, Director, UN Millennium Project, 2005, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, [http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/MainReportChapter0Frontmatter-lowres.pdf], p. 196Multilateral organizations frequently compete for donor government funding to implement small projects, instead of supporting country-scale plans and budgets. The various UN agencies, programs, and funds have

begun to coordinate their efforts through the structure of the UN Development Group at headquarters and the UN Country Teams at

country level, but this is still often more a forum for dialogue than real coordination. Moreover, the UN agencies are frequently not well linked to the local activities of the Bretton Woods institutions and regional

development banks, which tend to have the most access in advising a government since they provide the greatest resources.

DONOR FRAGMENTATION UNDERMINE BUDGET PROCESS FOR AFRICAN GOVERNMENTSSteven Radelet, Center for Global Development, 2007, Security by Other Means: foreign assistance, global poverty and American leadership, ed. Lael Brainard, p. 110-1Generally speaking, the move away from broad-based budget support made sense at the time for the vast majority of countries. But it came at a cost. U.S. contractors and representatives of other donors typically establish separate offices and accounts for the funds and then hire the most talented government officials to manage the accounts. The MCC requires that countries establish separate entities with separate staff and budget to oversee funds. Since many donors take this approach, funds are divided in numerous separate accounts, making the allocation of resources and macroeconomic management much more difficult. This process significantly weakens government capacity and undermines the establishment of strong and accountable institutions. In other words, instead of helping to strengthen one of the most critical institutions in developing countries—the budget process—donor practices tend to weaken it, with long-term detrimental consequences.

EFFORTS TO IMPROVE DONOR COORDINATION HAVE PROVEN DIFFICULTAdam Wagstaff & Mariam Claeson, Research Analysts, The World Bank, 2004, The Millennium Development Goals for Health: Rising to the Challenges, [http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2004/07/15/000009486_20040715130626/Rendered/PDF/296730PAPER0Mi1ent0goals0for0health.pdf], p. 159Some of the experiments in country-level coordination of development assistance to health reveal the difficulties in implementing the principles of better donor harmonization. In some instances, it has been hard to persuade donors to pool their funds and break the tie between funding and procurement. Monitoring and evaluation systems have sometimes not been strong enough to yield timely and meaningful data on progress, a critically important feature if disbursements are linked to performance. Multiple national coordination bodies for government, donors, and NGOs for different diseases and services also persist in many settings.

Development Assistance Increases Corruption/Undermines Democratic Institutions

AID UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF LOCAL INSTITUTIONSAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 294

To understand how aid works we need to study the relationship between aid and politics. Political and legal institutions play a central role in setting the environment that can nurture prosperity and economic growth. Foreign aid, especially when there is a lot of it, affects how institutions function and how they change. Politics has often choked off economic growth, and even in the world before aid, there were good and bad political systems. But large inflows of foreign aid change local politics for the worse and undercut the institutions needed to foster long-run growth. Aid also undermines democracy and civic participation, a direct loss over and above the losses that come from undermining economic development. These harms of aid need to be balanced against the good that aid does, whether educating children who would not otherwise have gone to school or saving the lives of those who would otherwise have died.

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO POVERTY ALLEVIATION -- CORRUPTIONAna Swanson, World Economic Forum, 2015, “Does foreign aid always help the poor?” October 23, [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-always-help-the-poor/]

It sounds kind of crazy to say that foreign aid often hurts, rather than helps, poor people in poor countries. Yet that

is what Angus Deaton, the newest winner of the Nobel Prize in economics , has argued. Deaton, an economist at

Princeton University who studied poverty in India and South Africa and spent decades working at the World Bank, won his prize for studying how the poor decide to save or spend money. But his ideas about foreign aid are particularly provocative.

Deaton argues that, by trying to help poor people in developing countries, the rich world may actually be corrupting those nations’ governments and slowing their growth. According to Deaton, and the economists who agree

with him, much of the $135 billion that the world’s most developed countries spent on official aid in 2014 may not have ended up helping the poor.

COUNTRIES RECEIVING FOREIGN ASSISTANCE MORE CORRUPT, LESS RESPONSIVE TO THE NEEDS OF THEIR PEOPLEAna Swanson, World Economic Forum, 2015, “Does foreign aid always help the poor?” October 23, [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-always-help-the-poor/]

Why was this happening? The answer wasn’t immediately clear, but Deaton and other economists argued that it had to do with how foreign money changed the relationship between a government and its people. Think of it this way: In order to have the funding to run a country, a government needs to collect taxes from its people. Since the people ultimately hold the purse strings, they have a certain amount of control over their government. If leaders don’t deliver the basic services they promise, the people have the power to cut them off . Deaton

argued that foreign aid can weaken this relationship, leaving a government less accountable to its people, the congress or parliament, and the courts. “My critique of aid has been more to do with countries where they get an enormous amount of aid relative to everything

else that goes on in that country,” Deaton said in an interview with Wonkblog. “For instance, most governments depend on their people for taxes in order to run themselves and provide services to their people. Governments that get all their

money from aid don’t have that at all, and I think of that as very corrosive.” It might seem odd that having more money would not help a poor country.

Yet economists have long observed that countries that have an abundance of wealth from natural resources, like oil or diamonds, tend to be more unequal, less developed and more impoverished, as the chart below shows. Countries at the left-hand side of the chart have fewer fuels, ores and metals and higher growth, while those at the right-hand side have more natural resource wealth, yet slower growth. Economists postulate that this “natural resource curse” happens for a variety of reasons, but one is that such wealth

can strengthen and corrupt a government. Like revenue from oil or diamonds, wealth from foreign aid can be a corrupting influence on weak governments, “turning what should be beneficial political institutions into toxic ones,” Deaton writes in his book “The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality.” This wealth can make governments more despotic, and it can also increase the risk of civil war, since there is less power sharing, as well as a lucrative prize worth fighting for. Deaton and his supporters offer dozens of examples of humanitarian aid being used to support despotic regimes and compounding misery, including in Zaire, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Biafra, and the Khmer Rouge on the border of Cambodia and Thailand. Citing Africa researcher Alex de Waal, Deaton writes that “aid can only reach the victims of war by paying off the warlords, and sometimes extending the war.”

FOREIGN AID UNDERMINES NEED FOR STATES TO TAX CITIZENS; IMPORTANT TO EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE AND PROVIDE NECESSARY SERVICES FOR GROWTHAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 295-6

Economic development cannot take place without some sort of contract between those who govern and those who are governed. The government needs resources to carry out its functions—preserving territorial integrity and maintaining its monopoly of violence, at the very least, and beyond that providing a legal system, public safety, national defense, and other public goods—and the resources that these functions require must be raised in taxes from the governed. It is this need to raise taxes, and the difficulty of doing so without the participation of those who are taxed, that places constraints on the government and to some extent protects the interests of taxpayers. In a democracy, direct feedback from the electorate evaluates the government’s performance, in effect a sort of project evaluation on the programs that are carried out using taxpayer’s money. While this sort of feedback works best in a democracy, the need to raise funds exists everywhere, and it will often constrain the ruler to pay attention to the demand of at least some of the population. One of the strongest arguments against large aid flows is that they undermine these constraints, removing the need to raise money with consent and in the limit turning what should be beneficial political institutions into toxic ones.

Without an adequate capacity to tax, a state denies its citizens many of the protections that are taken for granted in the rich world. They may lack the protection of the law, because the courts do not work or are corrupt, and the police may harass or exploit poor people instead of protecting them. People may be unable to start businesses, because debts are not paid and contracts are not enforced or because civil “servants” extort bribes. They may face threats of violence from gangs or warlords. They may lack clean water or minimal sanitation facilities. There may be local endemic pests that threaten them and especially their children with medically preventable but potentially fatal diseases. They may lack access to electricity, to functioning schools, or to a decent health service. All of these risks are part of what it means to be poor in much of the world, all are causes of poverty, and all are attributable to

the lack of state capacity. Anything that threatens that capacity is inconsistent with improving the lives of poor people.

WEAK PUBLIC-SECTOR MANAGEMENT UNDERMINES EFFECTIVENESS OF ASSISTANCEJeffrey D. Sachs, Director, UN Millennium Project, 2005, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, [http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/MainReportChapter0Frontmatter-lowres.pdf], p. 99Management systems are an essential part of service delivery, if often overlooked and underfunded. Also frequently

overlooked is that the quality of public sector governance depends crucially on investments in public sector management systems. Even in countries with good governance, public management tends to suffer mightily from a lack of trained managers, poor information systems, rigid civil service procedures, and inadequate budgets to address these concerns. The situation of public sector managers and civil service workers in many low-income countries has deteriorated over the past 20 years as a result of prolonged underfinancing of the public sector. Cash-strapped governments are often forced into draconian actions such as civil service hiring freezes, or across-the-board reductions in work forces and budgets to maintain macroeconomic balance. IMF and World Bank–supervised programs sometimes include those freezes because an increase in official development assistance that could ease the fiscal austerity is simply not forthcoming from donors. Even when IMF and World Bank staff recognize the deleterious aspects of such policies on the delivery of public services, the macroeconomic margin for maneuver may be limited unless increased ODA or debt relief are made available by the country’s donors . We recommend that IMF and World Bank staff use the evidence of MDG-based needs assessments to highlight these constraints more forcefully to donor governments and to promote the needed overall increases in donor assistance (see chapters 13 and 17 for more on donor assistance needs).

POOR GOVERNANCE MAJOR REASON WHY AFRICA REMAINS MIRED IN POVERTYJ.D. Sachs & J.W. McArthur, UN Millennium Project, 2005, The Lancet, Volume 365, p. 349The UN Millennium Project identified four broad categories to explain why some regions are failing to meet MDGs and why some goals are falling short almost everywhere. First, not surprisingly, is the problem of poor governance. When governments in low-income countries fail to govern responsibly by abusing citizens, denying equal protection of the law, or victimising society with corruption, mismanagement, or economic irrationality, the MDGs are bound to fall short. Yet poor governance also arises when governments are well intentioned but lack the human resources management systems and infrastructure needed to run an efficient public administration. Throughout the developing world, weak but willing governments are also falling short of achieving MDGs.

Harms of Development Assistance Justify Rejection of Obligation to Assist – Turns Morality Argument

AID EFFECTIVENESS TURN, TURNS THE MORAL IMPERATIVEAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 271-2

It is perhaps obvious that the claim in the opening paragraph of this section—that for $0.15 a day we can eliminate dollar-a-day poverty—is at best incomplete: things are not so simple. Indeed, many people’s first reaction to the calculation is that they recognize that $0.15 may not be enough—that there are no doubt losses and administrative costs along the way – so that maybe it takes $0.50 a day, or even a dollar or two. The moral imperative depends, not on the cost being as low as $0.15, but on the cost being low relative to what “we” have. However, there is an even stronger moral imperative to do no harm, especially to people who are already in such great difficulty. All of the arguments about giving money – whatever the amount – depend on the proposition that more money will make things better. Paradoxical as it may at first appear, I shall argue that giving more aid than we currently give—at least if it were given as it is given now—would make things worse, not better.

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE – BETTER OFF TO STAND ASIDE AND LET POOR COUNTRIES SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMSAna Swanson, World Economic Forum, 2015, “Does foreign aid always help the poor?” October 23, [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-always-help-the-poor/]

Instead, many of the positive things that are happening in Africa – the huge adoption in cell phones over the past decade, for example – are totally homegrown. He points out that, while the world has made huge strides in reducing poverty in recent decades, almost none of this has been due to aid. Most has been due to development in countries like China, which have   received very little aid as a proportion of gross domestic product   and have   “had to work it out for themselves .”

Ultimately, Deaton argues that we should stand aside and let poorer countries develop in their own ways. “Who put us in charge?” he asks.

AID BAD ARGUMENTS TURN MORAL OBLIGATIONAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 306-7

The harm of aid—even in the presence of some good—poses difficult ethical problems. The philosopher Leif Wenar, criticizing Peter Singer’s vision, with which I began this chapter, notes that “poverty is no pond”; Singer’s analogy is not helpful. Those who advocate more aid need to explain how it can be given in a way that deals with the political constraints. They should also think hard about the parallels with the colonialism that came before the era of aid. We now think of colonialism as bad, harming others to benefit ourselves, and aid as good, hurting us (albeit very mildly) to help others. But that view

is too simple, too ignorant of history, and too self-congratulatory. The rhetoric of colonialism too was all about helping people, albeit about bringing civilization and enlightenment to people whose humanity was far from fully recognized. This may have been little more than a cover for theft and exploitation. The preamble of the charter of the UN, with its ringing and inspiring rhetoric, was written by Jan Smuts, premier of South Africa, who saw the UN as the best hope of preserving the British Empire and the dominance of white “civilization.” Yet at its worst, decolonization installed leaders who differed little from those who preceded them, except for where they were born and the color of their skins.

Even today, when our humanitarian rhetoric acts as a cover for our politicians to buy themselves virtue, and when aid is our way of meeting our moral obligations to deal with global poverty, we need to be sure that we are not doing harm. If we are, we are doing it for “us,” not for “them.”

Development Assistance Risks Civil War

AID INCREASES RISK OF CIVIL WAR – UNDERMINES DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONSAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 299

Aid, like commodity price booms, can have other unhappy effects on local institutions. Without unrestricted inflows, governments not only need taxes, but also need to be able to collect them. The huge oil revenues in the Middle East are partly responsible for poor democratic institutions in the oil-producing countries. In Africa, presidential systems are common, and an externally funded president can govern through patronage or military repression. Parliaments have limited power; they are rarely consulted by the president; and neither parliaments nor judiciaries have power to rein in the presidency. There are no checks and balances. In extreme cases, large external flows, from aid or commodity sales, can increase the risk of civil war, because rulers have the means to avoid sharing power, and because the value of the inflows gives both sides a prize that is worth fighting over.

Development Assistance is Colonialist

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE IS ANOTHER FORM OF COLONIALISMAna Swanson, World Economic Forum, 2015, “Does foreign aid always help the poor?” October 23, [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-always-help-the-poor/]

Deaton also believes that our attitude toward foreign aid – that developed countries ought to swoop in and save everyone else – is condescending and suspiciously similar to the ideas of colonialism.   The rhetoric of colonialism, too, “was all about helping people, albeit about bringing civilization and enlightenment to people whose humanity was far from fully recognized,” he has written.

WHOLE CONCEPT OF ASSISTANCE WITH ANOTHER COUNTRY’S DEVELOPMENT IS FLAWEDAndrew Hewett and Chris Roche, Executive Director & Director of Development-Oxfam, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 17

The second major implication is that if power and politics are central to how change happens, and how they play out is highly contextual and linked to particular political cultures, then this begs a question as to what the role of ‘outside’ actors is, or can be, in promoting developmental change outside of their own societies. The non-recognition of endogenous and local ‘politics’ and institutions, when combined with a linear, engineering approach to ‘fixing’ things, generates a misplaced certainty about how change happens and the role of outsiders in that.

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE IS JUST ANOTHER FORM OF COLONIALISMSimon Fenby, Advisor to Prime Minister of Timor, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 42-3

In contrast to the approach of Sachs, Escobar argues that there is ‘an important connection between the decline of the colonial order and the rise of development’ (Escobar 1995: 26) and that the ‘developmentalisation’ of the developing world (including the professionalisation of development) has led to interventions for the eradication of poverty becoming central to the world order (Escobar 1995: 24), but which behind the humanitarian concern and the positive outlook of a new strategy, exert news forms of power and control which are more subtle and more refined than those of colonialism. Escobar asserts that the quest for the achievement of development has clouded the awareness of the impossibility of fulfilling the promises that development seems to be making.

MANY CRITICISMS OF DEVELOPMENT AS INHERENTLY WRONG-HEADEDSue Kenny, Center for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 166

The final type of criticism of development, which has been foreshadowed above, is that development discourse today is just wrong-headed. While it carries heavy normative promises (to eliminate poverty, for example), its whole basis rests on a faulty social ontology. To begin with, development discourse is premised on a simplistic essentialism that classifies societies on the basis of selected normative criteria

set by so-called developed societies. This thinking found form in the notions of first (Western, industrialised), second (communist) and third (underdeveloped and undeveloped) ‘worlds’. Today, the tripartite notion has been replaced by a binary divide between the first and third world, the North and the South, or the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries. Behind this social ontology lurks a lingering social Darwinism that sets the framework for development interventions. The framework has been used to invite the (inaccurately described) North to intervene in the South. The unequal power relations inherent in such development interventions are rarely acknowledged and even less rigorously analysed or addressed. From a similar perspective, all social, political and economic development is wrong-headed because it rests on a Western idea of progress, founded on the belief that progress can be achieved through science and economics. According to de Rivero (2001), the trajectory of most of the so-called ‘developing countries’ is more towards being Non-viable National Economics (NNE’s) or even Ungovernable Chaotic Entities (UCEs) rather than developed industrialised countries. Economic progress through development interventions has always been a false dawn. Development is also identified as wrong-headed because it is deemed to be hypocritical. This type of criticism is often based on an analysis of the specific institutions that have been given the brief to ‘develop’ the Third World. These institutions, including United Nations agencies, the World Bank and multi-national non-government organisations, lecture the ‘Third World’ on what it should do, such as establish democracy, privatise government programmes, and be more enterprising, yet they themselves are undemocratic, bureaucratic institutions, relying on public funds rather than their own initiative and enterprise. They spread their tentacles over the world, operating as grand supranational authorities. Moreover, these institutions are not without their own vested interests.

Alternatives to Aid More Effective: Technology

TECHNOLOGY IS THE KEY TO REDUCING ECONOMIC INEQUALITYAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 267

Almost a billion people still live in material destitution, millions of children still die through the accident of where they are born, and wasting and stunting still disfigure the bodies of nearly half of India’s children. Those people are among the many that the Great Escape has left behind. As in the past, the very enormity of the inequality points to ways to eliminate it. The scientific and technological advances that supported the escape are available to all, and I need hardly restate the benefits of escaping or the horrors of being left behind. Some countries in South and East Asia have seized the opportunity to begin to catch up, and they have lifted millions of their people from poverty and saved millions from early death. Yet stark inequalities remain.

AT: Our Development Assistance is Good

“OUR AID IS GOOD” DOESN’T ANSWER THE ARGUMENTS THAT AID HAS BEEN EMPIRICALLY INEFFECTIVE AND BADAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 282

One might argue that aid to corrupt and oppressive regimes is not what we are talking about, and that it should never have been counted as development aid. But the excuse is too easy. Most of this aid took the form of unrestricted flows to regimes that could have used it for development had they chosen to do so; much of it also went to countries where there were many people in need. So, while these examples do not prove that better-designed aid, or aid to a different selection of countries, might not have done better, they show clearly enough that it is not generally a good idea to give unconditional aid to countries whose populations are in need. I shall argue that the forces at work in these egregiously bad cases are a problem even under more favorable conditions.

AID FAILS – ATTEMPTS TO REFORM WILL FAIL, PERNICIOUS EFFECTS REMAIN DESPITE BENEFITSAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 317

Cash-on-delivery aid does not solve the now familiar dilemma of good regimes and bad regimes. For basically decent countries, there is no need for us to incentivize them to undertake projects that they would not otherwise want to do. If our priorities are naturally aligned, the assistance is not necessary. If they are not, it is unethical for us to try to impose our priorities on them; recall again my reverse example of the Swedish aid agency paying the United States to abolish capital punishment and legalizing gay marriage. For extractive and oppressive regimes, bribery might work; they are just as happy to extract resources from us as from their own people, and since they don’t care about their own people, they are just as happy for people to be helped as hurt, as long as they get paid. I suppose that an argument could be made for this sort of dealing with the devil. But we are back in the world of aid agencies providing weapons as a quid pro quo for being allowed to deliver humanitarian assistance, or of arming gangs of past and future murderers in order to be allowed to help their families, as happened in Goma after the genocide in Rwanda. Large-scale aid does not work because it cannot work, and attempts to reform it run around on the same fundamental problems over and over again. Bridges get built, schools are opened, and drugs are vaccines save lives, but the pernicious effects are always there.

ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT MODELS HAVE FAILED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF ASSISTANCEDamien Kingsbury, Director Centre for Citizenship-Deakin University, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 99

That is to say, like grass-roots development and participatory development, much has been written and endorsed in theory but little has occurred in practice. ‘Good governance’ has, in practice, sometimes not lived up to its promise. In particular, there has often been a disconnection between development practitioners and theorists (including governments) and communities and the individuals who constitute them, to whom such development is intended to apply. Most notably, development practitioners have rarely been accountable to those communities and individuals and, apart from their own ethical guidelines, it appears, short of legislative requirements, there are few mechanisms to compel such accountability. Governments can, in theory at least, be held more accountable, and agencies should be if they use public funds.

BYPASSING GOVERNMENTS DOESN’T SOLVE PROBLEMS OF DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCEAna Swanson, World Economic Forum, 2015, “Does foreign aid always help the poor?” October 23, [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/does-foreign-aid-always-help-the-poor/]

Some might argue for bypassing corrupt   governments altogether and distributing food or funding   directly among the people . Deaton acknowledges that, in some cases, this might be worth it to save lives. But one problem with this approach is that it’s difficult: To get to the powerless, you often have to go through the powerful. Another   issue, is that it undermines what people in developing countries need most — “an effective government that works with them for today and tomorrow,” he writes.

COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT HEALTH PROGRAMS USUALLY FAIL – NON-SUSTAINABLE, AND IGNORE CRITICAL LINKS TO THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENTLenore Manderson & Linda M. Whiteford, Professors University of Melbourne and University of South Florida, 2000, Global Health Policy, Local Realities: the fallacy of the level playing field, eds. L. Whiteford & L. Manderson, p. 5-6

Accordingly, much of the policy work in the area of primary health care and community participation is idealistic. The enthusiastic literature advocating a strong role of people in conceiving, contributing to, and sustaining quality health services often overlooks that fact that the pilot projects along these lines have been highly resource intensive and, in the long term, nonsustainable. In particular, arguments for community participation have often overlooked the impediments to partnerships between central government authorities and local bodies, and have ignored the resource, structural, institutional, and personal preconditions for improved health. Most elusive and ephemeral, and therefore easiest to overlook, are the local histories and local identities that allow community participation programs to become actualized within their institutional and political contexts. The complex and problematic reality of contextualizing policy in the arena of international health programs is the focus of Part I.

PARTICIPATORY DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE MODEL COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO REDUCING POVERTY AND INCREASING EMPOWMENTTara Grillos, Dissertation, Department of Public Policy, Harvard, 2015, Participation, Power and Preferences in International Development, [https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/23845452/GRILLOS-DISSERTATION-2015.pdf?sequence=1], p.32

However, a common critique of participatory institutions is that they are prone to elite capture (Cooke & Kothari , 2001), which undermines both the empowerment and efficiency motivations, and also runs directly counter to the related goal of poverty targeting (Kumar , 2002; Pan & Christiaensen , 2012; Park & Wang , 2010; Platteau , 2004). While poverty targeting implies that project benefits be disproportionately targeted to the neediest populations (a desirable outcome from the perspective of international development goals), elite capture results in the reverse: disproportionate targeting of groups who already wield power. Participatory planning is susceptible to elite capture, because citizens engaging with the process have differential access to the resources, influence and skills required to be effective within it (Abraham & Platteau , 2002; Fung & Wright , 2003). By some accounts, participatory institutions not only fail to alter existing power relations, but serve to preserve or even exacerbate them (Cleaver , 2001; Mosse , 1995). Scholars also note that over time, non - elites sometimes find their own ways to subvert elite capture (Classen et al. , 2008; Long , 2001; Lund & Saito - Jensen , 2013; Saito - Jensen et al. , 2010, Scott , 1985). Beard & Dasgupta (2007) suggest that collective action based on homogeneity lends itself to elite capture, whereas collective action based on “diversity, dispersed power and a dynamic social and political process” can effectively prohibit capture by elites.

PARIS DECLARATION FAILED TO FIX PATERNALISTIC PROBLEMS WITH ASSISTANCESimon Fenby, Advisor to Prime Minister of Timor, 2013, Critical Reflections on Development, ed. D. Kingsbury, p. 35

Perhaps necessarily high level, the statements in the Paris Declaration as they relate to fragile states are sufficiently vague and general to be of only limited value to the realities of operation in fragile local contexts. While this may be the result of difficulties in drafting general principles to apply to diverse circumstances, while at the same time satisfying the needs of international consensus, the fact of this diversity diminishes the applicability of the Paris Declaration in circumstances of fragility. Another consequence of this opaqueness is that it may be exploited by aid agencies that can site it in justification, and as a source of legitimacy, for the approaches adopted by their aid programs.

AT: Health Assistance Uniquely Justified/Effective

FOREIGN AID DECREASES INCENTIVES FOR GOVERNMENTS TO SPEND MONEY ON HEALTH CAREAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 121

Why do the governments of poor countries spend so little when their citizens are in such poor health? Why do citizens in need not turn to private health care when the government is missing in action? And what about the foreign assistance that has been so important in improving some dimensions of international health? Unfortunately, governments do not always act to improve the health or wellbeing of their citizens. Even in democracies, politicians and governments have a good deal of leeway to pursue their own ends, and there are often sharp political disagreements about what needs to be done to improve health, even where there is agreement on the need to do so. But many countries around the world are not democratic, and more broadly, many governments are not bound to act in the interest of their populations, whether by circumstance—for example the need to persuade citizens to let them raise revenue—or by effective constitutional rules or constraints. This is clearly true in dictatorial or military regimes, or in countries where repressive governments use the armed forces or secret police to control the population. In other cases, governments are well funded by the sale of natural resources—minerals and oil are notorious in this regard—so they have no need to collect revenue from the population. Since he who pays the piper usually calls the tune, governments can use such revenues to maintain a system of cronies and patronage that has little interest in popular health or wellbeing. In extreme cases, particularly in Africa, foreign aid has been significant enough to act in this way too, providing governments with resources but undermining their incentives to spend them in the right way. Even with the best will in the world, it has been difficult for donors to stop this from happening, a topic on which I will have more to say in the last chapter.

HEALTH ASSISTANCE BUYS OFF THE NEED FOR SERIOUS HEALTH SECTOR REFORMS BY AFRICAN ELITES – CREATES ILLUSION THAT THERE ARE “QUICK FIXES”Nginya Mungai Lenneiye, Health Consultant, Ziken Institute, 2000, Quest for a Corporate African Leadership: Public Sector Case Studies from Southern Africa, p. 64-5

Nearly 40 years after independence for most SSA [Sub-Saharan African] countries, the region is still in a hurry to find quick fixes for the “delivery of health care” and gain the confidence of the population. It is as though little has been learned about the relationship between citizens and the State – that health care is delivered through the partnership of citizens and their institutions (the State being just one of these). The African elite responsible for health sector reforms still believes that out there lies a strategy to “deliver heatlh care” without making painful choices over the use of resources – which would call for intense debates in African societies. If a formula can be found which the World Bank will buy, then complacency sets in on the belief that the good old days will return. Similarly, if a quick solution can be found to silence the underpaid health professionals and keep populations happy with totally inadequate health care, even more time will have been bought. This subversion of the African State by the very

people charged with its management is creating long-term problems the next day. The elite in the African State is just fooling itself it if thinks that problems will go away if only more time can be bought as it waits for “SAPs to come to an end.” For meaningful reforms in health, there is need for the African elite to enter into dialogue with its citizens over economic, health, education, trade, and other reforms. This would remove the need for the elite to enter into reform dialogues with external agencies (whom they blame when things go wrong) over the heads of their citizens. For their part, development agencies can contribute to a meaningful reform process by supporting efforts to gain a deeper understanding of the social, cultural, political, and economic basis of the broad SSA citizenry and not just that of the elite.

US EXPERIENCE PROVES THAT THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN HEALTH SPENDING AND HEALTH OUTCOMEAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 35

The United States is a poor performer relative to its income. Yet the United States spends a larger share of its national income on health care than any other country, so it provides a good illustration of the fact that there is no tight relation between income and health, and even less between health and expenditures on health care. Chile and Costa Rica have as good life expectancy as the United States, at about a quarter of per capita income and about 12 percent of per capita health expenditures. I shall return to U.S. health and health-care financing in Chapters 2 and 5.

UNCLEAR THAT MORE HEALTH AID CAN ACCOMPLISH MUCH MOREAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 308-9

Yet, all is not well in the garden of health. It is far from clear that aid can do much more than it is already doing. Nor did the successes to date come without costs—although it may still be true that those costs were worth paying. Most of the successful initiatives—the ones that have been responsible for most of the increase in life expectancy around the world – are what are called vertical health programs. The term refers to programs run from above by an agency such as UNICEF, albeit with the cooperation of local health authorities and the recruitment of local health workers. The term applies clearly to some of the early vaccination programs, as well as to the programs to eliminate pests—for example, mosquito control for malaria—or a disease such as smallpox or polio. It applies less well to AIDS programs, in which the delivery of antiretroviral drugs calls for large-scale involvement of clinics and local health personnel—though, even here, special clinics have often been built for the AIDS drugs alone.

AID UNDERMINES INVESTMENT IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE THAT IS NEEDED TO IMPROVE OVERALL HEALTH IN POOR COUNTRIESAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 310

The provision of primary health care requires state capacity in a way that vertical programs do not; “helicoptering in” is fine for the latter but does nothing for the former. Indeed, vertical programs sometimes even undermine the provision of local health care, for example by taking nurses and paramedics away from their routine tasks of antenatal care or vaccinations and sending them off to track down an outbreak of polio in a remote village. But routine health-care systems are complex to set up and to maintain, not only in poor countries but also in rich ones, and, as we saw in Chapter 3, they require a degree of state capacity that is in short supply in the poorest countries. This reminds us that aid and the development of local capacity are often at loggerheads. Yet it is clearly true that if aid is to help tackle the remaining health problems in poor countries, and stop the scandal of children dying because they were born in the wrong place, it will have to go beyond dealing with “named” diseases. The question, as always, is whether this can be achieved with outside funds.

Many governments around the world spend little on primary health care but instead, to quote the World Bank economists Deon Filmer, Jeffrey Hammer, and Lant Pritchett, “the public budget for health is principally absorbed by public hospitals staffed by doctors expensively trained at public expense who use costly medical technology to treat conditions of the urban elite, while in those same countries children die from diseases that could have been treated for a few cents or avoided altogether with basic hygiene practices.” Corrupt officials often divert money designated for health, and there is rarely a public outcry. The same authors tell the story of a newspaper that accused the health ministry of misappropriating $50 million of outside funds; the health ministry protested vigorously that the newspaper had not made it clear that the misappropriation was over several years, not just one. Helen Epstein writes that according to a local joke in Uganda, there are two kids of AIDS, “fat AIDS” and “slim AIDS.” “Those with ‘slim AIDS’ grow thinner and thinner and thinner until they finally disappear. ‘Fat AIDS’ afflicts development agency bureaucrats, foreign consultants, and medical experts who attend lavish conferences and workshops in exotic places, earn large salaries, and get fatter and fatter.” The lack of money for primary health care and corruption in health-care spending are commonplace in poor countries.

Public spending on health care in many countries is too little to meet the health-care needs of the population, often with the implication that aid from abroad is needed fill the gap. That too little is spent is true more often than not, but nothing would be served by expanding the health-care systems as they are; there would simply be more clinics that open only irregularly, more officials diverting funds, and more health-care workers being paid not to do their jobs.

DONORS ENCOURAGE VERTICAL PROGRAMS – NARROWLY FOCUSED, TOP-DOWN APPROACHES THAT UNDERMINE BASIC HEALTH CAREJoan E. Paluzzi, Partners in Health (Social Justice NGO), 2004, Unhealthy Health Policy: A critical anthropological examination, eds. A. Castro & M. Singer, p. 66Vertical programs are narrowly focused, centrally administered, and usually "top-down" in the development of protocols and policies. The programs are typically designed around the treatment and prevention of one specific disease, such as HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis (TB), or around a specialized health issue (for example,

reproductive counseling and services). There is little room for modifications or local adaptations in the program regimens. One of the most widely used examples of this type of program is directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS), which is utilized throughout much of the world for the treatment of tuberculosis. Vertical programs are attractive to donors; they are clearly delimited, well defined, and the results are amenable to quantification. Most vertical programs can predict with accuracy the cost per patient (or "unit"

cost) of treatment, which in turn facilitates budgetary planning, funding, and accountability. Program outcomes can also be relatively easy to quantify. Staff members are supposedly highly specialized and the programs are thought to be effective precisely because their narrow focus permits concentrated resources and attention to a single, targeted problem. However, the reality is that in most low-resource settings, both facilities and personnel must be utilized for a wide variety of health issues , including (but

certainly not limited to) the concurrent administration of multiple vertical programs. The lack of formal recognition of this fact by the international agencies that design and implement vertical programs prevents the development of practical, reality-based assistance and support to these overextended health care providers .

DISEASE FOCUSED ASSISTANCE DIVERTS ATTENTION AND RESOURCES FROM PRIMARY HEALTH CARE – UNDERMINES GENERAL HEALTH AND REVERSES THE SPECIFIC DISEASE GAINSDonald R. Hopkins, International Peace and Health Program, Carter Center, 2003, Impact: Dispatches from the front lines of global health, p. 14 Current initiatives are piling up. In addition to those mentioned above, we now have AIDS control efforts, STOP TB, Roll Back Malaria, Intestinal Helminth Control, and more. But the nitty-gritty, foundation-building work of improving primary health care services is neglected, even by its most vocal advocates. Some expensive, hard-won gains in disease control are in danger of being rolled back because local primary health care services are too weak to sustain them. Two sad examples of this are African sleeping sickness and yaws. The ongoing training, support, supply, and supervision of peripheral health workers needed to provide routine, prioritized services to fight these diseases is woefully lacking. That frontline health workers are too few, and even those few are commonly ignored, is a failure primarily affecting their communities and countries, but it also means less protection for the rest of the world as well.

DONOR FUNDING INEFFECTIVE – TARGETING SINGLE DISEASES UNDERMINES EFFORTS TO IMPROVE BASIC HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURER. Paul Shaw & A. Edward Elmendorf, The World Bank, 1994, Better Health in Africa: Experience and Lessons Learned, p. 154

While most donors have provided health assistance without conditions for explicit policy reform, the priorities implicitly embedded in donor funding have virtually driven the selection of health strategies in Africa. In some cases, heavy reliance on external assistance has led to virtual abdication of responsibility for health policy formulation. Furthermore, donor funding priorities are constantly shifting – tending to favor specific health themes at international conferences that detract attention from the need to strengthen basic health services. In Rwanda, for example, more than 20 percent of donor funding for health has recently been earmarked for AIDS alone, making it out of proportion to total health needs. The push between 1985 and 1990 for universal childhood immunization, which was “jump-started” in Africa largely by financing from UNICEF, Italy, WHO, and Rotary, vastly improved coverage throughout the continent. Declining rates of coverage in recent years indicate that many health systems were unable to maintain momentum without continued injections of outside funds. African governments are increasingly recognizing this problem, and some (such as Nigeria), are calling for African governments to assume responsibility for vaccine financing.

PRESUMPTION AGAINST VERTICAL HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY MECHANISMS – SHOULD FOCUS ON IMPROVING BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE AND INTEGRATING PROGRAMSJeffrey D. Sachs, Director, UN Millennium Project, 2005, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, [http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/MainReportChapter0Frontmatter-lowres.pdf], p. 106-7In choosing delivery strategies, policymakers should consider not only efficiency, but also the impact on other interventions and delivery systems. Some health interventions, such as childhood vaccinations, are traditionally delivered through freestanding vertical programs, circumventing the inefficiencies of many developing country health systems. It is also possible that more sophisticated health services, such as antiretroviral therapy, could also be efficiently and rapidly scaled

up by establishing dedicated treatment centers, supplied by dedicated distribution networks and funded directly by donors. Such a strategy would, however, endanger existing health services, and thus the provision of other critical interventions, by competing for limited resources in the short term, particularly trained staff. This approach would also squander an opportunity to strengthen all health services by building strong, unified systems that can sustain service delivery beyond 2015. Where possible, governments should identify synergies so that multiple interventions can be delivered with the same tools and infrastructure . More generally, the unified perspective of MDG-based planning requires taking into account the tradeoffs between scaling up some services as rapidly as possible and building the systems required to meet all the Goals.

MANY OBSTACLES TO HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY IN AFRICAJeffrey D. Sachs, Director, UN Millennium Project, 2005, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, [http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/MainReportChapter0Frontmatter-lowres.pdf], p. 79But few people in the developing world have access to facilities providing these services—because the facilities do not exist or lack basic equipment, essential medicines, or trained staff, because the lack of roads or transport prevents people from reaching them, or because people cannot afford the fees charged for even the most basic services (maps 5.1 and 5.2). And even where facilities are accessible and affordable, cultural obstacles, poor information, perceptions of poor quality (often justified), and a lack of trust may mean that they are not used. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the met need for emergency obstetric care—the proportion of women with direct obstetric complications treated in emergency obstetric care facilities—can be as low as 5 percent (Uganda Ministry of Health 2003).

DISEASE ASSISTANCE FAILS-MANY STRUCTURAL OBSTACLESThe World Bank, 2000, Health, Nutrition and Population Sector Strategy Paper, www.worldbank.org/html/extrdr/hnp/sector-strategy/hnp.pdf, p. 10

To address the HNP poverty agenda, improve the performance of health services, and secure affordable and sustainable financing for the sector, most countries say they need assistance from the international community in the form of both broad international experience, and country-focused policy advice and financing. Yet responding directly to client demand in the HNP sector is not straightforward. First, it is necessary to reconcile the divergent views of the various interest groups –the Bank’s clients (typically the ministries of health and finance), stakeholders (local communities, health care providers, and insurance companies), beneficiaries (patients, the poor, women, children and other vulnerable groups), and other development partners. Second, many countries have health, nutrition, and population problems precisely because governments introduced the wrong policies in the past. Often they failed to implement good policies and were unable to harness non-governmental resources effectively. Even

small changes in outcome may take as long as 10 to 15 years to realize, extending beyond the average government’s term and commitment to reform. Finally, when financial assistance to the HNP sector is sought in the form of credit and loans, this strategy must be carefully balanced with the medium-term returns to such investments and the opportunity cost of not investing in other spheres of the economy that impact on health, nutrition, and population outcomes.

AT: Specific Examples of Successful Aid ProjectsNEGATIVE IMPACTS OF AID ON GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS OUTWEIGHS POSITIVE EFFECTS – REASON SINGLE SUCCESSES DON’T TRANSLATE INTO STATISTICAL SUCCESSAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 305-6

Aid and aid-funded projects have undoubtedly done much good; the roads, dams, and clinics exist and would not have existed otherwise. But the negative forces are always present; even in good environments, aid compromises institutions, it contaminates local politics, and it undermines democracy. If poverty and underdevelopment are primarily consequences of poor institutions, then by weakening those institutions or stunting their development, large aid flows do exactly the opposite of what they are intended to do. It is hardly surprising then that, in spite of the direct effects of aid that are often positive, the record of aid shows no evidence of any overall beneficial effect.

The arguments about foreign aid and poverty reduction are quite different from the arguments about domestic aid to the poor . Those who oppose welfare benefits often argue that aid to the poor creates incentives for poor behavior that help to perpetuate poverty. These are not the arguments here. The concern with foreign aid is not about what it does to poor people around the world —indeed it touches them too rarely—but what it does to governments in poor countries . The argument that foreign aid can make poverty worse is an argument that foreign aid makes governments less responsive to the needs of the poor, and thus does them harm.

POSITIVE EVALUATIONS OF SPECIFIC PROJECTS AND PROGRAMS OFTEN EXAGGERATED AND FLAWEDAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 289-90

Many people—laypeople and development professionals alike—do not care to assess aid by looking for its effects on economic growth. For them, aid is about projects : the funding of a school or of a clinic, or giving aid to an organization that provides insecticide-treated bed nets, that offers information about how to avoid HIV/AIDS, or that sets up microfinance groups. It is about the road that changed life in a village or the dam that created livelihoods for thousands. Every organization that works in international development—the NGOs, UNDP, and the World Bank—has its success stories. Those who are involved often have firsthand experience, and they have no doubt about the effectiveness of what they have done. They will admit to failures, but they count them as the cost of doing business – a business that overall is a great success. How can we reconcile this knowledge with the ambiguous or even negative assessments from the statistical evidence?

One possibility is that evaluations, by the NGOs or by the World Bank, are overly rosy. Critics point to the fact that NGOs have strong incentives not to report failure and to exaggerate success—after all, they are in the fund-raising business as much as in the fund-dispersing business. They also point to methodological failings in the assessments, especially the fact that it is difficult to know what would have happened to the recipients of aid had they not received the aid. The World Bank and UN agencies have similar incentives to evaluate their work in positive terms. World Bank evaluations are often done

before the project has had time to work out in full, and there is constant pressure to provide evaluations quickly. With the membership of its board changing regularly, and with staff rotating through positions, the incentives for Bank staff are to get the money out the door, not to show that their long-completed projects did well. Career success is independent of whether or not projects have been successful, so there is no pressure for convincing evaluation.

“SUCCESSFUL” AID PROJECTS IRRELEVANT – ISOLATED SUCCESSES CAN’T BE REPLICATED TO GENERAL POVERTY ERADICATIONAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 291

Finding out whether a given project was or was not successful is important in itself but unlikely to reveal anything very useful about what works or does not work in general . Often, the experimental and control groups are very small (experiments can be expensive), which makes the results unreliable. More seriously, there is no reason to suppose that what works in one place will work somewhere else. Even if an aid-financed project is the cause of people doing well—and even if we were to be absolutely sure of that fact—causes usually do not operate alone; they need various other factors that help them to work. Flour “causes” cakes, in the sense that cakes make without flour do worse than cakes made with flour – and we can do any number of experiments to demonstrate it—but flour will not work without a rising agent, eggs and butter – the helping factors are needed for the flour to “cause” the cake. Similarly, teaching innovations may work in an experiment in one place and fail, or at least not work so well, in another village or in another country. The success of a microfinance scheme may depend on how women are organized and what men allow them to do. Agricultural education services may work well where the farmers live near one another and regularly talk and be a failure in an area of isolated farms. Without understanding these mechanisms –what it takes to bake a cake—it is not possible to get to “what works” from “this project worked”; indeed the whole idea of an unqualified “what works” is unhelpful. Replication that is not guided by an explicit search for these mechanisms does not solve the problem; there are just too many possible configurations of helping factors. So while the world might well be a better place if aid agencies demonstrated that the projects they undertook were successful on their own terms, such demonstrations are not in and of themselves going to give us the secrets to global poverty eradication.

EVEN A SUCCESSFUL AID PROJECT CAN BE NET NEGATIVE – UNDERCUTS PUBLIC SERVICE CAPACITY OF RECIPIENT COUNTRYAngus Deaton, Economics Professor-Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner, 2013, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, p. 292

It is also possible for aid-funded projects to work very well and for aid to fail . Even if an “ideal” aid agency were to fund only those projects that have passed a rigorous set of evaluations, its aid could still fail. For one thing, there is the irritating but frequently encountered problem that projects do much better as experiments than when rolled out for real. Prototypes are not the same as production. This could happen because policies implemented by real-life bureaucrats are not carried out as well as policies implemented by academics or World Bankers. There can also be spillovers that are not accounted for in the evaluation. An important example is the situation in which private provision of a

service—funded by aid—undercuts government provision of that same service. Even if the government’s system of antenatal clinics is not very good, and even if nurses and doctors are frequently absent, NGO-run clinics have to get nurses and doctors from somewhere, and the higher wages that they pay can hollow out the public system. The net benefit of the aid is then lower than it appears from any evaluation that does not take the diversion into account. The evaluation of dams is another example that has been much contested, if only because it is difficult to identify all of the people who are directly and indirectly affected.

Disaster Porn

Moral Arguments Rely on Images of SufferingBEREFT OF VALUES, OUR SOCIETY DEMANDS IMAGES OF SUFFERING FROM OTHERS TO REPLENISH OUR MORAL SENTIMENT. WE EXCHANGE OUR PITY FOR THEIR PAIN, IN A PROCESS THAT GUARANTEES THE SUFFERING MUST CONTINUE Baudrillard 94 [Jean, September 28, "No Reprieve For Sarejevo"]

Appealing to Images of Suffering Makes Us Complicit in Their Suffering

The problem lies indeed in the nature of our reality. We have got only one, and it must be preserved. Even if it is by the use of the most heinous of all paroles: "One must do something. One cannot remain idle." Yet, to do something for the sole reason that one cannot do nothing never has been a valid principle for action, nor for liberty. At the most it is an excuse for one's own powerlessness and a token of self-pity. The people of Sarajevo are not bothered by such questions. Being where they are, they are in the absolute need to do what they do, to do the right thing. They harbour no illusion about the outcome and do not indulge in self-pity. This is what it means to be really existing, to exist within reality. And this reality has nothing to do with the so-called objective reality of their plight, which should not exist, and which we do so much deplore. This reality exits as such - it is the stark reality of action and destiny. This is why they are alive, while we are dead. This is why we feel the need to salvage the reality of war in our own eyes and to impose this reality (to be pitiable) upon those who suffer from it, but do not really believe in it, despite the fact they are in the midst of war and utter distress. Susan Sontag herself confesses in her diaries that the Bosnians do not really believe in the suffering which surrounds them. They end up finding the whole situation unreal, senseless, and unexplainable. It is hell, but hell of what may be termed a hyperreal kind, made even more hyperreal by the harassment of the media and the humanitarian agencies, because it renders the attitude of the world towards them even less unfathomable. Thus, they live in a kind of ghost-like war - which is fortunate, because otherwise, they would never have been able to stand up to it. These are not my words, by the way: they say it so. To reconstitute reality, one needs to head to where blood flows. All these "corridors", opened by us to funnel our foodstuffs and our "culture" are in fact our lifelines along which we suck their moral strength and the energy of their distress. Yet another unequal exchange. And to those who have found in a radical delusion of reality (and this includes the belief in political rationality, which supposedly rules us, and which very much constitutes the principle of European reality) a kind of alternative courage, that is to survive a senseless situation, to these people Susan Sontag comes to convince them of the "reality" of their suffering, by making something cultural and something theatrical out of it, so that it can be useful as a referent within the theatre of western values, including "solidarity". But Susan Sontag herself is not the issue. She is merely a societal instance of what has become the general situation

whereby toothless intellectuals swap their distress with the misery of the poor, both of them sustaining each other, both of them locked in a perverse agreement. This parallels the way the political class and civil society are swapping their respective misery: one throwing up corruption and scandals, the other its purposeless convulsions and its inertia. Thus, not so long ago, one could witness Bourdieu and Abbe Pierre offering themselves as televisual slaughtering lambs trading with each other pathetic language and sociological garble about poverty. Our whole society is thus on its way towards "commiseration" in the most literal sense of the word (under the cloak of ecumenical bathos). It looks like as if we are in the midst of an immense feeling of guilt, shared by intellectuals and politicians alike, and which is linked to the end of history and the downfall of values. Then, it has become necessary to replenish the pond of values, the pond of references, and to do so by using that smallest common denominator which is the suffering of the world, and in doing so, replenishing our game reserves with artificial fowls. "At the moment, it has become impossible to show anything else than suffering in the news broadcasts on television", reports David Schneidermann. Ours is a victim-society. I gather that society is merely expressing its own disappointment and longing for an impossible violence against itself. Everywhere, a New Intellectual Order is following on the heels of the New World Order. Everywhere, we see distress, misery and suffering becoming the basic stuff of the primitive scene. The status of victimhood, paired with human rights is the sole funeral ideology. Those who do not directly exploit it do it by proxy - there is no dearth of mediators who take some surplus value of financial or symbolic nature along the way. Loss and suffering , just like the global debt, are negotiable and for sale on the speculative market, that is, the intellectual-political market - which is in no way undermining the military-industrial complex of old & sinister days .

IMAGES OF CATASTROPHE AND SUFFERING DESTROYS THE DISTANCE AND AMBIGUITY NECESSARY FOR REFLECTION AND UNDERSTANDING OF CATASTROPHE – THIS MENTALITY EXTENDS ITSELF FROM THIS DEBATE ROUND AND INTO EVERYDAY LIFE WHERE WE THEN BECOME COMPLICIT TO SUFFERING WE SEE EVERYDAY THE AFFIRMATIVE USES THEIR DISASTER PORNOGRAPHY TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES-

TO THEM ITS ENTERTAINING. THIS IS WHAT DESENSITIZES THE WORLD TO ALL SUFFERING Moeller 99 (Susan, assistant professor in the philip merrill college of journalism at the university of Maryland,

AFF HARM REPRESENTATIONS EXPLOIT SUFFERING – CREATE DESIRE FOR MORE AND MORE GRAPHIC IMAGES OF PAIN

Taylor 06 [Paul, Professor of Communication Studies, “The Pornographic barbarism of the Self-reflecting sign”, IJBS, Volume 4 Number 1, published 2006] Jean Baudrillard has compared the West’s relationship to images in terms of obscenity . In the light of events

in Iraq, frequent accusations that his work is willfully abstruse should be reconsidered. Baudrillard takes the notion of the obscene literally. An etymological analysis of the word gives us “ob” – a prefix meaning hindering – and “scene” – from the Latin and Greek words for “stage”. Ignoring its conventional connotation of depravity, his re-reading of the term obscene gives us the notion that Western media-dominated society is ob-scene because its proliferation of images has imploded the traditional, symbolically coded distance between the image and viewer that is implied with a stage. Baudrillard’s writing contains the repeated theme that in the West we suffer from a virus-like proliferation of immediate images that replace the distance needed for either considered reflection or a developed sensitivity to the ambiguities of cultural meanings. Baudrillard’s analysis illuminates the present

mediascape. For example, he argues: “… we shouldn’t underestimate the power of the obscene, its power to exterminate all ambiguity and all seduction and deliver to us the definitive fascination of bodies without faces, faces without eyes, and eyes that don’t look”. This has chilling pertinence to the dehumanized images of Iraqi prisoners in which their faces are hooded, deliberately pixilated, or only appear as minor details within a broader tableau (e.g., the naked man cowering in front of snarling guard dogs). Originally used in a different

context, Baudrillard also provides an unwittingly prescient description of the furor over the Daily Mirror pictures’ authenticity:…we don’t look for definition or richness of imagination in these images; we look for the giddiness of their superficiality, for the artifice of detail, the intimacy of their technique. What we truly desire is their technical artificiality, and nothing more. Beyond the manifest obscenity of the Pornography of the Abu Ghraib photographs, Baudrillard’s

broader theoretical point relates to how their staging paradoxically relies upon the actual absence of a stage. A

surfeit of images is presented to us so that: ”Obscenity takes on all the semblances of modernity. We are used to seeing it, first of all, in the perpetration of sex, but it extends to everything that can be perpetrated in the visible – it becomes the perpetration of the visible itself”. In a form of semiotic potlatch, images become their own justification for the decontextualized consumption for its own sake of such formats as MTV Cribs

and Bumfights. Everything becomes a potential image for the voyeuristic gaze and less and less is ruled out on grounds of taste or any other consideration. The pornography of the image lies here in its explicitness. Nothing is left to the imagination and all is revealed to the passive viewer . An apparently overwhelming sexual will-to-reveal that Welsh identified in the rise of gonzo porn may at least partially explain the sexual aspect of the Abu Ghraib pictures. As Sontag recently argued, we live in a world where, increasingly: An erotic life is for more and more people what can be captured on video. To live is to be photographed, to have a record of one’s life, oblivious or claiming to be oblivious to the camera’s non-stop attentions ...Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamour to get on a television show to reveal.

“Compassion Fatigue : How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death” 1999; page 35-37)

What does it mean when we become blasé about the pictures we see? Images of suffering and disaster— from pictures of the grieving Princes William and Harry to photos of the flattened Mercedes in the Paris tunnel—are appropriated to appeal emotionally to readers and viewers. As The New York Times columnist Max Frankel says, “Conflict is our favorite kind of news.” Crises are turned into a social experience that we can grasp; pain is commercialized, wedged between the advertisements for hemorrhoid remedies and headache medicines. In that cultural context, suffering becomes infotainment—just another commodity, another moment of pain to get its minute or column in the news. Our experience and our understanding of a crisis is weakened, diluted and distorted. If the news shows prompt us to equate chronic famine with chronic fatigue syndrome we are somewhat relieved. It helps absolve us of responsibility for what we see and can do little about. So with relief, we forget and go on with our everyday lives—until some other crisis image seizes our attention for a second.

Appealing to Images of Those Suffering From Global Poverty Cements Current Unequal Order

THE BODY OF THE STRAVING AFRICAN HAS COLONIZED OUR IMAGINATION IN RELATION TO THE THIRD WORLD. THESE REPRESENTATIONS OF CREATE A NUMBING

EFFECT THAT NORMALIZES HUNGER TO SUSTAIN THE CURRENT POLITICAL ORDER.Escobar, Associate professor of anthropology at the university of Massachusetts, 95 (Arturo, “Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World,” p. 103-104)

No ASPECT of development appears to be as straightforward as hunger. When people are hungry, is not the provision of food the logical answer? Policy would be a matter of ensuring that enough food reaches those in need on a sustained basis. The symbolism of hunger, however, has proven powerful throughout the ages. From famine in prehistoric times to the food riots in Latin America during the 1980s and early 1990s, hunger has been a potent social and political force. From the Bible to Knut Hamsun, Dickens, Orwell, Steinbeck, and, in twentieth-century Latin America, Ciro Alegria, Jorge Icaza, and Graciliano Ramos writers of many countries have been moved by the individual or collective experience of hunger. Images of hunger have also been portrayed in the cinema, never as powerfully as in the early years of Brazil's Cinema Novo during the first half of the I960s. "From Arruanda to Barren Lives," Glauber Rocha,

Jean Baudrillard, Professor of sociology @ University of Paris, Illusions of the End, 1994, p. 66-7 We have long denounced the capitalistic, economic exploitation of the poverty of the “other half of the world.” We must today denounce the moral and sentimental exploitation of that poverty – charity cannibalism being worse than oppressive violence. The extraction and humanitarian reprocessing of a destitution which has become the equivalent of oil deposits and gold mines. The extortion of the spectacle of poverty and, at the same time, of our charitable condescension: a worldwide appreciated surplus of fine sentiments and bad conscience. We should, in fact, see this not as the extraction of raw materials, but as a waste-reprocessing enterprise. Their destitution and our bad conscience are, in effect, all part of the waste-products of history – the main thing is to recycle them to produce a new energy source. We have here an escalation in the psychological balance of terror. World capitalist oppression is now merely the vehicle and alibi for this other, much more ferocious, form of moral predation. One might almost say, contrary to the Marxist analysis, that material exploitation is only there to extract that spiritual raw material that is the misery of peoples, which serves as psychological nourishment for the rich countries and media nourishment for our daily lives. The “Fourth World” (we are no longer dealing with a “developing” Third World) is once again beleaguered, this time as a catastrophe-bearing stratum. The West is whitewashed in the reprocessing of the rest of the world as waste and residue. And the white world repents and seeks absolution – it, too, the waste-product of its own history. The South is a natural producer of raw materials, the latest of which is catastrophe. The North, for its part, specializes in the reprocessing of raw materials and hence also in the reprocessing of catastrophe. Bloodsucking protection, humanitarian interference, medicines sans frontiers, international solidarity, etc. The last phase of colonialism: the New Sentimental Order is merely the latest form of the New World Order. Other people’s destitution becomes our adventure playground. Thus the humanitarian offensive aimed at the Kurds – a show of repentance on the part of the Western powers after allowing Saddam Hussein to crush them – is in reality merely the second phase of the war, a phase in which charitable intervention finishes off the work of extermination. We are the consumers of the ever delightful spectacle of poverty and catastrophe, and of the moving spectacle of our own efforts to alleviate it (which, in fact, merely function to secure the conditions of reproduction of the catastrophe market).

one of the founders of this movement, nakedly stated, "Cinema Novo has narrated, described, poeticized, discussed, analyzed, and stimulated the themes of hunger: characters eating dirt and roots, characters stealing to eat, characters killing to eat, characters fleeing to eat" (1982, 68); a veritable "aesthetics of hunger," as Rocha entitled his manifesto, the only one appropriate to an insurrectionist cinema in the context of neocolonialism in the Third World at the time. The liberties accorded to creative writing and cinema have not been granted to society at large. Indeed, as Josue de Castro, the Brazilian physician and first director of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), put it at the dawn of the development era, “Because of its explosive political and social implications, the subject [of hunger] until very recently has been one of the taboos of our civilization. . . . Hunger has unquestionably been the most potent source of social misfortunes, but our civilization has kept its eyes averted, afraid to face the sad reality. War has always been loudly discussed. Hymns and poems have been written to celebrate its glorious virtues as an agent of selection. . . . Thus, while war became a leitmotiv of Western thought, hunger remained only a vulgar sensation, the repercussions of which were not supposed to emerge from the realm of the subconscious. The conscious mind, with ostentatious disdain, denied its existence. ([1952] 1977, 51) This obscurity of hunger changed dramatically after World War II, when hunger entered irremediably the politics of scientific knowledge. Famines in the 1960s and 1970s (Biafra, Bangladesh, the Sahel) brought massive hunger to public awareness. Yet the more intractable aspects of persistent malnutrition and hunger entered the scientific world a decade earlier. From the 1950s to today, an army of scientists—nutritionists, health experts, demographers, agriculturalists, planners, and so on—has been busy studying every single aspect of hunger. This hunger of (scientific) language has resulted in manifold strategies that have succeeded each other throughout the develop-ment era; from food fortification and supplementation, nutrition education, and food aid in the 1950s and 1960s to land reform, the green revolution, integrated rural development, and comprehensive national food and nutrition planning since the late 1960s, the languages of hunger have grown increasingly inclusive and detailed. Whether "the nutrition problem" was thought to be due to insufficient protein intake, lack of calories, lack of nutrition education, inadequate food intake combined with poor sanitation and health, low incomes, or inefficient agricultural practices—or to a combination of many of these factors—a battery of experts was always on call to design strategies and programs on behalf of the hungry and malnourished people of the Third World. To be blunt, one could say that the body of the malnourished—the starving "African" portrayed on so many covers of Western magazines, or the lethargic South American child to be "adopted" for $16 a month portrayed in the advertisements of the same magazines—is the most striking symbol of the power of the First World over the Third. A whole economy of discourse and unequal power relations is encoded in that body. We may say, following Teresa de Lauretis (1987), that there is a violence of representation at play here. This violence, moreover, is extreme; scientific representations of hunger and "overpopulation" (they often go together) are most dehumanizing and objectifying. After all, what we are talking about when we refer to hunger or population is people, human life itself; but it all becomes, for Western science and media, helpless and formless (dark) masses, items to be counted and measured by demographers and nutritionists, or systems with feedback mechanisms in the model of the body espoused by physiologists and biochemists. The language of hunger and the hunger of language join forces not - only to maintain a certain social order but to exert a kind of symbolic violence that sanitizes the discussion of the hungry and the malnourished. It is thus that we come to consume hunger in the West; in the process our sensitivity to suffering and pain becomes numbed by the distancing effect that the language of academics and experts achieved. To restore vividness and political efficacy to

the language becomes almost an impossible task (Scheper-Hughes 1992). The situation is even more paradoxical when one considers that the strategies implemented to deal with the problems of hunger and food supply, far from solving them, have led to their aggravation. Susan George (1986) best captured the cynicism of these strategies with the title "More Food, More Hunger." Countries that were self - sufficient in food crops at the end of World War II—many of them even exported food to industrialized nations—became net food importers throughout the development era. Hunger similarly grew as the capacity of countries to produce the food necessary to feed themselves contracted under the pressure to produce cash crops, accept cheap food from the West, and conform to agricultural markets dominated by the multinational merchants of grain. Although agricultural output per capita grew in most countries, this increase was not translated into increased food availability for most people. Inhabitants of Third World cities in particular became increasingly dependent on food their countries did not produce. How can one account for this cynicism of power? This brings us again to the question of how discourse works, how it produces "domains of objects and rituals of truth" (Foucault 1979, 194). The discourse of development is not merely an "ideology" that has little to do with the "real world"; nor is it an apparatus produced by those in power in order to hide another, more basic truth, namely, the crude reality of the dollar sign. The development discourse has crystallized in practices that contribute to regulating the everyday goings and comings of people in the Third World. How is its power exercised in the daily social and economic life of countries and communities? How does it produce its effect on the way people think and act, on how life is felt and lived?

REPRESENTATIONS OF HELPLESS CHILDREN DEFINE AFRICAN CULTURE AS DESPERATELY IN NEED OF HELP AND FULFILL THE STEREOTYPE OF AFRICA FROM THE OCCIDENT. Nakanjako 06[Prossy Nakanjako, Childrens Rights Activist, Who gains from pictures of suffering children?, New Vision (Ugandan Journal), October 26]

THESE IMAGES CREATE FALSE ILLUSIONS, STRIP AGENCY AND ENSURES LONGTERM DEPENDENCY Omaar and De Waal 93[Disaster Pornography from Somalia, Center for Media Literacy, Winter, Issue 61, Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal, co-directors of African Rights (NGO)]

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SUFFERING AS HELPLESS CAUSE AN EXPECTATION OF THEM TO BE RESIGNED TOWARDS CHANGE. THIS IS JUSTIFICATION FOR MAKING SYSTEMS OF NEED SUBSERVIENT TO WESTERN HUMANITARIANISM AND MILITARY INTERVENTION. Fair and Parks 01 [Jo Ellen Fair and Lisa Parks, Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of

California-Santa Barbara, Africa on Camera: Television News Coverage and Aerial Imaging of Rwandan Refugees, Africa Today 48.2, pg. 35-37]

For months, I did not see any pictures of smiling children from Africa, a memory I had from home. I did not see pictures of children happily running around, playing 'hide-and-seek' or football, unaware of their tattered clothes. But instead, I saw only pictures of starving children from war-torn northern Uganda, AIDS orphans from South Africa begging to be helped, or someone begging on their behalf. Universally, children are seen as innocent, immaculate of the injustices of the world. And when it comes to disasters, such as war, epidemics, drought and earthquakes, children and women are considered to be a vulnerable category in society. "Like canaries down a coal mine, children often give the first indication that something is going wrong. Child malnutrition offers the most common index to famine; a child being disruptive at school may be the first sign of a family at war; child prostitutes and soldiers indicate a society in crisis; child-to-child murders are interpreted as a sign of moral breakdown," wrote one author, when commenting about the challenges of implementing children's rights in developing countries. Yes, suffering African children on television have delivered the atrocities, wars, famines, and droughts in many African countries right to the living rooms of even those Western citizens who do not know where the continent is exactly located. If childhood is viewed as a 'golden age' full of innocence but vulnerable and therefore in need of adult protection, then negative pictures of African children portray a society that does not give proper care to their children. If no beautiful pictures of Africa are shown, what kind of conclusion does one expect from someone who has never been to any country in Africa, but only feasts on negative pictures of African children on TV? Patricia Holland, author of Picturing Childhood says that, "Pictures of children contribute to a set of narratives about childhood which are threaded through different cultural forms, drawing on every possible source to construct stories that become part of cultural competence." What kind of narratives then, do pathetic images of hungry, lonely and helpless children deliver to those who feast on them in the West? Or, to throw back Mr. Oloya's question, "If we watch these documentaries about Africa's numerous ills, so what?" Social critics say that that negative pictures of African children aid fulfil the stereotype of Africa in the West; as a poverty, disease, war, famine etc infested continent where development has eluded the lives of many people.

Reduced to nameless extras in the shadows behind Western aid workers or disaster tourists, the grieving, hurting and humiliated human beings are not asked if they want to be portrayed in this degrading way. Do pictures of Somalia show herdsmen tending large flocks of well-fed camels, or farmers cultivating ripening crops of sorghum and maize? Do they show vegetable markets flourishing in Mogadishu? Are we allowed to see clan elders negotiating a local cease fire, or the women who have turned their homes over to orphanages, filled with the laughter of healthy children? All these are just as much facets of life in Somalia today as looting and starvation, but they are not what we are shown. The truth is that, even in the areas of the country stricken by famine, outright starvation is the exception. Most deaths are the result of disease. The great majority of people will survive-largely due to their own efforts. International food aid is much less important than food grown by local farmers, the maintenance of animal herds, having roots and berries to eat and charity of relatives and friends.

The most respectable excuse for selectively presenting images of starvation is that this is necessary to elicit our charity. But famine relief experts concur that the total impact of our charitable giving is less than what can be achieved if the stricken people are enabled to help themselves. If "Operation Restore Hope" is to live up to its name, first it must restore humanity, self-respect and dignity to the Somali people. This cannot be done while the press corps makes disaster pornography pass for a true portrait of the Somali nation. No more, please.

Acknowledging agency among hundreds of thousands of refugees spatially incarcerated in camps is a risky proposition for journalists. Audiences and news managers at home expect refugees to be passive, nobly resigned to their lot in life, not actively engaged in reformulating their political, cultural, and historical identities. Journalists' perception that refugees were unable or unwilling to act on their own behalf also is found in a group of stories focusing on the closure of camps in Zaire/Congo and Tanzania in October and November 1996. When Zaire/Congo and Tanzania began to close refugee camps and demand repatriation of refugees to Rwanda, 6 journalists began to describe refugees as groups "trapped" in camps (e.g., CNN, 22 October 1996; ABC, 3 November 1996; NBC, 16 November 1996; NBC, 23 November 1996; ABC, 30 November 1996). The stories suggested, of course, that those who were "trapped" would require [End Page 41] the assistance of western humanitarian and possibly military intervention efforts to locate and retrieve them for repatriation. For example, one NBC story--showing close up visuals of a young child--concluded that "the job of locating and keeping alive those refugees trapped in Zaire is the world's focus" (16 November 1996).

REPRESENTATION OF THE ‘STARVING AFRICAN’ IS A WESTERN CULTURAL ARCHETYPE THAT DEPERSONALIZES AFRICAN PEOPLE AND SEPARATES “THEM” FROM “US” Michael Maren, journalist and former Peace Corps worker, The Road to Hell: The ravaging effects of foreign aid and international charity, 1997, p. 2-3 It was easy to presume that people needed our help. For us, Africa was more than a place on the map, it was a location in our collective psyche. Our idea of Africa had been shaped by years of advertisements and news coverage that portrayed the continent as poor and helpless. Growing up in an affluent Western society we were invested with a stake in the image of helpless Africa, starving Africa. In public affairs discussion the term “starving Africans” (or “starving Ethiopians” or “starving Somalis”) rolls from the tongue as easily as “blue sky.” “Americans leave enough food on their plates to feed a

million starving Africans.” Charities raise money for starving Africans. What do Africans do? They starve. But mostly they starve in our imaginations. The starving African is a western cultural archetype like the greedy Jew or the unctuous Arab. The difference is that we’ve learned that trafficking in these last two archetypes is wrong or, at least, reflects badly on us. But the image of the helpless bloated child adorns advertisements for Save the Children and World

Vision. The image of the starving African is said to edify us, mobilize our good will and awaken us from our apathy. The starving African exists as a point in space from which we measure our own wealth, success, and prosperity, a darkness against which we can view our own cultural triumphs. And he serves as a handy object of our charity. He is evidence that we have been blessed, and we have an obligation to spread the blessing. The belief that we can help is an affirmation of our own worth in the grand scheme of things. The starving African transcends the dull reality of whether or not anyone is actually starving in Africa. Starvation clearly delineates us from them.

Appealing to Images of Suffering Immoral

THE “EFFORTS TO ALLEVIATE” CATASTROPHE POSED BY THE AFF IS ENTRENCHED IN A SELF-SERVING MENTALITY- THEY WILL INEVITABLY RESULT IN PERPETUATION AND RECREATION OF THE HARMS THEY TRY TO SOLVE DEPICTIONS OF SUFFERING CREATE OUR SUBJECTIVITY TO BE BASED ON STIMULATION. THIS CREATES SIMPLISTIC MORAL PERSPECTIVES THAT SHROUD EXPLICATION OR CONTEXT. Rozario 03 [Kevin Rozario, assistant professor in the American studies program at Smith College, Delicious Horrors, American Quarterly 55.3, 417-455]

Baudrillard 94 (Jean, Professor of Media;“The Illusion of the End” p. 66-71)

We have long denounced the capitalistic, economic exploitation of the poverty of the 'other half of the world' [['autre monde]. We must today denounce the moral and sentimental exploitation of that poverty - charity cannibalism being worse than oppressive violence. The extraction and humanitarian reprocessing of a destitution which has become the equivalent of oil deposits and gold mines. The extortion of the spectacle of poverty and, at the same time, of our charitable condescension: a worldwide appreciated surplus of fine sentiments and bad conscience. We should, in fact, see this not as the extraction of raw materials, but as a waste-reprocessing enterprise. Their destitution and our bad conscience are, in effect, all part of the waste-products of history- the main thing is to recycle them to produce a new energy source. We have here an escalation in the psychological balance of terror. World capitalist oppression is now merely the vehicle and alibi for this other, much more ferocious, form of moral predation. One might almost say, contrary to the Marxist analysis, that material exploitation is only there to extract that spiritual raw material that is the misery of peoples, which serves as psychological nourishment for the rich countries and media nourishment for our daily lives. The 'Fourth World' (we are no longer dealing with a 'developing' Third World) is once again beleaguered, this time as a catastrophe-bearing stratum. The West is whitewashed in the reprocessing of the rest of the world as waste and residue. And the white world repents and seeks absolution - it, too, the waste-product of its own history. The South is a natural producer of raw materials, the latest of which is catastrophe. The North, for its part, specializes in the reprocessing of raw materials and hence also in the reprocessing of catastrophe. Bloodsucking protection, humanitarian interference, Medecins sans frontieres, international solidarity, etc. The last phase of colonialism: the New Sentimental Order is merely the latest form of the New World Order. Other people's destitution becomes our adventure playground. Thus, the humanitarian offensive aimed at the Kurds - a show of repentance on the part of the Western powers after allowing Saddam Hussein to crush them - is in reality merely the second phase of the war, a phase in which charitable intervention finishes off the work of extermination. We are the consumers of the ever delightful spectacle of poverty and catastrophe, and of the moving spectacle of our own efforts to alleviate it (which, in fact, merely function to secure the conditions of reproduction of the catastrophe market); there, at least, in the order of moral profits, the Marxist analysis is wholly applicable: we see to it that extreme poverty is reproduced as a symbolic deposit, as a fuel essential to the moral and sentimental equilibrium of the West. In our defence, it might be said that this extreme poverty was largely of our own making and it is therefore normal that we should profit by it.

REPRESENTATIONS OF SUFFERING SHIFT THE FOCUS FROM A CALL TO ALTRUISTIC ACTION TO A DESIRE TO CONSUME SUFFERING. THIS IS THE AFFIRMATIVE’S FAÇADE

TO WIN THE ROUND. Rozario 03 [Kevin Rozario, assistant professor in the American studies program at Smith College, Delicious Horrors, American Quarterly 55.3, 417-455]

One notable and significant effect of the war was to erode Victorian prohibitions against showing brutality on screen. In September 1917, the very month that Robert H. Scott was dropping in on movie theaters throughout Alaska on his recruitment drive for the Red Cross, the CPI established a Division of Film to develop and distribute thrilling war films that were expected to encourage citizens to enlist or to buy liberty bonds. Despite concerns that overly vivid dramatizations of the brutality of war might deter some men from enlisting, these movies proved very successful. Commercial motion picture companies took advantage of this new opening and were so successful at enticing millions of Americans into theaters to watch exciting (propagandistic) war films that the War Industries Board took the extraordinary step of recognizing hitherto "disreputable" Hollywood as an "essential industry." And audiences became so used to the "patriotic" screening of violence and suffering that the censorious mayor of New York who cut violent scenes from Griffith's propaganda film Hearts of the World was accused of being pro-German. The war years disarmed opposition to public representations of violence thus changing the rules for portraying suffering in charitable publications. The movies, meanwhile, were transforming the way victims were imagined. Although Hollywood movies, and even government newsreels, did not depict the sufferings of war with any particular exactness, they did—through such cues as music, framing, and quivering close-ups—shape the ways viewers responded emotionally to the sufferings of war. Given that movies were "especially good at conveying impressions of speed, action and violence," cinematic representations of suffering unsurprisingly tended to emphasize spectacle and sentimentality over explication or context, feeding simplistic moral perspectives . By the time of the Armistice, the war movie was the most successful type of film in the country; not coincidentally, the horror movie was also emerging as a major genre. Mass culture, in short, was educating Americans how to see and feel suffering. Recent critics have plausibly argued that mass culture engendered a distinctively "modern form of subjectivity," one shaped by, and characterized by, an appetite for sensory stimulation, for agitation, thrills, and shocks. If this is so, then it should hardly be a surprise to discover that philanthropic groups seeking to move public sentiment should have adapted to these new conditions. The American Red Cross, which was initially granted exclusive control over the distribution of government war films, certainly hoped to promote humanitarian ideals (which, in practice, were often conflated with war aims) by making full use of the sensational mass media. This accommodation with mass culture decisively transformed the humanitarian enterprise, shifting it into the orbit of the entertainment world.

This is a startling phrase—"delicious horror." The horror seems straightforward enough (though it is worth reminding ourselves that while revulsion is undoubtedly the dominant modern response to suffering, it is not as natural as one might suppose). But it is the purported deliciousness of suffering that poses the most disquieting questions. What is so appetizing about depictions of pain and discomfort? What makes images of suffering thrilling? And why, for that matter, was an exciting show about destruction and suffering expected to part audiences from their charity dollars? A connection is implied in the very word we use to describe an entreaty for charitable donations: "appeal." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "appeal" is adapted from the Latin "appelare" which means "to call upon." Thus it is that charity organizations call upon donors for contributions. Since the late nineteenth century, however, the word has also carried another meaning (one that was, significantly, articulated and disseminated most thoroughly by an emerging advertising industry): the quality of being attractive, enticing—"appealing." The producers of the Minneapolis show certainly intuited that to raise money they needed both to please and appall audiences with shocking images of destruction and misfortune, gambling correctly that audiences so captivated would contribute generously to the relief of San Francisco. It seems that a closer connection exists be tween the appalling and the appealin g than most accounts of humanitarianism have recognized.

Edward O’Neill, Jr., Professor Emergency Medicine, Tufts University, 2006, Awakening Hippocrates, p. 65-6

Far too often, such appeals depict the "victims" as helpless individuals incapable of fending for themselves–only the benevolent donor can step in and save them. One angry African delegate said in a conference, "The more desperate our conditions are portrayed in the US media, the more money you American organizations seem to raise for your own overhead and projects" (Marren 1997, 158). A famous photograph portrayed a starving Sudanese famine victim–a mere toddler– slumped forward while a "grimly patient" v ulture watched her. STC used the photo in its fund- raising literature, not at all bothered by its blatant opportunism or insensitivity. The troubled photogra pher, 33-year-old Kevin Carter, won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for taking that picture, following a life of photographing some of the world's darkest moments. He recalled chasing off the vulture and remaining at the scene for hours, "smoking cigarettes and crying" ("Milestones" 1994). Haunted by depr ession , alcohol, and vivid memories of the dark side of humanity, Carter co mmitted suicide only two months after receiving his prize (MacLeod 1994, 70). Perhaps the only good that came from Carter's death was that he did not live long enough to see his moving photograph used in such shameless exploitation.

Randolph Kent, UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, US Institute of Peace, Special Report: Managing Communications, lessons from interventions in Africa, March 1997, http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/early/managingcomm.html The last point I would like to make regarding perceptual pitfalls concerns our relationship with and the way we view the disaster-affected, the vulnerable, those in need. This constant reference to the "hapless victims" is a problem of perception that affects our communication. We must understand that those in need are human beings who understand how to deal with their own problems. All too often, we fail to listen to them. We must learn to listen to those in need so that we will be able to communicate more effectively.

and prestige. Yet, as Tom Kennan has noted, mediatization in many ways is no longer a choice: “one cannot understand, nor have a properly political relation to, invasions and war crimes, military operations and paramilitary atrocities – both of maximal importance for human rights campaigners – in the present and the future if we do not attend to the centrality of image production and the management in them.” Thus, while the French first demonstrated the good that can come of publicizing suffering, the moral dilemma of what to do with that testimony now extends far beyond France.

OVEREXPOSURE TO CRISIS DEPICTIONS ALLOWS EACH TO BE FORGOTTEN THE NEXT ROUND – NOTHING RETAINS MEANING Susan D. Moeller, assistant professor of American studies, Brandeis University, Compassion Fatigue, 1994, p. 37 Sometimes the fatigue is due to simply overexposure. The same thing that happens to movie starts and rock stars can happen to crises. They can get overexposed. (Oddly, Princess Diana seemed to be the one exception to that rule.) And when they are overexposed, they quickly become yesterday’s news. Ignored and forgotten. Fashion moves on. The Bosnians, the Kurds, the Ethiopians, the Sudanese, the Somalis just disappear from view. Although it is demonstrable that many global events have a grave political, social or even ethical significance for the United States, it is conventional wisdom that Americans know little and care less about international affairs. Photographer Luc Delahaye took a memorable picture of an infant rescued from the Tuzla fighting in Bosnia, its face covered with blood. The photograph made the cover of Newsweek…and it was one of Newsweek’s poorest-selling issues of all time. As Smith Hempstone, the former US ambassador to Kenya put it: “I think that we may have reached the son of ‘horror fatigue’ situation in which, when you’ve seen one starving baby, you’ve seen them all.”

Appealing to Images of Suffering Counterproductive – Undermines Assistance

SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC TRAINING FOR INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH WORKERS REPRESENTS AFRICANS AS PASSIVE RECIPIENTS OF SUCCESSFUL WESTERN INTERVENTIONS – DISEMPOWERS AFRICANS, DISTORTS FOCUS FROM ROOT CAUSES AND WILL FAILCollins O. Airhihenbuwa, Professor Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, 2006, Healing Our Differences: the crisis of global health and the politics of identity, p. 47-8

As AIDS continues to ravage countries and destroy lives, issues of institutional responsibility have become apparent. Examining the concept of institutional behavior change has gained increased attention as more scholars document the roles of policy in promoting or impeding effective strategies to HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment. Institutional behavior change must be based on institutional trustworthiness. Closely tied to the question of trustworthiness is the question of professional behavior change. To the extent that the strategy for effecting a change needs to be changed, professionals and scholars would need to change their professional behavior if they are to become effective in promoting the new strategy for change. An example of professional behavior change is a careful examination of relations of power in the discourse on White privilege. For example, Laura Garrett in both The Coming Plague (1994) and Betrayal of Trust (2000) does a superb job in recounting the history of disease investigation and the deservedly s/herorism of Western epidemiologists, nuns, and lab assistants engaged in improving health of the population under condition of uncertainty. However, any contribution that was made at the local or country level was visibly absent. There are ways in which professionals report on diseases in Africa that leave the reader with the impression that the Africans did nothing but sat and waited for help from the West. In The Coming Plague, Lassa fever is reported as an endemic disease, but the fact that it may be treated, even if with only a limited outcome—in Sierra Leone, perhaps with herbal remedies – is not addressed. At the height of the child survival revolution, a homemade salt and sugar solution used by people in the African communities was found to be most effective and to have a better chance for sustainability. However, the sale of oral rehydration sachets was often promoted as a measure of program effectiveness. These sachets were mostly manufactured in the West (some built factories in African countries to manufacture them) for sale and distribution in African and other countries. The resulting dependence meant that several programs failed because they could not be sustained. The coming of the sachets was often promoted more than the use of the homemade solution. The latter was also sustainable. Thus, most reports of success are still credited to Western discoveries, a factor that has been used as an excuse to maintain secrecy by those who claim falsely to have cures for AIDS. Since knowledge production in Africa is almost never recognized, some practitioners (physicians and traditional healers) claim that their ideas are likely to be stolen if revealed. Instead of exploring the potential in traditional healing for this dreaded condition, we get reports of physicians and healers who claim to have cures or those who frightened their clients into believing that there is nothing to be done for people living with HIV because they are practically dead. In all these debates, a central issue is the question of the most appropriate professional training that would prepare the future generation to adequately address the gulf between health crisis and the solution that must be

anchored in cultural identity. Unfortunately, most of the professions, including social work and health education, that trained people in health to address root causes of health problems are systematically being downsized, and their programs have been phased out in many universities.

COMPASSION FATIGUE FORCES UNCONSCIOUS DISMISSAL OF THE IMPACTS Susan D. Moeller in 1999 (Quals: Director of the Journalism Program and Assistant Professor of American

Studies at Brandeis University. , Source: Compassion Fatigue, Page: 237, KL)

THE K TURNS CASE- ABUNDANCE OF SUFFERING DEPICTIONS DETERS PEOPLE FROM ADVOCATING AID Moeller 99 (Susan, assistant professor in the philip merrill college of journalism at the university of Maryland, “Compassion Fatigue : How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death” 1999; page 35-37)

To an astonishing extent, the media don’t tailor their coverage to anticipate or accommodate the public’s indifference. Of course, compassion fatigue or com- passion avoidance ultimately prevails—the story is yanked from sight long before it is truly over, and even before that happens it receives less play than it deserves. Hut the coverage of genocide — at least the coverage of those few cases of genocide that make it into the news in the first place—may be one of the few instances where the media really do put their foot down, when they really do insist on covering a story because the public should know. Public apathy about Bosnia or Rwanda, for example, argues that few are watching or reading such stories—and that perhaps the media needs to change their manner of telling this kind of news. But even if every reader and every viewer turns the page or hits the button on the channel suffer when the horrific images pop up, at least the media can say that they bore witness. “While much of the world was ignorant in 1940 of the efficiency of the Nazi killing machine,” said The Cleveland Plain Dealer, “today on the doorsteps of the global village a media-driven culture delivers fresh images daily of atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda. . ."

Appealing to Images of Suffering Commodify Assistance

REPRESENTATIONS OF SUFFERING CONDEMN AID TO BE AT THE WILL OF MARKET COMMODIFICATION. Rozario 03 [Kevin Rozario, assistant professor in the American studies program at Smith College, Delicious Horrors, American Quarterly 55.3, 417-455]

Jean Badrillard, Semitotician, The Illusion of the End, 1994, 2001, p. 55-6 (HARVUN0482)It was not the dead that were the scandal, but the corpses being pressed into appearing before the television cameras, as in the past dead souls were pressed into appearance in the register of deaths. It was their being taken hostage, as it were, and our being held hostage too, as mystified TV viewers. Being blackmailed by violence and death, especially in a noble and revolutionary cause, was felt to be worse than the violence itself, was felt to be a parody of history. All the media live off the presumption of catastrophe and of the succulent imminence of death . A photo in Liberation, for

example, shows us a convoy of refugees ‘which, some time after this shot was taken, was to be attacked by the Iraqi army’. Anticipation of effects, morbid simulation, emotional blackmail. It was the same on CNN with the arrival of the

Scuds. Nothing is news if it does not pass through that horizon of the virtual, that hysteria of the virtual – not in the psychological sense, but in the sense of a compulsion for what is presented, in all bad faith, as real to be consumed as unreal. In the past, to show something up as a fake, we said: ‘It’s just play-acting’, ‘It’s all romance!’, ‘It’s put on for the cameras!”. This time, with Romania and the Gulf War, we were able to say, “It’s just TV!” Photographic or cinema images still pass through the negative stage (and that of projection), whereas the TV image, the video image, digital and synthetic, are images without a negative, and hence without negativity and without reference. They are virtual and the virtual is what puts an end to all negativity, and thus to all reference to the real or to events. At a stroke, the contagion of images, engendering themselves without reference to a real or an imaginary, itself become virtually without limits, and this limitless engendering produces information as catastrophe. Is an image which refers only to itself still an image? However this may be, that image raises the problem of its indifference to the world, and thus of our indifference to it – which is a political problem. When television becomes the strategic space of the event, it sets itself up as a deadly self-reference, it becomes a bachelor machine. The real object is wiped out by news – not merely alienated, but abolished. All that remains of it are traces on a monitoring screen.

Scott's experience raises two questions: What exactly made suffering so interesting to audiences in this period? And, why did charity officials suspect that a sensational interest in suffering might be an asset in their quest to cultivate compassion? Against the dominant critical view of sensationalism and humanitarianism as distinct and competing cultural developments, I will contend in this essay that modern "humanitarianism" is in fact a creation of a sensationalistic mass culture. My main concern here will be with the second decade of the twentieth century, the moment when humanitarianism became a mass phenomenon and when charity organizations developed the fundraising techniques (professional publicity departments and manipulative emotional appeals) that are still most familiar to us today. A careful look at charitable publications over this formative period discloses surprising similarities in the presentation and consumption of charity texts and the pulp magazines, advertisements, and commercial movies of an increasingly entertainment-oriented mass culture. As it turns out, it was only when philanthropy became a marketing venture and when donors began to be treated and courted as consumers who had to be entertained that philanthropy could become a mass phenomenon. By paying especially close attention to the content of the American Red Cross Magazine and its contribution to the emergence of the American Red Cross as the most important charity organization of the twentieth century, I hope to enhance our understanding of the social and emotional scaffolding of modern philanthropy.

THE CULTURE OF IMAGERY CREATES PHILANTHROPY INTO A COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND INDIVIDUALS AS PARTICIPANTS IN A DREAM WORLD OF MASS CONSUMPTION Rozario 03 [Kevin Rozario, assistant professor in the American studies program at Smith College, Delicious Horrors, American Quarterly 55.3, 417-455]

Charity organizations took full advantage of the opportunities presented by the new mass culture of movies and mass-circulation newspapers to beguile the public into "acts of benevolence." Even as publicists at the YMCA and the Red Cross continued to speak warmly about the compassion and intelligence of their supporters, they began to imagine donors in much the same way that advertisers were imagining consumers: emotional, suggestible, (and significantly) female. Indeed, I would argue that they were fully implicated in the dominant cultural project of the age: producing a society of consumers. In so doing they were moving humanitarianism further out of the moral realm and into the "dream world of mass consumption"—turning philanthropy itself into a consumerist activity. It was thus quite appropriate for charity workers to borrow marketing strategies from movies, pulp magazines, and popular dailies. Now, more than ever, philanthropic institutions found themselves competing with commercial ventures in a (sensationalistic) mass culture for the attention of the public. From this point on, fundraisers would have to devote as much attention to advertising as to ethics, and to "entertainment" as to education.

Appealing to Images of Suffering Justifies Interventionist Policies

MEDIA DEPICTIONS OF SUFFERING DRIVE ACCEPTANCE FOR HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION David Rieff, Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute, “Charity on the rampage: the business of foreign aid,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 1997, http://www.netnomad.com/rieff.html Maren's book went to press before the events in eastern Zaire played themselves out, but they only buttress his argument. In The Road to Hell, he writes eloquently of our "sensory confusion," engendered partly by television's sentimental depictions and partly by the fact that since the end of the Cold War most people do not really know how to think about international affairs. In this context, humanitarianism's appeal is obvious. The humanitarians act in our stead, and we have the satisfaction of feeling that humanitarian aid remains an effective response in a world where every gesture seems compromised . This

is the world viewed as a morality play. There are people in need, people from abroad who want to help (and need funding to do so), and the thugs and militia bosses who have caused the suffering in the first place. As President Clinton said when he finally announced that the United States would join the multinational humanitarian military mission in Zaire, "The world's most powerful nation must not turn its back on so many desperate people and innocent children who are now at risk." In reality, the United States seems to have acted in response to pressure from governments, advocacy groups, and an intensifying media focus. Maren argues that the same pressure drove the humanitarian efforts in Ethiopia and Somalia. In Somalia, too, apocalyptic death tolls were predicted by the U.N. and aid agencies, and American television nightly showed scenes of despair and lawlessness in the streets of Mogadishu . Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.) visited the region, as did Bernard Kouchner, then French minister of humanitarian affairs. The media attention eventually forced President Bush's hand.

REPRESENTATIONS OF DISASTER USED TO JUSTIFY WESTERN MEDICINE, EXPERTISE AND ASSISTANCE Jennifer Anne Ricarda Marten, BA Honors Thesis, Edith Cowan University (Australia), Like a banana tree: towards a model of children in disasters, December 21, 2001, http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/radix/resources/marten-thesis.doc However, as Bankoff goes on to point out, the conventional paradigm of disasters as being extreme natural events, requiring primarily technocentric solutions such as the dissemination and transfer of technical and scientific knowledge, is proving surprisingly stubborn, and remains firmly embedded within the policies of the United Nations and funding institutions like the World Bank (2001, pp.24-26). Bankoff goes further in his analysis, linking the dominant paradigm, and the concept of vulnerability, both as parts of an essentially one dimensional western discourse that constructs large areas of the globe as “dangerous, disease ridden, poverty stricken and disaster prone” (2001, p.29). The solution to which, lies of course, in the same western discourse; “ [in] western medicine, investment, preventative systems [and] expertise” (2001, p.29). What is required, Bankoff argues, is that we go beyond vulnerability studies, and investigate the importance of hazards in historically and actively shaping local cultures. In social groups where hazards are chronic, he proposes local cultures have already developed a culture of disaster. This involves a permanent accommodation within the interpretive framework of cultural understanding; a “normalization of threat”(Bankoff, 2001, p.30). Many cultures demonstrate specific adaptations to recurrent hazards, that are transmitted, as Oliver-Smith (1999), shows, as adaptive strategies and indigenous technologies for coping with uncertainties.

Should Reject Policies Grounded in Offensive Representations

REPRESENTATIONS OF AFRICANS GROUNDED IN RACISM – LANGUAGE VERY IMPORTANT TO ENTRENCHING OPPRESSIVE REPRESENTATIONSCollins O. Airhihenbuwa, Professor Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, 2006, Healing Our Differences: the crisis of global health and the politics of identity, p. 7

Stuart Hall (1991) concludes that the British (Whites) are not racist because they hate Blacks but because they do not know who they are without Blacks. This point is very true of identity construction in the United States. In fact, much of the discomfort and resistance to engage a discourse on identity involve the fear and inability to articulate one’s identity through self-analysis (individual and collective) where one has always been taught to do so through analysis of others’ behaviors. Ngugi wa Thiong’O (1993) describes language as a cultural bomb because of its ability to represent and misrepresent identity and culture. Cheik Anto Diop (1991), the Senegalese Egyptologist and thinker: Frantz Fanon (1958), the late Algerian psychiatrist and thinker; and others have written about the importance of history in cultural construction of identity. This is particularly central to meanings of health as I have argued previously. In the final analysis, culture must be studied within its historical contexts in a language that expresses its experiences. This is the way to overcome the representation of African cultures that is often negatively juxtaposed against Western culture to produce victims and villains in what is often characterized as a clash of cultures.

Psychoanalysis Kritik

Compassion Link

THE COMPULSION TO ACT WHEN PRESENTED WITH THE SUFFERINGS OF ABJECT OTHERS IS NOT A SIMPLE, ALTRUISTIC EQUATION. COMPASSION IS PARADOXICALLY A MEANS OF KEEPING OUR DISTANCE FROM OTHERS, OF ASSUAGING THE GUILT WE FEEL WITHOUT EXAMINING THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIPS THAT PRODUCE THOSE WE FEEL GUILTY TOWARD OR BRING THEIR SUFFERING TO US. WE MUST REFUSE THIS IMPULSE TO ACT IN THE FACE OF ABJECT OTHERNESS, TRAVERSING THE FANTASY THAT LOCKS US INTO THE REPETITION OF THESE CYCLES OF TRAUMAEdkins, Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wales, 2000 [Jenny, Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid p. 112-116]

The experience of disaster as an encounter with the Real is one that, like the gaze of the victim, forces us to confront the impossibil ity of social reality, the void at its heart . The Real is that which cannot be symbolized. The symbolic or social order is always incom plete or impossible. It can only be constituted by the exclusion of some (nonsymbolizable) kernel—the Real. The literature on trauma and post-traumatic stress emphasizes that not only those caught up in a disaster experience this shock of an encounter with the Real, but also those who witness it. Whole communities can be caught up in it ; indeed, those who share a traumatic experience of this type feel themselves both part of a new community of a special type ( a com munity made up of those who share a revised view of the world, pro duced by trauma, that they must continue to bear witness to ) and apart from all usual social links. However, for witnesses of disaster the traumatic element is not so much the encounter with the Real as the encounter with "the gaze of the helpless other—child, animal—who does not know why some thing so horrifying and senseless is happening to him." It is not, as might be supposed, the gaze of a hero, willingly sacrificing himself, that is so striking to observers of tragedy, but "the gaze of a per plexed victim," the passive, helpless casualty. It is this gaze that gives rise to the compassion felt by outsiders. It is not, as we might think, the outsiders in distant countries who are the passive ones in cases of humanitarian disasters, who do nothing, who do not want to get involved. Rather, it is the people caught up in the events them selves. They see the horrors that are engulfing them but cannot under - stand how such horrors are possible and are unable to act. Their gaze, the gaze of the uncomprehending victim, is unbearable and gives rise to guilt in witnesses to distant disaster . It is to avoid the pressure of this gaze that we feel compassion toward those in trouble. This compassion can be related to the reflexive nature of human de sire , which is always desire for a desire . Compassion is " the way to maintain the proper distance towards a neighbour in trouble." By giving, we present ourselves so that we like what we see when we look at ourselves from the position of the victim. By responding com - passionately, we present ourselves as that which is desired by those who are suffering. This account does not in any sense invalidate compassion; on the contrary, it shows why it is so important and necessary. The reaction of the subject of compassion, the victim, is a separate matter. In the Ethiopian famine, we saw that the images that provoked an immediate reaction and a strong response were those that portrayed perplexed victims, children in particular, and specifically those that portrayed their passivity and bewilderment. It was precisely that picture of passivity that formed the basis of so many of the subsequent objections to the media coverage. However, the mediated nature of the image, the fact

that it was an image seen on television, leads to another account of the response to disaster. When we watch a television program, we do so from a disembod ied space outside and beyond the reach of the scene we are viewing . We ourselves are invisible to the people we are watching. We are not there, they cannot see us, yet we can see them . The same is the case with a theatrical drama on stage, except that there the distance is fictional or posited by convention and can be broken by audience participation or by applause. In a theater, too, people are part of an audience, not alone. When we witness scenes of suffering on television, our subjectivity is suspended. We are like ghosts. It is as if we were already dead. We cannot intervene, and we cannot be harmed by what is going on. Yet, in an important sense we are not passive. As (apparently) the focus of the victim's perplexed gaze, the viewer is placed in the position of the master signifier, the place of the subject who is supposed to know. This is the place the analyst occupies in psychotherapy. The symbolic or social order can never be complete. It constitutes itself around a lack, a paradoxical element that halts the shifting of signifiers in a "non-founded founding act of violence." This paradoxical element is the master signifier and provides the reference point that holds the symbolic field together. It conceals the void by occupying it and thus enables the social order to be constituted. How ever, the "master" is always an impostor —anyone at the place of the constitutive lack in the structure of the symbolic order will do. The character of master is produced by the position the figure assumes. It is by reference to the master that the symbolic order acquires mean ing and purpose, and its emptiness is concealed . The lack, the empty place at the heart of the symbolic order, cannot be abolished—it is constitutive—it can only be rendered visible as empty. As witnesses of distant suffering on our television screens, we are placed in that empty place , the void that has to be concealed for the social order to come into being. We are the ones who are supposed to be able to an swer the perplexity of the victims about the purpose of their suffer ing. This is an impossible position to hold . The imposture of the master signifier is usually concealed; however, in this case, we ourselves are interpellated into this position, and we know we are impostors. We know that what we are part of is not real. We cannot help. We cannot answer the appeal. According to Zizek, the accepted inter-pretation in media studies is that our perception of violence in a modern society of spectacle is aestheticized by media manipulation—we no longer see reality as such, but reality as spectacle, pseudo-reality. Zizek argues that this is not the case: "The problem of contemporary media resides not in their enticing us to confound fiction with reality but, rather, in their 'hyperrealise character by means of which they saturate the void that keeps open the space for symbolic fiction. The symbolic order can function only by maintaining a mini mal distance towards reality, on account of which it ultimately has the status of a fiction. . . . if it is to function normally, symbolic order is not to be taken literally." We are not part of what we see: we cannot take on the role demanded of us. We are watching, helpless to prevent, yet implicated. Not only are we unable to stop the tragedy, we are unable to comfort its vic - tims. We feel the full impact of the ambiguity and ambivalence—the undecidability—that is the metasubject. From this empty place we are summoned by the perplexed gaze to provide answers, to respond to the questioning of the victims who cannot understand the horror they have been caught up in. It is not a place we can occupy. There are no answers we can give. There are only (impossible) decisions to be made. Here we see what Zizek means—the space for the symbolic fiction (the master signifier) has been removed. The scene is the im possible one pictured in a Steve Bell cartoon, which shows the living room of a modern home in semidarkness. Seated on the floor is a figure, its eyes closed and the television set cradled in its arms. On the bright television screen we can see a body lying curled up on a road somewhere. We can just make out what looks like a figure holding a gun in the background. The title is "International Community.” This is what Zizek describes as an experience

of the sublime. Such an experience takes place when we "find ourselves in the face of some horrifying event whose comprehension exceeds our capacity of representation; it is so overwhelming that we can do nothing but stare at it in horror; yet at the same time this event poses no immedi ate threat to our physical well-being, so that we can maintain the safe distance of an observer."' We are forced to traverse the fantasy, to face the traumatic void at the heart of the social or symbolic order . We experience the non existence of the big Other, that is, the social or symbolic order. What do we do after we have traversed the fantasy? Is this moment, when the symbolic order no longer exists and we experience our own non existence as subjects , no more than a gap between two orders—a fleeting, vanishing mediator, "an enthusiastic intermediate moment necessarily followed by a sobering relapse into the reign of the big Other," like a revolution followed by a return to a more repressive regime? One response to this question is a move to produce an alter native social order, one based on a different master signifier . Another response is a return to, or reassertion of, the previous symbolic order. The first leads to an international community of affect, based on com passion, and a humanitarian practice. This claims a neutrality derived from universal basic human values or rights. The second produces a return to developmentalism, which is founded on the scientific search for objective causes of events and a belief in rational, technical solu tions. It claims a value-free truth founded on the certainty of objec tive method. A third response, to which I return later, is the possibil ity of "tarrying with the negative . " Lacanian work allows us to see the various responses in relation to a desire for (impossible) completion, for an overcoming of the lack inherent in la condition humaine as such.

THE AFF’S COMPASSIONATE BENEVOLENCE TOWARD THE OTHER IS A MEANS OF ASSUAGING GUILT. THE PLAN’S DISPENSATION OF CHARITY ONLY MAKES US ALL MORE COMFORTABLE AND COMPLACENT IN OUR CONTINUAL PARTICIPATION IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROCESSES THAT GUARANTEE THE THIRD WORLD’S EMISERATION. Zizek, Prof. of Sociology at Univ. Ljubljana, 2006. [Slavoj, “Nobody Has to be Vile,” London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 7]

Liberal communists are pragmatic; they hate a doctrinaire approach. There is no exploited working class today, only concrete problems to be solved: starvation in Africa, the plight of Muslim women, religious fundamentalist violence. When there is a humanitarian crisis in Africa (liberal communists love a humanitarian crisis; it brings out the best in them), instead of engaging in anti-imperialist rhetoric, we should get together and work out the best way of solving the problem, engage people, governments and business in a common enterprise, start moving things instead of relying on centralised state help, approach the crisis in a creative and unconventional way. Liberal communists like to point out that the decision of some large international corporations to ignore apartheid rules within their companies was as important as the direct political struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Abolishing segregation within the company, paying blacks and whites the same salary for the same job etc: this was a perfect instance of the overlap between the struggle for political freedom and business interests, since the same companies can now thrive in post-apartheid South Africa. Liberal communists love May 1968. What an explosion of youthful energy and creativity! How it shattered the bureaucratic order! What an impetus it gave to economic and social life after the political illusions dropped away! Those who were old enough were themselves protesting and fighting on the streets: now they have changed in order to change the world, to revolutionise our lives for real. Didn’t Marx say that all political upheavals were unimportant

compared to the invention of the steam engine? And would Marx not have said today: what are all the protests against global capitalism in comparison with the internet? Above all, liberal communists are true citizens of the world – good people who worry. They worry about populist fundamentalism and irresponsible greedy capitalist corporations. They see the ‘deeper causes’ of today’s problems: mass poverty and hopelessness breed fundamentalist terror. Their goal is not to earn money, but to change the world (and, as a by-product, make even more money). Bill Gates is already the single greatest benefactor in the history of humanity, displaying his love for his neighbours by giving hundreds of millions of dollars for education, the fight against hunger and malaria etc. The catch is that before you can give all this away you have to take it (or, as the liberal communists would put it, create it). In order to help people, the justification goes, you must have the means to do so, and experience – that is, recognition of the dismal failure of all centralised statist and collectivist approaches – teaches us that private enterprise is by far the most effective way. By regulating their business, taxing them excessively, the state is undermining the official goal of its own activity (to make life better for the majority, to help those in need). Liberal communists do not want to be mere profit-machines: they want their lives to have deeper meaning. They are against old-fashioned religion and for spirituality, for non-confessional meditation (everybody knows that Buddhism foreshadows brain science, that the power of meditation can be measured scientifically). Their motto is social responsibility and gratitude: they are the first to admit that society has been incredibly good to them, allowing them to deploy their talents and amass wealth, so they feel that it is their duty to give something back to society and help people. This beneficence is what makes business success worthwhile. This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Remember Andrew Carnegie, who employed a private army to suppress organised labour in his steelworks and then distributed large parts of his wealth for educational, cultural and humanitarian causes, proving that, although a man of steel, he had a heart of gold? In the same way, today’s liberal communists give away with one hand what they grabbed with the other. There is a chocolate-flavoured laxative available on the shelves of US stores which is publicised with the paradoxical injunction: Do you have constipation? Eat more of this chocolate! – i.e. eat more of something that itself causes constipation. The structure of the chocolate laxative can be discerned throughout today’s ideological landscape; it is what makes a figure like Soros so objectionable. He stands for ruthless financial exploitation combined with its counter-agent, humanitarian worry about the catastrophic social consequences of the unbridled market economy. Soros’s daily routine is a lie embodied: half of his working time is devoted to financial speculation, the other half to ‘humanitarian’ activities (financing cultural and democratic activities in post-Communist countries, writing essays and books) which work against the effects of his own speculations. The two faces of Bill Gates are exactly like the two faces of Soros: on the one hand, a cruel businessman, destroying or buying out competitors, aiming at a virtual monopoly; on the other, the great philanthropist who makes a point of saying: ‘What does it serve to have computers if people do not have enough to eat?’ According to liberal communist ethics, the ruthless pursuit of profit is counteracted by charity: charity is part of the game, a humanitarian mask hiding the underlying economic exploitation. Developed countries are constantly ‘helping’ undeveloped ones (with aid, credits etc), and so avoiding the key issue: their complicity in and responsibility for the miserable situation of the Third World. As for the opposition between ‘smart’ and ‘non-smart’, outsourcing is the key notion. You export the (necessary) dark side of production – disciplined, hierarchical labour, ecological pollution – to ‘non-smart’ Third World locations (or invisible ones in the First World). The ultimate liberal communist dream is to export the entire working class to invisible Third World sweat shops.

PEOPLE SACRIFICE THEMSELVES FOR THE OTHER BECAUSE THEY SECRETLY ENJOY THEIR SUFFERING, ENGINEERING IT CREATE NARCISSITIC SATISFACTIONŽižek, Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, 1998 [Slavoj, “Why does the law need an obscene supplement?” Law and the Postmodern Mind, p. electronic]

Another key philosopher and theologian to be inserted in this series is Nicolas Malebranche, the great Cartesian Catholic who, after his death, was excommunicated and his books destroyed on account of his very excessive orthodoxy. In the best Pascalian tradition, Malebranche laid the cards on the table and "revealed the secret" (the perverted truth) of Christianity: it was not that Christ came to Earth in order to deliver people from sin, from the legacy of Adam's Fall; on the contrary, Adam had to fall in order to enable Christ to come to earth and dispense salvation. (Malebranche applies here to God Himself the "psychological" insight that tells us that the saintly figure who sacrifices himself for the benefit of others, to deliver them from their misery, secretly wants the others to suffer misery so that he will be able to help them-like the proverbial husband who works all day for his poor crippled wife, yet would probably abandon her if she were to regain health and turn into a successful career woman. It is much more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to lose the status of a victim and maybe even to become more successful than ourselves…) Malebranche develops this parallel to its conclusion, to the horror of the Jesuits who organized his excommunication: in the same way that the saintly person merely uses the others' suffering to bring about his own narcissistic satisfaction in helping the others in distress, God also ultimately loves only Himself, and merely uses man to promulgate his own glory ... From this reversal, Malebranche draws a consequence worthy of Lacan's famous turnabout of Dostoyevski ("If God doesn't exist," the father says, "then everything is permitted. Quite evidently, a naive notion, for we analysts know full well that if God doesn't exist, then nothing at all is permitted any longer"):3 it is not true that, if Christ were not come to earth to deliver humanity, everybody would be lostquite the contrary, if Christ were not to come, nobody would be lost, i.e., every human being had to fall so that Christ could come and deliver some of them ... What further follows from this is the paradoxical nature of predestination and grace: divine grace is contingently disseminated, it has absolutely no correlation with our good deeds. The moment the link between grace and our deeds were to be directly perceptible, human freedom would be lost: God is not allowed to intervene directly in the universe, i.e., grace has to remain masked, nonperceptible as such, as a direct divine intervention, since its direct transparency would change man into a slavish entity subordinated to God like an animal and would deprive him of faith grounded in free choice.4

Moral Obligation Link

THE AFFIRMATIVE’S MORAL IMPERATIVE CONSTITUTES A TOTALITARIAN PARALYSIS AND CONTINUITY OF CONSERVATIVE POLITICS WHICH REPLICATE YOUR CASE HARMS.Stavrakakis, Prof Psychoanalysis @ U Essex, 03 [Yannis , parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 56–71 Re-Activating the Democratic Revolution: The Politics of Transformation Beyond Reoccupation and Conformism]

This brings us to the whole discussion around the ethical turn in contemporary political philosophy. Even if one concludes that radical democracy can be a viable and fruitful project for a politics of transformation, what about the prioritization of ethics within recent radical democratic discourse? For example, at a fairly superficial level, it seems as if Zizek questions the importance of ethics in this field, and thus would also seem to question the deployment of the radical democratic attitude at the ethical level. Consider, for example, his outright condemnation of the ethical turn in political philosophy: ‘The ‘‘return to ethics’’ in today’s political philosophy shamefully exploits the horrors of Gulag or Holocaust as the ultimate bogey for blackmailing us into renouncing all serious radical engagement’.60 Surely, however, this cannot be a rejection of ethics in toto. Even if only because Zizek himself has devoted a considerable part of his work elaborating the ethics of psychoanalysis in the Lacanian tradition.61 It follows then that it must be a particular form of ethical discourse that constitutes his target. The same is true of Alain Badiou’s argument, to which we will now turn. Badiou’s target is a particular type of ethics, of ethical ideology, which uses a discourse of ‘human rights’ and ‘humanitarianism’ in order to silence alternative thought and politics and legitimize the capitalist order. This is an ethics premised on the principle that ‘good is what intervenes visibly against an Evil that is identifiable a priori’.62 What Badiou points to here, is what appears as a strange inversion; here the Good is derived from the Evil and not the other way round.63 The result of such an inversion is significant for the theory and politics of transformation: If the ethical ‘‘consensus’’ is founded on the recognition of Evil, it follows that every effort to unite people around a positive idea of the Good, let alone identify Man with projects of this kind, becomes in fact the real source of evil itself. Such is the accusation so often repeated over the last fifteen years: every revolutionary project stigmatized as ‘‘utopian’’ turns, we are told, into totalitarian nightmare. Every will to inscribe an idea of justice or equality turns bad. Every collective will to the Good creates Evil […] In reality, the price paid by ethics is a stodgy conservatism.64 This ethic, which is revealed as nothing but a mindless catechism, a miserable moralism,65 is an ethics that can have no relation to a transformative political agenda. 66 This ethics is presented in Badiou’s argument as a distortion of a real ethic of truths, which attempts to restore the logical priority of Good over Evil. Badiou’s ethic of truths is an ethics related to the idea of the event, a category central for his whole philosophical and political apparatus. To put it briefly, the event here refers to a real break which destabilizes a given discursive articulation, a pre-existing order.

ETHICS RESULT IN CONSERVATISM AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE STATUS QUO.Jackson, Dept. of English, Wayne St. Univ, 2007. [Ken, “The Great Temptation of “Religion”: Why Badiou has been so important to Žižek” IJZS Vol. 1 no. 2]

The reason our attention to ethics can be considered an ideology is two-fold. First, much of the academic world and, in particular, the academic “left” does not recognize its attention to the “other” as ethics as such and, indeed, recoils from the notion that they are engaged in primarily ethical pursuits. They are even more horrified when presented with the notion that this ethics, our ethics, is connected somehow to religion. We are, in short, ethically interpellated subjects that can not see our own ideological constitution clearly. Second, as the remarks from Žižek quoted above suggest, our ethics actually functions in a conservative fashion, preserving the neoliberal status quo under the guise of challenging hierarchical power structures. As Badiou puts it, “the price paid by ethics is a stodgy conservatism. The ethical conception of man, besides the fact that its foundation is either biological (images of victims) or “Western’ (the self-satisfaction of the armed benefactor), prohibits every broad, positive vision of possibilities….what ethics legitimates, is in fact the conservation by the socalled ‘West of what it possesses” (2001: 24). We respect the other Badiou points out, but only inasmuch as that other conforms to our vision: “Respect for differences, of course? But on the condition that the different be parliamentary-democratic, pro freemarket economics, in favour of freedom of opinion, feminism, the environment…”(2001: 24). For this reason Badiou shockingly proposes that “the whole ethical predication based upon recognition of the other should be purely and simply abandoned” (2001: 25).

Impact-BiopoliticsLIBERAL DEMOCRACY’S DREAM OF A TRIUMPH OF MORALITY AND EXPLUSION OF OPRESSION IS ILL GROUNDED. THE IDE THAT WE, AS THE WEST, HAVE THE RIGHT TO GIVE HUMAN RIGHTS TO SUFFERING OTHERS IMPLIES THAT THEY HAVE NO RIGHTS NOW OR NEED HUMANITARIAN ASSITANCE. IN A GEOPOLITICAL SENSE, THIS DEPOLITIZATION OF THE THIRD WORLD JUSTIFIES THE RADICAL VERSION OF BIOPOLITICS WHERE THE SPECTER OF THE CAMP AND GENOCIDE BECOME TOOLS TO MOLD OTHERS INTO OUR IMAGE OF PERFECTION CONTINENT—THE AFFIRMATIVE LEGITIMIZES VIOLENCE ON A SCALE NOT SEEN IN HUMAN HISTORY IN ORDER TO PROVE THEIR WORLDVIEW.Slavoj Zizek, No Date given (Political philosopher and cultural critic) The Obscenity of Human Rights: Violence as Symptom http://www.lacan.com/zizviol.htm

We thus arrived at a standard "postmodern," "anti-essentialist" position, a kind of political version of Foucault's notion of sex as generated by a multitude of the practices of sexuality: "man," the bearer of Human Rights, is generated by a set of political practices which materialize citizenship - is, however, this enough? Jacques Ranciere 7 proposed a very elegant and precise solution of the antinomy between Human Rights (belonging to "man as such") and the politicization of citizens: while Human Rights cannot be posited as an unhistorical "essentialist" Beyond with regard to the contingent sphere of political struggles, as universal "natural rights of man" exempted from history, they also should not be dismissed as a reified fetish which is a product of concrete historical processes of the politicization of citizens. The gap between the universality of Human Rights and the political rights of citizens is thus not a gap between the universality of man and a specific political sphere; it, rather, "separates the whole of the community from itself," as Ranciere put it in a precise Hegelian way. 8 Far from being pre-political , "universal Human Rights" designate the precise space of politicization proper: what they amount to is the right to universality as such, the right of a political agent to assert its radical non-coincidence with itself (in its particular identity), i.e., to posit itself - precisely insofar as it is the "surnumerary" one, the "part with no part," the one without a proper place in the social edifice - as an agent of universality of the Social as such. The paradox is thus a very precise one, and symmetrical to the paradox of universal human rights as the rights of those reduced to inhumanity: at the very moment when we try to conceive political rights of citizens without the reference to universal "meta-political" Human Rights, we lose politics itself, i.e., we reduce politics to a "post-political" play of negotiation of particular interests. - What, then, happens to Human Rights when they are reduced to the rights of homo sacer, of those excluded from the political community, reduced to "bare life" - i.e., when they become of no use, since they are the rights of those who, precisely, have no rights, are treated as inhuman? Ranciere proposes here an extremely salient dialectical reversal: /.../ when they are of no use, you do the same as charitable persons do with their old clothes. You give them to the poor. Those rights that appear to be useless in their place are sent abroad, along with medicine and clothes, to people deprived of medicine, clothes, and rights. It is in this way, as the result of this process, that the Rights of Man become the rights of those who have no rights, the rights of bare human beings subjected to inhuman repression and inhuman conditions of existence. They become humanitarian rights, the rights of those who cannot enact them, the victims of the absolute denial of right. For all this, they are not void.

Political names and political places never become merely void. The void is filled by somebody or something else. /.../ if those who suffer inhuman repression are unable to enact Human Rights that are their last recourse, then somebody else has to inherit their rights in order to enact them in their place. This is what is called the "right to humanitarian interference" - a right that some nations assume to the supposed benefit of victimized populations, and very often against the advice of the humanitarian organizations themselves. The "right to humanitarian interference" might be described as a sort of "return to sender": the disused rights that had been send to the rightless are sent back to the senders. 9 So, to put it in the Leninist way: what today, in the predominant Western discourse, the "Human Rights of the Third World suffering victims" effectively mean is the right of the Western powers themselves to intervene - politically, economically, culturally, militarily - in the Third World countries of their choice on behalf of the defense of Human Rights. The reference to Lacan's formula of communication (in which the sender gets back from the receiver-addressee his own message in its inverted, i.e. true, form) is here up to the point: in the reigning discourse of humanitarian interventionism, the developed West is effectively getting back from the victimized Third World its own message in its true form. And the moment Human Rights are thus depoliticized, the discourse dealing with them has to change to ethics: reference to the pre-political opposition of Good and Evil has to be mobilized. Today's "new reign of Ethics," 10 clearly discernible in, say, Michael Ignatieff's work, thus relies on a violent gesture of depoliticization, of denying to the victimized other political subjectivization. And, as Ranciere pointed out, liberal humanitarianism a la Ignatieff unexpectedly meets the "radical" position of Foucault or Agamben with regard to this depoliticization: the Foucauldian-Agambenian notion of "biopolitics" as the culmination of the entire Western thought ends up getting caught in a kind of "ontological trap" in which concentration camps appear as a kind of "ontological destiny: each of us would be in the situation of the refugee in a camp. Any difference grows faint between democracy and totalitarianism and any political practice proves to be already ensnared in the biopolitical trap." 11

Nietzsche Kritik

Morality Links

MORAL IMPERATIVES ARE TOOLS OF RESENTMENT THAT CREATE A FALSE NECESSITY FOR ACTION, SIMULTANEOUSLY REDUCING LIFE-AS-MULTIPLICITY TO A HERD LED BY FALSE IDOLS.Nietzsche, a dead God, 1910, [Friedrich [German philosopher and classical philologist 1910 The Will to Power] The Herd 274(Spring-Fall 1887) Whose will to power is morality?-

The common factor in the history of Europe since Socrates is the attempt to make moral values dominate over all other values: so that they should be the guide and judge not only of life but also of (I) knowledge, (2) the arts, (3) political and social endeavors. "Improvement" the sale duty, everything else a means to it (or a disturbance, hin- drance, danger: consequently to be combatted to the point of anni- hilation-). A similar movement in China. A similar movement in India. What is the meaning of this will to power on the part of moral values which has developed so tremendously on earth? Answer:- three powers are hidden behind it: (I) the instinct of the herd against the strong and independent; (2) the instinct of the suffering and underprivileged against the fortunate; (3) the instinct of the mediocre against the exceptional.- Enor- mous advantage possessed by this movement, however much cruelty, falseness, and narrow-mindedness have assisted it (for the history of the struggle of morality with the basic instincts of life is itself the greatest piece of immorality that has yet existed on earth-). 275 (1883-1888) Very few manage to see a problem in that which makes our daily life, that to which we have long since grown accustomed- our eyes are not adjusted to it: this seems to me to be the case especially in regard to our morality. The problem "every man as an object for others" is the occasion of the highest honors: for himself-no! The problem "thou shalt": an inclination that cannot ex- plain itself, similar to the sexual drive, shall not fall under the general condemnation of the drives; on the contrary, it shall be their evaluation and judge! The problem of "equality," while we all thirst after dis- stinction: here, on the contrary, we are supposed to make exactly the same demands on ourselves as we make on others. This is so insipid, so obviously crazy: but-it is felt to be holy, of a higher rank, the conflict with reason is hardly noticed. Sacrifice and selflessness as distinguishing, unconditional obe- dience to morality, and the faith that one is everyone's equal before it. The neglect and surrender of well-being and life as distinguishing, the complete renunciation of making one's own evaluations, and the firm desire to see everyone else renounce them too. "The value of an action is determined: everyone is subject to this valuation. " We see: an authority speaks-who speaks?- One may forgive human pride if it sought to make this authority as high as possible in order to feel as little humiliated as possible under it. Therefore-God speaks! One needed God as an unconditional sanction, with no court of appeal, as a "categorical imperator"-: or, if one believed in the authority of reason, one needed a metaphysic of unity, by virtue of which this was logical. Now suppose that belief in God has vanished: the question presents itse1f anew: "who speaks?"-My answer, taken not from metaphysics but from animal physiology: the herd instinct speaks. It wants to be master: hence its "thou shalt!"- it will allow value to the individual only from the point of view of the whole, for the sake of the whole, it hates those who detach themselves-- it turns the hatred of all individuals against them. 276 (1886-1887) The whole of European morality is based upon what is useful to the herd: the affliction of all higher, rarer men lies in this, that everything that distinguishes them enters their consciousness accompanied by a feeling of diminution and discredit. The strong points of contemporary men are the causes of their pessimistic gloom: the mediocre are, like the herd, little

troubled with questions and conscience--cheerful. (On the gloominess of the strong: Pascal, Schopenhauer.) The more dangerous a quality seems to the herd, the more thoroughly is it proscribed. 277 (1883-1888) Morality of truthfulness in the herd. "You shall be knowable, express your inner nature by clear and constant signsotherwise you are dangerous: and if you are evil, your ability to dissimulate is the worst thing for the herd. We despise the secret and un- recognizable.- Consequently you must consider yourself know- able, you may not be concealed from yourself, you may not believe that you change." Thus: the demand for truthfulness presupposes the know ability and stability of the person. In fact, it is the object of education to create in the herd member a definite faith concern- ing the nature of man: it first invents this faith and then demands "truthfulness. " 278 (1885) Within a herd, within any community, that is to say inter pares," the overestimation of truthfulness makes good sense. Not to be deceived-and consequently, as a personal point of morality, not to deceive! a mutual obligation between equals! In dealing with what lies outside, danger and caution demand that one should be on one's guard against deception: as a psychological preconditioning for this, also in dealing with what lies within. Mistrust as the source of truthfulness. 279 (1883-1888) Toward a critique of the herd virtues.- Inertia operates (l) in trustfulness, since mistrust makes tension, observation, reflection necessary;- (2) in veneration, where the deterrence in power is great and submission necessary: so as not to fear, an attempt is made to love, esteem, and to interpret the disparity in power as disparity in value: so that the relationship no longer makes one rebellious;- (3) in the sense of truth. What is true? Where an explanation is given which causes us the minimum of spiritual effort (moreover, lying is very exhausting);- (4) in sympathy. It is a relief to count oneself the same as others, to try to feel as they do, to adopt a current feeling: it is something passive com- pared with the activity that maintains and constantly practices the individual's right to value judgments (the latter allows of no rest);- (5) in impartiality and coolness of judgment: one shuns the exertion of affects and prefers to stay detached, "objective";- (6) in integrity: one would rather obey an existing law than create a law oneself, than command oneself and others: the fear of commanding-: better to submit than to react;- (7) in toleration: the fear of exercising rights, of judging. 280 (Spring-Fall 1887) The instinct of the herd considers the middle and the mean as the highest and most valuable: the place where the majority finds itself; the mode and manner in which it finds itself. It is therefore an opponent of all orders of rank, it sees an ascent from beneath to above as a descent from the majority to the minority. The herd feels the exception, whether it be below or above it, as something opposed and harmful to it. Its artifice with reference to the ex- ceptions above it, the stronger, more powerful, wiser, and more fruitful, is to persuade them to assume the role of guardians, herdsmen, watchmen-to become its first servants:'" it has there- with transformed a danger into something useful. Fear ceases in the middle: here one is never alone; here there is little room for misunderstanding; here there is equality; here one's own form of being is not felt as a reproach but as the right form of being; here contentment rules. Mistrust is felt toward the exceptions; to be an exception is experienced as guilt. 281 (March-June 1888) When, following the instinct of the community, we make prescriptions and forbid ourselves certain actions, we quite reason- ably do not forbid a mode of "being," a "disposition," but only a certain direction and application of this "being," this "disposition." But then the ideologist of virtue, the moralist, comes along and says: "God sees into the heart! What does it matter if you refrain from certain actions: you are no better for that!" Answer: My dear Sir Long-Ears-and-Virtuous, we have no desire whatever to be better, we are very contented with ourselves, all we desire is not to harm one another-and therefore we forbid certain actions when they are directed in a certain way, namely against us, while we cannot sufficiently honor these same actions provided they are directed against enemies of the community-against you~

for instance. We educate our children in them; we cultivate them- If we shared that "Godpleasing" radicalism that your holy madness recommends, if we were fools enough to condemn together with those actions the source of them, the "heart," the "disposition," that would mean condemning our own existence and with it its supreme prerequisite-a disposition, a heart, a passion we honor with the highest honors.

By our decrees, we prevent this disposition from hreaking out and expressing itself in an inexpedient way -we are prudent when we make such law for ourselves, we are also moral-Have you no suspicion, however faint, what sacrifice it is costing us, how much taming, self-overcoming, severity toward ourselves it requires? We are vehement in our desires, there are times when we would like to devour each other- But the "sense of community" masters us: please note that this is almost a definition of morality. 282 (Fall 1888) The weakness of the herd animal produces a morality very similar to that produced by the weakness of the decadent: they understand one another, they form an alliance (-the great decadence religions always count on the support of the herd). In itself, there is nothing sick about the herd animal, it is even in- valuable; but, incapable of leading itself, it needs a "shepherd"- the priests understand that-The state is not intimate, not clandestine enough; "directing the conscience" eludes it. And that is how the herd animal has been made sick by the priest?- 283 (1883-1888) Hatred for the privileged in body and soul: revolt of the ugly, ill-constituted souls against the beautiful, proud, joyous. Their means: inculpation of beauty, pride, joy: "there is no merit," "the danger is tremendous: one should tremble and feel ill," "naturalness is evil; it is right to oppose nature." Also "reason." (The anti- uatural as the higher). Again it is the priests who exploit this condition and win the "people" over. "The sinner" in whom God has more joy than in the just man." This is the struggle against "paganism" (the pang of conscience as the means of destroying harmony of soul). The hatred of the average for the exceptional, of the herd for the independent. (Custom as true "morality."'") Turning against egoism": only the "for another" has value. "We are all equal";- against lust for dominion, against "dominion" in general;- against privilege;- against sectarians, free spirits, skeptics;- against philosophy (as opposing the tool-and-corner instinct); with philosophers themselves "the categorical imperative," the essence of morality "universal and general." 284 (Spring-Fall 1887) The conditions and desires that are praised:- peaceable, fair, moderate, modest, reverent, considerate, brave, chaste, honest, faithful, devout, straight, trusting, devoted, sympathetic, helpful, conscientious, simple, mild, just, generous, indulgent, obedient, disinterested, unenvious, gracious, industrious- To distinguish: to what extent such qualities are conditioned as means to a definite aim and end (often an "evil" end); or as natural consequences of a dominating affect (e.g., spirituality) or expression of a state of distress, which is to say: as condition of existence (e.g., citizen, slave, woman, etc.). Summa: they are none of them felt to he "good" for their own sake, but from the first according to the standards of "society," "the herd," as means to the ends of society and the herd, as necessary to their preservation and advancement, at the same time as the consequence of an actual herd instinct in the individual: thus in the service of an instinct which is fundamentally different from these conditions of virtue. For the herd is, in relation to the out- side world, hostile, selfish, unmerciful, full of lust for dominion, mistrust, etc. In the "shepherd" this antagonism becomes patent: he must possess opposite qualities to the herd. Mortal enmity of the herd toward orders of rank: its instinct favors the leveller (Christ). Toward strong individuals (Ies souve- rains) it is hostile, unfair, immoderate, immodest, impudent, in- considerate, cowardly, mendacious, false, unmerciful, underhand, envious, revengeful. 285 (1884) I teach: the herd seeks to preserve one type and defends itself on both sides, against those who have degenerated from it (crim- inals, etc.) and those who tower above it. The tendency of the herd is directed toward standstill and preservation, there is

nothing creative in it. The pleasant feelings with which the good, benevolent, just man inspires us (in contrast to the tension, fear which the great, new man arouses) are our own feelings of personal security and equality: the herd animal thus glorifies the herd nature and then it feels comfortable. This judgment of comfort masks itself with fair words-thus "morality" arises.- But observe the hatred of the herd for the truthful.- 286 (1883-1888) Let one not be deceived about oneself! If one hears within oneself the moral imperative as it is understood by altruism, one belongs to the herd. If one has the opposite feeling, if One feels one's danger and aberration lies in disinterested and selfless actions, One does not belong to the herd. 287 (1883-1888) My philosophy aims at an ordering of rank: not at an in- dividualistic morality."O The ideas of the herd should rule in the herd-but not reach out beyond it: the leaders of the herd require a fundamentally different valuation for their own actions, as do the independent, or the “beasts of prey,” etc.

MORALITY NEGATES AND DEVALUES LIFEBenso, Prof. Of phil. @ Rochester Inst., 09 Silvia Benso Of Tech.“Levinas: Another Ascetic Priest?” ” Nietzsche and Levinas “After the Death of a Certain God” pg 214-15On the Genealogy of Morals offers Nietzsche’s most systematic, pervasive, and devastating criticism of moralities based on the notion of a transcendent good inhibiting life, the enjoyment of life, and the will to power. Nietzsche does not simply question a certain morality; rather, he challenges “the value of morality,” and especially of that “morality of pity” (GM Preface: 5) in which “’moral,’ ‘unegoistic,’ ‘desinteresse’ [are taken] as concepts of equivalent value” (GM 1:2). Nietzsche’s well-known criticism can be re-formulated as focusing on three issues: altruistic morality stems from ressentiment , fosters asceticism, and displaces the value of life onto an ascetic ideal. All three notions, ressentiment, asceticism, and ascetic ideals, are characterized by the same structural or formal movement – the movement of negation: of the other, of oneself, and of life. One could thus legitimately conclude that the morality of ressentiment is a morality of negation, the minister of which is figure of the ascetic priest. In criticizing morality, I argue, Nietzsche is condemning this notion of negation that functions as its foundation. Two types of negation can be retraced in Nietzsche, which can be named affirmative negation and negative negation. Affirmative negation is the movement of denial enacted by the noble (GM 1:10). This negation stems from a first affirmation within the self; therefore, it is autonomous. Negative negation belongs to the rabble, who can assert themselves only by means of what Deleuze calls a “paralogism.”1 This group proceeds to affirmation only through a previous negation of what is other than itself. Negative negation starts in heteronomy, outside the self, from the other to which it says “No” (GM 1:10). Whereas affirmative negation is favored by Nietzsche, who pursues it in many of his works (from the early Birth of Tragedy to the later Thus Spoke Zarathustra) as a form of activity and affirmation of difference, negative negation is sharply rejected by him because of its reactive character. Nietzsche’s hermeneutic strategy for evaluating the dangerousness of a given morality is that of reading moral values as symptoms of the health conditions of the will that underlies them. If the proposed values reveal an affirmative structure, the will behind them is salubrious, nonreactive, and concerned with an affirmation and enhancement of life. Such values can be embraced with confidence. However, if the proposed values prove to come out of a dialectical structure of negation and ressentiment, the morality founded on them should be rejected since it fosters self-infliction of pain, debasement, decadence, and nihilism, and the will that proposes them is itself reactive, sick and degenerated. Altruistic morality is the danger of dangers when it comes to the assertion of the value of life because, by operating through negation, such morality denies life.

MORALITY KILLS CREATIVITY AND AGENCY AND DEVALUES LIFESIMON ROBERTSON Spring, University of Southampton, 2009 “Nietzsche's Ethical Revaluation” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 37, Spring 2009, pp. 66-90 Project Muse 6.1.2010These critics argue that morality (on traditional deontological and conse- quentialist models) requires individuals to systematically sacrifice significant nonmoral goods, since it gives priority to the impartial demands of moral life over the pursuit of nonmoral personal goods that give an individual’s life meaning. One way morality does this is by making moral obligations, derived from that privileged impartial standpoint, both pervasive and overriding. Leiter distances Nietzsche from such critics in several respects, in part by arguing that Nietzsche is concerned not with how morality might impede the good life for many of us but with how it thwarts the excellence of the few. Indeed, Leiter argues, Nietzsche’s central objection is that the moral values listed under (2) in §1 are detrimental to nascent higher individuals capable of excellence (e.g., GM P:6; BGE 62, 228; A 5, 43; EH “Destiny” 4). The crux of the objection runs as follows. Leiter argues that for Nietzsche a person is constituted by various psycho- physical facts, or “type-facts,” that determine the type of person one is. What is good for a person then depends on the type one is;10 this may vary across persons (Leiter 2002, 105ff.). Morality, however, claims that all people are “essentially similar” in relevant respects, whereby “the [morality] that is good for one will be good for all” (Leiter 2002, 80, 104ff.). It is on this false premise that morality presents itself as universally applicable, since it claims to be “appropriate [or good] for all” (Leiter 2002, 80). Since morality has succeeded in so presenting itself, nascent higher types think morality good for them; they thereby come to accept and internalize moral values (Leiter 2002, 28, 104ff., 176, 195). But such “values” are antagonistic to their flourishing and the realization of the excellences they are capable of (Leiter 2002, 113ff.). Central to Nietzsche’s conception of excellence is an ideal of creativity (Leiter 2002, 129ff.), the pursuit and achievement of which require a readiness to suffer, prioritizing one’s own goals, standing apart from others, channeling one’s instincts creatively, and so on. Most of us may be unable to achieve genuine excellence; but someone who is, if he or she has also internalized moral norms (promoting, say, the alleviation of suffering, altruism, equality, extirpation of instincts), will devalue and hence avoid conditions necessary for great achievement. Thus morality “is harmful because, in reality, it will have the effect of leading potentially excellent persons to value what is in fact not conducive to their flourishing and devalue what is, in fact, essential to it” (Leiter 2001, 243, 2002, 133). And, Leiter believes, Nietzsche’s primary aim is to “free these nascent higher types from . . . their false belief that the dominant morality is, in fact, good for them” (2002, 28; cf. 176, 195).11

MORALITY LEADS TO PITY AND MUST BE REJECTEDCartwright University of Wisconsin , Jan. 1993 DAVID E. CARTWRIGHT Whitewater “The Last Temptation of Zarathustra” Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 31, Number 1, January 1993, pp. 49-69 Project Muse 6.3.2010Yet, if Nietzsche had concentrated on either nausea or revenge as Zara- thustra's last temptation, he would have lost his allusions to Schopenhauer and the opportunity to demonstrate both his overcoming and redemption o f his educator. By selecting pity as Zarathustra's last temptation, at a personal level, Nietzsche repays his teacher Schopenhauer. His repayment is a redeeming reversal o f his teacher's truth: "One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil" (Z I, 19o/97). More importantly, nausea and revenge also lack the sanction of morality, even though Nietzsche argues that traditional morality is an insidious form of revenge against life. Pity, more- over, involves both the Potential for nausea and revenge. Sharing the suffer- ings of others is nauseating and the implicit weakness Nietzsche saw in pity leads to a nihilistic revenge against life. Thus by making pity

Zarathustra's final sin, he was able to show the damnable dimensions of traditional religion and pity in ways that would have been impossible with either nausea or re- venge. By depicting Zarathustra as overcoming pity, Nietzsche was also able to show the vital need to transcend traditional, altruistic morality. As Nietzsche remarked in a note late in 1888: "The highest law o f life, formulated by Zarathustra, demands that one is without pity for all life's refuse and garbage--that one denies what would be merely restraint, Poison, renunciation, subterranean opposition for the ascending life.",5 This does not mean simply those who would drag one down; rather, one must deny that which about oneself would allow others t o d o s o : p i t y . "

MORALITY NEGATES LIFE AND IS NIHILISTICVivian, Communication and Rhetorical Studies Syracuse University, 2007 Bradford “Freedom, Naming, Nobility: The Convergence of Rhetorical and Political Theory in Nietzsche's Philosophy” Philosophy and Rhetoric, Volume 40, Number 4, 2007 Project Muse 6.6.2010Throughout his philosophy, Nietzsche maintains that this ideal and morally rigid understanding of truth negates the vital and creative forces of life. Gilles Deleuze posits that “Nietzsche does not criticise false claims to truth, but truth in itself and as an ideal. . . . If someone wills the truth it is not in the name of what the world is but in the name of what the world is not”; such an individual “makes life an ‘error’ and this world an ‘appearance.’ He therefore opposes knowledge to life and to the world he opposes another world, a world-beyond, the truthful world” (1983, 95–96). The stakes involved in Nietzsche’s preoccupations with truth, language, and morality are high indeed: the “established, canonical, and binding” manner in which we comprehend and speak of a given truth evinces our embodiment of a moral authority that denies individuals’ innate intellectual, creative, and rhetorical capacities—their inborn ability to think, create, and say something new. Nihilism is the proper name in Nietzsche’s philosophy for this destructive impulse. Nietzsche proclaims that this nihilistic impulse originates in a “fundamental human drive” (1999, 150), in our tendency to deny human agency regarding the rhetorical creation and dissemination of truth. Ken Gemes concludes that, for Nietzsche, “the notion of truth is used to escape responsibility for one’s actions and beliefs and is employed as a means of coercing uniformity of belief” (1992, 51). Contending that the “art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man,” Nietzsche equates the universal human drive for truth with such self-denial: Deception, lying and cheating, speaking behind the backs of others, keeping up appearances, living in borrowed finery, wearing masks, the drapery of convention, play-acting for the benefit of others and oneself—in short, the constant fluttering of human beings around the flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law. (TL 142)

MORALITY IS AN ATTEMPT TO FORCE MEANING INTO AN OTHERWISE MEANINGLESS WORLD—THIS REACTIVE STRATEGY PRODUCES LIFE DENIALAdrian Del Caro. Grounding the Nietzsche Rhetoric of Earth. 2004. Page 366-367.Returning now to the first aphorism of Science in which Nietzsche takes issue with the teachers of purposes for existence, we find that he is deeply concerned about another form of denial that violates the principle of economy. When someone insists on discovering or teaching a purpose for existence the following reasoning is at work: “Life should be loved, because ! The human being should advance himself and his neighbor, because !” In so arguing , however, we lose sight of the whole and simultaneously detract from and add to existence in a wasteful manner. “In order for that which happens necessarily and always of itself and without any purpose to seem from now on to be done for a purpose and to dawn upon humans as reason and ultimate commandment – this is why the ethical teacher appears as the teacher of the purpose of existence; for this he invents a second and different existence and by

means of his new mechanics removes this old common existence from its old common hinges.” This operation of opposing the real world, with all its faults, evils, accidents, etc. with a “true” or “ideal” world is deeply ingrained in the ascetic legacy of Platonism and Christianity. In the first instance this false doubling ignores or seeks to deny the existence of negative traits by remaking life, and one's fellow human beings, in the image of the good, by inventing purposes (“because,” etc.). We recognize in this behavior a denial of the closest things in favor of the last things, in favor of metaphysics. The second violation of the principle of economy takes place when the second, or double, world is posited in place of the real, the only world. This is done ultimately because humans do not easily embrace the notion that life has no meaning, that there are aspects to life about which we can only laugh. “Yes, he [the ethical teacher] in no way wants us to laugh at existence, or ourselves – or at him; for him One is always One, something first and last and tremendous, for him there are no species, no sums, no zeros.” The transgression against nature is two-fold because not only are the closest things denied because they do not conform to idealistic notions of the good, but further wasteful conduct manifests itself as inflationary doubling. It is certainly not news that lambs dislike birds of prey, Nietzsche observes in Genealogy, but this is no reason to reproach birds of prey for feeding on lambs. It is senseless to demand of strength that it not express strength, that it not engage in mastering, dominating, overpowering, every bit as senseless as demanding of weakness that it express itself as strength. “A quantum of force is like quantum of drive, will, effect, - even more, it is nothing but precisely this driving, willing, effecting itself, and only under the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified in it), which understands and misunderstands all effects as conditioned by an effecting agent, by a “subject,” can it appear otherwise.” What Nietzsche objects to is the morally motivated attribution of conscious agency, or conscience, intelligence, subjectivity to what is a mere quantum of force, as if the force were endowed with the capacity to do otherwise, e.g. As if the eagle were endowed with the capacity to refrain on moral grounds from devouring lambs. He also objects to the tendency of language to engage in doubling by ascribing a subject or agent-does to deeds, as if the eagle's feasting on lambs could be separated from the eagle itself, as if the eagle were not, essentially, what the eagle does. Nietzsche insists that “there is no 'being' behind doing, effecting, becoming; 'the doer' is merely a fiction added to the deed – the doing is everything.” Science is no better off in this regard than are common people, since scientists too speak in terms of moving forces and causing forces, but what really galls Nietzsche is the reverse logic or anti-natural asceticism that the doubling mentality engenders.

MORALITY RESTS UPON A MYTH OF EXTERNAL IDEALS THAT DEVALUES PRESENT EXISTENCE AND COLLAPSES INTO RESENTMENT TOWARDS THE UNREPENTANT AND EXCLUDEDKathleen Marie Higgins, Professor at U.T., 2007 [Hicks, Steven V., and Alan Rosenberg. Reading Nietzsche at the Margins. New York:Purdue UP. Print. 64-65 nietzsche claims… person’e suffering]

Nietzsche claims here that Christianity, and any similarly unconditional morality, must inevitably fail to provide atheodicy justifying the entire texture of life. Such moralities inevitably find fault with life because suffering does not bear any direct relationships to desert. The theodicy offered by Christianity appeals to an afterlife as a deus ex machina-the afterlife is brought in to resolve a problem left unsolved without such an intervention. This, according to Nietzsche, is to abandon the quest to find meaning in life in the face of suffering, since meaning is deferred to existence outside this world. In On the

Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche analyzes Christian morality as characterized by ressentiment, a desire on the part of those who are suffering to blame and to inflict suffering in recompense. Christian morality attempts to rationalize suffering by seeking someone to blame-evildoers, who deserve damnation, which they will receive if unrepentant, in contrast to the innocent, who will be rewarded in a future life . More insidiously, Christianity encourages its followers to find the evildoer in themselves, thus inducing them to wallow in guilt and fear of retribution unless they throw themselves on the mercy of God (or more accurately, the clergy). Christianity's approach to suffering is barbaric, according to Nietzsche. It inspires terrifying emotions in its adherents, which they will act desperately to expiate. Moreover, God himself is the inventor of hell, a site of eternal torture, which is interpreted as the ultimate destination of those who remain insubordinate to him. Worst of all, the Christian doctrine that the crucifixion occurred as atonement for sin suggests that God enjoys cruel spectacle, so much that he accepts the broken, bleeding body and life of Jesus as repayment for humanity's faults. God is a ruthless accountant, adamantly insisting on what is owed him and willing to accept a payment of blood. Nietzsche's opposition to Christian morality again shows him to be concerned with suffering, in this case to resist the suffering he claims Christianity brings into the world, again primarily inward suffering. On the Genealogy of Morals analyzes the mechanisms that Christian m orality exploits, all of which increase suffering: its exploitation of its adherents' self-doubts and its encouragement of harsh judgments against others as a means to self-esteem; its incitement of bad conscience in those who are already suffering; and its "explanation" of personal suffering in terms of guilt, and the ascetic practices it encourages. Nietzsche also stresses the sufferer's interpretive perspective on his or her own life, a perspective that Christianity manipulates so as to heighten the person's suffering.

Moral Obligation to Solve Poverty Link

AFFS ‘MORAL IMPERATIVE’ TO STOP POVERTY CREATES A GUILT ECONOMY THAT REQUIRES PEOPLE TO REMAIN POOR IN ORDER TO HAVE SOMETHING TO PROTEST ABOUT.Bruckner, French writer and philosopher, 1986, [Pascal, ..The Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt, p.81-82]

Tragedy and poverty have thus become exotic, so that when a European region is poor, it is mentally classified as part of the Third World. Naples, Andalusia, and Sicily have slipped into this category. This is necessary, for on the chaos of the Third World floats the life raft upon which we are rebuilding our identity. We establish ourselves by setting ourselves against their misfortune. Of course, it is criminal to let children in Africa and Asia die of hunger, because their lives are sacred; but their lives are sacred only because they are dying of hunger. They are victims of atonement who restore the harmony of our communities. The abuses that we denounce must be maintained so we can contrive to denounce them. And the more we attack Western democracies, the more they are secretly valued, because the verbal rejection of our wealth rests on the assumption that somewhere else there are impoverished cultures whose frugal lives will redeem our wastefulness, crowds in tatters who will make up for our sins.90 Thus, our white priests slumming amid the poor believe they are shaming us by bringing us heartrending stories, but they give us cause for secretly rejoicing. Rather than making us ashamed of our serenity, the camera that travels amid the disasters of India and West Africa makes us need to reconfirm it. No matter what the dizzying dimensions of the world around us, the depth of our ignorance, the dangers of future catastrophes, and our individual weaknesses, we are certain that the West is a little island surrounded by oceans of indigence, and is all the more precious because of that . Faced with the lacerations of Africa, the crises of the Near East, and the calamities of Asia, we thank the good Lord that we are French. The horror of the Third World, which is confirmed as bestial in nature to us, becomes the shadowy foil we need to feel good about ourselves. Free men need martyrs like this. The movement that designates them as poor is precisely the same one that prevents us from seeing them as human. They are no longer like slaves of Ancient Rome, or Little Black Sambos, or Viets from French Indochina; they are the dregs of the Third World, and they are all the same. We lament their fate in order to detach ourselves from it a little, and the depths are described in order to make us feel more comfortable in our cozy lives. Blaming ourselves serves two ends; it makes life more pleasant and, in the end, does not touch us.

We dress in our finery and berate ourselves in the welter of guilt, enjoying our peace while we contemplate those poor souls ground down in the heat and the filth. The shame they inspire makes the boredom of everyday life attractive again. The total disorder of the Southern hemisphere makes the Northern look like heaven on earth, which we must keep safe at all costs. The terrifying accounts of deterioration make the West look a lot better. Our happiness would not be so great if it were not for four billion nonwhite peasants beaten down by poverty, just beyond our borders, who make our own successes look both precarious and miraculous.

Morality Specific AlternativeUNIVERSAL MORALITY ALWAYS CREATES RESENTMENT AND LOWERS HUMANITY TO THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR; THE ALTERNATIVE IS MORAL PLURALISMConway 97 Daniel W. Conway U Pennsylvania Nietzsche and the political p. 29-31 Google Books 6.5.2010

Especially when viewed from the broadly historical perspective that Nietzsche favors, however, the enterprise of morality encompasses far more than the universal prescriptions and metaphysical fictions that he so famously debunks. In fact, he regularly reminds his readers that the type of morality he opposes is only one among several possible moralities: Morality in Europe today is herd animal morality – in other words, as we understand it, merely one type of human morality beside which, before which, and after which many other types, above all higher moralities, are or ought to be, possible. But this morality resists such a “possibility,” such an “ought” with all its power: it says stubbornly and inexorably, “I am morality itself, and nothing besides is morality.” (BGE 202) Continuing this critique of moral monism in his next book, On the Genealogy of Morals, he declares that contemporary morality, despite its claims to universality, is in fact descended from a “slave” morality, which in turn emerged only in reponse to the hegemony of a logically and historically prior “noble” morality. The history of morality, encrypted in the “long hieroglyphic record” that Nietzsche aims to decipher (GM P:7), thus contradicts the claim of any morality, including the ubiquitous “herd animal morality,” to privileged, monistic prerogative as the arbiter of ethical life. In his “review” of the Genealogy, he explicitly identifies the “slave revolt in morality” with “the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of ressentiment” (EH XI). Rather than reject the enterprise of morality itself, Nietzsche instead rejects the claim of any single morality to universal scope and application. A universally binding morality would necessarily erect a monolithic moral ideal, thereby reducing a plurality of human types and kinds to a lowest common denominator. Ethical laws should (and do) bind collectively, but only across a limited number of individuals, such as constitute a people, race tribe, or community. As Zarathustra puts it, “I am a law only for my kind [di Meinen], I am no law for all” (Z IV:12). The dream of an ethical community comprising all human beings, or all sentient beings, thus spells political nightmare. The laws of an omni-inclusive ethical community would express only the commonalities and banalities of the individuals involved, rather than their unique strengths and virtues. Morality should always serve the enhancement of the ethical life of a particular people, and not the other way around: Morality – no longer the expression of the conditions for the life and growth of a people, no longer its most basic instinct of life, but become abstract, become the antithesis of life - morality as the systematic degradation of the imagination, as the “evil eye” for all things. (AC 25) Nietzsche’s critique of Christian morality is best understood within the context of his political opposition to moral monism. He has no quarrel for example, with Christian morality in its “pure” forms, which he applauds for proving comfort and solace to the demotic strata of hierarchically organized socieiteis. He goes so far as to praise the contributions of Christain morality to the “hygienic” maintenacnce of intramural political boundaries, readily acknowledging the value of moralities that serve the inwardly destroyed (BGE 62). As his commitment to moral pluralism would suggest, he objects to Christian morality only in its most virulent political form, insofar as it arrogates to itself a universal application across all of humankind; as we have seen, this objection is sustained strictly on political, rather than epistemological or theological, grounds. He consequently aims to disabulse his readers of the belief that Christian morality is coextensive with morality itself: “I negate a type of morality that has become prevalent and predominat as morality itself – the morality of decadence or, more concretely, Christian morality” (EH XIV:4). He thus explains that his self-awarded title, “the immoralist,” designates an opposition specifically to Christian morality, which in his day held (or so he believed) a virtual monopoly over ethical life throughout the diverse cultures of Western civilization (EH XIV:6). As an alternative to the moral monism he detects at the rotten core of Christianity, Nietzsche espouses a moral pluralism that reflects the rich diversity of human types, while reminding us that these moralities vary in worth as widely as the individuals whose needs and perfections they express: Moralities must be forced to bow first of all before the order of rank; their presumption must be brought home to their conscience – until they finally reach agreement that it is immoral to say: “what is right for one is fair for the other.” (BGE 221) Indeed, a primary aim of Nietzche’s perfection ism is to promote the design of hierarchically organized political regimes, each of which would simultaneously sustain several grades of morality. The aristocratic regimes he favors would shelter a pyramidal hierarchy of ethical communities, each equipped with a distinctive morality that reflects its unique needs and strengths. At the pinnacle of this pyramidal structure would stand the community of agonistic “friends” founded by the Ubermensch.

AT: “Doesn’t Apply to Our Morality”

THE SPECIFIC PRESCRIPTIONS ARE IRRELEVANT; MORALITY CREATES A CULTURE THAT THWARTS EXCELLENCESpring, University of Southampton, 2009 SIMON ROBERTSON “Nietzsche's Ethical Revaluation” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 37, Spring 2009, pp. 66-90 Project Muse 6.1.2010Leiter (2001, 239ff., 2002, 132–34) considers a response moral theorists might offer to the critique so far: Even if morality endorses values inimical to excellence, it need not outright prohibit relevant excellences; therefore, it does not preclude their pursuit or achievement as Nietzsche’s objection sup- poses. This response, Leiter notes, mirrors that given to contemporary critics of moral theory. Faced with the charge that moral theory is too demanding because it requires us to forgo significant nonmoral goods, many moralists respond by amending the moral theory, for instance by making moral obligations less demanding and pervasive, thereby accommodating the legitimate pursuit of nonmoral goods (cf. Brink 1986; Darwall 1987; Railton 1984; Scheffler 1992). Leiter, however, regards Nietzsche not as a pioneering critic of moral theory but as a critic of morality understood as an everyday cultural phenomenon. He claims that morality “is harmful not because its specific prescriptions and proscriptions explicitly require potentially excellent persons to forgo that which allows them to flourish—that is, Nietzsche’s claim is not that a conscientious

application of [moral theory] would be incompatible with the flourishing of higher men” (2001, 243). Rather, a culture in which moral norms prevail, and thus become internalized by potentially excellent individuals, will be one that in practice thwarts excellence. So even if moral theory might be modified to accommodate Nietzschean excellences, Nietzsche’s critique is directed against the moralized culture we continue to inhabit. To the

extent the values listed under (2) form an ineradicable part of morality thus construed, morality cannot escape Nietzsche’s critique.

Suffering Links

THE PATH OF MORALITY IS THE STRATEGY OF THE LAST MAN—WHO, RATHER THAN EMBRACE THE NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF LIFE, WOULD AVOID SUFFERING AT ALL COSTS—THIS PRODUCES A NEGATIVE FORM OF ETHICS THAT SMOTHERS THE VALUE TO LIFEOwen and Ridley, 2000 (David Owen is Reader in Political Philosophy and Deputy Director of the Centre for Post-Analytic Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Aaron Ridley is a professor of Philosophy at the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton. Why Nietzsche still? page 149-54)The threat here is obvious: What is to be feared, what has a more calamitous effect than any other calamity, is that man should inspire not profound fear but profound nausea; also not great fear but great pity. Suppose these two were one day to unite, they would inevitably beget one of the uncanniest monsters: the "last will" of man, his will to nothingness, nihilism. And a great deal points to this union. (GM III:I4) So suicidal nihilism beckons. The one response to the situation that is absolutely ruled out is the one that has so far proved most successful at addressing problems of this sort, namely, adoption of the ascetic ideal, because the present crisis is caused by the self-destruction of that ideal. But Nietzsche argues that two plausible responses to the crisis are nonetheless possible for modern man. Both of these involve the construction of immanent ideals or goals: one response is represented by the type the Last Man, the other by the type the Ubermensch. The first response recognizes the reality of suffering and our (post-ascetic) inability to accord transcendental significance to it and concludes that the latter provides an overwhelming reason for abolishing the former to whatever extent is possible. This has the effect of elevating the abolition of suffering into a quasi-transcendental goal and brings with it a new table of virtues, on which prudence figures largest. In other words, this response takes the form of a rapport a soi characterized by a style of calculative rationality directed toward the avoidance of suffering at any cost, for example, of utilititarianism and any other account of human subjectivity that accords preeminence to maximizing preference satisfaction . In Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche portrays this type as follows: "What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" thus asks the Last Man and blinks. The earth has become small, and upon it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His race is as inexterminable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest. "We have discovered happiness," say the Last Men and blink. They have left the places where living was hard: for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs oneself against him: for one needs warmth. Sickness and mistrust count as sins with them: one should go about warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or over men! A little poison now and then: that produces pleasant dreams. And a lot of poison at last, for a pleasant death. They still work, for work is entertainment. But they take care the entertainment does not exhaust them. Nobody grows rich or poor any more: both are too much of a burden. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both are too much of a burden. No herdsman and one herd. Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is the same: whoever thinks otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse "Formerly all the world was mad," say the most acute of them and blink. They are clever and know everything that has ever happened: so there is no end to their mockery. They still quarrel, but they soon make up-otherwise indigestion would result. They have their little pleasure for the day and their little pleasure for the night: but they respect health. "We have discovered happiness," say the Last Men and blink. (Z: I "Prologue" 5) Nietzsche's hostility to this first form of response is evident. His general objection to the Last Man is that the Last Man's ideal, like the ascetic ideal, is

committed to the denial of chance and necessity as integral features of human existence. Whereas the ascetic ideal denies chance and necessity per se so that, while suffering remains real, what is objectionable about it is abolished, the Last Man's ideal is expressed as the practical imperative to abolish suffering, and hence, a fortiori, what is objectionable about it – that is, our exposure to chance and necessity. This general objection has two specific dimensions. The first is that the Last Man's ideal is unrealizable , insofar as human existence involves ineliminable sources of suffering- not least our consciousness that we come into being by chance and cease to be by necessity. Thus the Last Man's ideal is predicated on a neglect of truthfulness. The second dimension of Nietzsche's objection is that pursuit of the Last Man's ideal impoverishes and arbitrarily restricts our understanding of what we can be and, in doing so, forecloses our future possibilities of becoming otherwise than we are . Thus the Last Man's ideal entails an atrophying of the capacities (for self-overcoming, etc.) bequeathed by the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche brings these two dimensions together in Beyond Good and Evil: "You want, if possible – and there is no more insane 'if possible' – to abolish suffering. ... Well-being as you understand it – that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible – that makes his destruction desirable" (BGE 225). The second response to the nihilistic threat posed by the selfdestruction of the ascetic ideal is definitive of the Ubermensch type. This response recognizes both the reality and the ineliminability of suffering and concludes that an affirmation of chance and necessity must therefore be built into the very conception of what it is for something to function as a (postascetic) ideal . So this response, insofar as it cultivates an affirmation of chance and necessity (i.e., amor fati), overcomes the (ascetic) hatred of or (modern) dissatisfaction with this-worldly existence. Yet the success of this overcoming is conditional on the exercise and development of the very capacities and disposition that are the bequest of the ascetic ideal. The disposition to truthfulness is a condition of recognizing the ineliminability of chance and necessity. But actually to recognize, let alone affirm, this awful fact about human existence requires the exercise of the capacities for self-surveillance (so that one can monitor oneself for the symptoms of self-deception in the face of this fact), self-discipline (so that one can resist the understandable temptation to deceive oneself about this fact), and self-overcoming (so that one can develop, in the face of this temptation, one's capacities for self-surveillance and self-discipline). Thus the ascetic ideal provides the tools required to overcome the crisis precipitated by its own self-destruction. In other words, the Ubermensch's ideal simply is the exercise and cultivation of the capacities and the disposition required to affirm the fact that chance and necessity are ineliminable. And because chance and necessity are ineliminable, and therefore require perpetually to be affirmed anew, such exercise and cultivation must itself be perpetual, a process without the slightest prospect of an end. The contrast with the Last Man's ideal is stark. Whereas the latter offers a feeling of power to its devotees by positing as realizable the unrealizable ideal of no more suffering-that is, of a fixed, final, completed state of being – the Ubermensch’s ideal offers a feeling of power predicated only on the continual overcoming of the desire for any such state. What the Last Man longs for, in other words., the Ubermensch distinguishes himself by unendingly and truthfully refusing to want. It is of the first importance that the Ubermensch's ideal should represent a process as inherently valuable, rather than a product (such as the Last Man's completed state of life without suffering). There are two reasons for thinking this important. The first is the one mentioned above given that chance and necessity are ineliminable features of living a life, a life oriented to the affirmation of this fact must recognize the ineliminably processual character of such an affirmation, and hence the ineliminably processual character of an ideal that serves rather than denies "the most fundamental prerequisites of life" (GM III:28). The other reason is that this ideal exhibits the

form of practical reasoning that Nietzsche's genealogy itself deploys. By contrast with, say, Kant's conception of practical reasoning, which centers on an opposition between the real and the ideal (between the heteronomous and the autonomous), and denies "the most fundamental prerequisites of life," Nietzsche's conception involves a continual process of movement from the attained to the attainable; and it is precisely this that the rapport a soi constitutive of the Ubermensch exhibits. Thus, while Kant offers a juridical conception of practical reasoning structured in terms of the idea of law, Nietzsche offers a medical or therapeutic conception articulated through the idea of the type or exemplar. Which is to say, Nietzsche's genealogical investigation (at its best, i.e., its most self-consistent) exemplifies precisely that commitment to the affirmation of life which it recommends, that is, to an Ubermenschlich rapport a soi. Process, not product; Dionysus, not Apollo.

Kain, 2k7 (Philip J., “Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and the Horror of Existence”, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, issue 33, Penn state University, Muse)Nietzsche simply dismisses the designed cosmos, which few believe in anymore anyway (WP12a). On the other hand, Nietzsche takes the perfectible cosmos very seriously. He resists it with every fiber of his being.5For Nietzsche, we must stop wasting time and energy hoping to change things, improve them, make progress (see, e.g., WP40, 90, 684)—the outlook of liberals, socialists, and even Christians, all of whom Nietzsche tends to lump together and excoriate. For Nietzsche, we cannot reduce suffering, and to keep hoping that we can will simply weaken us. Instead, we must conceal an alien and terrifying cosmos if we hope to live in it. And we must develop the strength to do so. We must toughen ourselves. We need more suffering, not less. It has “created all enhancements of man so far . . .” (BGE 225, 44; WP957; GMII:7). If we look deeply into the essence of things, into the horror of existence, Nietzsche thinks we will be overwhelmed—paralyzed. Like Hamlet we will not be able to act, because we will see that action cannot change the eternal nature of things (BT7). We must see, Nietzsche says, that “a profound illusion . . . first saw the light of the world in the person of Socrates: the unshakeable faith that thought . . . can penetrate the deepest abysses of being, and that thought is capable not only of knowing being but even of correcting it . This sublime metaphysical illusion accompanies science as an instinct . . .” (BT15). In Nietzsche’s view, we cannot change things. Instead, with Hamlet we should “feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that [we] should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint” (BT7; cf. TI “Anti-Nature,” 6). Knowledge of the horror of existence kills action—which requires distance and illusion. The horror and meaninglessness of existence must be veiled if we are to live and act. What we must do, Nietzsche thinks, is construct a meaning for suffering. Suffering we can handle. Meaningless suffering, suffering for no reason at all, we cannot handle. So we give suffering a meaning. We invent a meaning. We create an illusion. The Greeks constructed gods for whom wars and other forms of suffering were festival plays and thus an occasion to be celebrated by the poets. Christians imagine a God for whom suffering is punishment for sin (GM II:7; cf. D78). One might find all this unacceptable. After all, isn’t it just obvious that we can change things , reduce suffering, improve existence, and make progress? Isn’t it just obvious that modern science and technology have done so? Isn’t it just absurd for Nietzsche to reject the possibility of significant change? Hasn’t such change already occurred? Well, perhaps not. Even modern environmentalists might resist all this obviousness . They might respond in a rather Nietzschean vein that technology may have caused as many problems as it has solved. The advocate of the perfectible cosmos, on the other hand, would no doubt counter such Nietzschean pessimism by arguing that even if technology does cause some problems, the solution to those

problems can only come from better technology. Honesty requires us to admit, however, that this is merely a hope , not something for which we already have evidence, not something that it is absurd to doubt—not at all something obvious. Further technology may or may not improve things. The widespread use of antibiotics seems to have done a miraculous job of improving our health and reducing suffering, but we are also discovering that such antibi- otics give rise to even more powerful bacteria that are immune to those antibiotics. We have largely eliminated diseases like cholera, smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis, but we have produced cancer and heart disease. We can cure syphilis and gonorrhea, but we now have AIDS. Even if we could show that it will be possible to continuously reduce suffering, it is very unlikely that we will ever eliminate it. If that is so, then it remains a real question whether it is not better to face suffering, use it as a discipline, perhaps even increase it, so as to toughen ourselves, rather than let it weaken us, allow it to dominate us, by continually hoping to overcome it. But whatever we think about the possibility of reducing suffering, the question may well become moot. Nietzsche tells a story: “Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of ‘world history, ’but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die” (TL1, 79). Whatever progress we might think we are making in reducing suffering, whatever change we think we are bringing about, it may all amount to nothing more than a brief and accidental moment in biological time, whose imminent disappearance will finally confirm the horror and meaninglessness of existence. The disagreement here is not so much about the quantity of suffering that we can expect to find in the world but, rather, its nature . For proponents of the designed cosmos, suffering is basically accidental. It is not fundamental or central to life. It is not a necessary part of the nature of things. It does not make up the essence of existence. We must develop virtue, and then we can basically expect to fit and be at home in the cosmos. For the proponents of a perfectible cosmos, suffering is neither essential nor unessential. The cosmos is neutral. We must work on it to reduce suffering. We must bring about our own fit. For Nietzsche, even if we can change this or that, even if we can reduce suffering here and there, what cannot be changed for human beings is that suffering is fundamental and central to life. The very nature of things, the very essence of existence, means suffering. Moreover, it means meaningless suffering—suffering for no reason at all. That cannot be changed—it can only be concealed. Nietzsche does not reject all forms of change . What he rejects is the sort of change necessary for a perfectible cosmos. He rejects the notion that science and technology can transform the essence of things—he rejects the notion that human effort can significantly reduce physical suffering. Instead, he only thinks it possible to build up the power necessary to construct meaning in a meaningless world and thus to conceal the horror of existence, which cannot be eliminated. We cannot prove the opposite view, and I do not think we can dismiss Nietzsche’s view simply because it goes counter to the assumptions of Christianity, science, liberalism, socialism, and so forth. And we certainly cannot dismiss this view if we hope to understand Nietzsche. At any rate, for Nietzsche, we cannot eliminate suffering; we can only seek to mask it.

Responsibility Link

THE SEARCH FOR RESPONSIBILITY IS A REFLECTION OF OUR INABILITY TO COPE WITH EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY—THE IMPACT IS RESSENTIMENT AND SCAPEGOATING. Warner, 99 (Daniel, Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, “Searching for Responsibility/Community in International Relations”, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, Ed. David Campbell and Michael Shapiro, Minnesota Press, pg. 15-16)William Connolly has specifically called into question the quest for responsibility and the search for community. His criticisms add an important dimension to our previous discussion in that they raise the possibility that the quest for responsibility and the search for community are both firmly rooted in modernity and identity politics. Whereas I have previously located my discussion of responsibility and community within the context of international relations debates,50 Connolly places the search for responsibility and community within a broader context (as indeed does Walker's discussion of Weber51). We will deal with each of Connolly's criticisms in turn before examining their importance in the larger context. In his discussion of responsibility, Connolly notes: ʻThe idea of 'responsibility' itself is a locus of persistent instability and contestation in late-modern discourse.ʻ52 Connolly maintains that ʻestablished debates over the terms of responsibility and its proper range of application as a historically specific field of discourse [are] bound up with particular conceptions of self, nature, state, language, god, past and future.ʻ53 While Sandel has argued that the self is situated, and I have argued that responsibility is situated in terms of specific actions and consequences, Connolly argues that debates over responsibility are also situated in time and place. Connolly does not argue against the need to search for responsibility ; he argues that the expression of that drive is articulated in different times and places because of a host of factors: Perhaps the insistence upon the truth of deep identity or singular responsibility simultaneously sets up these accusations and disarms the terms of response available to them ... Must we truly have a true identity? A Nietzschean perspective shares with the Augustinian tradition the conviction that this demand is rooted in an entire array of linguistic, psychological, epistemic, and political pressures built into the human condition. The drive to strong identity and responsibility, to put it briefly, is overdetermined as a disposition of life. What one must refuse to do, one might say to modern Augustinianism and the heresies it spawns, is to invest these dispositions with the blessings of unambiguous truth. One must treat them as entrenchments installed in the self and its world rather than depths that mirror the deepest truths about the world and the self.ʻ Having shown the politicization of identity and responsibility, Connolly argues that the present drive to establish responsible agents is part of an existential resentment: People tend to demand ... a world in which suffering is ultimately grounded in proportional responsibility. We resent a world in which it appears that this is not so. But resentment must locate an appropriate object if it is to be discharged as resentment. It thereby seeks a responsible agent that it can convince itself is worthy of receiving the load of incipient resentment it carries. Otherwise its existential rancor must be stored or translated into something else. So, part of the drive to insistent attributions of responsibility flows from existential resentment.55 55 The implications of Connolly's analysis implications of Connolly's analysis threaten the algebraic equation between evil/illegality and responsibility/agent that is established through imputation. ʻIdealizations of identityʻ serve a social, political function for Connolly that exacerbates differences by codifying identities in stereotypes responding to the perceived need to localize agents of responsibility. According to Connolly, responsibility ʻis both indispensable to life and acutely susceptible

to inflation through existential resentment.ʻ Connolly tries to ʻchallenge, contest, subvert, and abridgeʻ those discourses that lead to this inflation.

RADICAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OTHER IS NARCISSISTIC AND INEVITABLY PRODUCES RESSENTIMENT Murphy, 04 (Ann, Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of philosophy at the university of New South Wales, “The Political Significance of Shame,” Borderlands E-Journal, volume 3 Number 1, 2004)2. The insistence on the ahistorical nature of responsibility is particularly obvious when one takes note of Shame is of interest as a political phenomenon to the degree that it signals cognisance of individual and collective responsibility. Knowing this, one should take note of the dangerous dismissal of guilt and shame in contemporary politics by both the right and the left. The right’s attack on guilt has frequently been couched in terms of the "bleeding heart liberal," whose attempts to be empathetic to others is condemned as a delusional and wrong-headed approach to issues of cultural difference. In an attempt to publicly undermine the efficacy of social policies such as welfare, the right has persisted in labelling the advocates of such policies "bleeding hearts," whose rational capacity for judgment has been clouded by their emotions. Allegedly, "bleeding hearts" cannot be trusted to rationally deliberate issues of politics. This line of argumentation is likely grounded in the belief that we inherit from Kant, and those who work in his wake, that justice in its proper sense is to be rendered via the avenues of reason, and not those of the heart. In this context, shame and guilt become problematic insofar as they hamper political rationality. 3. It would be disingenuous, however, to assign blame wholly to the political right. To be fair – and admittedly with a few notable exceptions – the discourse on shame has arguably suffered equal abuse at the hands of the left. While there is no disputing the claim that the right has frequently coopted the discourse on empathy in order to shirk certain social responsibilities, it is also the case that the left has demonstrated a marked reluctance to delve into the politics of collective guilt. Particularly amidst a theoretical landscape – inherited from Levinas and Derrida – that privileges the stranger, the foreigner, and the radically other, the worry surrounding guilt and shame is that there is something in the experience of these emotions that is perhaps narcissistic, indulgent, and even patronizing. In short, the fear of addressing shame and guilt is grounded in the worry that these emotions in the end only recuperate certain privileges. Shame and guilt are self-regarding emotions, and so one worries that they may detract from the genuine consideration of others and that at heart they are egoistic. Add to this the worry that guilt in and of its own right does not necessarily motivate concrete action, and one sees why even those with progressive political agendas express reticence regarding the issue of guilt, not simply in regard to the danger of appearing patronizing, but likewise out of suspicion regarding its efficacy in motivating action.

Welfare LinkWELFARE IS NIHILISM: IT SUBORDINATES THE STRONG TO A REGIME OF PITY THAT REDUCES LIFE TO THE MERE AVOIDANCE OF SUFFERINGQuain 2009 (Tony, Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Georgetown University,

http://www.tonyquain.com/philo/200611NW.shtml)

What does Nietzsche have to contribute to our understanding of the charity and benevolence of a political society? Specifically, would Nietzsche favor or oppose a generous, redistributive welfare state? I shall argue that in his writing Nietzsche makes it quite clear that he would oppose state redistribution of wealth, both from the point of view of those from whom wealth is taken and those to whom it is given.2While he does not in The Gay Science directly confront or discuss the merits of welfare politics, his views on pity, benevolence, dignity, morality, equality, pain, and happiness all contribute to a mosaic quite contemptuous of charity and its motives and consequences. Nietzsche would reject the welfare state as being, at the same time, both weak submission to self-negating morality and a projection of power of the strong over the weak. Nietzsche's approach is individualistic. While he often speaks of the origins, development, and ails of society in general, his writing is nowhere intended to sway the designs or designers of the collective; he directs his attention always to the individual as an individual. Following this style, the evidence of his rejection of the welfare state shall be presented as the admonitions he dispenses to three kinds of people3: the Benefactor, who gives what he has to assist those in need; the Moralist, who demands that others do the same; and the Recipient, who accepts the charity of others or the manna of a compassionate state. The argument will conclude with a possible alternative Nietzsche offers to the welfare state. The Benefactor is held up for contempt mainly because his acts originate from a contemptible feeling of pity. Throughout The Gay Science, Nietzsche makes clear that pity is an enervating emotion of the weak-willed. "What is needful is not pity for [the evil and unhappy]. We must learn to abandon this arrogant fancy."4 Further, he admires the absence of pity: "At times, our strengths propel us so far forward that we can no longer endure our weaknesses and perish from them … Thus we become hard against everything in us that desires consideration, and our greatness is also our lack of compassion."5 Pity is also tied directly to a notion of charity, as when he says, "Indeed, those who now preach the morality of pity even take the view that precisely this and only this is moral—to lose one's own way in order to come to the assistance of a neighbor." 6 Those who give of themselves out of pity simply do not deserve our respect. While Nietzsche often singles out pity as a deplorable affection, virtues of self-negation in general are held in low regard. "I do not like negative virtues—virtues whose very essence is to negate and deny oneself something."7 Also: "'Selflessness' has no value either in heaven or on earth."8 Benevolence is thoroughly linked in Nietzsche's mind to selfnegation, as when he cries "No altruism!" and then describes people who desire to be a "function" of someone else and thus fail to live for themselves.9 Yet even as he pours derision on self-negation and pity, Nietzsche does not deny that these feelings have personal utility, even if they are misplaced. Pity moves us to take possession of the pitiful, to exert power over them. "When we see somebody suffer, we like to exploit this opportunity to take possession of him; those who become his benefactors and pity him … do this … and the pleasure they feel is comparable to that aroused by the prospect of a new conquest."10 This makes it less clear that selfless virtues such as pity do not hold some positive value for the individual. When Nietzsche says, "Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one's power upon others; that is all one desires in such cases,"11 he extends power as a motivation not just for those who are

charitable, but also for those who would redistribute wealth from benefactors (willing or unwilling) to recipients. Hurting unwilling benefactors through taxation and benefiting poor recipients through public welfare spending ultimately serves the power instincts of those who may be neither. Here we are speaking of the Moralist. For Nietzsche, there is no special place for humans in nature and no minimum acceptable human condition. He claims that we should "remove humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity.'"12 Indeed, he sees the Moralist as too involved, too caring of others, too unconcerned for the self. "I do not want to wage war against what is ugly … Looking away shall be my only negation." 13 Ultimately Nietzsche wants the Moralist to reserve judgment for others and instead look to oneself. In his criticism of the Kantian categorical imperative and 'universal laws,' he counters, "We, however, want to become those we are—human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves."14 He seeks a moral anarchy, which by extension appears to imply political anarchy. Indeed, he proclaims that the message of "'equal rights,' 'a free society,' 'no more masters and no servants'" has no allure. "We simply do not consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on earth," since this would be the "realm of the deepest leveling."15 While this does not conclusively determine that Nietzsche believed in total anarchy, it does show that with specific regard to notions of equality he is strongly disposed to anarchy and opposed to all order and leveling. Although Nietzsche has been shown to offer much disdain for benefactors and moralists, it is the Recipient who he believes is harmed most by charitable intentions. This arises out of a fundamental misunderstanding of human happiness. Discomfort and displeasure are necessary for us to experience and appreciate true pleasure and true happiness: "To this day you have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible , painlessness in brief—and in the last analysis socialists and politicians of all parties have no right to promise their people more than that—or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth and abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet. If you decide for the former and desire to diminish and lower the level of human pain, you also have to diminish and lower the level of their capacity for joy ."16

Pity Link

THE POLITICS OF PITY IMPOSE VICTIMIZATION ON THE OTHER WHO BECOMES THE OBJECT OF PIT—THIS REULTS IN RESSENTIMENTKain, 2k7 (Philip J., “Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and the Horror of Existence”, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, issue 33, Penn state University, Muse)

Eternal recurrence also gives suffering another meaning. If one is able to embrace eternal recurrence, if one is able to turn all “it was” into a “thus I willed it,” then one not only reduces suffering to physical suffering, breaks its psycho- logical stranglehold, and eliminates surplus suffering related to guilt , but one may even in a sense reduce suffering below the level of physical suffering. One does not do this as the liberal, socialist, or Christian would, by changing the world to reduce suffering. In Nietzsche’s opinion that is impossible, and, indeed, eternal recurrence of the same rules it out—at least as any sort of final achievement.23 Rather, physical suffering is reduced by treating it as a test, a discipline, a training, which brings one greater power. One might think of an athlete who engages in more and more strenuous activity, accepts greater and greater pain, handles it better and better, and sees this as a sign of greater strength, as a sign of increased ability. Pain and suffering are turned into empowerment. Indeed, it is possible to love such suffering as a sign of increased power . One craves pain—“more pain! more pain!” (GMIII:20). And the more suffering one can bear, the stronger one becomes. If suffering is self-imposed, if the point is to break the psychological stranglehold it has over us, if the point is to turn suffering into empowerment, use it as a discipline to gain greater strength, then it would be entirely inappropriate for us to feel sorry for the sufferer. To take pity on the sufferer either would demonstrate an ignorance of the process the sufferer is engaged in, what the sufferer is attempting to accomplish through suffering, or would show a lack of respect for the sufferer’s suffering (GS 338; D135). To pity the sufferer, to wish the sufferer did not have to go through such suffering, would demean the sufferer and the whole process of attempting to gain greater strength through such suffering . Let us try again to put ourselves in Nietzsche’s place. He has suffered for years . He has suffered intensely for years. He has come to realize that he can- not end this suffering. He cannot even reduce it significantly. But he has finally been able to break the psychological stranglehold it has had over him. He is able to accept it. He wills it. He would not change the slightest detail. He is able to love it. And this increases his strength. How, then, would he respond to our pity? Very likely, he would be offended. He would think we were patronizing him. He would not want us around. He would perceive us as trying to rob him of the strength he had achieved, subjugate him again to his suffering, strip him of his dignity . He would be disgusted with our attempt to be do-gooders, our attempt to impose our ownmeaning on his suffering (treating it as something to pity and to lessen) in opposition to the meaning he has succeeded in imposing on it. Nietzsche wagers a lot on his commitment to the notion that suffering cannot be significantly reduced in the world. For if it can, then pity and compassion would be most important to motivate the reduction of suffering. Nietzsche is so committed to the value of suffering that he is willing to remove, or at least radically devalue, pity and compassion.

Utilitarianism Link

UTILITARIANISM IS A SLAVE MORALITYWarren, 88 (Mark, Professor at the University of British Colombia, Nietzsche and Political Thought, MIT Press)If Nietzsche is not interested in ethical rules so much as in the conceptions of agency they presuppose, one would think that he would have been well-disposed toward the utilitarian attempt to evaluate practices in terms of their benefits for the self. After all, utilitarianism breaks down the Christian polarity between the demands of the self and what is good, between morality and life. But one finds little praise of utilitarianism in Nietzsche's writings. Part of the reason is that utilitarianism embeds a metaphysics of moral agency in its concept of the "ego," and it is this metaphysics that is expanded into notions of

general welfare. Nietzsche's argument is that the utilitarian self is not given as a fact, but must itself be explained as the result of a specific historical organization of power. Utilitarianism in effect takes over and simply reevaluates the Christian "false dogmatism regarding the 'ego': it is taken in the atomistic sense, in a false antithesis to the 'nonego'; at the same time, pried out of becoming, as something that has being." 38 This is why "the 'welfare of the individual' is just as imaginary as the 'welfare of the species': the former is not sacrificed to the latter ; [the] species viewed from a distance is just as transient as the individual." 39 Nietzsche's point, as we saw in chapter 2, is that the powers, capabilities, and needs of agents become something "individual" through an incorporation of historical experiences, culture, and language. Insofar as moral judgments attribute selfhood to individuals, they as much constitute individuals as they flow from them. What utilitarianism really does, then, is read interests of

general welfare ("the happiness of Rngland," as Nietzsche puts it) onto the individual. In this way, it usurps the good of the individual into the good of society -precisely the opposite of what its proponents intend.

Mass Destruction Impact

IMPACT: THE AFFIRMATIVE’S GUILTY HAND-WRINGING OVER THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY REFLECTS A NIHILISTIC SELF-HATRED THAT WILL CULMINATE IN MASS DESTRUCTIONBruckner, French writer and philosopher, 1986, [Pascal, ..The Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt, p.63-70]

What is our wealth, in short? "A sort of economic Nazism created by a master race of the wealthy, who reign over a mass of undernourished people."39 After this, how can we fail to see ourselves as monsters devastated by shame?4°

These are fallacious comparisons, of course, because they always fail to mention the different levels of industrialization that by themselves explain the huge differences in consumption between countries. When socioeconomic conditions are radically different, precise figures lose all validity and serve no purpose other than for slogans and reproaches. But there is no value in pointing out the uselessness of this quantitative overkill. Excess is the enemy of precision, and overstatement is deceptive. Overabundance of numbers becomes the rule, and indignant speeches answer with millions of starving people and contemptuous citations of the record books, where the number of hungry people is listed alongside the largest number of sausages, the longest kiss, the highest hairdo, and so on. These statistics pretend to be encyclopedias of suffering, packages of agony,41 and the officious indicators of one sole message: We are all parasites and cannibals. 42

Suffering humanity is placed on a scale and, on balance, the West is portrayed as worthless. Our way of life is put in numerical terms in order to ridicule it. The reasoning behind our scolding Third World-lovers is that, the less we suffer, the more we must feel responsible. An elaborate, ramshackle, logical system that tries to establish a causal link, no matter how far-fetched, is set up between myself and this suffering. Highly technical explanations are worked out to demonstrate that, in the final analysis, it is still Europe that pulls the strings .41 It is like the world of a detective story, the infallible deduction that unravels the problems of hunger like Sherlock Holmes:

Who is guilty of these massacres that fill the morgues of the Third World every day? Is it mere fate? Are these men, women, and children the victims of uncontrollable and recurring natural disasters? No. For every victim, there is a murderer. Thenceforth, all of us, young and old, are at fault for what goes wrong on our unhappy planet.45 We are participating in the destruction of the world 46-from agricultural breakthroughs to woodcutting technology" to female circumcision.

The West is the great and only guilty party to all the evils of the world. In sum, we are inhuman and criminal because we do not want others to exist,49 and the causes of famine lie before us on the dinner table.5° It makes no difference that this accusation cannot be proven. Guilt is an easy way of bridging distinctions and doing away with intermediaries, because it draws a pitiless red line between their poverty and our sated appetites. Remorse comes before wrongdoing, because our error is not in sinning but in existing. The mania of suspicion makes us guilty before the fact for the disintegration of Ghanaian society, for empty stores in Angola, for the rising prices in Central America, for clouds of locusts in black Africa, for hurricanes in the Caribbean, tribal warfare in New Guinea, and so on. Every study, every book on the Third World, whatever its subject, says the same thing. The guilt of the accused is confirmed, and more evidence is accumulated against him. They are like a storekeeper's books, where the long list of the evils of the Old World is neatly spelled out, while the merits of the Southern hemisphere stand out from the details of an implicit frame of reference that is never questioned. They are an exercise in malediction, which is supposed to make our horror grow as it convinces us all-salaried workers, professors, lawyers, laborers, truckdrivers-of our fundamental thievery. The reader himself is a convenient scoundrel…

Obsessive repetition takes the place of a concern for precision, because we have to make our own breast-beating offering for the suffering of the world. Duty, that nameless and insatiable goddess, conducts a Kafkaesque trial against Europeans. This is the bad faith of bad consciences-unable to give solace for one scourge or another in any real way, we accuse ourselves of being the cause. The old relationship between colonizer and colonized is endlessly atoned for, and we search for aftereffects of imperialism everywhere. We can thus mortify our flesh with delight because we know how rotten we are. The conclusion is that our very existence is an insult to the human race. We have only one duty-to wipe ourselves off the face of the earth.51 The future of the West is self-destruction.

Will to Power Impact

OUR LINKS COME FIRST—THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE OF THE WILL TO POWER Ciano Aydin (lecturer in philosophy at Radbound University). “Nietzsche on Reality as Will to Power: Toward and 'Organization-Struggle' Model.” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 33. Spring 2007.We can begin with some elaboration of Nietzsche's notion of "power." "Power" in "will to power" is a peculiar concept. It is characterized, and this is a crucial point, by intrinsic relationality: power is only power in relation to another power. Nietzsche says: "A power quantum is characterized by its effect and its resistant" (KSA 13:14[79]; cf. KSA 12:2[159], 12:9[151]). The concept "power" would be meaningless if a power were detached from an opposite power . That power is inherently relational implies further that it is characterized by a relation without relata that precede it or that can exist independent of it. Nietzsche's principle of the will to power implies that relation is not an additional element of things but, rather,

something that constitutes in a fundamental way what a thing is. In other words, there are no first things, which then have relations with each other; rather, things are what they are by virtue of their relations. Furthermore, Nietzsche's concept of power implies that reality is dynamic in the strongest meaning of the word. Power, in Nietzsche's view, entails a directedness or causation without there being something (durable), a fixed cause, that can be separated from that directedness or causation; power is in its essence "something" that does not coincide with itself. It is an always-being-on-the-way. Additionally, this structure implies that power must be understood as a necessary striving for more power (see KSA 13:14[82]). Power is a necessary striving to expand itself. Power is only power insofar as it can maintain itself against other powers and strives to predominate over them. There is in Nietzsche's

worldview nothing that has existence and meaning outside the "game" of power relations. Because of this, there is no withdrawal from this "game." Even rejecting the claim that reality is will to power is an expression of will to power. Also making a statement about the cause or (pre-given) goal of a thing is nothing else than the formulation of a will to power, which always can be questioned by other wills to power. Every account is understood as a power seizure or as the effect of it. Although the necessary striving for more power can be called teleological, it is not teleological in the traditional Aristotelian sense. What we have here is, in a certain sense, a teleology without telos. The crucial point is that the "teleological" character of the will to power not only has no pre-given, fixed end but also precisely precludes such an end. Such a pre-given end that is precluded, and that Nietzsche frequently attacks, is self-preservation. Nietzsche characterizes the notion of self-preservation as one of those "redundant teleological principles" (BGE 13). At the same time, this conception is exposed as an attempt to negate the reality of becoming. The statement that all life strives for self-preservation presupposes that there is a substantial self that wants to preserve itself. Nietzsche repudiates that there is such a self. The notion of the will to power can be conceived as a kind of hypothesis. It is, however, not the kind of hypothesis that can be proved to be a true and valid thesis through sufficient verification or lack of falsification. Such is not possible because all conditions that have to be fulfilled are themselves formulations of will to power. In the game of power relations every power tries to impose its own conditions on the rest. A proposition never loses its conditional character, because it is continuously being questioned by other powers. There is no proposition that can ever be determined definitively as being true. The hypothetical character of the notion of the will to power expresses this provisional status, this "always-being-at-risk," of every proposition. Every actualization is for Nietzsche the realization of only one possibility. There is what he sometimes calls a permanent chaos at work, which is a condition for discovering ever more and

alternative possibilities. The chaos is, therefore, not a mere burden that we have to overcome to survive or make our life easier; that is only one aspect of it. It plays also a very positive role. It is the basis for all creation and creativity.

Without it nothing novel could emerge. The more that chaos breaks into our ordered world, the more our creative power is stimulated (see KSA 8:5[188], 10:5[1]). In Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche puts it in the following poetic formulation: "I say to

you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say to you: you still have chaos in yourself" (Z "P" 5; KSA 4, 19, 9:11[121], 10:24[5]). Nietzsche believes that this element is operative in every aspect of reality, even on a cosmological level. Not only is there no final ground or divine order to which ultimately everything can be reduced, but also there can be no phase in which there is no chaos anymore. In his early writings on cosmology, Nietzsche repudiates Anaxagoras's view that chaos was a phase that preceded the cosmos and that there is a movement toward ever more order and ever less chaos and chance (KSA 9:11[157]). For Nietzsche chaos and chance are, in a certain sense, eternal, meaning that "underlying" every order there is an element of chaos that is operative: we never can reach a final ground or ultimate end but, in fact, are always confronted with a multiplicity of possibilities. The principle of the will to power proves to be a special kind of "principle," one that deprives every principle that serves as the basis of our interpretation of reality of its unconditional character. The homogenizing of reality in this way does not lead to the negation of the diversity and richness of the world. On the contrary, because of it, every determination of reality, every interpretation, is continuously questioned by opposing powers; because of this,

other interpretations always remain possible .

Eternal Recurrence Alternative

ETERNAL RECURRENCE IS AN ETHICAL FRAMEWORK WHICH AFFIRMS LIFE--Kain, 2k7 (Philip J., “Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and the Horror of Existence”, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, issue 33, Penn state University, Muse)

At any rate, Nietzsche claims that just thinking about the possibility of eternal recurrence can shatter and transform us.13In published works, eternal recurrence is presented as the teaching of a sage, as the revelation of a demon, or as a thought that gains possession of one. In The Gay Science341, we must notice, eternal recurrence is not presented as a truth . Many commentators argue that it simply does not matter whether or not it is true; its importance lies in the effect it has on those who believe it.14 I have written at length about this complex doctrine elsewhere. I refer the reader there for further treatment of details.15What I want to do here is point out that the philosopher who introduces eternal recurrence, the philosopher who believes in amor fati, is the very same philosopher who also believes in the horror of existence. This is a point that is never emphasized—indeed, it is hardly even noticed—by commentators.16Lou Salomé tells us that Nietzsche spoke to her of eternal recurrence only “with a quiet voice and with all signs of deepest horror. . . . Life, in fact, produced such suffering in him that the certainty of an eternal return of life had to mean something horrifying to him.”17 Try to imagine yourself with a migraine. Imagine yourself in a feverish state experiencing nausea and vomiting. Imagine that this sort of thing has been going on for years and years and that you have been unable to do anything about it. Extreme care with your diet, concern for climate, continuous experimenting with medicines—all accomplish nothing. You are unable to cure yourself. You have been unable to even improve your condition significantly.18 You have no expectation of ever doing so. Suppose this state has led you to see, or perhaps merely confirmed your insight into, the horror and terror of existence. It has led you to suspect that Silenus was right: best never to have been born; second best, die as soon as possible. All you can expect is suffering, suffering for no reason at all, meaningless suffering. You have even thought of suicide (BGE157).19Now imagine that at your worst moment, your loneliest loneliness, a demon appears to you or you imagine a demon appearing to you. And this demon tells you that you will have to live your life over again, innumerable times more, and that everything, every last bit of pain and suffering, every last migraine, every last bout of nausea and vomiting, will return, exactly the same, over and over and over again. What would your reaction be? If your reaction were to be negative, no one would bat an eye. But what if your reaction was, or came to be, positive? What if you were able to love your life so completely that you would not want to change a single moment—a single moment of suffering? What if you were to come to crave nothing more fervently than the eternal recurrence of every moment of your life? What if you were to see this as an ultimate confirmation and seal, nothing more divine? How could you do this? Why would you do this? Why wouldn’t it be madness? What is going on here? How has this been overlooked by all the commentators? This cries out for explanation. Eternal recurrence, I think we can say, shows us the horror of existence. No matter what you say about your life, no matter how happy you claim to have been, no matter how bright a face you put on it, the threat of eternal recurrence brings out the basic horror in every life. Live it over again with nothing new? It is the “nothing new” that does it. That is how we make it through our existing life. We hope for, we expect, something new, something different, some improvement, some progress, or at least some distraction, some hope. If that is ruled out, if everything will be exactly the same in our next life, well that is a different story. If you think you are supremely happy with your life, just see what happens if you

start to think that you will have to live it again. Suppose that you can, as Aristotle suggested, look back over your life as a whole and feel that it was a good one—a happy one. Would that make you want to live it again? Would you at the moment in which you feel that your life was a happy one also crave nothing more fervently than to live it again? What if your life was a joyous life or a proud life? It is quite clear that you could have a very positive attitude toward your life and not at all want to live it again. In fact, wouldn’t the prospect of eternal repetition, if the idea grew on you and gained possession of you, begin to sap even the best life of its attractiveness? Wouldn’t the expectation of eternal repetition make anything less appealing? Wouldn’t it empty your life of its significance and meaning? Most commentators seem to assume that the only life we could expect anyone to want to live again would be a good life. That makes no sense to me. On the other hand, most people would assume that a life of intense pain and suffering is not at all the sort of life it makes any sense to want to live again. I think Nietzsche was able to see that a life of intense pain and suffering is perhaps the only life it really makes sense to want to live again. Let me try to explain. For years Nietzsche was ill, suffering intense migraines, nausea, and vomit- ing. Often he was unable to work and confined to bed. He fought this. He tried everything. He sought a better climate. He watched his diet fanatically. He experimented with medicines. Nothing worked. He could not improve his condition. His suffering was out of his control. It dominated his life and determined his every activity. He was overpowered by it. There was no freedom or dignity here. He became a slave to his illness. He was subjugated by it. What was he to do? At the beginning of the essay “On the Sublime,” Schiller writes: [N]othing is so unworthy of man than to suffer violence. . . . [W]hoever suffers this cravenly throws his humanity away. . . . This is the position in which man finds himself. Surrounded by countless forces, all of which are superior to his own and wield mastery over him. . . . If he is no longer able to oppose physical force by his relatively weaker physical force, then the only thing that remains to him, if he is not to suffer violence, is to eliminate utterly and completely a relationship that is so disadvantageous to him, and to destroy the very concept of a force to which he must in fact succumb. To destroy the very concept of a force means simply to submit to it voluntarily.20 Although Nietzsche did not go about it in the way Schiller had in mind, nevertheless, this is exactly what Nietzsche did. What was he to do about his suffering? What was he to do about the fact that it came to dominate every moment of his life? What was he to do about the fact that it was robbing him of all freedom and dignity? What was he to do about this subjugation and slavery? He decided to submit to it voluntarily. He decided to accept it fully. He decided that he would not change one single detail of his life, not one moment of pain. He decided to love his fate . At the prospect of living his life over again, over again an infinite number of times, without the slightest change, with every detail of suffering and pain the same, he was ready to say, “Well then! Once more!” (ZIV: “The Drunken Song” 1). He could not change his life anyway. But this way he broke the psychological stranglehold it had over him. He ended his subjugation. He put himself in charge. He turned all “it was” into a “thus I willed it.” Everything that was going to happen in his life, he accepted, he chose, he willed. He became sovereign over his life. There was no way to overcome his illness except by embracing it. I think we are now in a position to see that for eternal recurrence to work, for it to have the effect that it must have for Nietzsche, we must accept without qualification, we must love, every single moment of our lives, every single moment of suffering. We cannot allow ourselves to be tempted by what might at first sight seem to be a much more appealing version of eternal recurrence, that is, a recurring life that would include the desirable aspects of our present life while leaving out the undesirable ones. To give in to such temptation would be to risk losing everything that has been gained. To give in to such temptation, I suggest, would allow the suffering in our present life to begin to reassert its psychological stranglehold.

We would start to slip back into subjugation. We would again come to be dominated by our suffering. We would spend our time trying to minimize it, or avoid it, or ameliorate it, or cure it. We would again become slaves to it. For the same reason, I do not think it will work for us to accept eternal recur- rence merely because of one or a few grand moments—for the sake of which we are willing to tolerate the rest of our lives. Magnus holds that all we need desire is the return of one peak experience.21This suggests that our attitude toward much of our life, even most of it, could be one of toleration, acceptance, or indifference—it could even be negative. All we need do is love one great moment and, because all moments are interconnected (ZIV: “The Drunken Song” 10; WP1032), that then will require us to accept all moments. This would be much easier than actually loving all moments of one’s life—every single detail. The latter is what is demanded in Ecce Homo, which says that amor fati means that one “wants nothingto be different” and that we “[n]ot merely bear what is necessary . . . but loveit” (EH“Clever” 10, emphasis added [except to love]). We want “a Yes-saying without reservation, even to suffering. . . . Nothing in existence may be subtracted, nothing is dispensable . . .” (EH“BT” 2). If we do not love every moment of our present life for its own sake, those moments we do not love, those moments we accept for the sake of one grand moment, I suggest, will begin to wear on us.22We will begin to wish we did not have to suffer through so many of them, we will try to develop strategies for coping with them, we will worry about them, they will start to reassert themselves, they will slowly begin to dominate us, and pretty soon we will again be enslaved by them. Our attitude toward any moment cannot be a desire to avoid it, change it, or reduce it—or it will again begin to dominate us. Indeed, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche says that he had to display a “Russian fatalism.” He did so by tenaciously clinging for years to all but intolerable situations, places, apartments, and society, merely because they happened to be given by accident: it was better than changing them, than feelingthat they could be changed—than rebelling against them. Any attempt to disturb me in this fatalism, to awaken me by force, used to annoy me mortally—and it actually was mortally dangerous every time. Accepting oneself as if fated, not wishing oneself “different”—that is in such cases great reasonitself. (EH“Wise” 6) Eternal recurrence is an attempt to deal with meaningless suffering. It is an attempt to do so that completely rejects an approach to suffering that says, Let’s improve the world, let’s change things, let’s work step by step to remove suffering—the view of liberals and socialists whom Nietzsche so often rails against. If it is impossible to significantly reduce suffering in the world, as Nietzsche thinks it is, then to make it your goal to try to do so is to enslave yourself to that suffering .

ETERNAL RECURRENCE SOLVES FOR SUFFERINGKain, 2k7 (Philip J., “Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and the Horror of Existence”, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, issue 33, Penn state University, Muse)

We have seen that in Nietzsche’s opinion we cannot bear meaningless suffering and so we give it a meaning. Christianity, for example, explains it as punishment for sin. Eternal recurrence, however, would certainly seem to plunge us back into meaningless suffering (WP55). It implies that suffering just happens, it repeats eternally, it is fated. There is no plan, no purpose, no reason for it. Eternal recurrence would seem to rub our noses in meaningless suffering. In one sense this is perfectly correct. And Nietzsche does want to accept as much meaninglessness and suffering as he can bear (BGE39, 225; WP585a). Nevertheless, we must see that there Is meaning here —it is just that it lies precisely in the meaninglessness. Embracing eternal recurrence means imposing suffering on oneself, meaningless suffering, suffering that just happens, suffer- ing for no reason at all. But at the very same time, this

creates the innocence of existence . The meaninglessness of suffering means the innocence of suffering . That is the new meaning that suffering is given. Suffering no longer has its old meaning. Suffering no longer has the meaning Christianity gave to it. Suffering can no longer be seen as punishment. There is no longer any guilt. There is no longer any sin. One is no longer accountable (TI“Errors” 8; HH99). If suffering just returns eternally, if even the slightest change is impossible, how can one be to blame for it? How can one be responsible? It can be none of our doing. We are innocent. This itself could explain why one would be able to embrace eternal recurrence, love every detail of one’s life, not wish to change a single moment of suffering. One would be embracing one’s own innocence. One would be loving one’s own redemption from guilt. Eternal recurrence brings the Übermensch as close as possible to the truth, meaninglessness, the void, but it does not go all the way or it would crush even the Übermensch. Eternal recurrence gives the Übermensch meaning. It eliminates emptiness. It fills the void. With what? It fills it with something totally familiar and completely known; with something that is in no way new, different, or strange; with something that is not at all frightening. It fills the void with one’s own life —repeated eternally. It is true that this life is a life of suffering, but (given the horror of existence) suffering cannot be avoided anyway, and at least suffering has been stripped of any surplus suffering brought about by concepts of sin, punishment, or guilt. It has been reduced to a life of innocence. Moreover, as Nietzsche has said, it is only meaningless suffering that is the problem. If given a meaning, even suffering becomes something we can seek (GMIII:28). Eternal recurrence, the fatedness of suffering, its meaningless repetition, makes our suffering innocent. That might well be reason enough to embrace it. Or, although we may not be able to embrace it ourselves, I think we can at least see why Nietzsche might—and even why it might make sense for him to do so.

Levinas Kritik

Levinas K: Suffering Link

WE MUST BE OVERWHELMED WITH SUFFERING—NOT ATTEMPT TO RATIONALLY REDUCE ITPitkin 01 (Scandalous ethics. Infinite presence with suffering Annabella Pitkin, Barnard College, Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8, No. 5-7, 2001, pp. 231-46)The desire to escape is the most subtle barrier to ethics. In Buddhist terms, beings erroneously believe it is possible to avoid change and therefore pain — beings ‘think there is somewhere to go’ where they can keep their private personal selves from suffering. Even at moments where human beings act to address suffering, there is a subtle impulse to slip away from its difficulty, from the blow suffering deals to the illusion of permanent selves. This impulse to get away can manifest in many ways — in the desire for gratitude, or the desire to control outcomes; in a tendency to reify a helper role or a victim role. People simply do not like to pay attention to what is actually going on moment by moment if it is uncomfortable. Because of this, arguably the first layer of scandal in talking about suffering is the mere fact of forcing it upon the attention at all. Levinas bluntly acknowledges the desire to escape, noting as well that the vision of human freedom and responsibility which he offers is difficult (this even forms the title of one of his books, Difficile Liberté). In Levinasian terms, this desire for escape is a desire to mitigate the shocking otherness — the scandal — of the encounter with suffering, to assimilate the experience and make it one with the self in some way (something we have already seen him critique as totality). This is, of course, an act of violence toward the sufferer, the exact reverse of what is required. Levinas, in keeping with the Jewish tradition on which he draws, insists instead on a sort of ethical hermeneutics a special sort of attentiveness to the other. For Prasangikas, the confrontation with this desire to flee is, in fact, the rejection of absolutism and nihilism. In emotional terms, there is no place to go; there is no reified separate Nirvana of blissfulness which does not relate to samsara. Liberation, in fact, lies in a different understanding of the relation between the absolute level of liberation and its relation to the conventional samsaric realm. That is to say, for the Prasangikas as for Levinas, correct hermeneutic practice is inextricable from developing an ethical relationship to suffering.24 The desire to escape from suffering, intimately entwined with both the egocentric self and the temptation to absolutism and nihilism, is the ultimate target of scandalous

Morality Link

REFERENCES TO MORALITY BELIE OUR PIRMORIDAL INFINITE ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY TO THE OTHERPitkin 01 (Scandalous ethics. Infinite presence with suffering Annabella Pitkin, Barnard College, Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8, No. 5-7, 2001, pp. 231-46)Second, both Prasangika thinkers and Levinas (like Jewish thinkers in general), give practices of interpretation a central role in addressing suffering. Finally, both frame- works respond to suffering as a scandal, in languages that are scandalous. Both deploy the shock of scandal in various ways in order to respond to suffering. The ‘quartet of problems’ which both philosophies confront are four cognitive and moral pitfalls that seem to loom whenever human beings think about suffering. These four are all intimately related and all urgent for both Levinas and the Prasangikas. The initial problem is the egocentric self. From this flow the intertwined philosophical and moral errors of absolutism, nihilism, and the desire to escape suffering to run away and be somewhere else. All of these, unchecked, obstruct compassion and ethics, and lead to further suffering. Levinas and Prasangika thinkers address their attention (and their most scandalous statements) directly at these problems. And yet, as one might suspect from the dra- matic differences in their philosophical universes and languages noted already, the results are quite distinct.7 On the one hand, Prasangikas develop their ideas about compassion and liberation explicitly around a notion of the non-duality of self and others. At the level of ethical practice, this non-duality expresses itself in the idea that all beings fundamentally want the same things — to be truly happy, and free of suffering. This is extended in many practical techniques for cultivating love and compassion toward other beings, including, for example, the practice of considering all beings as one’s beloved mother.8 For Prasangikas and Buddhists in general, suffering is rooted in the misknotwledge that causes attachment to the egocentric self. It is precisely this misknowledge that their scandalous statements confront. As I will describe, it is the realization of non-duality which liberates the practitioner from the egocentric trap, with its attendant sufferings and unethical tendencies. For Prasangikas, liberation from the egocentric self, from all absolutisms, and from the desire to escape, lies in the wisdom of non-dual understanding, in which the pivotal scandal is the emptiness of phenomena. On the other hand, Levinas is urgently concerned with the alterity of the other person. My infinite ethical responsibility for the other explicitly occurs in the context of recognizing the other ’s difference from me: ‘The for-the-other responsive to the neighbour . . . is a responsibility that signifies — or commands — precisely the face in its alterity. . . .’ (Levinas, 1987, p a 106). For Levinas, the fundamental ethical relationship is one of ‘proximity’. Proximity is the opposite of any union that would collapse self and other into a totality, in which Levinas fears the other would be over- whelmed (destroyed, subjugated, assimilated by violence). In ethical proximity, the other, precisely as ‘stranger ’, is my neighbour. The other is the one to whom I am infinitely obligated, or for whom I am infinitely responsible, but whom I never possess, and never assimilate into myself (Levinas, 1987, p. 94). For Levinas, preserving alterity with distance is crucial to the ethical relation. The alterity of the other (and the infinitude this evokes), offer a scandalous corrective to the reification of absolutes into totality and is the heart of ethical engagement. There is thus a profound distinction in approach between Levinas and the Prasangikas. One might say that Levinas emphasizes difference as a hallmark of his ethics, while Prasangikas stress non-difference. To go even further, one could say that there is, in fact, something scandalous for Levinas

about the Prasangika approach, and vice versa. They seem not simply different, but opposed to each other. Each approach could be caricatured using the terms of the other, as precisely that which should be rejected. Perhaps, therefore, there is an underlying scandal in this very project of comparison. I hope to evoke a certain fruitful cognitive dissonance, by presenting together two analyses of suffering that not only employ scandalous elements internally, but that seem to collide together. Yet I suggest that a relationship-in-difference will emerge between the two when brought together, via the notion of scandal. In what fol- lows, I will trace the scandal of emptiness and the scandal of alterity by describing how each system approaches the four pitfalls.

Ethics First

THE QUESTION OF THE AFF IS A PREREQUISITE Campbell, 99 (David, Prof. of International politics at the University of Newcastle, “The Deterritorialization of Responsibilit: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics after the End of Philosophy”, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, Ed. David Campbell and Michael Shapiro, Minnesota Press, pg. 42-43)That this is the problem of politics certainly brooks no disagreement from the argument being made here. However, the discussion above of Levinas's reflections on politics and the state suggested that while his critique of ʻontological totalitarianismʻ unsettled ʻpolitical totalitarianismʻ within states, it did not carry through to the dangers of ʻpolitical totalitarianismʻ that inhere in the strategies necessary to secure (even liberal-democratic) states, or to the question of ʻpolitical totalitarianismʻ between states. Thus, while Critchley supplements Derrida with Levinas in pursuit of the political goal this argument shares, I would suggest that in order to establish the grounds for ʻa form of political life that will repeatedly interrupt all attempts at totalization,ʻ his argument re- quires a resupplementation in the form of Derridean deconstruction. This move connects to Derrida's provocative and suggestive statement that deconstruction can be considered ʻa stroke of luck for politics, for all historical progress.ʻ 71 Part of the reason for this is that deconstruc- tion can be regarded as the ʻat least necessary condition for identifying and combatting the totalitarian risk.ʻ76 To see how this is so, recall that the containers of politics are indispensably deconstructible because their foundations of authority are ʻmystical.ʻ At the same time, remember that such structures exist and exercise power because the interpretive and performative coup de force that brings them into being occludes the mystery within that unfounded process. Consider also that the greatest acts of violence in history have been made possible by the apparent nat- uralness of their practices, by the appearance that those carrying them out are doing no more than following commands necessitated by the order of things, and how that order has often been understood in terms of the survival of a (supposedly pregiven) state, people, or culture. Then it is possible to appreciate that only if we examine, through strategies of deconstruction (among others), the coup de force that encloses this logic in a timeless quality can we resist such violence,.ʻ Indeed, we can say that without deconstruction there might be no questions of ethics, politics, or responsibility. Were there in fact secure foundations, privileged epistemological grounds, and unquestionable ontological bases ʻsomehow removed from the strife, investments, and contamination regularly asso- ciated with them then social action would be no more than the auto- matic operation of a knowledge, and ethics and politics would be no more than technology.

ETHICS REQUIRES AN INFINITE RESPONSIBILITYMyers, 1999 (D.G., Texas A&M University “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, Fall http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/myers/responsible.html)Socrates’ deontological advice that it is better to suffer injustice than to cause it (Gorgias 469c) is of small assistance to him who is rasped by the mauvaise conscience that he has already caused injustice. "Self-consciousness is not an inoffensive action in which the self takes note of its being," Levinas says; "it is inseparable from a consciousness of justice and injustice" ("Religion for Adults" 16). What he proposes

is to replace deontology with a counterfactual ethics of responsibility. If I am not guilty of hurting another I cannot be blamed for it, but if I nevertheless feel accused of it I can take responsibility for it . In this way perhaps I can both ease my conscience and begin to repair any damage that I might have caused. My responsibility to the person I might have hurt—the human Other or Autrui, in Levinas’s terminology—preempts any claims of my own. Because the injury is counterfactual, because it is not specified and therefore not limited, my relation to the other is a relation of infinite responsibility , which means there is no escaping it ("Transcendence and Height" 20-21).8 In Buber’s familiar terms, not to respond is to treat the other as an It rather than a Thou, an object to which things are done rather than a person with whom I might speak. But for Levinas there is no not responding. To ignore another to shame her, to make her aware of her isolation from me, and thus to duck the responsibility for not hurting her in these ways. Everyone is responsible to another whether he knows it or not. Being human is living in responsibility. Levinas’s ethics are not prescriptive, then, but descriptive. It is not that I should be responsible; I already am responsible by virtue of having consciousness. Every new encounter with another raises the question how I am going to respond to her. Although it is not prescribed, how to respond is a decision entirely within my command. Either I can accept responsibility or I can default—there is no third alternative. The injustice to another "imposes itself upon me," Levinas says, "without my being able to be deaf to its call or to forget it, that is, without my being able to suspend my responsibility for its distress" ("Meaning and Sense" 54).These days we like to say that knowledge is ideological, by which we mean that it belongs to a historical world and is composed by the particular interests of that world. But a human being cannot be reduced to an object of knowledge; the effort to do so is "disturbed and jostled by another presence," which cannot be "integrated into the world"—namely, the presence of a human face ("Meaning and Sense" 53). This is perhaps Levinas’s most famous insight. The human face is the site of human personality. "The face is not the mere assemblage of a nose, a forehead, eyes, etc.," he says; "it is all that, of course, but takes on the meaning of a face through the new dimension it opens up in the perception of a being" ("Ethics and Spirit" 8). The other is always already a Thou, because she has a face; she foredooms every effort to reduce her to an It, because objects do not have faces. When I look upon the other’s face, I perceive the presence of something more than a composition of interests: I glimpse a being. Her face establishes her uniqueness, her irreducibility to explanatory context, her being-in-herself. Perhaps I can account for her behavior, but I can never account for her face. Her presence before me, revealed by her face, is a summons to respond, to bestir and thus to identify myself: "here I am" ("God and Philosophy" 182-84).9 The I-Thou relation is constitutive of the self, not the other. I construct myself as a person by how I respond to others. But I can also deconstruct myself. I can withhold myself in unresponsive silence, leaving open the possibility that I have treated the other unjustly, or I can seize her in an effort to know her, committing an act of violence which transforms counterfactual injustice into actual injustice ("Transcendence and Height" 15-17).

Utilitarianism Link

UTILITARIANISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH AN ETHICS OF OTHERNESSReynolds 06 – Lecturer at the University of Tasmania, Australia, (Jack, “Negotiating the Non-negotiable: Rawls, Derrida, and the Intertwining of Political Calculation and 'Ultra-politics'” Project Muse, http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v009/9.3reynolds.html)

Although Derrida and Rawls both privilege justice over other important political concepts like equality and freedom, Rawls insists that the principles of justice as fairness must attain a 'reflective equilibrium' whereas Derrida contends that justice is always that which disrupts any equilibrium. But what does Rawls mean by this idea of reflective equilibrium? Well, it needs to be noted that Rawls begins A Theory of Justice by rejecting what he calls 'intuitionism', which is the idea that there are certain principles of action that are self-evident to our moral sense (we might call this 'commonsensism'). From his perspective, we need a theory that shows why certain situations intuitively elicit disapproval in us, not just that they do illicit disapproval. More famously, Rawls also rejects the focus on rationality of utilitarianism, which engenders all of these well-known situations where we might, for example, owe an unknown Rwandan the same degree of moral concern as we do members of our immediate family. Rawls' notion of a reflective equilibrium is an attempt to avoid this kind of either/or dilemma and to better mesh our rational judgements with our intuitions. To put the idea as simply as possible, he suggests that we move back and forth from our deeply held moral intuitions (common-sense) and an analysis of the principles that inform those intuitions, to our considered and rational judgments (TJ 48). While our intuitions may be confused or inconsistent, as they clearly often are, Rawls contends that by advancing principles that accord with most of our intuitions and by re-examining those intuitions that are outside this spectrum, we may move, step by step, towards a position of 'reflective equilibrium' in which our intuitions are more fully in harmony with our principles. On his view, our considered judgments can and will change as their regulative principles come to light and the veil of ignorance plays an important role in testing our principles. Sometimes we may be forced to modify our account of the 'original position' such that it yields more readily to our intuitions, sometimes we will have to give up our intuitions, even deeply held ones. In this way, we can move back and forth from the general (our considered judgments under the test of the 'veil') to the particular (our intuitions), and systematize and adjust each in the hope that we will eventually establish something akin to a reflective equilibrium. Although Rawls is evasive about the specificities of this process (particularly in A Theory of Justice), there seem to be two main structural ways of reaching such an equilibrium. Firstly, by contending that there is a dialectic between our socially grounded intuitions and our considered judgments that is infinitely revisable. On this understanding, Rawls' reflective equilibrium simply negotiates a middle way between intuitionism and the rationality of utilitarianism. Rather than intuitions or rationality being sufficient on their own, we need to play them off against each other until we have a considered and coherent system or worldview. However, any such non-teleological (in the traditional sense) dialectical theory deprives morality of any ultimate ground and becomes a form of relativism. Given his wavering commitment to moral objectivism it seems that Rawls does not want this (TJ 56) and at other points in A Theory of Justice he suggests that there are some initial opinions, or intuitions, that must be accommodated, such as that racism is unjust (TJ 19). If, as it seems, Rawls is committed to arguing that there are some foundational intuitions that get to the heart of the principles of 'justice as fairness', then there are many

questions that need to be answered that are not, at least in A Theory of Justice. Most obviously, he doesn't justify this claim, nor suggest which intuitions are to be preferred over others and why. Which are the core intuitions that are to be used in this trade-off with our considered judgments? All cannot be, granting that our intuitions are often in conflict with one another. Why even think that our intuitions are helpful at all in cashing out the principles of justice as fairness?

Ontological Totalitarianism Impact

OUR ETHICAL STANCE IS CRUCIAL TO RESIST THE ONTOLOGICAL TOTALITARIANISM THAT VIEWS ALTERITY ONLY IN TERMS OF SAMENESS AND DOMINATION AND MAKES VIOLENCE INEVITABLECampbell, 99 (David, Prof. of International politics at the University of Newcastle, “The Deterritorialization of Responsibilit: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics after the End of Philosophy”, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, Ed. David Campbell and Michael Shapiro, Minnesota Press, pg. 30-31)In this contemporary milieu, a 1934 essay by Emmanuel Levinas (ʻRe- flections on the Philosophy of Hitlerismʻ) has been republished with a preface offering a different account of danger. In that short note, Levinas argued that the origins of National Socialism's ̒ bloody barbarism ̒ were not to be found in an aberration of reasoning or an accident of ideology, but rather in ̒ the essential possibility of elemental Evil into which we can be led by logic and against which Western philosophy had not sufficiently insured itself.ʻ4 Moreover, the possibility of evil as a product of reason, something against which Western philosophy had no guard, was ̒ inscribed within the ontology of a being concerned with being .ʻ As such, this possibility remains a risk: it ̒ still threatens the subject correlative with being as gathering together and as dominating, ̒ even though this subjec t (the subject of liberalism and humanism) is ̒ the famous subject of transcendental idealism that before all else wishes to be free and thinks itself free. ̒ 5 5 In this statement, Levinas offered the core of a thought with the potential to chart an ethical course for subjects implicated in deconstruction but who want to resist destruction. Levinas's philosophy-that of ethics as first philosophy- is ʻdominated by the presentiment and the memory of the Nazi hor- ror,ʻ6 and from under the shadow of Auschwitz seeks to install a disposition that will prevent its repetition. Yet this summons is not answered by the admonition to return to the dominant moral-philosophical dis- course of modernity with its traditional concept of responsibility, where ethics is most often understood in terms of the moral codes and commands pertaining to autonomous agents (whether they be individuals or states).8 For Levinas, being beholden by reason to elements of that tradition was the basis upon which the Holocaust (among other related atrocities) was possible.' Instead, Levinas argues that in order to con- front evil it is the totalities of that moral-philosophical discourse that must be contested, for ̒ political totalitarianism rests on an ontological totalitarianism. ʻ 10 The critique of ̒ ontological totalitarianism ̒ puts Levinas in tension with the legacies of (Greek) philosophy, at least insofar as Levinas understands that philosophy to have been dominated by a way of think- ing in which truth is equivalent to presence. ʻBy this I mean an intelli- gibility that considers truth to be that which is present or copresent, that which can be gathered or synchronized into a totality that we would call the world or cosmos.ʻ11 That which is Other is thereby reduced to the Same. This transformation is considered by Levinas to be an ʻalchemy that is performed with the philosopher's stone of the knowing ego,ʻ a a being concerned with being.l2 ʻPolitical totalitarianismʻ originates in this privilege granted to presence because it disenables and resists an understanding of that which cannot be thematized, the ʻotherwise than Being.ʻ13 In this context, antisemitism - as one of the bases for the Nazi horror-is more than ̒ the hostility felt by a majority towards a minority, nor only xenophobia, nor any ordinary racism. ̒ Instead, it can be understood as ̒ a repugnance felt for the unknown within the psyche of the Other, for the mystery of its interority or... a repugnance felt for the pure proximity of the other man, for sociality itself.”