Smith Meets Singer: Duties Beyond the Humble Department

Suppose, on your usual walk to work, you pass a shallow pond. Looking into the pond, you see a small child drowning. You can easily wade into the pond and pull the child out, but doing so will result in a few inconveniences: your clothes will get muddy, the shoes you just bought will be ruined, and you will be late for work. Should you save the child? The obvious answer to most of us would be yes. The sacrifices we’d make in this scenario are trivial when compared to the life of a child.¹

But what if your sacrifice was larger? Consider a man named Bob, who has invested most of his savings into a Bugatti automobile that he is unable to insure. The Bugatti is Bob’s pride and joy, and he plans to retire one day, sell the car, and live comfortably on the profits. One day, Bob parks the Bugatti near some railroad tracks and goes for a walk. While on his walk he sees a runaway train with no one on board rolling toward an oblivious child, who is too absorbed in playing on the tracks to notice the train. Bob cannot stop the train and is too far away from the child for her to hear him give a warning shout, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train into his Bugatti. Doing so would result in no loss of life, but Bob’s Bugatti would be destroyed. Since he cares deeply about the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch.² Bob’s inaction does not necessarily result in the child dying. It’s possible that the child might eventually notice the train and leap to safety. But Bob still prioritizes his retirement over the serious and immediate risk that the child could die.³

In the experience of Australian philosopher Peter Singer, most people believe that Bob acted badly in not throwing the switch. According to him, there is a serious implication of such a belief: whenever any of us choose to save for retirement, we are acting as badly as Bob, as the money we saved could have gone toward saving lives in the present.⁴

The Singerian Argument

As of March 2026, there were 847 million people living in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as living on less than $3.00 a day.⁵ These people are vulnerable to malnutrition and starvation and are usually unable to access life-​saving and preventative health services.⁶ UNICEF estimated that in 2024 the number of children that died below the age of five was 4.9 million, largely from preventable, poverty-​related causes.⁷ Many of them could have been saved through simple and inexpensive means.⁸ For example, each year malaria kills over 600,000 people (mostly children under five), and it only costs five to seven dollars per treatment to protect a child against malaria, either through preventative medicine or mosquito nets. Thanks to globalization and the internet, any of us can contribute to helping those children: GiveWell, a leading charity evaluator, has identified Malaria Consortium and Against Malaria Foundation as two effective charities that work on this problem. You can donate to either of them through GiveWell’s website.⁹

Singer’s 1972 essay, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (henceforth “FAM”), starts from the assumption that “suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care [is] bad.”¹⁰ He then posits a second assumption that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it”.¹¹It has already been posited that anyone with an internet connection has the power to prevent some amount of suffering. It has also already been argued that many of us believe we are morally compelled to sacrifice something of minor importance to prevent something bad from happening. Most people believe that you ought to sacrifice your new shoes to save the drowning child, and many of us would take it a step further to say that Bob ought to sacrifice his Bugatti to save the child playing on the railroad tracks. Therefore, Singer’s second assumption does not seem unreasonable. It is from these two assumptions that Singer presents his main argument: You ought morally to give to others to prevent their suffering until you reach the level of marginal utility where giving any more would cause yourself as much suffering as an additional donation would alleviate.¹²

If acted upon, Singer’s argument would dramatically alter the way we live. Furthermore, it has two equally radical implications. The first is that his principle does not take into account any considerations of proximity or distance. To Singer, “if we accept any principle of impartiality, universalizability, equality, or whatever,” then we cannot justify prioritizing those closest to us over those far away from us.¹³ If there is, anywhere in the world, suffering that you can prevent, you have a moral obligation in his framework to prevent it, provided that doing so does not preclude your doing something else that would even better improve the good of the whole. Further, much of Singer’s activism post-“FAM” has been dedicated to arguing that you should maximize the amount of good you do with the dollars you donate. For those in wealthy countries, this means forgoing giving to local causes in favor of giving to those in poor countries with which you have no ties. You simply can alleviate much more suffering per dollar donated if you send your money abroad.¹⁴

The second implication of Singer’s argument is that it is irrelevant whether anyone else is adhering to the principle laid out in his argument. Since hardly anyone we encounter gives in the way Singer believes is morally required of us, it’s tempting to absolve ourselves by pointing out that no one else gives the required amount. However, this should make no real difference to our moral obligations. If, in the drowning child example, we see other adults who are not attempting to save the child, does that absolve us from having to save the child? Singer argues that it would be absurd to say that it does, so why would it be any different with extreme poverty?¹⁵

Singer says that his argument amounts to a reframing of our traditional moral categories. Many of us draw a distinction between duty and charity. If we donate to charity, then we are considered generous, implying that our donation was not strictly required of us. The man who is not charitable is likewise not condemned. Under Singer’s argument, however, that framing is completely shifted. Since we are morally compelled to give away everything we have in excess, doing so is not charitable or generous but simply performing our duty, and it would be morally wrong not to do so.¹⁶

The Smithian Approach to the Singerian Question

Despite living and writing nearly 200 years before Singer wrote FAM, Adam Smith devoted a considerable amount of space in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (henceforth TMS) to thinking about similar moral issues.

In Part III, Section III of TMS, Smith addresses a set of philosophers who he calls the “whining and melancholy moralists.” Smith says that the goal of the whining and melancholy moralists is to increase our sensibilities about the interests of others. Such moralists constantly reproach us for the natural joy that comes from our comfort and security. How can we be so happy when there are so many people who languish in poverty, malnutrition, disease, and the horrors of death? According to such moralists, the suffering of others ought to instill in us a melancholy that dampens our happiness.¹⁷ Smith doesn’t discuss the motives of the melancholy moralists much further. But he took issue with their position, for he understood that we are often incapable of alleviating the suffering of others. We should, therefore, feel no obligation to dampen our own joy when doing so can have no possible positive effect on the suffering of strangers.

Smith describes the proposed sympathy for those we know nothing about as being “altogether absurd and unreasonable.” He says that such a disposition is unattainable in humans, and even if it were attainable, “[it] would be perfectly useless, and could serve no other purpose than to render miserable the person who possessed it.” When this disposition of the mind is directed toward “those with whom we have no acquaintance or connexion, and who are placed altogether out of the sphere of our activity,” all it can do is generate anxiety within ourselves, without any benefit to those toward whom it is directed.¹⁸

Smith says that our lack of sympathy for such unfortunate people seems “to have been wisely ordered to us by Nature,” as humankind would gain nothing by it being otherwise. It is this belief that helps us understand how Smith sees our duties to universal benevolence. While Smith does believe that a wise and virtuous man¹⁹ would be willing to sacrifice his interests for the good of the whole, “the administration of the great system of the universe, however, … is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension; the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country.”²⁰ For Smith, the approach Singer proposes extends outside the scope of our duties. Instead, we ought to care primarily for those closest to us; that is the “humble department” that we occupy and should dutifully fulfill.

In an essay addressing similar themes, Erik Matson affirms this interpretation. According to Matson, Smith saw self-​love, which serves to ensure the good of the individual and, by extension, the human species, and prudence, which speaks to the manner in which we ought to carry out our pursuits, as informing how we should carry out our duties of universal benevolence.²¹ While Smith saw serving the good of the whole as ethically supreme, we ought to care for ourselves first and foremost because we are part of the whole and have the most intimate knowledge of our circumstances. The argument here is about the effectiveness of beneficence. Extending this principle, we should proportion our beneficent efforts on the basis of our knowledge, caring next for our family and then for our community, with a diminishing moral obligation as the objects of our beneficence become less familiar. It is through this that we are able, as Smith says, “to co-​operate with the Deity,” where we serve the interests of all of humankind by using our local knowledge to improve our humble department.²²

Does the argument about the effectiveness of beneficence hold up against Singer? It is important to note that there is a degree of overlap between the two. Singer’s argument does not suggest that you should forgo your own basic needs: the successful administration of aid to the suffering requires that you do not forgo them.²³ Up to the point of meeting your basic needs and the basic needs of those closest to you, Smith’s argument applies. If your child and a poor child in Africa both lack what Smith called “the necessaries” of life,²⁴ you would be more effective in taking care of your own child. However, Smith’s point about local knowledge becomes less relevant in the case that your child’s basic needs are met while the poor child’s are not. It does not take intimate knowledge to know that, once your child’s basic needs are met, the child who is vulnerable to dying from malaria is in far greater need of help. We need to confront the possibility that the domain in which we render benefit may need to be expanded in a world where we can far more readily help those living in extreme poverty.

However, the fact that Singer’s principle is so demanding of us does pose serious challenges to our ability to act on it. Recall that Singer proposes a reframing of our traditional moral categories: It is now simply our duty to donate everything we have, save the essentials needed for our survival, and it is no longer framed as a virtuous or generous act. Unsurprisingly, this cuts against traditional Smithian notions of morality. All moral sentiments relate to a sense of propriety, or a sense of performing what is expected of us. Performing above that is praiseworthy; performing below that is blameworthy.

Donating nearly everything you have and have worked for would be universally considered a near-​superhuman achievement. The binary nature of the Singerian moral framework means that all of us have to be Smith’s “wise and virtuous man” to even meet the standard of propriety. If no one in our society can do so, then how can we assess our conduct against the conduct of others?

Singerism in Practice

Even though Singer advocates for a principle that seems unnatural and unworkable, it’s hard to deny that the Effective Altruism (EA) movement, which was inspired by his work, has done a lot of good. Members of the EA movement seek to do the most good that they can in the world by donating as much as possible to the most effective charities.²⁵ The movement’s related organizations have donated over $200 million to effective charities, with over $13 billion pledged to be donated.²⁶ GiveWell estimates that donations to their top-​rated charities averted over 270,000 deaths from 2009 to 2023.²⁷ If the standard advocated in “FAM” is nearly impossible to attain, how has a movement based off of the principle of “FAM” been effective?

The answer lies in Singer’s advocacy after “FAM,” which suggests a more modest approach. In his 2015 and 2019 books The Most Good You Can Do and The Life You Can Save, Singer’s arguments about how much you should give to the poor are far less radical than those in “FAM.” In The Life You Can Save, he questions if there is a point to having a standard that “cuts so strongly against the grain of human nature that virtually [no one would] follow it.”²⁸ Instead, he proposes a much easier standard: those who are financially comfortable should donate five percent of their annual income, and those who are richer should give significantly more.²⁹ Giving What We Can, an organization founded by Effective Altruists Toby Ord and Will MacAskill, likewise promotes a “10% Pledge,” where members pledge to give away ten percent of their income “thoughtfully and strategically.”³⁰

The standard of propriety proposed by the EA movement is now such that we can reasonably expect most people to be able to adhere to it. It is now more likely that we will start giving in the first place, and it is further more likely that we will hold others accountable to this standard and render blame and praise as needed. In doing this, Singer, and by extension the Effective Altruism movement, make it more likely that people will contribute to the goal of alleviating as much suffering in the world as possible.

Some Smithian Challenges to Singer

Smith said we have duties to those with whom we have a “connexion.” Modern technology has greatly widened our span of possible “connexions.” In some respects, it has, loosely, connected us to billions of people. With this widened span of possibilities, however, we face a bewildering problem of deciding the “connexions” to which we shall give our attention, money, or other resources.

What causes do most good? Many Effective Altruists focus their efforts on abstract issues, like AI safety or nuclear war, believing that their efforts can prevent future suffering even if they don’t prevent current suffering. Under this logic, maybe the most effective use of your ten percent is to donate to organizations (like the Cato Institute!) that promote traditionally liberal (i.e. libertarian) institutions. Arguably, the primary cause of the poverty reduction that has occurred over the past 200 years has been the economic dynamism and innovation that depends on a healthy degree of economic freedom. Or perhaps charitable donation isn’t the most effective route. Investing in profit-​driven entrepreneurs in Africa to, say, create a water purification system can more sustainably solve the problem of unclean water than donating to charities that treat the effects of unclean water. Singer’s challenge gives us a lot to think about.