Elucidando o Argumento da Obrigação de Ajudar de Singer

Abstract

Extreme poverty is without any doubt a human malady we should fight. It is hard to find someone who dispute it. In face of the immense ailment that it represents for humanity, Peter Singer says to us that we have the moral duty to act in ways to, at minimum, alleviate it. According to him, considering that is possible to do it without sacrifice anything of comparable moral importance – a small contribution to the right institution is enough to achieve the aim of alleviate poverty – there is no reason to think that we should not to do such thing. In order to defend this idea, Singer presented what became known as the “obligation to assist argument”. The most important aim of this paper is to elucidate the premises and the conclusion of this argument, such as it was presented by Singer. Considering that most people does not know what really means “to help the poor”, this is made in order to provide a more precise comprehension of what is really at stake at the Singerian argumentation and what would be our duties to the poor. Finally, we discuss if our obligation to assist the poor should be, in fact, alleviate or fight the problem of extreme poverty at its causes.