How much do we really owe people in desperate need once we take seriously both the real-world consequences of aid and what it means to be a good person?
My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.
1. Guest
Larry Temkin is distinguished professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, and his research focuses primarily on normative ethics and political philosophy. His book is "Being Good in a World of Need".
2. Interview Summary
Larry Temkin discusses his forthcoming book Being Good in a World of Need, framed as a response to the question “What do we owe the needy?”—especially in a world where many people are born into severe deprivation through no fault of their own. Rutgers University is introduced as his home institution, and he explains that the book is written for multiple audiences at once: ordinary readers who want to help but aren’t sure how demanding morality is, students encountering these issues in ethics courses, and also policy/charity professionals. Peter Singer looms large as the key foil—Temkin is explicitly writing for readers who’ve absorbed Singer-style conclusions—and he also targets the Effective Altruism audience in particular, noting that his own thinking has shifted from earlier sympathy with that framework.
A recurring methodological thread is how to treat moral intuitions and moral theory-building. Temkin identifies as a moral objectivist, but emphasizes that the practical questions still matter even if (as some subjectivists hold) morality is ultimately a human construction: we still have to decide what kind of community and world we want to build, and what traits we should cultivate. Intuitions, on his view, function like “data points” for ethical theorizing—important to accommodate and explain, but never beyond revision in light of arguments, reflection, and historical awareness that whole societies (and even major philosophers) have had deeply misguided moral “seemings.” Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong comes up here as a touchstone for the idea that, invention or not, the project of shaping a better moral world remains urgent.
The heart of the interview is Temkin’s critique of moving too quickly from simple “rescue” cases to sweeping conclusions about global giving. He uses an updated version of the drowning-child case—now involving a sentimental, expensive watch—to argue that a decent person should save the child in front of them rather than delay in order to sell the watch and donate to an “effective” charity that could save more lives; this is meant to show that “doing the most good” can conflict with virtues and with what being a good person requires. The Life You Can Save is mentioned as emblematic of the streamlined Singer-style approach that Temkin thinks overlooks crucial complications. From there he stresses how real-world aid can generate hard-to-measure indirect harms: corruption and “perverse incentives,” the draining of scarce local talent from essential institutions, and the risk of “ethical imperialism” that disrespects autonomy and local values when outsiders push reforms. He then brings in Angus Deaton’s argument that large-scale aid can undermine governments’ accountability to their citizens, and connects this to Derek Parfit–style “each-we” dilemmas: individually sensible, compassionate choices can aggregate into collectively worse outcomes—especially when many tiny burdens are dispersed across huge populations, illustrated by his “lollipops for lives” style tradeoff. The upshot is not “don’t help,” but “help with a more realistic moral lens”: one that tracks systemic effects, collective-action structure, and the moral costs of imposing solutions from the outside.
3. Interview Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:42 - Who the book is for
07:00 - Relevance to COVID
13:50 - Intuitions
24:42 - Ethical thought experiments
41:16 - Ethical imperialism
51:28 - Each/we dilemmas
1:07:48 - Evidentialist approach
1:14:29 - Evidentialist response
1:19:57 - Obligations to help
1:25:04 - Conclusion
