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| The Life You Can Save | |
|---|---|
| Name | The Life You Can Save |
| Author | Peter Singer |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Ethics, Charity |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Pub date | 2009 |
| Pages | 192 |
| Isbn | 978-0812983419 |
The Life You Can Save is a 2009 book by Peter Singer that argues for effective altruism and moral obligation to alleviate global poverty. The work links utilitarian ethics with practical philanthropy and helped catalyze networks, debates, and institutions concerned with global health, development, and ethical giving. It intersects with thinkers, organizations, and movements spanning philosophy, economics, and humanitarian action.
Singer compares moral philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Derek Parfit, Henry Sidgwick, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, Thomas Nagel, and G. E. Moore while discussing charitable organizations like Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, CARE International, Save the Children, and The Gates Foundation. He invokes figures such as Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Aung San Suu Kyi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Amartya Sen to frame moral landscapes and policy responses, and cites economists including Angus Deaton, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, William Easterly, Jeffrey Sachs, Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz to situate poverty debates. The book also references practical evaluators like GiveWell, Effective Altruism, The Humane League, Animal Charity Evaluators, GlobalGiving, and Charity Navigator.
Singer’s arguments build on academic work at institutions such as Princeton University, Monash University, Oxford University, Harvard University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Harvard Kennedy School, London School of Economics, and Stanford University. The book emerged amid policy discussions involving United Nations Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development Goals, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Health Organization, United States Agency for International Development, and initiatives like The Global Fund, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Clinton Global Initiative. Singer’s earlier essays in venues tied to The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The Atlantic helped lead to the wider platform for the book.
Singer adapts utilitarian reasoning associated with Bentham and Mill and modern ethicists such as Derek Parfit and Peter Unger to argue obligations to distant strangers, referencing works by Thomas Pogge, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Kant, and Martha Nussbaum. He emphasizes cost-effectiveness metrics drawing on Gary Becker-style analysis and randomized controlled trial proponents Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, and evaluators like GiveWell and Development Impact Bond pilots linked to UK Department for International Development and Philanthropy Roundtable. Singer connects to organizational ethics exemplified by Oxfam International and CARE, and to activist histories involving Live Aid, Band Aid, Make Poverty History, and humanitarian responses to crises like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The book influenced networks including Effective Altruism, 80,000 Hours, Charity Science, Giving What We Can, The Life You Can Save organization, GiveDirectly, The Centre for Effective Altruism, and donor-advised funds such as The Effective Altruism Funds. It sparked discussion across media outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The Economist, Time (magazine), The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and broadcast outlets like BBC, NPR, CNN, and ABC News. Academic engagement involved scholars at Princeton, Oxford, Harvard, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and journals such as Philosophy & Public Affairs and Journal of Political Philosophy.
Critics from traditions including communitarianism and scholars like Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Susan Moller Okin, Michael Walzer, Amartya Sen, William Easterly, Angus Deaton, and Dambisa Moyo contested Singer’s conclusions on cultural context, aid effectiveness, and moral demandingness. Debates engaged policy actors including Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, CARE International, UNICEF, World Food Programme, and economists at World Bank and IMF. Ethical critiques referenced thinkers such as Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, Elizabeth Anderson, Charles Taylor, Hannah Arendt, and Alison Jaggar.
Institutions affected include Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GiveWell, GiveDirectly, UNICEF, GAVI, The Global Fund, USAID, DFID, Norad, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, European Commission, and philanthropic vehicles like Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Rockefeller Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Omidyar Network, and Wellcome Trust. Governments and think tanks including Brookings Institution, Center for Global Development, Institute of Development Studies, Chatham House, Council on Foreign Relations, Rand Corporation, Heritage Foundation, and Cato Institute engaged with cost-effectiveness arguments in policy design, conditional cash transfer programs inspired by Brazil's Bolsa Família, Mexico's Progresa/Oportunidades, and randomized evaluation approaches promoted by J-PAL.
Singer’s book influenced cultural conversations intersecting with events like Live 8, TED Conference, Davos (World Economic Forum), celebrity philanthropy involving Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, George Soros, Angelina Jolie, Bono, Leonardo DiCaprio, Taylor Swift, Pharrell Williams, and media such as The Simpsons, South Park, The Daily Show, and documentaries aired on PBS and Channel 4. The legacy continues through university societies, public lectures at TEDx, academic courses at Princeton University, Monash University, University of Oxford, and ongoing debates among philosophers, economists, activists, and major institutions shaping twenty-first-century philanthropy and global health.
Category:Books about ethics