- #1
Dissident Dan
- 238
- 2
Can we have ethical obligations to help others? Do we have have ethical obligations to help others?
My take is that in a world in which one can remain causally unconnected to others or where one can live a life without doing harm to others, there is not much of a case that there is an inherent obligation to help others, although doing so would be a good idea (but not mandatory), as a society of helpers is overall more pleasurable for most people, and individual acts of kindness would be good, but not mandatory.
However, in the world that we live in, it is impossible to live without somehow negatively affecting another being. One could then argue that, in order to make up for this, we incur an obligation to help others.
My take is that in a world in which one can remain causally unconnected to others or where one can live a life without doing harm to others, there is not much of a case that there is an inherent obligation to help others, although doing so would be a good idea (but not mandatory), as a society of helpers is overall more pleasurable for most people, and individual acts of kindness would be good, but not mandatory.
However, in the world that we live in, it is impossible to live without somehow negatively affecting another being. One could then argue that, in order to make up for this, we incur an obligation to help others.