James Grant, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, discusses objections to the belief that well-off people have extremely demanding obligations to poor people in other countries. The views of J. L. Mackie, Bernard Williams, Samuel Scheffler, Liam Murphy and Garrett Cullity are considered. He then considers Murphy and Cullity's arguments that well-off people have less demanding obligations to poor people in other countries.

Global Poverty: Philosophical Questions

2. Arguments from Beneficence, Part 2

These lectures are about the moral obligations that well-off people have toward poor people living in other countries. Poverty kills about one-third of humankind. Many philosophers argue that the average person in a rich country has a moral obligation to do something about this. These lectures introduce those arguments, as well as the objections that others have raised against them. They show how contemporary moral philosophy deals with what many regard as the most important moral problem facing the world today.

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Global Poverty: Philosophical Questions