For the most part, interactions with strangers are governed by the principle of nonmaleficence—Do not harm—and the corresponding virtue of being disposed not to hurt others. This is a “negative” obligation not to interfere with their endeavors. There is no “positive” obligation to help others satisfy their desires, even when those desires are deeply felt or central to individuals’ life plans. My strong desire to buy a house places no obligation on you to help me, and a religious group’s fervent desire to build a church places no obligation on us to help them. There is not even a presumption of goodness in helping others to satisfy their desires; everything depends on the situation and the kind of desire involved.
Matters are different, however, with basic human needs. Basic needs are the necessities for subsistence and significant life, including food, shelter, medical care, and, in contemporary society, literacy and legal assistance in protecting civil rights. At the very least, there is a presumption of goodness in helping people who are unable by themselves to meet their own needs. It is only a presumption because other moral considerations might intervene: What if the person is Stalin or Saddam Hussein? Is there in addition an obligation, however limited, to help others meet their basic needs?
Simple decency, which is the minimal standard of benevolence, leads us to endorse the principle of mutual aid: we have a responsibility to help people meet their basic needs when they are unable to meet them through their own efforts and when helping requires little or no significant sacrifice to us. The question of when people are unable to meet their basic needs must be answered contextually, by examining particular individuals in specific settings. But what is a significant sacrifice? It is a voluntary lessening of one’s overall good for the sake of someone else. One’s overall good, as I understand it, is self-fulfillment—the development of talents so as to achieve happiness and meaningful life. Roughly, then, I make a significant sacrifice whenever I lower (or risk lowering) the ability to develop my talents so as to achieve meaningful and happy life.
The principle of mutual aid is vague, but not vacuous. It has numerous straightforward applications. If I can save you from drowning by throwing a life preserver, I ought to throw it. If I can prevent an infant from drinking poison by removing a bottle of Chlorox, then I ought to remove it. If I can prevent a murder by making a phone call, then I ought to make the call.
The last situation occurred in 1964. in Queens, New York.5 Kitty Genovese was returning home at 3.20 a.m. from her job as a night manager. Moments after parking her car she was attacked and stabbed by a man she had never met before. Thirty-eight neighbors heard her screams for help. One man yelled, “Let that girl alone”; no one else did anything. The attacker walked away, then returned in a few minutes and stabbed her again. This time no one even yelled out in response to her loud cries. The attacker drove away, only to return a third time, when he finally killed her. Thirty-five minutes elapsed from the first attack to the third, fatal stabbing. When the police were finally called they arrived within two minutes, indicating that an earlier call would have prevented the murder. According to the principle of mutual aid, that call was obligatory.
Does the principle of mutual aid imply a general obligation to engage in philanthropy? Not by itself. We can imagine a world where basic needs are met without the need for philanthropy, a world of fewer hardships, as well as more effective economies and governments. Our world, however, is characterized by four glaring realities.
First, millions of people urgently require help to meet their most basic needs. More than a billion people “live in conditions of abject poverty—starving, idle, and numbed by ignorance.”6 More than thirty thousand people starve to death each day, many of them children. Second, sufficient resources are available to remedy this suffering, if only there were sufficient social cooperation. Third, huge disparities exist between the privileged and the poor, and well-off people are able to help without themselves becoming poor. Fourth, governments are not preventing the suffering through adequate levels of taxation and effective distribution of resources; often they do little beyond making politically expedient token gestures. Taken together with the principle of mutual aid, these four realities place responsibilities on us to aid destitute people by engaging in appropriate forms of philanthropy.