Common threads · 6 books
Distance, poverty, rights, and real opportunities. Move from personal duties to the institutions that shape other people's lives.
Books, curator notes, and what to read next.
Peter Singer
Use Singer's applied arguments as cases to evaluate, paying attention to how equal consideration differs from identical treatment.
Next: The Life You Can Save
Peter Singer
Singer makes distance and everyday spending morally uncomfortable. Test how much help his argument requires of one person.
Next: What We Owe to Each Other
T. M. Scanlon
Scanlon grounds wrongness in principles others could reasonably reject. Try the test with a case involving unequal burdens.
Next: World Poverty and Human Rights
Thomas Winfried Menko Pogge
Pogge shifts attention from charity to institutions that contribute to deprivation. Ask what responsibility follows from participation.
Next: Creating Capabilities
Martha Nussbaum
Nussbaum evaluates societies by what people can actually do and be. Compare this approach with income-based measures.
Next: The Idea of Justice
Amartya Sen
Sen starts with remediable injustice rather than a perfectly designed society. Try comparing two imperfect alternatives.
Also includes Creating Capabilities
A political philosophy seminar on rights, distribution, oppression, and capabilities. Try each theory on the same real disagreement.
Also includes What We Owe to Each Other
Compare consequences, duty, virtue, and reasonable rejection, then ask whether a single moral theory can do all the work.
More paths featuring Peter Singer
Compare suffering, rights, kinship, and political membership. The question is not only how to treat animals, but how to live alongside them.
