What does moral philosophy tell us about giving? Interview with Antonin Broi, philosophy researcher
Antonin Broi discusses the ethics of giving: A philosophical perspective on generosity
Wednesday 25th September 2024, Reading time: 15 mins
Antoine received his doctorate in philosophy from Sorbonne University and has published in various philosophical journals, including the prestigious The Philosophical Quarterly. Today we talk to him about the links between ethics and donations.
What is your background?
I started with a preparatory course in literature and social sciences, then went on to study sociology and economics at ENS Cachan (now ENS Saclay). I then went on to do a master’s degree and then a doctorate in philosophy.
Can you tell us about your background in philosophy and what attracted you to it?
I’ve always been fascinated by fundamental questions: how do we justify our thoughts? What are our moral duties? I soon realised that philosophy was the only way to tackle these issues in depth. Although I also studied sociology and economics, my interest in these big questions has never left me.
What’s the point of philosophy?
That’s a very controversial question! As I see it, philosophy has two main uses:
On the one hand, it helps us to make progress on fundamental questions about knowledge, morality or metaphysics. These questions may sometimes seem abstract, but they are at the heart of our understanding of the world and our place in it.
Philosophy also develops practical skills that are very useful in everyday life. This is particularly true of analytical or argumentative philosophy, which is based on arguments and seeks to defend or criticise positions. For example, it encourages us to clarify the concepts we use and to rigorously analyse the arguments we put forward. Often, in our everyday discussions, our reasoning lacks rigour. Philosophy teaches us to structure our thinking in a more methodical way, which strengthens the solidity of our positions.
And ethics in particular?
Ethics, as a branch of philosophy, highlights even more the importance of rigour. We might think that “everything is equal” or that “it depends on our values”, but when we examine our intuitions, we realise that they are often contradictory.
For example, in a seminal article in 1972, the philosopher Peter Singer proposed a thought experiment to help us reflect on our duty to help others. He invites us to imagine that one morning, on the way to work in our very expensive suit, worth 1000 euros, we pass a pond where we see a child drowning. And then you have a choice: do you go on your way, in which case the child dies because there’s no one else to save him, or do you dive in to save him, in which case you ruin your good suit? In these circumstances, it seems that our immediate moral intuition is to say that we must obviously save the child, quite simply because a child’s life is worth much more than our suit, however beautiful and expensive it may be! It’s an improbable situation, of course, but it makes you wonder whether we face similar situations in our everyday lives. Peter Singer notes that at the time he was writing his article, a terrible famine was affecting Bengal, where our donations could easily save children. Many people don’t feel concerned by such tragedies, they don’t feel they have a duty to help. However, geographical distance does not seem to be a relevant ethical criterion, so the situation is similar to that of the child drowning in the pond. It’s easy to see how opinions can easily contradict each other: we’re inconsistent in our thinking.
Ethics is precisely about resolving these kinds of contradictions and making our actions and thinking more coherent.
Does philosophy tell us that we should give?
Philosophy itself does not provide unambiguous answers to the question of giving. There are many schools of thought, and not all of them address this question. However, many ethical theories emphasise the importance of altruism, benevolence and solidarity, values that can encourage giving.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to give?
The first piece of advice is to think about why you want to give. Are you donating for pleasure with no objective other than personal satisfaction, or do you have specific objectives in mind? Clarifying your motivations will enable you to direct your donations in a more thoughtful way and in line with your values.
Is it a philosophical imperative to give effectively?
Here again, there is no consensus. If you’re giving to honour a personal promise to give to a certain charity, I’d say that efficiency is a consideration that doesn’t necessarily have a place. On the other hand, if your motivation for giving is to help others, then yes, I think that implies a requirement for effectiveness. If, with the same amount of money, you have the choice between helping a little or helping a lot, I think you have a duty to choose the option that will help a lot. Quite simply because if you’re interested in the difference you make to the lives of the people you’re helping, it’s only natural that you want to make a big difference, so you should help them a lot. And I would even go so far as to say that it’s our duty to make as big a difference as possible. If we intentionally chose a donation that had less impact than another, we wouldn’t really be taking the effects of our donation on its beneficiaries seriously. We wouldn’t really be trying to help others.
What advice would you give on how to give effectively?
Firstly, don’t let yourself be led by impulsiveness and don’t let yourself be influenced by irrelevant factors, for example someone approaching us in the street asking us to give to the association they represent.
Secondly, think about who you want to help. Sometimes you have a fairly precise idea of the cause you want to help, for example, helping undocumented migrants or fighting against the abandonment of cats and dogs. In that case, you have to ask yourself: why are you focusing on this particular group of beneficiaries or this particular cause? Are we open to giving to other causes or other beneficiaries? If we have chosen to focus on certain beneficiaries just because we think that’s where we can have the greatest impact, we need to be open to the possibility that this may not in fact be the case. Perhaps we could have a greater impact by giving elsewhere?
This brings me to my third piece of advice, which is to take into account all the information you have or can easily acquire to determine where you can have the greatest impact. To give effectively, we need to form an accurate picture of the mechanisms by which our donations will help. In short, we need to understand how the world works so that we can change it for the better!
