2025.02. : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Larry S. Temkin, Being Good in a World of Need, Oxford University Press, 2022, 422pp., $51.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780192849977.
Reviewed by David O’Brien, University of Wisconsin-Madison
In Being Good in a World of Need, Larry Temkin investigates the moral obligations of the affluent toward those who are in need. Temkin’s position is that, while the affluent plainly have such moral obligations, the content of those moral obligations is far from clear. As Temkin notes, his position contrasts with many in the effective altruist movement who take the content of those moral obligations to be relatively clear (chapter 1.7). Drawing on and developing themes from his influential earlier work—on global poverty, inequality, and the structure of the good—Temkin makes a patient, careful, and rigorous case that theorizing about the moral obligations of the affluent is a far more complex…
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