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Theron Pummer, The Rules of Rescue: Cost, Distance, and Effective Altruism, Oxford University Press, 2023, 253pp., $32.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780190884147.
Reviewed by Violetta Igneski, McMaster University
Theron Pummer’s book, The Rules of Rescue: Cost, Distance, and Effective Altruism, provides a thoroughly engaging discussion of the moral reasons and requirements we have to use our time and resources to help others. After quickly dismissing act consequentialism for its implausibility and inability to accommodate moral permissions and constraints, Pummer constructs a nonconsequentialist picture that relies heavily on intuitive responses to a series of stylized examples. His account then goes further by offering a coherent set of explanations for these intuitive responses. While these explanations are of limited value to those who do not share Pummer’s intuitions, or to those with limited patience for hypothetical cases, the examples serve an important function in isolating various salient considerations and assessing their moral significance. The main…
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