Moral Saints 2: Why Be a Saint?

This episode is about Wolf’s “Moral Saints,” Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” and Larissa Macfarquhar’s Strangers Drowning.

Susan Wolf thinks that devoting your life to helping others would be a real drag. It’d interfere with playing tennis and reading Tolstoy.

True enough but some people might have philosophical and personal reasons to do it anyway.

For example, Peter Singer argues that, if you think a child’s life is worth more than your shoes, then you’re morally obliged to give away all your money to charity.

Larissa Macfarquhar helps out with the personal reasons. She’s written a book that profiles a whole bunch of real-life do-gooders. And it turns out that even though the saintly life is tough, the saints are getting something out of it. And from their perspective, a life of Tolstoy and tennis might not be a great as Wolf makes it out to be.