Can Peter Singer’s Ethics of Impartialitybe the Philosophical Basis for Ethical Consumerism?

Abstract

The paper confronts Peter Singer’s ideal of impartial ethics with the idea of ethical consumerism. The first part shows the view of Singer concerning moral responsibility for passivity in the face of others’ suffering. The philosopher argues that an agent is responsible for not providing help to a person standing next to him in the same way as he or she is responsible for not doing it for someone on the other side of the world.
The second part describes the idea of ethical consumerism, which postulates buying things only when there is no ethical concerns to the process of their production. Sweathops are shown as an example of unethical practices. In the context of consumer’s rights, there is a depiction of consumer’s real position on the market and difficulties he meets when trying to buy ethically. The paper leads to a finding that Peter Singer’s view concerning equal responsibility for not providing help to suffering, no matter where the person is, is impossible to accept. When the consumer’s decision is taken he cannot obtain full information on the product. What is more, there is a need of similar behavior from a lot of other people and a decision from the bosses of the company to achieve change. At the end, the result of everything may be – and it happened in the past – worse for suffering people than their situation at the beginning.