On Helping One's Neighbor
Severe Poverty and the Religious Ethics of Obligation

Deploying religious ethics and moral and political philosophy, this crucial intervention insists on immediate obligations to assist severely impoverished people.

Bharat Ranganathan (Author)

9781009428217, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 2024

232 pages
22.2 x 14.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.43 kg

'A rigorously argued account of the obligations that affluent people have to severely poor people. The most natural audience for the book is specialists in religious ethics, moral philosophy, and human rights discourse, though the book could also be assigned in classes for upper-level undergraduates.' Dallas Gingles, Reading Religion

Exploring what he calls 'the moral horror that is severe poverty,' Bharat Ranganathan develops a demanding account of the obligations that affluent people have to assist severely impoverished people. He argues that this is an immediate ethical as much as a social or structural imperative. Noting that developmental economists and moral and political philosophers have focused on wealth inequalities in increasingly sophisticated ways, Ranganathan observes that – within religious ethics – normative issues around severe poverty have nevertheless received insufficient attention. Bringing together general moral, religious, and philosophical principles with particular economic, social, and political realities, and engaging constructively with the writings of John Rawls and Peter Singer, this passionately argued book boldly challenges deleterious trends within ethics by unpacking, in a much more systematic way than hitherto, the pressing dilemmas around acute impoverishment. It will find an eager readership among scholars of religion, ethics, developmental studies, and theology.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations 1. Religious Ethics and Obligations to Others
2. Universalism and Relativism, Minimalism and Maximalism
3. Institutions, Severe Poverty, and the Obligations of Affluence
4. On Helping One's Neighbor
5. Moral Demandingness and Obligations to Special Relations and Self
Conclusion
Coda
Appendix I. The Relationship among Basic, Human, and Moral Rights
Appendix II. Dignity, Indeterminateness of Sense, and Human Rights
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Religious ethics [HRAM1]