Negative
FHS- LD
R: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need
Julia Espero
I NEGATE.
V:
Morality is the proper code of conduct put forth in society. Assisting other people in need does
not contain a moral obligation, especially when it undermines the opportunities of other moral
tenants of society. While helping people is moral, it is not an individual’s moral obligation to
help those in need, because attaching an obligation to the end of a “good deed,” taints morality
in itself. Therefore, my value is MORALITY.
S:
The only way we can achieve what’s best for society is through ALTRUISM. Altruism is
the action of helping those in need, for the sake of helping those in need. To imply any
obligation in doing so rips away the morality of the act. Therefore, we are not obligated
to do so.
1A) While it is commendable to assist the distant needy, people are not morally obligated to do so; it
is supererogatory.
Badru, 2009
the duty of assistance is very important to Rawl’s
internationalism. As stated in the earlier part of this work, it is the only principle that shows that the society of peoples owes
anything at all to the distant other in the sense of positive action to bring the peoples in the burdened
societies out of their problems. Laudable as this principle might have otherwise been, its central defect lies in the supererogatory implication.
The principle grants a duty that does not morally obligate society of peoples to help the distant needy in
those burdened societies. What it allows to get to those needy peoples is just humanitarian services.
Thus , the recipients of the assistance from the society of peoples are deprived of any moral right to
make a morally binding demand on the society of people if they fail to fulfill this duty of assistance.
Although it is the last in the listing of the principles that under pin the society of peoples,

Olufemu Badru, Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, December 2009
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.whitman.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=7e70c8c7-36fa-47fa-ac65
e76d59278270%40sessionmgr113&vid=2&hid=111
1B) Morality is about making the world better, not about the obligation.
Hanes 2006
morality is all about producing the right kinds of overall consequences. Here the
if you think that the
whole point of morality is (a) to spread happiness and relieve suffering, or (b) to create as much freedom
as possible in the world, or (c) to promote the survival of our species, then you accept
consequentialism. Although those three views disagree about which kinds of consequences matter,
they agree that consequences are all that matters. So, they agree that consequentialism is true. The
Consequentialism is the view that
phrase “overall consequences” of an action means everything the action brings about, including the action itself. For example,
utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham is a well known example of consequentialism. By contrast, the deontological theories of John Locke and
Immanuel Kant are nonconsequentialist.

William Haines, Professor at University of Hong Kong, March 2006 http://www.iep.utm.edu/conseque/
Negative
FHS- LD
R: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need
Julia Espero
1C) CONFUSING SYMPATHY WITH OBLIGATION IS DANGEROUS
Narveso 2004
people can suffer in all sorts of ways, and many sufferers are no poorer than you or I The things we might be able to
there might be other
things some of us can do, and it will be just as true that we "ought" to do those things as that we
"ought" to go out and help improve the incomes of the very poor. Which, in both cases is not that it is
our moral obligation to do them (depending on the exact circumstances of the suffering in question) but that it would be good
of us to do so would contribute to our level of moral virtue, if we want to talk that way. And this is no trivial matter.
Sympathy is an important human capacity, and it should be cultivated, not crushed. For that matter, one way to
It should be noted that
do to help such people probably will not consist in sending them a check - though it possibly might, for that matter - but
crush it is to confuse it with justice, leaving the sympathetic out in the cold with the bureaucrats who compel their support rather than solicit their sympathetic
responses. That is, while we are at it, one of the things we should have against Temkin's way of talking here.

Jan Narveso [Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo] “Is World Poverty a Moral
Problem for the Wealthy?” The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 8, No. 4 2004.
2A) Individuals should judge what they deem to be morally right and then act accordingly
Krasnoff, 2010
we ought to do what we judge to be good, and of course we ought to do it because of its goodness. The model
Certainly we ought to exercise our
autonomous judgment about what to believe, but just as certainly we ought to believe what we judge
to be true, independently of anything about ourselves. In the theoretical case, our thoughts are
necessarily directed towards objects beyond ourselves, and so the role of our will must be to
subordinate itself to our best judgments about the nature of the object.
Of course
here is one of recognition, drawn without fundamental alteration from the case of belief.

Larry Krasnoff, Professor of Philosophy at College of Charleston South Carolina, October 2010
http://ejournals.ebsco.com.ezproxy.whitman.edu:2048/Direct.asp?AccessToken=5WN4444TRZPSQYJJW66BQSUPZYPBTRN69U&Show=Object
Morality must be the results of our reasoning and judgments. If that happens to coincide with the
reasoning and judgments of everyone else in the world, then of course we should do what we deem to
be good. But it is a decision that must be arrived at from within, not an externally advocated obligation.
3A) Implying that helping others in need is an obligation, is detrimental to those in need.
BBC Ethics Guide, 2011
“ It is more socially injurious for the millionaire to spend his surplus wealth in charity
than in luxury. For by spending it on luxury, he chiefly injures himself and his immediate circle, but by
spending it in charity he inflicts a graver injury upon society. For every act of charity, applied to heal
suffering arising from defective arrangements of society, serves to weaken the personal springs of
social reform, alike by the 'miraculous' relief it brings to the individual 'case' that is relieved, and by
the softening influence it exercises on the hearts and heads of those who witness it. It substitutes the
This isn't a new argument:
Negative
FHS- LD
R: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need
Julia Espero
idea and the desire of individual reform for those of social reform, and so weakens the capacity for
collective self-help in society,” (J A Hobson, Work and Wealth, 1914).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/against_1.shtml
If people are satiated by donating their five dollars a month to the AIDS foundation, they will assume
their moral obligation has been “fulfilled” (and in some interpretations, it has). This will cause a
complete stagnation of social reform and the change needs to happen as advocated by the affirmative.
Not only will individuals be less passionate about assisting the needy, but governments will cease to be
pressured as heavily to effect real change.