Obligations to the Starving

It is commonly claimed that affluent societies and their members are obligated to come to the aid of persons who are in danger of death due to starvation. In this paper I wish to consider the question of whether principles that ascribe duties of benevolence can provide an adequate basis for such claims. I will argue that the principles of benevolence which are most often appealed to as a source of individuals' obligations to the starving are all either false or do not in fact yield such obligations. It is sometimes claimed that one source of obligations to the starving is the right of each starving person to be saved from death due to starvation. I will argue that it is unlikely that many starving persons have this right on grounds of benevolence. On the positive side, I will propose a principle of benevolence which, I suggest, does yield obligations to the starving, and I will try to spell out the nature and extent of these obligations. The most interesting feature of this principle is that the obligations to the starving which it yields directly are obligations on the part of groups, and not individuals. A consequence of this is that the members of affluent societies have obligations to the starving primarily because they are members of groups which have such obligations.