The Most Good You Can Do

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Peter Singer's books and ideas have been disturbing our complacency ever since the appearance of 'Animal Liberation'. Now he directs our attention to a challenging new movement in which his own ideas have played a crucial role: effective altruism. Effective altruism is built upon the simple but profoundly unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good. Such a life requires a rigorously unsentimental view of charitable giving: to be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more good with our money or our time than other options open to us. Singer introduces us to an array of remarkable people who are restructuring their lives in accordance with these ideas, and shows how, paradoxically, living altruistically often leads to greater personal fulfillment than living for oneself. This book develops the challenges Singer has made, in the 'New York Times' and 'Washington Post', to those who donate to the arts, and to charities focused on helping our fellow citizens, rather than those for whom we can do the most good.