Moral obligation as hopeless burden

A recent piece in the New Yorker raises some interesting questions about personal sacrifice and the moral life. Zell Kravinsky gave essentially his entire forty-five-million-dollar real-estate fortune to charity, but still felt like he had not done enough, so he made an unrestricted donation of one of his kidneys. His selflessness is inspiring to a certain extent, but he also provides a good case study in the hopelessness that arises from a rejection of the localized moral responsibility embodied in subsidiarity. Asked about his moral responsibility to his own children, Kravinsky asserts that "the sacrosanct commitment to the family is the rationalization for all manner of greed and selfishness," and denies that "two children should die so that one of my kids might live." Our culpability for others' deaths is expansive, in his view, for we cause death by our omissions as much as our action, so failing to donate our organs renders us, in his eyes, "murderers." (He embraces the universal focus of Peter Singer's approach to morality.)

Certainly moral responsibility does not end at the boundaries of the family unit (as subsidiarity emphasizes), and "saving for our kids" does serve as a too-convenient vehicle by which we ignore pressing needs around us. But that is not a reason for disregarding the primacy of the local altogether. Indeed, subsidiarity lets us address needs in a way that allows us to have a discernible impact, rather than being saddled with the crushing burden of all human suffering. Not surprisingly, the New Yorker article focuses on Kravinsky's pervasive despair.

Rob