ABSTRACT

The question of responsibility to distant others is at the heart of the notion of development as the deliberate improvement of life in the world’s deprived regions. It is implicitly a perspective of the more affluent (‘North’) towards the less developed (‘South’), raising the role of beneficence in the transfer of resources from rich to poor. Beneficence is the process of active kindness or actually doing good, implied by the acceptance of a moral responsibility, as opposed to benevolence as merely charitable feelings or the desire to do good. A major ethical and practical issue is how benevolence can be turned into beneficence, requiring sacrifices on the part of those in affluent parts of the world for the sake of less fortunate persons elsewhere.