The world knows an immense amount of suffering, much of it humanly inflicted and much of it humanly preventable. My book seeks to shed light on the moral dimensions of this fact. Ultimately, it aims to clarify the nature of the duty to relieve suffering, and to encourage reflection on the kinds of changes that would be necessary to bring our lives into adequate compliance with this duty. I have brooded on these matters for a long time. From an early age I enjoyed many wide-ranging and eye-opening conversations with Morris Jackson, who greeted my views with good-natured skepticism and subjected them to steady critique
