Løgstrup and overdemandingness

I gave a paper at a conference at the University of Southampton on ‘How much does Morality Require of Us? Singer, Kant and Løgstrup’. I suggested that Løgstrup might provide an ideal middle way between Singer (who looks too demanding regarding the distant other) and Kant (who looks too undemanding regarding the proximate other), while Løgstrup’s distinction between the responsibility of the ethical demand, and our political responsibilities to others, may show what is wrong with Singer’s famous analogy between the child drowning in the pond, and those distant others who are in need, but less clearly ‘in one’s hands’.

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