Exploring Suffering-Focused Ethical Philosophies

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Introduction to suffering-focused ethics, published by Center for Reducing Suffering on September 1, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
By Simon Knutsson and Magnus Vinding
This text is a general introduction to suffering-focused ethics. We describe different types of suffering-focused ethical views and explain some of the reasons why we find suffering-focused views reasonable. We also bring up and discuss some common misunderstandings and objections, and briefly cover some practical implications.
1. The core of suffering-focused ethical views
In essence, suffering-focused ethical views give a foremost priority to the reduction of suffering.[1] According to such views, there is something especially important or urgent about alleviating and preventing suffering. Usually, the primary concern is severe suffering rather than discomforts.
A simple example of a clearly suffering-focused view is the view that our only moral obligation is to reduce suffering as much as we can. Yet there are many types of suffering-focused views, as we will see in the next section. For instance, there can be differences in how strongly suffering is prioritised, as well as differences in terms of which considerations besides suffering are taken into account.
Which views count as being suffering-focused? There is no sharp line that delineates exactly when a view is suffering-focused or not; it is a matter of degree. Still, it is useful to observe that there is a diverse group of ethical views according to which the reduction of suffering has a foremost priority.[2]
2. Different types of suffering-focused views
Suffering-focused views can come in all the shapes and sizes that moral views come in. Some say that all that matters is the consequences of our actions. Others talk about character and virtues such as compassion, or about separate moral principles that need to be balanced against one another (for example, one principle about reducing suffering and another principle about respecting individual autonomy).
Still others are less theoretical and leave more to moral judgement given the particulars of a situation.[3]
There are many examples of suffering-focused views in both historical and contemporary ethical traditions. We are most familiar with Western sources and talk mostly about those, but there are also Eastern traditions that are suffering-focused.
For instance, some of the main strands of Buddhist ethics give special priority to the reduction of suffering.[4] This includes the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, in which 8th-century philosopher Shantideva argued that we should "dispel the pains of all".[5]
Below, we describe some examples of suffering-focused ethical views. We try to convey the diversity that exists and we focus on views that can be found in the literature (as opposed to merely possible views).
2.1 Consequentialist views
When a suffering-focused view is impartial and only concerned with minimising suffering or ill-being, it is a form of (strong) negative utilitarianism.[6] The most popular version of that view is probably the view that one should minimise the total amount of suffering, or especially minimise the amount of extreme suffering.[7] Negative utilitarian views, like the one just mentioned, are members of the large family of consequentialist views, but there are other suffering-focused consequentialist
views besides negative utilitarianism.
For example, a view according to which one should reduce other bad things besides suffering, such as injustice, would be another variant of (strong) negative consequentialism.
There are also suffering-focused consequentialist views that give a moral role to positive well-being or positive final value (the positive value something has for its own sake). According to these views, consequences for positive well-being or positiv...