Stoic advice: should I volunteer during a pandemic, at risk of my health?

The Roman Senator Helvidius Priscus, a role model for Epictetus

K. writes: During this time of crisis I’m grateful everyday for my privilege. I contacted my local food bank to offer my time as a volunteer and they responded immediately regarding a 6-hr shift next week. It’s in the warehouse, picking food items for government issued care packages for people in vulnerable communities that may or may not be unwell but are certainly at risk.

When I told a friend he strongly suggested that I should stay at home and not put myself at risk. That I should donate money or pay someone to do the shift for me. The latter seemed morally redundant and the former seemed like an “easy way out” option. What are your thoughts? How do you balance personal responsibility with altruism during a pandemic? You could argue that my work — educational programs for students in vulnerable communities — would suffer if I fell sick, potentially limiting its impact. But as someone who is physically fit and useful, is it my moral duty to contribute as I am able? Especially when there are people still working, not to mention the healthcare workers who are going to be stretched to their limits over the following months.

This is a common, and crucial moral problem that we all face, in one form or another: what are the limits of our moral obligations? And what ethical criteria should we use to calibrate our behavior toward others?

For instance, your friend seems to be suggesting that your priority should be to “look after number one,” discharging your responsibility toward others either by giving money to a certain cause, or by paying someone else to do on your behalf what would otherwise expose you to some risk. And you raise the issue of the balance between the good you’d be doing by volunteering for the food bank vs the potential detriment to your educational programs, should you get sick.

The answers to these questions will depend dramatically on your chosen moral framework. If you are a utilitarian, you should try to maximize most people’s happiness, or at least minimize most people’s pains. In that case, the answer to your question about the food bank vs the educational programs will depend on your best guess at the outcome of such utilitarian calculus. (Good luck with that, since it seems to me that a fatal weakness…