Peter Singer

Utilitarian

Princeton University campus in autumn, a leaf-covered path between Gothic stone buildings, red and gold maple leaves falling, afternoon sun on sandstone facades. — Distance does not diminish duty.

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Singer's philosophical method is simple and its conclusions are demanding: take utilitarianism seriously, follow the argument, and stop where the argument stops rather than where convention is comfortable. Animal Liberation, published in 1975, made the case for treating animal suffering as morally significant on exactly the same terms as human suffering, calling the alternative speciesism. His essay Famine, Affluence, and Morality argued that geographic distance is morally irrelevant: if you can prevent something very bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, you are obligated to do it. These two arguments gave rise to the effective altruism movement. He has been banned from campuses, protested outside lecture halls, and challenged from every direction. He continues to argue that the conclusions follow from the premises, and invites his critics to say exactly where they disagree.

Writing

1975·Oxford

Animal Liberation published

Singer published Animal Liberation in 1975, while based at Oxford. It argued, in plain language, that the suffering of pigs and chickens matters as much as the suffering of humans, and that factory farming is a moral catastrophe on a massive scale. The book created the modern animal rights movement.

Words

“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”
— Peter Singer

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