Peter Singer

UtilitarianContemporaryAustralian

Born 1946 CE, Melbourne

He asked why we don't care about suffering just because it's far away, or caused by an animal. The question has never gone away.

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.

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.

Places

Ideas

Happiness Equality

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 SingerShare

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
— Peter SingerShare

Works

Animal Liberation

1975·English

The book that launched the modern animal rights movement. Singer's argument is straightforward: if suffering matters, and if animals can suffer, then their suffering matters. The species of the sufferer is irrelevant, 'speciesism' is as arbitrary a prejudice as racism. Factory farming and animal experimentation, by these lights, are moral catastrophes.

Life & Moments

1975

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.

1999

Appointed to Princeton Bioethics Chair

In 1999, Singer was appointed to the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics chair at Princeton. His appointment was protested by disability rights advocates who objected to his views on end-of-life decisions. He continues to hold the chair, combining utilitarian philosophy with public advocacy on global poverty and animal welfare.

Influence

Influenced by

John Stuart Millutilitarian tradition
Singer's utilitarianism descends directly from Bentham and Mill: what matters is sentient suffering and pleasure, not species membership. He pushed this to a conclusion neither Bentham nor Mill drew, animal liberation.
Jeremy Benthamthe capacity to suffer as the criterion
Singer quotes Bentham's question directly: not whether animals can reason or talk, but whether they can suffer. Animal Liberation is in large part that sentence taken seriously and followed out.

Influenced

Martha Nussbaumwelfare answered with capabilities
Nussbaum's list of what a person must be able to do and be is offered against the utilitarian habit of aggregating satisfaction, on the ground that a decent life is not a quantity that can be traded off.