Practical Ethics by Peter Singer

Overview

Practical Ethics (1979) is Peter Singer's most influential book and the founding text of modern applied ethics. It applies the utilitarian principle — the greatest good of all those affected — to the hardest questions of life and death: the treatment of animals, abortion, euthanasia, the distribution of wealth, and the environment. The book is famous for its conclusions and its method: Singer follows the argument wherever it leads, whatever the cost to common sense. The book has shaped the animal rights movement, the effective altruism movement, and the global discussion of the obligations of the rich to the poor, and it has been one of the most discussed works of philosophy since its publication. Its central thesis is simple and radical: the ethics must be applied, the boundaries of the moral community must be redrawn, and the comfortable must take seriously the claim that their luxuries come at the cost of the lives of others.

Author

Peter Singer (born 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and the most famous — and most controversial — living utilitarian. His essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" (1972) argued that the affluent are morally obligated to give to the point of marginal utility, and Practical Ethics developed the argument across the whole field of applied ethics. He is the founder of the effective altruism movement and one of the most cited philosophers in the world.

Historical Background

The book belongs to the birth of applied ethics in the 1970s. The civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, and the new technologies of medicine had forced philosophy into the public square, and Practical Ethics was the book that demonstrated the power of the rigorous argument applied to the real questions. Singer's method was the method of the Enlightenment: the argument from the principle, followed without flinching. The book's context was also the new awareness of the treatment of animals — Singer's Animal Liberation (1975) had preceded it by four years — and the new awareness of global poverty, which his "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" had put on the philosophical agenda.

Key Ideas

The book develops the implications of the utilitarian principle — the greatest good of all those affected, impartially considered. The first implication is the expansion of the moral community: the boundaries of the community are drawn by the capacity to suffer, not by the species, and the sentient animals are therefore members of the moral community — the pain of the animal counts as much as the equal pain of the human. The second is the principle of equal consideration: the interests of all beings are to be weighed equally, whatever their species, race, or capacities — the equal consideration that grounds the rejection of both racism and speciesism. The third is the radical claim about the obligations of the affluent: the person who has more than enough while others starve is responsible for the deaths that their spending could have prevented — the luxury is the moral cost.

Important Passages

The most famous passages of the book are the accounts of speciesism: "The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race; the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species." The account of the obligations of the affluent: "If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it." And the account of the method: "The ethic I am presenting is a consequentialist ethic: the right action is the one that produces the best consequences, for all those affected."

Influence

The influence of Practical Ethics has been enormous. It founded modern applied ethics as a professional discipline, shaped the animal rights movement and the effective altruism movement, and changed the terms of the public discussion of poverty, euthanasia, and the treatment of animals. It has been translated into dozens of languages, and it remains the most widely read work of applied ethics. Its conclusions remain controversial — Singer's arguments about the status of the newborn and the demented continue to provoke — but the controversy is the measure of the book's power: it has forced the discussion of the questions that the comfortable would prefer not to discuss.

Sources

• Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979; 3rd ed. 2011.
• Singer, Peter. "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229-243.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Peter Singer" (plato.stanford.edu/entries/singer)