Peter Singer

Peter Singer is a controversial philosopher probably because, as he admits himself, he doesn’t have much truck with the doctrine of the sanctity of human life. That is, why should humans single themselves out for special treatment.  He is pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia but offers clear rationale for these stances.

Singer rails against what he calls the great discrimination of our time - speciesism.Speciesism is where man treats fellow animals for its own pleasure and satisfaction, for example, food and medical research. Because non-human animals are sentient beings with the capacity to suffer they are entitled to equality of consideration and treatment in the same way our fellow human beings are. By dint of the prevailing treatment of animals today, man’s behaviour is profoundly immoral.  Singer posits that it is more moral to use a human being in a vegetative state for medical research than it is to use a sentient non-human animal.

Singer is also big on the Western world’s neglect of the world’s poor and malnourished and criticises the comfortably off’s seeming indifference to the plight of these people. Diseases and maladies that are mere insignificances for us can and often do prove fatal for the people of the Third World. We can do so much more and challenges us and himself as to why we won’t do more. (See the Life You Can Save, above).

Singer gives a half-hour, thought-provoking- interview here.