Peter Singer

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 1, No. 1  19 March - 2 April 2007 ]

Professor Peter Singer has been described as the most influential and most controversial philosopher in the world.

Peter Singer is a bioethicist whose work probes the ethics of how we treat animals, third world poverty and euthanasia. His most recent book The Ethics of What We Eat was published last year.

He is currently working on his response to several critical essays about his work, to be published next year under the title Singer Under Fire.

A graduate of the universities of Melbourne and Oxford, he spent many years in at Monash University before being appointed Ira W Decamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University in 1999.

He has been Laureate Professor at the University’s of Melboune’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics since 2005, and divides his time between Australia and the United States.

University of Melbourne Voice staff writer Janine Sim-Jones caught up with him during his current visit to Melbourne.


Q: Your views inspire such emotional responses. You have been the subject of protests and hate mail. What role has this controversy taken in shaping your career?

A: I don’t think the protests have made much of a difference to my career. The protests have been irritating and, at times,disquieting, but they are not, in general, the kind of thing that would make anyone change their mind. That’s not to deny, of course, that I have learned some things from listening more closely to people with disabilities, for example.

Q: Does it surprise you that ­environmental issues have become such a mainstream ­political issue in Australia and why do you think this has happened?

A: No, it doesn’t surprise me at all, because these are obviously crucial issues for the future of our planet. What is surprising is that some of these issues, especially global warming, have yet to become mainstream issues in the United States. Of course, the severe drought we are having in much of Australia really does bring home to people just how precariously this population of 20 million people is living on this dry continent.

Q: What are the major ethical issues that climate change poses for us?

A: The first and most important point is that we do think of climate change as an ethical issue. We should see it as one example of that familiar family of issues that is exemplified by dividing a pie among 10 people, when each of them is hungry enough to eat a quarter of the pie. In the case of global warming, the pie is the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb our waste gases without causing a global catastrophe. If we were to divide this pie up equally among all the inhabitants of the planet, we would find that Australians and Americans are taking a slice about five times as big as their share. By doing so, these rich nations are, in all likelihood, inflicting devastating future losses on the poor farmers of developing nations – people who have no ability to mitigate the consequences of loss of rainfall, or rising sea levels. And they are doing this, not so that they can survive, but so that they can maintain their present high levels of material comfort, driving cars and turning on airconditioning whenever they feel like it. This really is morally outrageous.

Q: You have led the charge encouraging people to think about where their food comes from. Do you think that people are now more conscious about what they eat and what role has ethics played in this?

A: Definitely. The change between what you can buy now, and what you could buy 20 years ago, is dramatic. There is far more vegetarian, vegan, and organic food available, and local farmers markets are flourishing. People know more about factory farming, and many are avoiding its products. In Britain, the value of free range eggs sold is now larger than that of battery eggs, at least for eggs sold whole, rather than in manufactured products. That’s an amazing transformation of the British egg market from the time when I was a graduate student in Oxford, and you could only get free range eggs at one little health store. Then the supermarkets never carried them – and it was the same in Australia when I returned from overseas in the 1970s. I was also greatly encouraged by the announcement, just a week or two ago, that Smithfield, the largest pig producer in the United States, will phase out individual stalls for pregnant sows. The largest Canadian pig producer then said it would do the same. Those are big steps forward, and they prove that it is commercially viable to do so. Australian pig producers should take note.

Q: Having now spent several years in the US at Princeton, how would you describe the climate of public debate there as compared to Australia?

A: Politics in the US is much more influenced by religious fundamentalism. Public opinion polls suggest that it’s still impossible for an atheist or agnostic to be elected President of the US. The abortion debate is still very big there – perhaps because thirty years ago, abortion was taken out of the democratic process by the Supreme Court. Though I support legal abortion, in my view it is a mistake, in a democratic political system, to allow the courts to play such a significant role in controversial ethical and political issues.

Q: Who have been your mentors? And among fellow philosophers’ whose thinking do you most inspiring?

A: My first mentor in philosophy was HJ McCloskey, who taught ethics here at Melbourne University when I was an undergraduate. Although I disagreed with his views on most issues, I was greatly influenced by his insistence on the practical importance of ethics and political philosophy – an unfashionable view at the time. In Oxford, my most important mentor was RM Hare, who I think was one of the major philosophers of the 20th century, and a much more rigorous thinker than, for example, John Rawls.

‘Inspiring’ isn’t the right word. Philosophers should challenge, provoke and stimulate further thinking, but there isn’t anyone whose work I find inspiring, and maybe that’s a good thing.

Q: What would you say to a young person interested in living ethically?

A: Take a course or two in philosophy – they’ll help you to think clearly about ethics. But then, move beyond the theory, and find your own way of making a difference in the world.