Living Ethically a Global Issue

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 2  12 May - 9 June 2008 ]

When Peter Singer first enrolled at the University of Melbourne in 1963 he planned to become a lawyer.

“An adviser suggested I should do a combined law arts degree because he thought it would be dull if I just did Law,’’ he says.

“I was interested in history so I did history and philosophy but towards the end of my Arts degree I found that philosophy was what interested me most.”

Professor Singer completed his Bachelor of Arts with Honours in 1967 and discontinued his law studies.

He went on to complete a Master of Arts at Melbourne in 1969 and from there travelled to Oxford, set on a career path that would see him become one of the world’s most influential and controversial philosophers.

Today he is Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics and Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University in the US.

He divides his time between the two institutions and will be the guest speaker at the University of Melbourne’s Vice-Chancellor’s 2008 Oration for Alumni and guests on 12 June.

In his oration The Many Demands of Living Ethically, Professor Singer will explore the demands and difficulties of living an ethical life – a concept he says has changed dramatically since his early years as a scholar.

“The issues of animals and food were ones that no-one took seriously when I was an undergraduate,’’ he says.

“I didn’t think about it either, but now 30 years later it has become a significant political issue – about how we handle live exports to the Middle East, how factory farming that is allowed in Australia is now banned in Europe.

“Globally animal rights have become more important an issue than ever. Thirty years ago the impact of animals on climate change was not considered.

“Now we know the world’s livestock greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by cutting down on the number of animals kept on farms.

“The idea of living ethically has also taken on a more global perspective. Previously we could live ethically within a narrow circle of people, but now we realise the way we live has an impact on people all over the world.”

Looking back on his career, Professor Singer recalls being inspired by late University of Melbourne philosophy academic John McCloskey- even though they disagreed on most issues.

“McCloskey was important because he saw philosophy as concerned with important ethical and political issues at a time when most philosophers were concerned with linguistic analysis but had nothing to say about what we ought to do or how we ought to organise society,’’ he says.

In Australia’s recent political history there has been a push for a more vocational approach to education that seemed to exclude disciplines such as philosophy.

Professor Singer says this certainly has not been the case at Melbourne, nor in the US where the humanities are very much valued.

“The whole American educational system is established on the basis that you should get a good liberal arts or science education before you go on to law, medicine or business,’’ he says.

“This is the direction the University of Melbourne is moving towards and I think it is worthwhile.

“Philosophy does help you to think and that’s very practical, no matter what you are gong to do later on.”