Singer's plea for selflessness.(Peter Singer)

SINCE THE FIRST editions of Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics were published in the 1970s, Peter Singer has emerged as one of the most influential and formidable ethical philosophers in the world. He has had an important, if controversial, impact on current thinking about human bioethics, the treatment of non-human animals, environmental preservation, and the West's response to Third World poverty. His newest book, Writings on an Ethical Life, reprints a selection of material from earlier books and articles in a volume of well over 300 large pages, sufficient to capture his main ideas in one convenient place. As Michael Duffy put it in the Australian (12th May 2001), this is a "disturbing, impressive book"; it merits a wide and thoughtful readership.

Though Writings on an Ethical Life is a compilation of earlier material, Singer has re-mixed it in a form that has few inconsistencies and is evidently intended to elaborate a coherent ethical system. It is fair, therefore, to treat the book as an integrated work, and it is clear that its author has been presenting essentially the same view of the world since the 1970s, gradually enlarging his system's scope, but never abandoning his core thesis that acting ethically consists in pursuing the best consequences for all who are affected by our conduct. Here, "best consequences" means "what, on balance, furthers the interests of those affected"; this is not merely a matter of pleasure and pain, though Singer sometimes writes, plausibly enough, as if the crucial goal is to reduce suffering. He insists, moreover, that our ethically relevant conduct includes omissions as well as positive acts, that we are responsible for everything that we fail to prevent.

Pursued to its logical conclusion, this has drastic implications. If we reflect upon the widespread misery and deprivation in the Third World, it seems to follow that we must give all of our income beyond a subsistence level to the poor of the worst-affected regions. Thus Singer states without apology that the "correct" version of his principle of avoiding bad occurrences is that we should give to others "until we reach the level of marginal utility--that is the level at which, by giving more, I would cause as much suffering to myself or my dependants as I would relieve by my gift". He adds: "This would mean, of course, that one would reduce oneself to very near the material circumstances of a Bengali refugee." All other projects must wait. Any life devoted to the creation of beauty, the search for knowledge, or the pursuit of personal fulfilment is illegitimate:

 
   If we take the point of view of the universe, we can recognize the urgency 
   of doing something about the pain and suffering of others, before we even 
   consider promoting (for their own sake rather than as a means to reducing 
   pain and suffering) other possible values like beauty, knowledge, autonomy, 
   or happiness. 

In this article, I concentrate on the fundamentals of Singer's philosophy, bracketing off such issues as whether utilitarianism should extend to relationships with nonhuman animals as well as with each other. Likewise, I set aside Singer's complex views on bioethical issues, such as euthanasia and infanticide, which Tamas Pataki has recently caricatured as "a more casual attitude to killing people" (" Singer and his Song", Australian Book Review, May 2001). I am sympathetic towards some of Singer's conclusions in the field of bioethics, and hope to address these on another occasion. Many of Singer's practical conclusions might survive even if the utilitarian underpinning of his worldview could be demolished, since his impressively searching analyses of traditional ethical concepts, such as the "sanctity of life" doctrine, do not rely wholly on utilitarian assumptions. Meanwhile, however, coming to grips with his philosophy requires that we form a view about its most basic ideas.

IN THE ABSTRACT, utilitarianism claims that we are ethically obliged to conduct ourselves in whatever way is necessary to maximise the interests of all people, if not all sentient beings, present and future. We must always put the general utility ahead of our own interests, taking "the point of view of the universe". It often passes unnoticed that this is an extraordinary burden to place on the shoulders of each individual. As Bernard Williams has argued, particularly in his Utilitarianism: For and Against (with J.J.C. Smart, 1973), it means subordinating our involvement in the projects that shape our lives and give them a sense of purpose, our special interest in the happiness of those we love or who depend upon us, and other commitments that are critical to our individuality.

While Singer uses utilitarian arguments to try to persuade us to give most of our money to the Third World, such arguments can be turned on their head and treated as a reductio ad absurdum. Consider, for example, this robust dismissal of utilitarianism from Jan Narveson ("Equality vs. Liberty: Advantage, Liberty", 1985):