Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. In this interview, we talk about his parents escaping Nazi occupation, being picked on in Melbourne, collecting stamps, coins, and rocks, reading History of Western Philosophy, considering going into the family business, realizing he likes history and philosophy more than law, trying to figure out the origins of fascism, drinking and arguing, his initial reaction to the Sheriff counterexample to utilitarianism, Vietnam, conscription, abortion, meeting his wife, how raising children affected his philosophical outlook and vice versa, differences between grad school and being a grad student, taking classes with Parfit, Glover, and Griffin, how a conversation after a philosophy class led to him becoming vegetarian, working with Hare, the rise of Radical Philosophy, the popularity of “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” working at NYU, moving to Melbourne and starting the first center for Bioethics in Australia, the difference between a protest and being silenced, wild animals and human extinction, anonymous journals, running for office, moving to Princeton, working with a Buddhist monk, reason and the possibility of agreement, Anscombe, moral tribes, Mozi, and the ethical views of ET…
[7/14/17, photo credit: Alletta Vaandering, hyperlinks inserted by editor]
Where did you grow up?
In Encyclopedia Britannica, and at one stage I set out to read it from A – Z, all 23 (I think) volumes. I didn’t finish it, though. But I did read Bertrand Russell’s if only the communists had been willing to work together with the social democrats.
What attracted you to philosophy?
I was attracted to philosophy because I had always enjoyed an argument, and on Friday evenings you could go to the pub across the road from the university and get into an argument over a beer with some of the lecturers and more senior students who would be hanging out there.
What was the name of the pub? Is it still around?
Naughton’s – it is still a hotel, but it’s been gentrified, not the same place at all.
Inspirational teachers?
conscription. I was involved with the R.M. Hare for moral philosophy and for my thesis, then the question “What is the optimum population size? Should we assume it is the one with the highest average level of happiness, or would it be better to have a larger population with a greater total quantity of happiness?” That question had first been raised by Henry Sidgwick H.L.A. Hart’s chair of jurisprudence, was attracting attention, although not all the Oxford philosophers were enamored of this brash American wearing stylish suits and a bright yellow tie. Hare was doing his lectures on why the naturalists were wrong and Althusser’s much more obscure writings. And during my time in Oxford, the his recent death (and edited Does Anything Really Matter?, a collection of essays about his work, which was in press when he died). We are also still close to two couples who we got to know through the high school near Oxford where Renata was teaching.
How did Oxford shape you as a philosopher? How did Keshen influence you? How did your philosophical outlook start to influence your behavior outside of the classroom?
My time as a student at Oxford was transformative. It was at Oxford that I first began to think about the ethics of how we treat animals, prompted by a chance encounter with Richard Keshen, the first ethical vegetarian I had ever met (I describe that experience in the Preface to Analysis called “Michael Lockwood, Greg Pence and books aimed at young children written by trial and execution of Socrates, which means that it is the opposite of what philosophy should stand for. It’s a stupid tactic anyway, because invariably it means that my views get more attention. You just have to look at a sales chart of the German editions of Practical Ethics to see that. The book sold poorly in Germany for several years. Then when I visited Germany the suffering of wild animals, because although it raises some serious ethical questions, any attempt to do something about it would immediately put the animal movement in conflict with the environmental movement, and it would be better if both movements put their energy into issues on which there is no such conflict, and on which they can hope to have a more significant practical impact.
I have a somewhat similar problem with I ran for the Senate for the Australian Greens. I wasn’t successful, but I didn’t expect to be, the idea was to give the Greens greater national prominence. Maybe I helped to do that, because Henry Spira, and also had the goal of Shih Chao-Hwei, a Taiwanese Buddhist nun, about the similarities and differences between Buddhism and utilitarianism. We hope to turn the transcript of our dialogue into a book. The second is a book on whether the world is overpopulated, and if so, what ought to be done about it. I’m planning on writing that with non-naturalist normative objectivism is a defensible position. That, by the way, is an example of something that ought to make us optimistic about philosophy – we do change our views, after reading good arguments.
Bad example. My bad! Can you think of a better example of somebody you fundamentally disagree with? Do you think those peers are confused or misinformed? What do you think explains why some intelligent, well informed people look at a case like the sheriff and think framing the drifter is justified and others think that one simply should not ever do such a thing?
A better example of someone with whom I am in fundamental disagreement would be a hardline deontologist – Josh Greene has carried out, and described in Adam Lerner and Bentham in eighteenth century England.
How would you sum up your body of work in one sentence?
I’ve always looked for issues on which thinking philosophically can make a significant difference – and if my work shows anything, it is that philosophy can change lives and make the world a better place.
Favorite comedian(s)?
Monty Python, Woody Allen, Sarah Silverman.
Thanks for your time, Peter!