Practical Ethics [Hardcover]

I first read Practical Ethics twenty-five years ago, and have re-read it, including the later expanded edition, several times. It is an amazing book, because it quietly, calmly and rationally tears apart most of our conventional views about what is right and wrong, particularly in the areas of abortion, euthanasia, our treatment of animals, how we should respond to global poverty and what responsibility we have towards future generations. Singer is currently a professor at Harvard, and is probably the world's most influential writer on ethics. Certainly, Practical Ethics is the most important book that I have ever read, and I urge you to read it, too.

Singer does not pre-judge anything: he challenges us to throw away assumptions such as 'all human life is sacred' and he exposes the unjustifiability of many of the conclusions that we imagine follow from the differences between people and other animals. He uses logical argument to make us realise that if we want to be moral, we need to fundamentally change many of our attitudes.

Singer uses detailed scientific facts as well as moral argument to explore how we should behave, and comes to many controversial conclusions. He has been accused, wrongly, of being hostile to the rights of people with disabilities, but in fact he is a persuasive advocate for ending all unfair discrimination, and for valuing the comparable interests of all sentient beings equally, even when those sentient beings are not people.

I do not agree with everything in Practical Ethics (though I suspect that when we disagree, it is Singer who is right!), but reading it has still managed to change my life in many ways. Be prepared for a challenging and wonderfully stimulating read.

The title of this book is most apt. Singer presents his view of ethics by considering practical situations that may present moral dilemmas. He arranges the chapters so as to provide progressive examples in which he puts forward a coherent, if in places controversial, approach to ethical behaviour. Chapter headings are:

1. About Ethics
2. Equality and its Implications
3. Equality for Animals?
4. What's Wrong with Killing?
5. Taking Life: Animals
6. Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus
7. Taking Life: Humans
8. Rich and Poor
9. Insiders and Outsiders
10. The Environment
11. Ends and Means
12. Why Act Morally?
Appendix: On Being Silenced in Germany

For me Singer's style isn't always easy to read. Of course one expects somehwat convoluted sentences in philosophy books but it could, IMO, benefit from an effort to tidy up the worst specimens. Apart from that, given the task that the author sets himself, the overall balance of the book is IMO nicely judged.

As to Singer's ethical position, I have my doubts. His concept of ethical personhood is made to bear, IMO, more than it reasonably can. It distinguishes between sentience and self-awareness and accords a self-aware being greater ethical consideration than a purely sentient one. He could, IMO, make stronger arguments for his positions from the Bhuddist principle that ethical behaviour is that which tends to reduce the suffering of any sentient beings. To my mind this makes many of his arguments in Chapters 4 to 7 open to significant criticism.

He mentions Hare's concepts of intuititive and critical ethics but does not develop them. This, to my mind, is unfortunate, especially in chapters 8 and 9, where the ethical questions he discusses are clouded by the practical difficulty that an ethical agent has in deciding what the likely consequences of his actions will be in a complex society with a developed economy. The discussion of the economic aspects of ethics in these chapters is, IMO, too lightweight to be very helpful.

The Appendix on hostility to Singer's views in German-speaking Europe is a curious inclusion. It adds nothing to the exposition of his ethics but does provide an interesting contemporary account of how some societies are still thinking about ethical issues by reaction to the ills of Nazism.

The book's focus on well known ethical questions makes it an accessible introduction to ethics. Considered as such, I think it deserves a 5-star rating. Its omissions, notably that of any reference to existentialist ethics, make it less satisfactory as a philosophical exposition - but then that is not it's purpose.

Peter singer is one of the best thinkers of or time!
I would recommend this book.
The best way I could explain would be having an opinion but thought it out ethically and morally !