5/3/2023 0 Comments The particulars of peter![]() By the same token, albeit seemingly at odds with the do-gooder stereotype, Singer applauds earning gobs of money on Wall Street rather than being a social worker or even a medical doctor, provided you will donate most of your earnings to helping the poorest of the poor in the most cost-effective ways. So for example, Singer frowns on donating to an art museum when you might instead contribute to a charity that saves lives in a developing country. They are also often sufficiently counterintuitive to raise the eyebrows of anyone not wearing Singer’s eyeshade. Malaria patient photo © Rodd Waddington 2014 Is money better spent on preventing malaria than on helping the blind?īlind man photo © Ravishankar Ayyakkannu 2011. Singer labels this ‘effective altruism’, and what this book does is take that green eyeshade and, so to speak, run with it. Singer maintains – indeed, this is the book’s main claim – that in order to be truly ethical in our giving, we should take a cold-eyed, actuarial approach to philanthropy. ‘Is Love All We Need?’ is the title of one of his chapters, and Singer’s answer is decidedly: quite the contrary. For Singer is at pains to impress on us the importance of numerical calculation over emotional responsiveness. ![]() (Oddly Singer does not mention this, although he devotes a chapter to the substance of this point, if not its etymology.) But Singer also has an issue with the ‘phil’ part of the word (although, again, he does not comment on the etymology). Right off the bat we can see that the notion could pose a problem for Singer because the very word ‘philanthropy’ literally means love ( phílos in Greek) for humanity ( ánthropos in Greek), but of course Singer would want us to be concerned about nonhumans as well. In a similarly straightforward way, the present book draws out practical implications from the central utilitarian imperative to maximize the good. From this it follows, by Singer’s reasoning, that almost all current use of other animals for human purposes should cease forthwith. What matters, then, are the consequences of one’s actions for all animals, and not just for human beings. Singer’s insight – which in fact was shared by utilitarianism’s classic expounders, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick – was that this dictum embraces all sentient beings. ![]() ![]() Utilitarianism holds that one ought always to do that which will have the best overall consequences. Thus, his breakout book, Animal Liberation (1975), about the cause with which he is most identified, derived from his simply having taken utilitarianism seriously. The key to Singer’s particular beliefs has always been his uncompromising espousal of the ethical philosophy called utilitarianism. He has become downright notorious for defending positions such as infanticide, euthanasia, sports doping, and bestiality, and yet anyone who has heard him speak can attest to his dispassionate, open-minded, and rational manner. We would expect no less from Peter Singer, who has been bringing out such books for forty years, at the rate of one per annum. The Most Good You Can Do is a marvelously provocative and intriguing book. SUBSCRIBE NOW Books The Most Good You Can Do by Peter Singer Joel Marks critiques Peter Singer’s popular ethics.
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