Peter Singer
b. 1946 · Australian philosopher
“Count the interests of every being that can suffer equally”
Life and education
- Born
- 6 July 1946, Melbourne, Australia
- Education
- University of Melbourne (BA, MA); Oxford BPhil (1971, supervised by R. M. Hare)
- Positions
- Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University Center for Human Values (1999–2024); now emeritus
- Fields
- Applied ethics, bioethics, animal ethics, effective altruism
Australian philosopher and the contemporary ethicist who has applied utilitarianism to real-world problems most consistently. He studied under R. M. Hare at Oxford, worked at Monash University's Centre for Human Bioethics among others, and taught at Princeton from 1999.
Animal Liberation (1975) sparked the movement to take animal suffering seriously, and his 1972 paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" became the philosophical starting point for effective altruism. He founded the anti-poverty charity The Life You Can Save. His positions on euthanasia and severely disabled newborns have also drawn fierce criticism and controversy.
Timeline
- 1972"Famine, Affluence, and Morality"
- 1975Animal Liberation
- 1979Practical Ethics
- 1999Joins Princeton
- 2009The Life You Can Save
- 2023Animal Liberation Now
- 2024Becomes emeritus at Princeton
Big ideas
If you think like them…
If you're like Peter Singer, the first thing you ask is "who's suffering, and how much?" You value consistency and calculation over tradition, and you're willing to follow an argument even to uncomfortable places. You also tend to think moral truths are real and that morality can make progress.
Rough positions on the five questions the quiz uses. These simplify each philosopher's actual views and are open to interpretation.
Thought experiments featuring them
Key works
- Animal Liberation (1975)
- Practical Ethics (1979)
- The Expanding Circle (1981)
- The Life You Can Save (2009)
- The Point of View of the Universe (with K. de Lazari-Radek, 2014)