His enemies put it bluntly. Singer says it's OK to kill disabled babies. Singer says seriously damaged human beings are on a par with apes. Singer says it would have been OK to kill his own mother. These charges are spat out of the sides of their mouths. One theologian I spoke to said contemptuously, "Peter Singer takes the most basic human instincts and tries to reason them out of existence. What does he expect us to do, hug him?"
But Singer is not a drooling, swastika-waving eugenicist, whatever his foes say. He identifies as a man of the left, a campaigner for progressive politics. At 58, he is still best known as the author of Animal Liberation, the 1975 founding text of the animal-rights movement. Most of his writings these days concentrate on the desperate moral case for redistributing the abundant wealth of the West to the starving nations of Africa.
So why do they hate him? He has a simple explanation. "We are living in an incredible time of transition," he whispers. "In the West, we have been dominated by a single tradition for 2,000 years. Now that whole tradition, the whole edifice of Judaeo-Christian morality, is terminally ill. I am trying to formulate an alternative. Some of what I say seems obscene and evil if you are still looking at it through the prism of the old morality. That's what happens when morality shifts: people get confused and angry and disgusted."
Singer's moral system is called preference utilitarianism, and evolved from the 19th-century philosophy of John Stuart Mill. It sounds convoluted, but many people in the post-religious societies of Europe take its central premise for granted. It has one basic idea: to be moral, you must do whatever will most satisfy the preferences of most living things. Morality doesn't come from heaven or the stars; it comes from giving as many of us as possible what we want and need.
This isn't some dry academic theory. It affects the most important decisions in every person's life. Say you are old and sick and want to die. Under the old Judaeo-Christian ethic, you have an immortal soul given to you by God, and He will reclaim it from you when He's good and ready. Under preference utilitarianism, your preference - which harms nobody else - should be met, with a lethal injection from a friendly doctor if necessary. The scale of Singer's intellectual ambition is staggering. He is trying to lead an ethical revolution unparalleled since paganism was beaten and banished by the Judaeo-Christian ethic. "You can't expect such a radical shift," he says dryly, "without a few fights."
Thus far, most British atheists like me can travel along Singer's philosophical path - goodbye God, hello utilitarianism - without stumbling. But then we get to animals, and disabled babies are just a few steps away. "You shouldn't say animals," he says in a level tone when I raise the topic, "to distinguish between humans and non-humans. We are all animals." This objection captures Singer's thoughts in a neat sound bite. He thinks there is nothing special about being human. "Every living thing has preferences, and those preferences need to be taken into account," he says. "Non-human animals can't be left out of utilitarian equation."
For Singer, this isn't so radical. "All we are doing is catching up with Darwin," he explains. "He showed in the 19th century that we are simply animals. Humans had imagined we were a separate part of Creation, that there was some magical line between Us and Them. Darwin's theory undermined the foundations of that entire Western way of thinking about the place of our species in the universe. Yet for a century, we've carried on like nothing happened, abusing animals in the most terrible ways. The idea that humans are special and can tyrannise animals as much as we like is about to fall."
So he advocates a new kind of equality. It's not the equality of human beings - he attacks that, saying that a person in a vegetative state on a life-support machine is "obviously not equal to a healthy person". No, he advocates the equality of anything that is capable of feeling pain and having preferences. "Look: pain and suffering are bad and should be prevented or minimised, regardless of the race, sex or species of the being that suffers. It's a simple fact that a three-year-old human has pretty much the same self-awareness, rationality and capacity to feel pain as an adult ape. So they should be given equal moral consideration."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/p...people-are-more-equal-than-others-551696.html
Dit is moreel objectivisme, spiritueel nihilisme. Geen goed of slecht, alleen dat wat er is. Singer is een sociale darwinist en als dit de politiek is van Thieme, dan blijkt ze dus wel degelijk de communist te zijn waar ik haar al die tijd al voor uitmaak!
Mike
But Singer is not a drooling, swastika-waving eugenicist, whatever his foes say. He identifies as a man of the left, a campaigner for progressive politics. At 58, he is still best known as the author of Animal Liberation, the 1975 founding text of the animal-rights movement. Most of his writings these days concentrate on the desperate moral case for redistributing the abundant wealth of the West to the starving nations of Africa.
So why do they hate him? He has a simple explanation. "We are living in an incredible time of transition," he whispers. "In the West, we have been dominated by a single tradition for 2,000 years. Now that whole tradition, the whole edifice of Judaeo-Christian morality, is terminally ill. I am trying to formulate an alternative. Some of what I say seems obscene and evil if you are still looking at it through the prism of the old morality. That's what happens when morality shifts: people get confused and angry and disgusted."
Singer's moral system is called preference utilitarianism, and evolved from the 19th-century philosophy of John Stuart Mill. It sounds convoluted, but many people in the post-religious societies of Europe take its central premise for granted. It has one basic idea: to be moral, you must do whatever will most satisfy the preferences of most living things. Morality doesn't come from heaven or the stars; it comes from giving as many of us as possible what we want and need.
This isn't some dry academic theory. It affects the most important decisions in every person's life. Say you are old and sick and want to die. Under the old Judaeo-Christian ethic, you have an immortal soul given to you by God, and He will reclaim it from you when He's good and ready. Under preference utilitarianism, your preference - which harms nobody else - should be met, with a lethal injection from a friendly doctor if necessary. The scale of Singer's intellectual ambition is staggering. He is trying to lead an ethical revolution unparalleled since paganism was beaten and banished by the Judaeo-Christian ethic. "You can't expect such a radical shift," he says dryly, "without a few fights."
Thus far, most British atheists like me can travel along Singer's philosophical path - goodbye God, hello utilitarianism - without stumbling. But then we get to animals, and disabled babies are just a few steps away. "You shouldn't say animals," he says in a level tone when I raise the topic, "to distinguish between humans and non-humans. We are all animals." This objection captures Singer's thoughts in a neat sound bite. He thinks there is nothing special about being human. "Every living thing has preferences, and those preferences need to be taken into account," he says. "Non-human animals can't be left out of utilitarian equation."
For Singer, this isn't so radical. "All we are doing is catching up with Darwin," he explains. "He showed in the 19th century that we are simply animals. Humans had imagined we were a separate part of Creation, that there was some magical line between Us and Them. Darwin's theory undermined the foundations of that entire Western way of thinking about the place of our species in the universe. Yet for a century, we've carried on like nothing happened, abusing animals in the most terrible ways. The idea that humans are special and can tyrannise animals as much as we like is about to fall."
So he advocates a new kind of equality. It's not the equality of human beings - he attacks that, saying that a person in a vegetative state on a life-support machine is "obviously not equal to a healthy person". No, he advocates the equality of anything that is capable of feeling pain and having preferences. "Look: pain and suffering are bad and should be prevented or minimised, regardless of the race, sex or species of the being that suffers. It's a simple fact that a three-year-old human has pretty much the same self-awareness, rationality and capacity to feel pain as an adult ape. So they should be given equal moral consideration."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/p...people-are-more-equal-than-others-551696.html
Dit is moreel objectivisme, spiritueel nihilisme. Geen goed of slecht, alleen dat wat er is. Singer is een sociale darwinist en als dit de politiek is van Thieme, dan blijkt ze dus wel degelijk de communist te zijn waar ik haar al die tijd al voor uitmaak!
Mike