`If it is sometimes right deliberately to allow a baby to die when a simple medical intervention could save its life, then it must also sometimes be right to kill the baby. To deny this is to refuse to take responsibility for deciding not to act, even when the consequences of omission and action are the same." Peter Singer is not afraid to draw controversial conclusions if that is where his arguments take him. He has applied his thinking - and his campaigning energies - to issues of animal liberation, the environment, infanticide (for certain categories of extremely handicapped babies such as those born without a brain), voluntary euthanasia and the selfish affluence of the wealthy nations. In doing so, he has been lauded, vilified and threatened and, it must be said, regularly misunderstood. Jewish, Green, social democratic, agnostic though Singer is, he has been boycotted in Germany and characterised as fascist by lobby groups on the left for his views on infanticide and euthanasia. In general, this is a reflex categorisation by groups virulently opposed to anything that reminds them of Nazi policies, but who often have not read Singer's arguments and are content with self-righteous labelling. For others, whose conception of human life in the world is fundamentally religious, the thrust of his arguments is all too clear.
Singer's practical ethics are forged in and for a world without God and therefore without any divine instructions on how to live or on why to continue living when all quality of life has been removed by pain and mortal illness. It is fundamentally utilitarian, resting on such claims as "Pain is bad and similar amounts of pain are equally bad, no matter whose pain it might be". The fact that very many non-human animals can feel pain makes, in his view, a very strong ethical demand on us. Singer has been a powerful proponent of the view that we must respect this fact about other animals and not treat them as insensate things en route to quicker and greater profits, as is the case with so much factoryfarming. His strong view that we are responsible not just for what we do but also for what we could have prevented bridges that gap - some would say rift - that has so often marked the relationship between moral philosophy and real lived life. Singer's views imply action, which is why he identifies what he does as practical ethics. It is intensely humane its and courageous in its call to reasoned kindness in a godless world. His own analysis as to why many find his views on such contentious issues as actively rather than passively ending lives which have no prospect of a conscious future or a lessening of terminal pain problematic is plausible. It has to do with the directness with which he describes what is already done rather than suggesting something radically new. At its core is the wish to take full responsibility for what we knowingly do without fudging its meaning. There are certainly questions to be asked about Singer's ideas. His concept of a person as "a being who is capable of anticipating the future" is idiosyncratic and excludes newborn babies. And there is also a certain faux naivete about the impact his own formulations might have. He can berate the Austrian journal Erziehung Heute for its special "Euthanasia Issue" being phrased in "terms calculated to arouse a hostile response" and yet he himself can call his major work in this area, with Helga Kuhse, Should the Baby Live? when "the baby" of the title refers to certain categories of extremely disabled infant. Peter Singer is a welcome and provocative voice in an increasingly challenging moral climate. His commitment to clarifying the nature and required reach of humane practices to reduce pain and indignity is what recommends this very readable collection of his own best writing on practical ethics and practical ethical action.
Ciaran Benson is Professor of Psychology in University College Dublin. His book, The Cultural Psychology of Self: Place, Morality and Art in Human Worlds was published by Routledge earlier this year