Peter Singer on Animal Liberation

Looking for some intellectual vegetarianism in Boston? Look no further than your college campus. Boston University's Vegetarian Society will be hosting the philosopher Peter Singer on Friday, April 26th from 7:30 to 9 pm in the Morse Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public, so even if you don't go to BU, grab some friends and prepare to be treated to a night of intellectual stimulation and vegetarian philosophizing! 

Background on Peter Singer 

Peter Singer is an australian philosopher who became famous for writing his book Animal Liberation. He is a moral philosopher, focusing on applied ethics. Singer is a major proponent of utilitarianism (doing the most god for the most amount of people) and biocentrism (a point of view in ethics that gives inherent value to non-human species). He is one of the most influential contemporary philosophers today and is believed to have influenced the major leaders of the animal liberation movement. Currently he is the Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and a Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. 

Animal Liberation 

In 1970, after having lunch with a vegetarian graduate student, Singer became interested in vegetarianism. He then read the book Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison and a paper by Rosalind Godlovitch, which led him to join the ranks of vegetarians and inspired him to consider animal suffering in philosophical terms. He published 

Animal Liberation in 1975 and introduced his many new arguments regarding animal rights and welfare. His arguments include: 

Extending the utilitarian idea of the "greatest good" to animals. 

He believe that animal rights are the same as human rights, and therefore they should not be treated such. He is against speciesism and believes that animals should have rights based on their ability to feel pain. He believes that all beings capable of suffering should have equal consideration and that if one discriminates against this, that it is just as bad as other more common forms of discrimination like skin color. He believes that you can eat meat as long as the animal was raised in a  way that didn't inflict pain or suffering. Given that these types of farms are uncommon, he concludes that a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle is best. He is against experimental surgeries done on living animals unless the good of the surgery outweighs the bad. 

A Vegetarian Philosophy 

His his essay A Vegetarian Philosophy, Singer outlines his reasonings for a vegetarian lifestyle. The article is short and easy to read. As a fellow vegetarian, I would highly recommend reading it to strengthen or pose new questions to your own vegetarian philosophy. Personally, I resonated with: "The case for vegetarianism is at its strongest when we see it as a moral protest against our use of animals as mere things, to be exploited for our convenience in whatever way makes them most cheaply available to us.

Peter Singer at Boston University 

Peter Singer's lecture at Boston University will be exploring his perception on the progress made with animal rights since "Animal Liberation". He will analyze the climate of today's animal welfare issues and conjecture about what it will be like in the future. He also will be exploring what we can learn from the struggle with animal rights throughout the years. 

If you have any questions about the event, contact Rachel Atchenson at vegsoc@bu.edu or 202-215-0356.