Peter Singer Quotes on Justice
Singer's Practical Ethics and Animal Liberation extend utilitarian impartiality beyond the human species: any being capable of suffering has interests that must be weighed equally with the like interests of any other, regardless of species membership. The early essay Famine, Affluence, and Morality argues that affluent individuals have stringent positive duties to alleviate distant suffering — duties that conventional morality treats as supererogatory but that the principle of impartial maximization treats as mandatory. The framework grounds Singer's positions on global poverty, the moral status of animals, and applied bioethics.
Quotes
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“All animals are equal: the principle of equality requires that suffering be considered equally with the like suffering of any other being.”
Speciesism —the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term—is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species. -
“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”
Famine, Affluence, and Morality -
“Speciesism is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species.”
Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal -
“Speciesism is an attitude of prejudice towards beings because they're not members of our species, so just as racism means that you're prejudiced against beings who are not members of your race and sexism means you're prejudiced against people of the other sex. So we humans tend to be speciesist in we think that any being that is a member of the species homo sapien just automatically has a higher moral status and is more important than any being that is a member of any other species, irrespective of the actual characteristics of those beings.”
Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews - Richard Dawkins , 2009. -
“Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate -change, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.”
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress(1981) | Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 172 -
“the fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.”
The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics(2017) | p. 343