Peter Singer Quotes on Nature
Peter Singer, the utilitarian philosopher whose Animal Liberation founded the modern animal rights movement, approaches questions of nature through the lens of suffering and moral consideration, and the quotes gathered here reflect that. Singer's central claim is that the morally relevant fact is not which species a being belongs to but its capacity to suffer and enjoy, which he calls a prerequisite for having interests at all; to weight one's own species above others is the bias he named speciesism. He also treats human nature itself naturalistically, arguing that we were social before we were human and that the principles of ethics arise from our own nature as social, reasoning beings. Drawn from Animal Liberation and The Expanding Circle, these passages present nature, evolution, and the shared capacity for suffering as the basis of an ethics that reaches beyond the human.
Quotes
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“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 -
Attributed to Peter Singer:
“The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having interests at all.”
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“To be honest, I was somewhat disappointed... It's had effects around the margins, of course, but they have mostly been minor. When I wrote it, I really thought the book would change the world. I know it sounds a little grand now, but at the time the sixties still existed for us. It looked as if real changes were possible, and I let myself believe that this would be one of them. All you have to do is walk around the corner to McDonald's to see how successful I have been.”
Quoted by Michael Specter on the impact of the book Animal Liberation , " The Dangerous Philosopher ", The New Yorker , 6 September 1999. -
“The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler.”
The God of Suffering? Project Syndicate , 2008 -
“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 -
“Human beings are social animals. We were social before we were human.”
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress(1981) | Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 3 -
“The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.”
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress(1981) | Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 149 -
“Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.”
Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals(1975) | Preface