Analytic & pragmatist · born 1946 · living
Peter Singer
Australian utilitarian of animal liberation and effective giving
Equal interests deserve equal consideration whoever has them, so the suffering of animals counts, and if we can prevent something very bad without sacrificing anything of comparable importance, we ought to do it.
Life and thought
Peter Singer (born 1946 in Melbourne) is the son of Viennese Jews who fled to Australia in 1938; his grandparents were among the victims of the Holocaust. He studied in Melbourne and at Oxford under R. M. Hare, founded the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University, and from 1999 taught at Princeton, where he is now emeritus. He co-founded The Life You Can Save and helped inspire the effective-altruism movement.
Singer is a utilitarian: what matters morally is the interests of every being that can suffer or enjoy, counted equally. In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (1972) he argued that if you would wade into a pond to save a drowning child at the cost of ruining your clothes, you ought equally to give money that would save a child far away, because distance makes no moral difference. Animal Liberation (1975) extended equal consideration to animals and, using Richard Ryder’s term, condemned “speciesism”, helping to launch the modern animal-rights movement. His views on euthanasia and on severely disabled newborns have provoked fierce protests.
Works
Shaped by
1748–1832Jeremy BenthamAnimal Liberation builds on Bentham’s line: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”1806–1873John Stuart MillEnglish philosopher of liberty, utility and women’s equalityMeanwhile, in other traditions
1926–1984Michel FoucaultFrench historian of madness, prisons and sexuality1929–2026Jürgen HabermasLeading second-generation Frankfurt theorist of democracy and communication1930–2004Jacques DerridaAlgerian-born French philosopher who founded deconstruction1935–2003Edward SaidPalestinian-American literary critic at Columbia Universityborn 1942Gayatri Chakravorty SpivakIndian-born theorist and translator of Derrida, at Columbia Universityborn 1956Judith ButlerAmerican philosopher at Berkeley, theorist of gender performativityOn the record
Peter Singer is living.
Singer is Emeritus Professor of Bioethics at Princeton and was still publishing columns in October 2026. A report of his death that circulated in July 2026 was a hoax.
Sources: Project Syndicate, columnist page: Peter Singer · Wikipedia, “Peter Singer”