Practical Ethics

Introduction

A book that grew out of Singer’s teaching, published by Cambridge University Press in 1979 and revised in 1993 and 2011. Starting from the principle of equal consideration of interests, it discusses among other topics equality and discrimination, animals, abortion, euthanasia and global poverty. Its most disputed passages argue that newborn infants are not yet persons in the sense of self-conscious beings, so that killing a severely disabled infant can, in some cases, be permissible. In Germany and Austria this led from 1989 onwards to protests by disability rights groups, cancelled lectures and a broad public controversy known as the “Singer affair”. The book remains a common textbook of applied ethics.

Connections

Builds on

• The Language of Morals1952 · R. M. Hare
• Animal Liberation1975 · Peter Singer

More works by Peter Singer

• 1972Famine, Affluence, and Morality
• 1975Animal Liberation