Peter Singer: Killing as a social therapeutic

After ruling our thoughts and our decisions about life and death for nearly 2,000 years, the traditional Western ethic has collapsed.

On this triumphant note, Professor Peter Singer begins his milestone book, Rethinking Life and Death. It conveys an attitude of revolutionary confidence that brings to mind another atheistic iconoclast, Derek Humphry, who has said, "We are trying to overturn 2,000 years of Christian tradition."

The new tradition that Singer welcomes is founded on a "quality-of-life" ethic. It allegedly replaces the out-going morality that is based on the "sanctity of life." Wesley J. Smith states that, "Rethinking Life and Death can fairly be called the Mein Kampf of the euthanasia movement, in that it drops many of the euphemisms common to pro-euthanasia writing and acknowledges euthanasia for what it is: killing."

A disability advocacy group that calls itself Not Dead Yet has fiercely objected to Singer's views on euthanasia. Some refer to him as "Professor Death." Others have gone so far as to liken him to Josef Mengele. Troy McClure, an advocate for the disabled, calls him "the most dangerous man in the world today." There is indeed a bluntness to Singer's pronouncements that gives his thought a certain transparency. This makes his philosophy, comparatively speaking, easy to understand and to evaluate.

Despite the vehemence of some of his opponents, Singer is regarded, in other circles, as an important and highly respected philosopher and bioethicist. His books are widely read, his articles frequently appear in anthologies, he is very much in demand throughout the world as a speaker and he has lectured at prestigious universities in different countries. He currently holds the Ira W. DeCamp chair of Bioethics at Princeton University's Centre for the Study of Human Values. He has also written a major article for Encyclopedia Britannica.

Singer's philosophy begins in a broad egalitarianism and culminates in a narrow preferentialism. His egalitarianism has won him many supporters; his preferentialism has earned him his detractors. Hence, he is both strongly admired and soundly vilified.

In his widely read article, "All Animals Are Equal," Singer expresses his disdain for racism and sexism. Here, he is on solid ground. From this beachhead, he invites his readers to conquer "the last remaining form of discrimination," which is discrimination against animals. He refers to this form of discrimination as - to borrow the term from Richard Ryder - "speciesism." This latter form of discrimination rests on the wholly unwarranted assumption, in Singer's view, that one species is superior to another.

"I am urging," he writes, "that we extend to other species the basic principle of equality that most of us recognize should be extended to all members of our own species." Here, Singer endears himself to animal "rights" activists. In 1992, he devoted an entire book to the subject - Animal Liberation: A New Ethic for Our Treatment of Animals.

Singer rejects what he regards as non-philosophical ways of understanding human beings and non-human animals. He finds notions of "sanctity-of-life," "dignity," "created in the image of God" and so on, to be spurious. "Fine phrases," he says, "are the last resource of those who have run out of argument." He also sees no moral or philosophical significance in traditional terms such as "being," "nature," and "essence." He takes pride in being a modern philosopher who has cast off such "metaphysical and religious shackles."

What is fundamentally relevant, for Singer, is the capacity of humans and non-human animals to suffer. Surely non-human animals, especially mammals, suffer. At this point, Singer adds to his egalitarian followers those who base their ethics on compassion. Singer deplores the fact that we cruelly and unconscionably oppress and misuse non-human animals by eating their flesh and experimenting on them. Thus, he advocates a vegetarian diet for everyone and a greatly restricted use of animal experimentation.

By using a broad egalitarian base that elicits a compassionate response to the capacity of human and non-human animals to suffer, Singer thereby replaces the sanctity-of-life ethic with a quality-of-life ethic that, in his view, has a more solid and realistic foundation. In this way, Singer appears to possess a myriad of modern virtues. He is broadminded, fair, non-discriminatory, compassionate, innovative, iconoclastic, and consistent. It is the quality of life that counts, not some abstract and gratuitous notion that cannot be validated or substantiated through rational inquiry.

Humans and non-human animals are fundamentally sufferers. They possess a consciousness that gives them the capacity to suffer or to enjoy life, to be miserable or to be happy. This incontrovertible fact gives Singer a basis, ironically, for a new form of discrimination that is more invidious that the ones he roundly condemns. Singer identifies the suffering/enjoying status of all animals with their quality of life.

It follows from this precept, then, that those who suffer more than others have less quality of life, and those who do not possess an insufficiently developed consciousness fall below the plane of personhood. He argues, for example, that where a baby has Down syndrome, and in other instances of "life that has begun very badly," parents should be free to kill the child within 28 days after birth.

Here, he is in fundamental agreement with Michael Tooley, a philosopher he admires, who states that "newborn humans are neither persons nor quasi-persons, and their destruction is in no way intrinsically wrong." Tooley believes that killing infants becomes wrong when they acquire "morally significant properties," an event he believes occurs about three months after their birth.

Here is where Singer picks up his detractors. According to this avant-garde thinker, unborn babies, or neonates, lacking the requisite consciousness to qualify as persons, have less right to continue to live than an adult gorilla. By the same token, a suffering or disabled child would have a weaker claim not to be killed than a mature pig. Singer writes, in Rethinking Life and Death: "Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping their lives over time. They are not persons. Hence, their lives would seem to be no more worthy of protection that the life of a fetus."

At a Princeton forum, Singer remarked that he would have supported the parents of his disabled protesters if they had sought to kill their disabled offspring in infancy. This is the kind of unkind remark that will ensure his disabled protesters will continue to protest.

Another error in Singer's thinking is that philosophy should be built up solely on the basis of rational thinking, and that feelings and emotions should be distrusted, if not uprooted. Concerning the infant child, he advises us, in Practical Ethics, to "put aside feelings based on its small, helpless and - sometimes - cute appearance," so we can look at the more ethically relevant aspects, such as its quality of life. This coldly cerebral approach is radically incompatible with our ability to derive any enjoyment whatsoever from life.

By "putting feelings aside," we would be putting enjoyment aside. It is not the mind that becomes filled with joy, but the heart. Thus, the man (Peter Singer) who allegedly prizes happiness is eager to deactivate the very faculty that makes happiness possible. Dr. David Gend, who is a general practitioner and secretary of the Queensland, Australia branch of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life, suggests that Singer's announcement of the collapse of the sanctity-of-life ethic is premature:

"Nevertheless, Herod could not slaughter all the innocents, and Singer will not corrupt the love of innocence in every reader. As long as some hearts are softened by the image of an infant stirring in its sleep, or even by their baby's movements on ultrasound at 16 weeks, Singer's call to 'put feelings aside' in killing babies will reek of decay."

Singer underscores the importance of reason, broadmindedness, and compassion. But his emphasis on reason displaces human feelings. His advocacy of broadmindedness causes him to lose sight of the distinctiveness of the human being (he does not object to sexual "relationships" between humans and non-human animals). And his sensitivity for compassion is exercised at the expense of failing to understand how suffering can have personal meaning.