Love him or hate him, you certainly can't ignore him. For the past twenty years, Australian philosopher and professor of bioethics Peter Singer has pushed the hot buttons of our collective conscience. In addition to writing the book that sparked the modern animal rights movement, Singer has challenged our most closely held beliefs on the sanctity of human life, the moral obligation's of citizens of affluent nations toward those living in the poorest countries of the world, and much more, with arguments that intrigue as often and as powerfully as they incite.

Writings On An Ethical Life offers a comprehensive collection of Singer's best and most provocative writing, as chosen by Singer himself. Among the controversial subjects addressed are the moral status of animals, environmental account-ablility, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and the ultimate choice of living an ethical life. This book provides an unsurpassed one-volume view of both the underpinnings and the applications of Singer's governing philosophy.

The landmark book that opened the world's eyes to the suffering inflicted by humans on other animals, now fully rewritten and entirely updated to reflect the pressing problems of today. 'An extraordinary book which has had extraordinary effects ... It galvanised a generation into action' Independent on Sunday *One of the 100 all-time best non-fiction books* (TIME magazine) WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY YUVAL NOAH HARARI ____ Animal Liberation started a worldwide movement when it revealed the abuse of animals in factory farms and laboratories. It demonstrated that these and other practices were the cause of appalling and unnecessary suffering and therefore morally indefensible. In the fifty years since, science has further vindicated Peter Singer's arguments about animal sentience, vegetarianism has become widespread, and the book has helped change the minds of millions. But the situation for animals has in many ways grown worse. Despite improvements in animal welfare in some regions - brought about in large part by this book - in many others the scale of their abuse has reached staggering new depths. This revised edition, of which about two-thirds is entirely new, documents these and other developments, such as the impact of meat consumption on climate and the spread of dangerous new viruses. It refines its arguments in light of new evidence, equips the reader with fresh tools and advice, and shows us all the road ahead. The result, Animal Liberation Now, is a book of galvanising power, relevance and importance. ____ 'Raises ethical questions that every human being should take to heart' Yuval Noah Harari 'One the most important books of the last 100 years. It expands our moral horizons beyond our own species' Ecologist 'The indispensable foundational text for the movement, new and updated. Animal Liberation Now is written with the honesty and philosophical depth characteristic of all of Singer's work' J. M. Coetzee, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, author of The Lives of Animals and Disgrace 'A reasoned plea for the humane treatment of animals that galvanised the animal-rights movement the way the Rachel Carson's Silent Spring drew activists to environmentalism' The New York Times 'If I have to pick the book that had the most impact on me, I would say Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, since I instantly became a vegetarian after reading it' Jane Goodall 'Probably the single most influential document in the history of ... animal welfare' Guardian

Provocative essays on real-world ethical questions from the world's most influential philosopher Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, Rethinking Life and Death, and The Life You Can Save, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words. In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness. Singer asks whether chimpanzees are people, smoking should be outlawed, or consensual sex between adult siblings should be decriminalized, and he reiterates his case against the idea that all human life is sacred, applying his arguments to some recent cases in the news. In addition, he explores, in an easily accessible form, some of the deepest philosophical questions, such as whether anything really matters and what is the value of the pale blue dot that is our planet. The collection also includes some more personal reflections, like Singer’s thoughts on one of his favorite activities, surfing, and an unusual suggestion for starting a family conversation over a holiday feast. Provocative and original, these essays will challenge—and possibly change—your beliefs about a wide range of real-world ethical questions.

Apuleius's The Golden Ass, one of a handful of extant ancient novels, remains relatively unknown. Peter Singer, the renowned philosopher and author of the modern classic Animal Liberation, remedies this neglect, bringing the comic tale back to the wider reading public. With a version stripped of the many tales extraneous to the main narrative, Singer exposes the core of the text: the adventures of the man-turned-animal, Lucius. Singer has teamed with Apuleius scholar and translator Ellen Finkelpearl to create a delightful rollicking story in which we follow the adventures of this cocky young man transformed into a donkey, through his travails, erotic adventures and enlightenment. With Singer's vision, superbly illustrated by prize-winning artists Anya and and Varya Kendel, this newly rendered canonical work is bound to be enjoyed by anyone who cares about human and animal life. Afterwords by Singer and Finkelpearl assess the significance of The Golden Ass for our thoughts about animals, ancient and modern.

The competition for limited health care resources is intensifying. We urgently need an acceptable method for deciding how they should be allocated. But the goods that health care produces are of very different kinds. Health care can extend the lives of children and of older people. It can make it possible for a person to walk, when without health care that person would be permanently bedridden; and it can reduce the pain and distress of people who are terminally ill. How can we possibly decide which of these - and many more - diverse achievements of health care are more deserving than others? We need a common unit by which we might be able to measure these very different goods. The Quality-Adjusted Life Year, or QALY, is the most developed proposal for such a unit of measure. In this book a distinguished team of ethicists and economists defend the core of the QALY proposal: that health care resources should be used so as to produce more years of life, of the highest possible quality. This leads to a discussion of such fundamental questions as whether all lives are of equal value, whether health care should be allocated on the basis of need and whether the QALY approach incorporates an adequate account of fairness or justice. The result is the most thorough account yet of the ethical issues raised by the use of the QALY as a basis for allocating health care resources.

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, Rethinking Life and Death, and The Life You Can Save, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words. In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness. Singer asks whether chimpanzees are people, smoking should be outlawed, or consensual sex between adult siblings should be decriminalized, and he reiterates his case against the idea that all human life is sacred, applying his arguments to some recent cases in the news. In addition, he explores, in an easily accessible form, some of the deepest philosophical questions, such as whether anything really matters and what is the value of the pale blue dot that is our planet. The collection also includes some more personal reflections, like Singer's thoughts on one of his favorite activities, surfing, and an unusual suggestion for starting a family conversation over a holiday feast. Now with a new afterword by the author, this provocative and original book will challenge--and possibly change--your beliefs about many real-world ethical questions.

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters, and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research, and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live.

The competition for limited health care resources is intensifying. We urgently need an acceptable method for deciding how they should be allocated. But the goods that health care produces are of very different kinds. Health care can extend the lives of children and of older people. It can make it possible for a person to walk, when without health care that person would be permanently bedridden; and it can reduce the pain and distress of people who are terminally ill. How can we possibly decide which of these - and many more - diverse achievements of health care are more deserving than others? We need a common unit by which we might be able to measure these very different goods. The Quality-Adjusted Life Year, or QALY, is the most developed proposal for such a unit of measure. In this book a distinguished team of ethicists and economists defend the core of the QALY proposal: that health care resources should be used so as to produce more years of life, of the highest possible quality. This leads to a discussion of such fundamental questions as whether all lives are of equal value, whether health care should be allocated on the basis of need and whether the QALY approach incorporates an adequate account of fairness or justice. The result is the most thorough account yet of the ethical issues raised by the use of the QALY as a basis for allocating health care resources.

What is ethics? Where do moral standards come from? Are they based on emotions, reason, or some innate sense of right and wrong? For many scientists, the key lies entirely in biology--especially in Darwinian theories of evolution and self-preservation. But if evolution is a struggle for survival, why are we still capable of altruism?

In his classic study "The Expanding Circle," Peter Singer argues that altruism began as a genetically based drive to protect one's kin and community members but has developed into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern. Drawing on philosophy and evolutionary psychology, he demonstrates that human ethics cannot be explained by biology alone. Rather, it is our capacity for reasoning that makes moral progress possible. In a new afterword, Singer takes stock of his argument in light of recent research on the evolution of morality.

What does the idea of taking 'the point of view of the universe' tell us about ethics? The great nineteenth-century utilitarian Henry Sidgwick used this metaphor to present what he took to be a self-evident moral truth: the good of one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other. Ethical judgments, he held, are objective truths that we can know by reason. The ethical axioms he took to be self-evident provide a foundation for utilitarianism. He supplements this foundation with an argument that nothing except states of consciousness have ultimate value, which led him to hold that pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically good. Are these claims defensible? Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer test them against a variety of views held by contemporary writers in ethics, and conclude that they are. This book is therefore a defence of objectivism in ethics, and of hedonistic utilitarianism. The authors also explore, and in most cases support, Sidgwick's views on many other key questions in ethics: how to justify an ethical theory, the significance of an evolutionary explanation of our moral judgments, the choice between preference-utilitarianism and hedonistic utilitarianism, the conflict between self-interest and universal benevolence, whether something that it would be wrong to do openly can be right if kept secret, how demanding utilitarianism is, whether we should discount the future, or favor those who are worse off, the moral status of animals, and what is an optimum population.

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"--our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals--inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them.

In "Animal Liberation," author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures--destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.

En esta breve introducción el renombrado filósofo Peter Singer expone la visión central que unifica el pensamiento de Marx y nos permite entender su punto de vista como un todo. Presentándolo como un filósofo principalmente preocupado por la libertad humana, en lugar de como un economista o un científico social, Singer consigue explicar ideas clave de Marx, como la alienación, el materialismo histórico o la teoría económica del capital, en un lenguaje sencillo.En estas páginas, Singer explora si las concepciones de Marx siguen siendo relevantes en el siglo XXI. ¿El hecho de que las ocho personas más ricas del planeta posean tanto como la mitad de la población mundial vendría a confirmar la óptica marxista? ¿La facilidad con que los políticos conservadores pueden ganarse los votos de la clase trabajadora apelando al nacionalismo socavaría su visión de la lucha de clases y la inevitable victoria final del proletariado? Singer reflexiona aquí sobre cuestiones cruciales como estas y analiza también el papel de internet en nuestra sociedad en tanto que “fuerza productiva”. El libro concluye con una evaluación del legado de Marx y la pregunta de hasta qué punto resulta realista en la actualidad la propuesta de reemplazar el capitalismo por un sistema de producción mejor.

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, Rethinking Life and Death, and The Life You Can Save, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words. In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness. Singer asks whether chimpanzees are people, smoking should be outlawed, or consensual sex between adult siblings should be decriminalized, and he reiterates his case against the idea that all human life is sacred, applying his arguments to some recent cases in the news. In addition, he explores, in an easily accessible form, some of the deepest philosophical questions, such as whether anything really matters and what is the value of the pale blue dot that is our planet. The collection also includes some more personal reflections, like Singer's thoughts on one of his favorite activities, surfing, and an unusual suggestion for starting a family conversation over a holiday feast. Provocative and original, these essays will challenge--and possibly change--your beliefs about a wide range of real-world ethical questions.

Does animal welfare have a place in sustainable farming, or do the demands of a rising human population and the threat of climate change mean that the interests of animals must be put aside? Can we improve the way we keep animals and still feed the world - or is it a choice between ethics and economics?

The aim of this book is to challenge the "them-and-us" thinking that sets the interests of humans and farm animals against each other and to show that to be really "sustainable," farming needs to include, not ignore, animal welfare. The authors of this remarkable book come from a diversity of backgrounds: industry, animal welfare organizations, academic institutions, and practical farming. They are united in arguing that farm animals matter and that sustainable farming must have animal welfare at its ethical core, along with the production of healthy, affordable food and care for the environment.

More than twenty years after its publication, Peter Singer's Ethics into Action continues to inspire new generations of activists through its portrayal of Henry Spira and the animal rights movement. With a new preface from the author, this edition celebrates the continued importance of social movements and provides a path towards furthering changes in our world. Singer, one of the world's most influential living philosophers, reveals how Henry Spira influenced major corporations by simultaneously applying targeted pressures and removing existing obstacles to achieve his ethical goals. As people all over the world continues to struggle for justice, Spira's method of affecting change serves as a proven model for activists fighting across a wide range of causes.

Apuleius's The Golden Ass, one of a handful of extant ancient novels, remains relatively unknown. Peter Singer, the renowned philosopher and author of the modern classic Animal Liberation, remedies this neglect, bringing the comic tale back to the wider reading public. With a version stripped of the many tales extraneous to the main narrative, Singer exposes the core of the text: the adventures of the man-turned-animal, Lucius. Singer has teamed with Apuleius scholar and translator Ellen Finkelpearl to create a delightful rollicking story in which we follow the adventures of this cocky young man transformed into a donkey, through his travails, erotic adventures and enlightenment. With Singer's vision, superbly illustrated by prize-winning artists Anya and and Varya Kendel, this newly rendered canonical work is bound to be enjoyed by anyone who cares about human and animal life. Afterwords by Singer and Finkelpearl assess the significance of The Golden Ass for our thoughts about animals, ancient and modern.

Many people regard Hegel's work as obscure and extremely difficult, yet his importance and influence are universally acknowledged. Peter Singer eliminates any excuse for remaining ignorant of the outlines of Hegel's philosophy by providing a broad discussion of his ideas and an account of his major works.

This book is not a conventional reader in moral philosophy. To capture the essentials of what we know about the origins and nature of ethics, Peter Singer has drawn on anthropology, history, observation of non-human animals, the theory of evolution, game theory, and works of fiction, in addition to moral philosophy. By choosing some of the finest pieces of writing, old and new, in and about ethics, he conveys the intellectual excitement of the search for basic questions about how we ought to live.

Utilitarianism may well be the most influential secular ethical theory in the world today. It is also one of the most controversial. It clashes, or is widely thought to clash, with many conventional moral views, and with human rights when they are seen as inviolable. Would it, for example, be right to torture a suspected terrorist in order to prevent an attack that could kill and injure a large number of innocent people? In this Very Short Introduction Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek provide an authoritative account of the nature of utilitarianism, from its nineteenth-century origins, to its justification and its varieties. Considering how utilitarians can respond to objections that are often regarded as devastating, they explore the utilitarian answer to the question of whether torture can ever be justified. They also discuss what it is that utilitarians should seek to maximize, paying special attention to the classical utilitarian view that only pleasure or happiness is of intrinsic value. Singer and de Lazari-Radek conclude by analysing the continuing importance of utilitarianism in the world, indicating how it is a force for new thinking on contemporary moral challenges like global poverty, the treatment of animals, climate change, reducing the risk of human extinction, end-of-life decisions for terminally-ill patients, and the shift towards assessing the success of government policies in terms of their impact on happiness. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

While moral perfectionists rank conscious beings according to their cognitive abilities, Paola Cavalieri launches a more inclusive defense of all forms of subjectivity. In concert with Peter Singer, J. M. Coetzee, Harlan B. Miller, and other leading animal studies scholars, she expands our understanding of the nonhuman in such a way that the derogatory category of "the animal" becomes meaningless. In so doing, she presents a nonhierachical approach to ethics that better respects the value of the conscious self.

Cavalieri opens with a dialogue between two imagined philosophers, laying out her challenge to moral perfectionism and tracing its influence on our attitudes toward the "unworthy." She then follows with a roundtable "multilogue" which takes on the role of reason in ethics and the boundaries of moral status. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner for Literature and author of "The Lives of Animals," emphasizes the animality of human beings; Miller, a prominent analytic philosopher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, dismantles the rationalizations of human bias; Cary Wolfe, professor of English at Rice University, advocates an active exposure to other worlds and beings; and Matthew Calarco, author of "Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida," extends ethical consideration to entities that traditionally have little or no moral status, such as plants and ecosystems.

As Peter Singer writes in his foreword, the implications of this conversation extend far beyond the issue of the moral status of animals. They "get to the heart of some important differences about how we should do philosophy, and how philosophy can relate to our everyday life." From the divergences between analytical and continental approaches to the relevance of posthumanist thinking in contemporary ethics, the psychology of speciesism, and the practical consequences of an antiperfectionist stance, "The Death of the Animal" confronts issues that will concern anyone interested in a serious study of morality.

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters, and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research, and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live.