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Interview

Peter Singer

Peter Singer is a Professor of Bioethics at Princeton. Notorious for his views on issues such as euthanasia, he is also revered as a founding father by the animal rights movement. Jeremy Iggers asked him about the treatment of farm animals and about his own strict vegetarianism.

The controversial ethicist Peter Singer recently moved from Monash University in his native Australia to the United States, to become the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values. Last August Richard Taylor, writing in Philosophy Now, called Singer “the most important and influential philosopher of this generation.”

In his many writings on ethics he takes a utilitarian approach, with an emphasis on the need to reduce suffering. Always willing to apply his theories in his own life, his concern to reduce the suffering of animals led him to give up eating meat and to write the classic Animal Liberation.

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