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Animals

Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? The controversial Peter Singer!

Charlotte Laws cautiously chows down with the Defender of Animals.

I recently had the opportunity to eat, drink and make moral calculations with philosopher Peter Singer, who is sometimes called ‘the Father of the Animal Rights movement’. You might think that hanging out with a renowned and accomplished philosopher would cause a pain in the brain, risking the sort of soreness that can develop after a college class of induction, deduction and general cerebral gymnastics. But as a lifelong fiancée of philosophy, I was thrilled that Professor Singer agreed to meet with me.

Singer has the distinction of being the epiphany-trigger in my life. In 1985 I read his book, In Defense of Animals, in which he talks about ‘speciesism’, a prejudice similar to racism and sexism, in which humans assume they are superior to other species.

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