Peter Singer

Peter Singer and Robert George will be at Labyrinth to discuss Mr. Singer’s new book, Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter (Princeton Univ. Press $27.95) on Tuesday, October 18 at 6 p.m.).

Mr. Singer helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. According to The Economist, Ethics in the Real World is an “accessible introduction to the work of a philosopher who would not regard being described as ‘accessible’ as an insult …. Despite their brevity, the essays do not shirk the big moral questions.” 

In this book of brief essays, Singer addresses 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. He also 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.

Peter Singer is professor of bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University and professor at the University of Melbourne. He first became well known internationally in 1975 with the publication of Animal Liberation. His other books include How Are We to Live?; The Ethics of What We Eat; and The Most Good You Can Do. Robert George is professor of Jurisprudence and Politics at Princeton. His books include In Defense of Natural Law; Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality; The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion and Morality in Crisis; and Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism.

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