November 18, 2021
A CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON:
So What's the Problem With Peter Singer?: Discrimination is quite literally killing disabled people, now more than ever. (Lucy Burke, 18 November 2021, Novara Media)
Media engagement with Singer, including Novara Media, has tended to focus on his highly influential work on animal rights and his views on veganism. Singer is notable for arguing that personhood - an attribution that provides rights, protections, privileges, and moral consideration - should be extended to non-human animals such as primates that exhibit specific characteristics: self-awareness; the capacity to plan, form alliances and relationships, manifest grief and anger; and to learn sign language.
But most engagement with Singer's philosophy of personhood fails to fully acknowledge the significance of his work in contributing to a culture in which the value of disabled peoples' lives is viewed as a matter for debate rather than a given, and reflects a broader failure to engage meaningfully with disability activism and activists whose work has, for example, been vital in challenging the economic and ideological justifications of austerity and highlighting its brutal human costs.
The significance of Singer's philosophy is that it decouples the concept of personhood from 'species-being', enabling the philosopher to argue that some non-human animals should be endowed with the rights and protections that personhood affords. But the separation of the category of personhood from species (ie being a human) is also central to Singer's work on the impact of modern medical technologies on traditional ethical assumptions.In his book Rethinking Life and Death, Singer argues that the religious principle of the "sanctity of life" is increasingly redundant in a world in which life can be sustained artificially, for example on a mechanical ventilator. Instead, he argues that decision-making at both the beginning and end of life should be informed by his criterial view of personhood: in other words, whether the human whose life is in question possesses the specific attributes Singer associates with personhood - rationality, self-awareness, being able to perceive oneself through time, anticipating and desiring a future, and fear of death.
The Left is the Right. It's just a matter of who they think needs killing.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 18, 2021 7:58 AM