Philosophy, Controversy, and the Importance of Free Speech

Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States and Australia, he has, since 1999, been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. Since 2005 he has combined that position with the position of Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2012 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civic honor. He is known especially for his work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, for his controversial critique of the sanctity of life ethics in bioethics, and for his writing on the obligations of the affluent to aid those living in extreme poverty. His 1972 article “Famine Affluence and Morality” is the original inspiration for the effective altruism movement. Together with other essays, it has recently been released in book format by Oxford University Press. Singer has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 40 books, including Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), The Life You Can Save, The Most Good You Can Do, Ethics in the Real World, and most recently, Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction, co-authored Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. His writings have appeared in more than 30 languages.