The Problem with Peter Singer

There is an ongoing debate about euthanasia in Germany, due to a new legislation to be discussed in the Federal Parliament in July that could make certain forms of euthanasia legal. Meanwhile, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, both animal rights activists' and pro-choicers' indefatigable hero, got a price (in fact: his own price) for his engagement in animal protection grounded in his ethics, which include a justification of euthanasia by stating that some human beings are persons and some are not, while some animals should be considered as persons instead. Being not qualified as persons has no intrinsic value, and therefore no unconditional right to life. We should look deeper into the ethical argument that makes such implications possible.

I. Obviously, in the recent ethical debate there are a lot of serious approaches towards so-called “animal rights.” Meanwhile, it is undisputed that an animal, as a creature, has a certain sort of “dignity” and therefore an inherent “right” to be protected. Yet, it seems quiet doubtful whether this shall lead to “absolute” rights, constituted on the same level as human rights. In the debate, one question is, if there should be any exceptions to the protection of the animal’s life for cases in which animals serve human beings, as in relief of aliments or for scientific purpose? For instance, following the Christian concept of the human being as “God’s image” and as the “crown of creation,” it may appear justified to permit these exceptions, because of the human being’s outstanding position towards animals.

However, animal rights activists, as well as some ethicists, like the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, consider this as “speciecism.” They consider these exceptions as a sort of “discrimination” within the relation of a human being to an animal and raise it on the same ethical level as the discrimination of blacks by whites (racism), or female human beings by male human beings (sexism). They argue that human beings and animals should be treated equally if, and when, they have the same interests, e. g. the interest to be free of harm and pain, as Singer clearly makes by the example of slapping a horse and a human baby: “[…] if we consider it wrong to inflict that much pain on a baby for no good reason, then we must, unless we are speciesists, consider it equally wrong to inflict the same amount of pain on a horse for no good reason.”[1] This utilitarian rationality seems to be logically correct and justified by the first impression.

But on a second view, it becomes quiet clear that the concept of interest and the equal consideration of human being’s interests and animal’s interests do contain dangerous implications that can be used to neglect the human being’s claim to life as a fundamental human right, rather than to justify the animal’s right not to be killed for the base motives of “speciecists,” as some of Singer’s remarks on abortion[2] and euthanasia[3] show.

Once again: Singer holds, that any different treatment of human beings and animals is unjustified, because it violates the principle of equal consideration of basic interests. As a consequence, Singer does not separate humans from other beings, but persons (beings with the ability to have interests) from “non-persons” (beings without the ability to have interests). Meanwhile, into the first group belong “some nonhuman animals”[4] like apes. Yet, every human fetus belongs to the second, for “no fetus is a person”[5]. This argument leads to the conclusion that “no fetus has the same claim to life as a person”[6]. To Singer, the likelihood of the incapability of fetuses of less than 18 weeks “of feeling anything at all, since their nervous system appears to be insufficiently developed to function” does mean that “an abortion up to this point terminates an existence that is of no intrinsic value at all”[7]. And even late in pregnancy, an abortion indeed “should not be taken lightly,” but “is hard to condemn in a society that slaughters far more developed forms of life for the taste of their flesh”[8]. Singer insists that if we do not want to be “speciecists” by any religious or other justification,and do not want to turn into vegetarians, we can not hold the moral wrongness of abortion.

The problem in this argument regarding abortion lies in the comparison of the actual morally relevant status of a human fetus with developed animals on the background of the concept of interest, leaving out the potentiality. The essential, i. e. the genomic imprinting constituting a human being as a being of serious interests (and not only of basic ones that also can be found in animals, like the interest to be free of pain) already exists directly after the fertilization. Hence, right from the very beginning of human life, we should consider the being as a “potential person.”

On the other hand, Singer’s comparative argumentation could be taken as a justification for killing human beings, because of the approval of killing animals by emphasizing the similar actual morally relevant status of some animals (as persons) and mentally disabled human beings (as “non-persons”): “Some nonhuman animals appear to be rational and self-conscious beings, conceiving themselves as distinct beings with a past and a future. When this is so, or to the best of our knowledge may be so, the case against killing is strong, as strong as the case against killing permanently defective human beings at a similar mental level.”[9] The reverse might be: If we kill animals for our benefit, we cannot condemn the killing of human beings of the same or a lower mental level. That, to me, is a very problematic implication leading directly to euthanasia. And this would be the first step on a slippery slope, ending in complete immorality, and making genocide possible because of ethical reasons taken from the debate about animal rights, considering interests and personality, although Singer tries to deny this alarming risk with some historical and anthropological remarks: “Ancient Greeks regularly killed or exposed infants, but appear to have been at least as scrupulous about taking the lives of their fellow-citizens as medieval Christians or modern Americans. In traditional Eskimo societies it was the custom for a man to kill his elderly parents, but the murder of a normal healthy adult was almost unheard of. If these societies could separate human beings into different categories without transferring their attitudes from one group to another, we with our more sophisticated legal systems and greater medical knowledge should be able to do the same.”[10]

Should we? Could we? Are we really able to prevent a situation from getting out of our hands? This is a serious question, particularly in the light of the recent European history, connected to Nazi Germany’s euthanasia-program and the holocaust. Although it is wrong to compare the Nazi ideology with Singer’s proposals, they bring doubts into the mind: Who defines the “categories of separation,” who defines its limits and who is able to set these boundaries? Who says, one is “fellow citizen,” who determines one is “normal healthy”? In one word: Who can guarantee, once the utilitarian way of separation becomes an accepted common practice, that there is no abuse?

First of all, I am not against the protection of animals. But to ground this effort on rights concerning interests like Singer does, leads to undesirable ethical implications, as I have tried to demonstrate. They could evoke harm to the unalienable human dignity through the path of, on the one hand, the equalizaton of animals and human beings, and on the other hand, the separation of human beings “into different categories”[11]. And further on, I do not only want to persist in the difference between a human and a non-human being by reason of theological or metaphysical considerations, i. e. by appealing on creation, or the concept of soul as the human being’s rarefaction, held by a long-standing Christian tradition, but to further warn that interest-centered and right-based animal protection efforts very seriously undermine the status of human beings, and do endanger the most fundamental of human rights: life – human life. To my mind, that seems to be too high of a price.

Notes:

[1] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, Cambridge (1979), p. 52.

[2] For more on this topic see Singer, Pract. Eth., pp. 106-126 and Peter Singer, “Abortion”, in: Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford (1995), pp. 2-3.

[3] For more on this topic see Singer, Pract. Eth., pp. 126-157.

[4] Singer, Pract. Eth., p. 97.

[5] Singer, Pract. Eth., p. 118.

[6] Singer, Pract. Eth., p. 118.

[7] Singer, Pract. Eth., p. 118.

[8] Singer, Pract. Eth., p. 118.

[9] Singer, Pract. Eth., p. 103.

[10] Singer, Pract. Eth., p. 157.

[11] Singer, Pract. Eth., p. 157.