[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/lum/prchap/01-04.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Some Considerations on Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics

In: Rethinking Social Action. Core Values in Practice

Author

Listed:
  • Mihai ANDRONE

    (Associate Professor, PhD, “Dunărea de Jos†University of Galati, Romania)

Abstract
Peter Singer’s applied or practical ethics constitutes a typical product of the pluralist, relativistic, utilitarian and secular spirit of the postmodern era. Being an influential public figure, at the same time famous and controversial to the highest degree, his ideas have more than once been considered as dangerous. A passionate advocate of animal rights, Peter Singer is not a supporter of man’s right to live. His philosophical attitude towards humanity and personality, his total separation from the Judeo-Christian tradition, protector of the sanctity of life, made him profess, in his book Practical Ethics, that the unborn children and the newborns are not rational beings and therefore do not value more (in fact, they value less) than certain animals. Such an anthropological conception evincing the psychological aspects of human existence is meant to “justify†abortion, infanticide, removal of haemophiliac children. This doctrinaire stance of the Australian moral philosopher aims at showing us the unhappy position of contemporary man who is deprived of certainties, of absolute moral benchmarks. Being an admirer of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the atheist philosopher and ethicist Peter Singer considers that ethics is a natural phenomenon and man has no essential nature, being free to choose what he wants to be. By this type of existentialist ideas Peter Singer only confirms the truth of Jean-Paul Sartre’s statement in Existentialism is a Humanism: if God does not exist, then everything is permissible.

Suggested Citation

  • Mihai ANDRONE, 2017. "Some Considerations on Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics," Book chapters-LUMEN Proceedings, in: Camelia Ignatescu & Antonio SANDU & Tomita CIULEI (ed.), Rethinking Social Action. Core Values in Practice, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 34-43, Editura Lumen.
    • Handle: RePEc:lum:prchap:01-04
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.18662/lumproc.rsacvp2017.4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://proceedings.lumenpublishing.com/ojs/index.php/lumenproceedings/article/view/409/411
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://proceedings.lumenpublishing.com/ojs/index.php/lumenproceedings/article/view/409
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/https://doi.org/10.18662/lumproc.rsacvp2017.4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Peter Singer; postmodernity; practical ethics; atheism; Jean-Paul Sartre;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A3 - General Economics and Teaching - - Multisubject Collective Works
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
    • M0 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lum:prchap:01-04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Antonio Sandu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://proceedings.lumenpublishing.com/ojs/index.php/lumenproceedings .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.