Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1967654 in Books
• Published on: 1990-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
"probably the single most influential document in the history of recent movements concerned with animal welfare"
--Guardian

From the Publisher
'An extraordinary book which has had extraordinary effects. . . widely known as the bible of the animal liberation movement' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

About the Author
Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. He has taught at the University of Oxford, New York University, University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of California at Irvine, and the La Trobe University. He is now a professor of Philosophy and deputy Director of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University, Melbourne. He was the founding President of Animal Liberation (Victoria) and is now the President of the Australian and New Zealand Federation of Animal Societies, a peak body for animal welfare and animal rights organisations in Australia and New Zealand. He is the co-founder and President of The Great Ape Project, an international effort to obtain basic rights for chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans.
In 1994 Peter Singer was a candidate for the Australian Greens at a by-election for the House of Representatives, and gained 29% of the vote, an Australian record for the Greens.
Peter Singer first became well known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation. His other books include Democracy and Disobedience; Practical Ethics; The Expanding Circle; Marx; Hegel; Animal Factories (with Jim Mason); The Reproduction Revolution (with Deane Wells); Should the Baby Live? (with Helga Kushe); How are We to Live?; and Rethinking Life and Death.

Customer Reviews

A very important book - everyone should read it
This books is widely credited for setting off the animal "rights" movement. Singer really brought the issue into the public arena, and caused people to question their presumptuous beliefs - this book was first published in 1975, and sparked off the writing of literally hundreds of other books about animal "rights". He describes our traditional view of animals as "speciesist" - arbitrarily discriminating simply on the basis of species - comparable to sexist or racist views. In the book he argues rationally and convincingly for animal "rights". Although a work of philosophy, the book is written to be easily accessible to the lay-person.

The book explains why we must extend our moral principles to other animals, describes the cruelty occuring in laboratories and factory farms, tells how and why we should become vegetarians, gives a short history of our views of animals and where they came from, and refutes common arguments against animal "rights".

In the 1990 preface to this book, Singer writes of its arguments "I have lectured on them, given talks to conferences and philosophy department seminars, and discussed them at length, both verbally and in print; but I have come across no insurmountable objections, nothing that has led me to think that the simple ethical arguments on which the book is based are anything but sound. It has been encouraging to find that many of my most respected philosophical peers agree with this view - so many, in fact, that in reviewing the revised edition Colin McGinn, who holds a distinguished chair of philosophy at Rutgers University, described the ethical core of the book as, in theory if not in practice, 'a won argument'".

If you find that hard to believe, then read the book and see if you can refute its claims!

One of the toughest-to-argue with books I've ever read
I read this book partly out of curiosity and partly out of a wish to confront a position that I found challenging to my own hazy sense of ethics. Specifically, I love cooking but was beginning to wonder if I didn't eat more meat than was really a good idea.

The fundamental insight I got from Singer's book is that the human tendency to elevate the interests of our species over those of other species is an entirely irrational prejudice, with no authority other than tradition. This is not to say that the interests of other species are always to be preferred to our own - that would also be illogical. But they must be taken into consideration, if our ethics are to have any rationality whatsoever.

As far as I'm concerned, this argument demolishes the objection often made to Singer's work by e.g. some religious people - that his concern for animals, coupled with his belief that abortion is sometimes morally justified, means that he "dehumanises" people, or "lowers them to the level of animals". The unspoken assumption here is that humans are self-evidently above animals to begin with. This argument fits much ancient theology but is not consistent with reason (or, it might be added, with science). It is nothing more than bigotry for religious authorities to claim that humans are in any way superior to other creatures.

So did it turn me into a vegetarian? No. I probably read too much Nietzsche when I was young. But I know now that the continued presence of meat in my diet is the result of nothing other than force and self-interest working in harmony. Humans eat meat because they can get away with it, and any other attempt to justify it is hypocrisy. One day, when I can't live any longer with the contradiction, I'll probably become a vegetarian, but in the meantime I have to find more ways of making mushrooms interesting.

Incidentally, Singer is also eloquent about the sheer wastefulness and incompetence of the meat industry. If we didn't eat so many hamburgers, it would be possible to do a lot more for the starving in the rest of the world. (If beef, pork, lamb and chicken were farmed less intensively and more in harmony with traditional methods, we would undoubtedly pay more for them, but they'd also start tasting better. But unsurprisingly, Singer doesn't make that particular point.)

This is undoubtedly one of the most challenging and rigorous works of philosophy of the last century. Insofar as it has a power of making us examine our own attitudes and behaviour, it's also one of the best.

One of the most compelling books I've ever read.
Well, I was already converted, but I have found that I now have the ability to present a coherent argument on the subject, thanks to this book.

Those books that claim you'll have given up smoking by the end? Pah! This is the animal equivalent. As a scientist I really appreciate the logical structure and the strength of some of the scientific arguments, but the book is a really easy read - on all levels but an emotional one, so it's one of those rare books that will appeal to anyone with an open mind.

If you think you can't be changed - take the challenge!

Julian