Peter Singer

“Even though I’m not a utilitarian, and so I tend to disagree with Singer in terms of the general framework, this book literally changed my life. I read it many years ago, in the 1990s, when I was in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was part of a book club that I helped organize and I don’t remember who suggested it but we read this book. One of the things that struck me as really reasonable and useful in it is that Singer says, ‘Don’t try to be perfect, don’t try to change everything you do all at once because most likely you will fail and give up. Try to do the little that you can, and as much as you can in the right direction.’ So, for instance, Singer is famously an advocate of animal rights and vegetarianism. He says that if you agree that the vegetarian or even the vegan position is, in fact, morally preferable, that doesn’t mean you have to give up everything on the spot, or indeed ever. It means that you want to move in that direction. What are you doing now, eating steak three times a week? Go down to one a week, or once every couple of weeks. Start moving in that direction. Any movement you make in the right direction is progress. It’s progress for you as an individual and it’s progress for whatever cause—in this case, animal rights and the environment—you’re concerned with.” Read more...

The best books on How to Be Good

Massimo Pigliucci, Philosopher

“This book is quite brilliantly done. It’s a very concise book, but it’s intelligible and precise in the way it describes the varieties of utilitarianism. It’s very readable and it covers a lot of ground. It covers what you would cover in a university undergraduate course on utilitarianism, but you can read and take it in in four or five hours or so. Because Peter Singer is a co-author, it has a certain authority in its description of thinkers and positions. It’s got a bias, obviously, because it’s written by people who are extremely sympathetic to utilitarianism.” Read more...

The Best Philosophy Books of 2017

Nigel Warburton, Philosopher

“This is a relatively small book but with a very big idea. I like to use it to test my students’ intuition about the ethical basis for globalisation. Singer makes a simple and, on the face of it, very plausible point which is that the extent to which we care for other human beings shouldn’t depend on what side of the border they live. Taken to its logical limit, it has very powerful implications about how we should conduct our own lives as well our domestic policy – what kind of ends domestic government policies should pursue. It’s a very good book in terms of laying out an extremely cosmopolitan view of justice and ethics. I don’t subscribe to much of what he says, but I do think that he lays out a challenge to those of us who, like me, are sceptics to be clearer as to our reasoning.” Read more...

The best books on Globalisation

Dani Rodrik, Economist

“Also new in ethics books, there’s a “fully updated and expanded” version of Ethics in the Real World by Peter Singer, the Australian-American philosopher behind the effective altruism movement, one of our best philosophy books of 2016. These are short essays, mostly from Singer’s Project Syndicate column, addressing issues like: ‘Can Ethics Be Taught?’, ‘The Case for Going Vegan’ and ‘Why Google Was Wrong’ to fire James Damore for his comments about women in tech.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023

Sophie Roell, Journalist

“Practical Ethics came out in 1979, just before I began studying philosophy. I loved its rigour, and I found Peter Singer almost impossible to argue with. I agreed with almost every position he took on every issue. There were chapters on abortion, on animal rights, on how much money we can give to the poor. It’s really the blueprint for everything he’s written subsequently. He is prolific, but if you want to know what Singer believes on a given topic, you may as well go back to Practical Ethics. There’s a whole chapter on the fact that if we know that people are going to die in the Third World and we fail to do something about it, we’re as responsible for their murder as if we put a bullet through their heads. It’s a very practical book which addresses these controversial issues. I became a vegetarian at university after reading it, so it had a big effect on my life. I’ve since moved away from his very rigid utilitarianism on other topics, but I still find his arguments about how we should treat animals very persuasive.” Read more...

The best books on Ethical Problems

David Edmonds, Philosopher