All Animals Are Equal...: Peter Singer

Animal Liberation (1975) by renowned Australian philosopher Peter Singer is widely recognized as a foundational text within the animal rights movement. In this work, Singer helped popularize the term "speciesism," and argues that it is unethical to discriminate against non-human animals.

Singer's philosophy of animal rights is traceable to Bentham's utilitarianism, which stresses the closeness and connection between animals and humans. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780) the governing principles of morality are pain and pleasure. In a "famous footnote," Bentham concludes: "a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant.... But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"

And in Theory of Legislation (1802, Chapter 7), Bentham notes "legislation might be extended further than it is in relation to the interest of the inferior animals." However, this is qualified by animals' presumed ability to suffer and escape suffering: "there are good reasons why animals should serve for the nourishment of man, and for destroying those which incommode us. We are the better for it, and they are not the worse; for they have not, as we have, long and cruel anticipations of the future; and the death which they receive at our hands may always be rendered less painful than that which awaits them in the inevitable course of nature."

Using the feminist and civil rights movements as points of comparison, Singer applies utilitarian analysis to the ideology of equality. Described as an egalitarianism in spite of difference, he further develops the view that beings capable of suffering are worthy of moral consideration.

The title of the first chapter alludes to a quotation from George Orwell's Animal Farm, in full: "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others."

For this meetup, we will read Chapter 1 of Animal Liberation, "All Animals Are Equal...":
pdf: https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/wfb175/singer.pdf

kindle (most of chapter 1 is available as a free download): https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Liberation-Definitive-Classic-Movement-ebook/dp/B00TZE2Q0O/

Supplemental:

"Suffering in Humans, Animals, and AI": https://youtu.be/llh-2pqSGrs

"Animal Liberation, Forty Years On": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOlN6d1CP9A

This meetup is part of a series on Flora and Fauna.