Interview with
Peter Singer: Philosopher as Educator
by Jacob M. Appel, J.D.
Princeton University philosophy professor
Peter Singer is no stranger to controversy. The fifty-seven year old Australian-born
scholar—whom
the Archbishop of Melbourne once branded “Herod’s propaganda minister” and
the New Yorker hailed as the most influential
thinker of our time—has advocated animal rights, a euthanasia option
for deformed infants, and the radical redistribution of human wealth. His appointment
as Ira W. DeCamp Professorship of Bioethics at the Center for Human Values
five years ago generated protests from anti-abortion demonstrators and some
advocates for the disabled; others, most notably anti-poverty activists, rallied
to his defense. Yet the man behind the controversy turns out—at least
on first impression—to be an intellectual lion with the manner of a lamb.
He is soft-spoken, with a winning boyish smile. One is instantly struck by
his passion for his students and, most of all, by his tolerance—even
appreciation—for ideas different from his own.
“A significant part of the success I’ve had,” Singer
explains, “is because I’ve selected important issues to talk about
and spoken about them in a way that is clear, that avoids unnecessary jargon,
so students have no difficulty understanding or seeing what the issues are.” Singer
makes a point of exposing his students to texts that directly conflict with
his own ideas. When discussing current American foreign policy, much of which
Singer opposes, he assigns President Bush’s recent address at West Point.
While teaching bioethical issues relating to life and death decision-making,
Singer offers students both his own utilitarian arguments and writings by his
fiercest critics that tout the absolute sanctity of life. “You have to
give students a clear position to argue against and encourage them to argue
against it,” Singer says. “I say in my instructions for writing
papers that an essay that repeats back to me what I’ve said in class
or in my writings is not likely to get a good grade, while an essay that argues
with me is likely to get a better grade...Of course you have to create an atmosphere
in which students feel comfortable and in which they know they will not be
penalized for disagreeing with you.” Toward this end, Singer’s
students also have discussion sections with preceptors whose ideas often differ
greatly from his own.
Singer’s own mentors—two of the last century’s
leading philosophers—were men with whom he often disagreed. The first,
H. D. McCloskey of the University of Melbourne, was a prominent opponent of
utilitarianism—the theory of “judging whether acts are right or
wrong by their consequences” that Singer himself espouses. “McCloskey
would criticize utilitarianism fiercely,” Singer recalls of the class
he took during his second year at college, “but I thought that his objections
to utilitarianism weren’t very sound and that they could be met. I remember
writing an essay defending utilitarianism and thinking that it seemed to be
a very sensible and understandable point of view.” Singer credits McCloskey’s
openness to dissent with stimulating his own thinking. “He was fair-minded.
You could criticize him and get a good grade for the course, which is essential
in a good teacher. We used to argue, and eventually we became very friendly,
and he supervised my master’s thesis as well.” Later, as a graduate
student at Oxford University, Singer developed a similar relationship with
the late moral philosopher R. M. Hare. Hare had not been Singer’s original
thesis advisor, but after Singer sent Hare “a little paper” he
had written criticizing some of Hare’s ideas, the Englishman became his
sponsor and friend. “I was a little bit apprehensive at what his response
would be,” recalls Singer. “He had a fearsome reputation for not
taking kindly to criticism.” But taking this chance, he says, made all
the difference.
“My advice to students is to make the most of your opportunities,” says
Singer. “Take the initiative. Be prepared to talk to your professors.
If you’ve got something interesting to say, they’ll be interested
in talking to you.” But Singer’s personal fame has forced him to
curtail his own availability. “I’ll talk to any Princeton student,” he
says. “That’s what I’m here for.” But students at other
schools—who email him by the hundreds—are out of luck. “I
regret I do not have time to discuss my views with all of the people who email
me,” he explains. “I wish there were ten of me. The internet could
be a wonderful tool for education if only you had time to take advantage of
it.” But Singer’s spare time is devoted to running a visiting speaker
series, advising senior theses and graduate student dissertations, and addressing
such campus organizations as Oxfam and Unicef—the latter chapter formed
by his former students. He teaches
two courses, “Bioethics” in the fall and “Practical Ethics” in
the spring that are both highly popular. A few students enter his class unaware
of his reputation, but many come for the opportunity to watch a celebrity faculty
member in action. “I guess a lot of people say you should take a course
with Singer while you’re at Princeton,” he muses. “It’s
an interesting experience whether you agree with him or not.”
One of the factors that helps keep his
class interesting, and those of his colleagues as well, is the relatively
light instruction load at Princeton. Singer champions such a light load—not because he disdains
teaching, but because he cares about it. “If you’re teaching three
courses a semester,” he argues, “you can get very stale. Such a
hard load becomes something you have to get through, rather than something
that you look forward to or are enthusiastic about.” At an institution
such as Princeton, in contrast, faculties have enough time to make themselves
freely available to students. “There’s always someone students
can go and talk to: they can talk to me, they can talk to their preceptors.
It takes a good faculty-student ratio to make that possible.” According
to Singer, every educational institution should have access to the same resources
at Princeton. He adds: “But, obviously, that’s not going to happen.” Teaching
in the United States offers a striking difference to his earlier experiences
teaching in Australia, both for better and worse. “Australia doesn’t
have elite universities in the same sense,” he says. “They’re
all funded on basically the same formula and there’s not a huge difference
between them, so the range of students you get is necessarily broader and the
resources available are fewer.”
Singer’s most recent project,
published in March as The
President of Good and Evil, is likely
to generate additional controversy. “It’s different from what
I’ve done before,” says Singer. “It’s more political.” The
book is a philosopher’s assessment of President Bush’s ethics.
Singer explains the work as follows: “I felt given the situation the
Unites States is in, we should talk about war...George W. Bush speaks a lot
about right and wrong, about morality, about what’s good and evil.
A lot of people think it’s all a fraud and all lies, and other people,
of course, think it’s wonderful, but there hasn’t been so much
that looks at what he says and holds it up to scrutiny in the way that philosophers
hold moral arguments up to scrutiny. That’s what I’ve attempted
to do in the book.” Singer concludes that, for the most part, Bush “does
not have a consistent ethic.” Instead, “he pulls from various
different approaches on different issues. For example, he’ll be very
concerned about the sanctity of human life when he is talking about funding
or not funding research on embryos, or on stem cells derived from embryos,
but he’ll be less concerned about it when he goes to war in Afghanistan
or Iraq, where American bombs are killing civilians.” Of course, Singer
urges his students and readers to feel free—as he always does—to
disagree. “After all,” he concludes, “I’m still learning
all the time.”#
