In the second and final installment of his conversation with The Animals' Agenda, Peter Singer discusses topics ranging from the feminist critique of animal oppression to suggestions for combating the backlash against the animal rights movement.
In 1975 Peter Singer published Animal Liberation, the book that is often credited with launching the animal rights movement. Since then he has written or co-written nine more books, including Animal Factories (with Jim Mason). In addition, he has been the editor or co-editor of nine other texts, among them In Defence of Animals, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, and The Great Ape Project (with Paola Cavalieri).
Recently, Singer was in the United States to promote The Great Ape Project and to persuade people to sign the declaration it contains. In Singer's words that declaration asserts "[that] the community of equals, the community of beings for whom we accept the same ultimate, basic rights, should cease to be the species homo sapiens and should become the great apes as a whole."
Kim W. Stallwood, editor-in-chief of The Animals' Agenda visited with Singer in the offices of St. Martin's Press, publisher of The Great Ape Project, in New York.
AGENDA: What do you think has been added to the animal rights movement by the feminist critique of animal oppression?
SINGER: The feminist critique has, perhaps, made some of us who are inclined to look at things in a rational way realize that we have not given enough attention to emotional connections to animals and to caring attitudes towards them. We should try to extend people's emotional attachment and commitment to animals, and we ought to try to get people to empathize more with the less charismatic, less attractive animals. That's something I've gotten from the feminist critique.
AGENDA: What is your opinion of ecofeminism, which argues that both utilitarian calculations and natural rights theories are an integral part of the dominant patriarchal culture that exploits animals?
SINGER: I'm not sure that all those who consider themselves ecofeminists would adopt that position. I've spoken to some who would accept the idea of equal consideration of all animals, although they may not think it goes far enough. Still, they wouldn't reject equal consideration as part of patriarchal domination. I think ecofeminists would recognize that an equal-consideration viewpoint provides a moral stance from which you get away from domination.
There are several strains of ecofeminism. I couldn't speak for all of them, but my position is compatible with much of what ecofeminists are talking about. If they're saying, for example, the male attitude has been disastrous for the planet and for other species, I certainly agree. And I'm inclined to accept that, in general, women have more of a long-term sense of responsibility for the planet as they often do for human relationships. You could speculate on the reasons for that, whether men have been socialized into this dominant attitude or if women are, in some way, naturally more long term in their perspective.
AGENDA: Do you think animal liberation can be accomplished under patriarchy?
SINGER: The goals of care and commitment for animals--like the goals for oppressed minorities, indigenous peoples, and the ecological systems of the planet--are subversive of patriarchy. Therefore, if we accomplish animal liberation, we are simultaneously undermining a patriarchal society, so that it wouldn't exist by the time we got to our goal; but that's not to say we have to eliminate patriarchy before working towards animal liberation.
AGENDA: Can animal liberation be accomplished under capitalism?
SINGER: I don't think animal liberation can be accomplished under a system that promotes greed and personal self-interest as the natural goals for every individual. To some extent, then, animal liberation would have to be accomplished under a dramatically modified capitalism, but it still would be a system that allows free markets to perform certain functions. I don't see any reason for assuming that government control of the economy in itself brings about animal liberation. My inclination is towards smaller-scale, regional-community development, which allows a place for markets and for exchange but would not be the global-scale capitalist system we know today.
AGENDA: Do you think we will accomplish animal liberation in our lifetime?
SINGER: Animal liberation will not be accomplished until we persuade people that we don't have the right to dominate and exploit animals. We cannot accomplish that while the prevailing diet is based on the assumption that animals are here to produce food for us rather than to lead lives of their own. That's the underlying buttress of speciesism, and it may be the last one we get rid of. When we do, if other forms of speciesism still exist, they will collapse. If society ceased to regard animals as food, they would cease to be regarded as fur coats or laboratory tools or anything else. I don't expect to see that in my lifetime. We've seen steps towards it, but eliminating an animal-based diet is a bigger and more historical change than the abolition of slavery, which was not so central in the lives and economy of the people in the New World at the time that the reformists began to abolish it. Yet it took them from the late 18th century until the middle of the 19th century to abolish slavery.
AGENDA: If you were not a philosopher, but, say, a public information officer for the animal rights movement, what message would you articulate to combat the strategy of the anti-animal rights forces?
SINGER: I would try to revive grass roots initiatives, to get people in their own communities prepared to stand up and say, 'I want to make a difference in the way animals are treated. I'm going to tell other people why I'm not eating animals. I'm going to make it easier for others to do this by pointing out that there are vegetarian alternatives available. I'm going to look out for cases of animal abuse. If I'm a student or a parent, I'm going to see that there are alternatives to using animals in classes.' We need to promote that level of local activity. It's too easy for people to feel that because they write a check once a year to some organization, that's the extent of their responsibility for the movement. I'd like people to realize that living an ethical life is worthwhile in itself. It's not just as a side issue to the goal of pursuing a career.
AGENDA: Are you concerned about the image of the animal rights movement and the backlash against the movement?
SINGER: The backlash is effective at combating specific initiatives from large animal rights groups, but it's less effective at the grass roots level because it can't be everywhere at once. The backlash is fueled by a few well-heeled professional organizations who employ other professionals to fight us full time. Reviving a grass roots movement is one way of combating those professionals. People in local communities are going to be more influenced by those they know, respect, and work with than they are by outsiders. We also must keep hitting the fact that opponents of the animal rights movement are defending their financial self-interest. When we get people to see that, I think they will automatically discount the kinds of things professionals say against us.
AGENDA: Why did you become a philosopher?
SINGER: I was always interested in doing things that would contribute to public debates about ethical and political issues. Philosophy offered the potential for doing that. I was quite unsure about becoming a philosopher for some time during my university career. I didn't make the decision until after I had graduated. That was a time when philosophy was going through some interesting changes. After spending a lot of time rather fruitlessly analyzing the meanings of words it was just starting to get involved in debates about the Vietnam conflict, civil disobedience, racial rights, and so on.
AGENDA: What is it about utilitarianism that attracts you more than any other philosophical system?
SINGER: Its concreteness. It takes things we can observe and makes them the basic data of ethics. It tells you that the good things are people leading happy lives or lives in which they get what they want. Bad things involve people suffering, being in pain, or having their needs and wants frustrated. Obviously, I should say "sentient creatures" rather than "people," but traditionally the focus has been on people. Suffering and pain are concrete. We know them in our own experience, we can observe them in other humans and animals. Other philosophical positions base themselves on something more mysterious: the idea of a natural right, for instance. People put forward all sorts of things as natural rights or basic rights or human rights or animal rights, and then someone says, 'No, I don't think X is a right.' And at that point the argument stops. That's why I think utilitarianism is on much firmer ground than other views.
AGENDA: Is the ethical issue involving animals the one you like to deal with most?
SINGER: It's certainly the one I feel most attached to, having done more personally to put it on the agenda, both the public agenda and the philosophical agenda. Yet I find some of the other issues fascinating in a professional sense, and animal rights is not necessarily the issue I most enjoy working on still because I'm not sure I have a lot of new, creative things to say about it at a philosophical level.
AGENDA: Is there any problem philosophy cannot solve?
SINGER: There are lots of problems philosophy doesn't have the answers to. And may never have them. For example, the question of how we change people, how we reach them. Philosophy can outline ethical principles and say we ought to be doing this, we ought not to be doing that, but there's a significant proportion of the community that doesn't take much notice of those pronouncements. So I don't think philosophy has the answers to those sorts of questions. I don't know whether any other branch of human understanding does. You hope it will eventually, but we're a long way from the answers to those sorts of questions.
AGENDA: Has philosophy ever solved any problems?
SINGER: Philosophers have contributed to a lot of ideas that we now accept. The anti-slavery movement was benefitted by philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and others who were writing about equality at the time. I think philosophers made contributions to the environmental movement, to the debates about the war in Vietnam and civil disobedience, and so on. Obviously, philosophers have played an important role in the animal movement and in bioethics. Many doctors are much more willing to consult philosophers than they were 20 years ago. We have hospital ethics committees and so on with philosophers serving on them. So I think philosophy's contribution is recognized and is a useful one even if it doesn't give you sort of clear cut, two-and-two-make-four sorts of answers to our problems.