Peter Singer versus Christianity

Peter Singer versus Christianity

Introduction

Peter Albert David Singer was born on July 6 of 1946, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He is a philosopher utilitarian Jewish Australian of law and later philosophy at Monash University (Melbourne). Then up to the University of Oxford, where it contacts the utilitarian ethics by reading English authors such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. There participates in protests against the Vietnam War , and also takes place her "conversion" to vegetarianism , influenced by some students, that sparked the interest in ethics applied to animals, an ethical treatment of animals, abortion , the euthanasia , the poverty and income distribution, among others (Carruthers, 1992).

Peter Singer is a child of Jewish parents in Vienna, who had fled before the connection to the Third Reich and immigrated to Australia. His grandparents were murdered when Jewish people in Nazi death camps. Peter Singer is thus raised in the Anglo-American world, and it is due to the history of his family in his own writings deemed necessary, particularly sensitive in terms that arouse in the German-speaking associations with events in the Third Reich deal. Euthanasia is a term in the Anglo-American world; the more uses the progressive left. He stands there in connection with the right to one's own death, which is contrary to the Catholic-Christian concept of the sanctity of life and the prohibition of suicide. Accordingly, where the critics of Singer come almost exclusively from the right-conservative, religious camps. In English-speaking singer is regarded as left-intellectual Jew (Regan, 2003).

Discussion

Peter Singer has been in this country mostly known for his utterances regarding euthanasia and notorious. However, some of his books, acting especially Animal Liberation, the liberation of animals, and even often regarded as the trigger for the animal rights movement, were the legitimate skepticism. Moreover, Singer opposite applied to the whole animal rights idea. An analysis of its ethical ideas based on his book Practical Ethics shows that his dubious claims regarding euthanasia are a consequence of the utilitarian approach and the separation of conscious and self-conscious beings, but only the latter an interest accorded to stay alive (Carruthers, 1992).

However, the philosophy of animal rights but follows an ontological approach and recognizes all living beings with a right to consciousness of life is just so with regard to these two points contradict Singer. Therefore, from the animal rights philosophy does not have permission follows on Euthanasia. Singer's merit, it remains to have formulated the ethical principle of equality and justice so clear that it disclose any sexist, racist, nationalist or specialist form of oppression. The criticism of animal rights philosophy of Peter Singer is not intended to diminish the appreciation of his role in the beginnings of the animal liberation movement, nor the vehemence of the rejection of his statements are justified with respect to reducing euthanasia (Carruthers, 1992).

Ethics

One must be careful, in terms such as euthanasia, have in the local history of a different color than in English, easy to translate so ...