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Peter Singer cytaty
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Peter Singer [sɪŋə] – australijski etyk, profesor University Center for Human Values, Princeton University. Wykładał m.in. w Oxfordzie, Nowym Jorku, University of Colorado, University of California i Monash University.

Jako jeden z pierwszych Singer przeniósł ciężar dyskusji etycznych z rozważań teoretycznych na praktykę. W 1979 ukazała się jego książka Practical Ethics, która jest najpopularniejszym podręcznikiem etyki stosowanej w świecie anglosaskim. Opracował na gruncie filozoficznym i spopularyzował ideę wyzwolenia zwierząt, sam od lat 70. jest wegetarianinem, a jego dietę w dużej części można zaklasyfikować jako wegańską. Twierdzi, że obowiązkiem bogatych krajów rozwiniętych jest aktywne wspomaganie populacji krajów trzeciego świata. Od ponad 40. lat oddaje dużą część swojego majątku na rzecz najuboższych. Jest znany z kontrowersyjnych poglądów bioetycznych: dopuszcza aborcję, eutanazję mocno upośledzonych niemowląt zgodnie z wolą rodziców i eutanazję dobrowolną dorosłych. Wikipedia  

✵ 6. Lipiec 1946
Peter Singer Fotografia
Peter Singer: 62   Cytaty 0   Polubień

Peter Singer słynne cytaty

„Zdrowy noworodek nie ma świadomości biograficznej, ale wiadomo, że niebawem będzie ją miał. Więc ma takie same prawa jak każdy inny człowiek. Ale jest pytanie, co z noworodkami, o których wiadomo, że na skutek wady czy choroby nigdy nie będą miały świadomości biograficznej, że nie przeżyłyby, gdyby nie fantastyczny rozwój medycyny, i że potęga medycyny skaże je oraz ich najbliższych na życie w nieusuwalnym cierpieniu. (…) Pytam, czy moralne jest sztuczne utrzymywanie takich dzieci przy życiu. Po jednej stronie mamy cierpienie tego dziecka i jego rodziny oraz gigantyczne nakłady, które mogłyby uratować lub poprawić jakość życia wielu ludzi, a po drugiej stronie jest tabu bezcennej wartości każdego ludzkiego życia.”

Peter Singer

Źródło: rozmowa Jacka Żakowskiego, Moralność oceniam po skutkach, polityka.pl, 2 czerwca 2010 http://www.polityka.pl/swiat/rozmowy/1506130,2,zycie-a-moralnosc.read

„Moja sugestia jest więc taka, żeby nadać życiu płodu nie większą wartość niż życiu zwierzęcia niebędącego człowiekiem o podobnym stopniu racjonalności, samoświadomości, świadomości, zdolności do odczuwania itd.”

Peter Singer

Etyka praktyczna
Źródło: s. 149.

„Holandia podtrzymuje prawo do eutanazji bez względu na to, kto rządzi, a Polska jej zakazuje bez względu na to, kto rządzi. Bo to jest kwestia zaufania do lekarzy i ich etyki zawodowej, do prawników, do państwa, do własnej rodziny. Społeczeństwa o wyższych standardach etycznych i wyższym poziomie zaufania lepiej sobie radzą z takimi wyzwaniami.”

Peter Singer

Źródło: rozmowa Jacka Żakowskiego, Moralność oceniam po skutkach, polityka.pl, 2 czerwca 2010 http://www.polityka.pl/swiat/rozmowy/1506130,2,zycie-a-moralnosc.read

„Bez względu na to, jaka jest natura istoty, zasada równości wymaga, by cierpienie było uznawane na równi z podobnymi cierpieniami – tak dalece, jak można je z grubsza porównać – innych istot. Jeśli istota nie jest zdolna do cierpienia czy doświadczania uczucia przyjemności lub szczęścia, nie ma nic do wzięcia pod uwagę. Dlatego właśnie granica odczuwania (…) jest jedyną dającą się obronić granicą troski o interesy innych.”

Peter Singer

Etyka praktyczna
Źródło: s. 67.

„Wszys­tkie ar­gu­men­ty na pod­parcie ludzkiej wyższości nie są w sta­nie zap­rzeczyć jed­nej niezap­rzeczal­nej praw­dzie: w cier­pieniu zwierzęta są nam równe.”

Peter Singer

„Kiedy lecę z Nowego Jorku do Polski, zadaję sobie na przykład pytanie, czy efekt tej wizyty może usprawiedliwić zajmowanie miejsca w samolocie, który zużywa paliwo i niszczy środowisko.”

Peter Singer

Źródło: rozmowa Jacka Żakowskiego, Moralność oceniam po skutkach, polityka.pl, 2 czerwca 2010 http://www.polityka.pl/swiat/rozmowy/1506130,2,zycie-a-moralnosc.read

„Z chwilą, kiedy podstawą pozycji społecznej stało się samo bogactwo – zamiast np. mądrości, wiedzy, prawości czy sprawności w posługiwaniu się bronią – bogaci musieli znaleźć sposoby wydawania pieniędzy, których wyłącznym celem było demonstrowanie bogactwa. Thorstein Veblen nazwał to „ostentacyjną konsumpcją.””

Peter Singer

Źródło: Ostentacja jest głupia, przeł. Andrzej Erlich, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 18–19 maja 2013.

„Pierwszą zatem rzeczą, jaką należy powiedzieć o etyce, jest to, że nie jest ona zbiorem zakazów dotyczących przede wszystkim życia płciowego. Nawet w epoce AIDS seks nie wniósł żadnych szczególnych problemów moralnych. Decyzje w sprawach seksu mogą pociągać za sobą rozważania o uczciwości, trosce o innych, rozwadze, itd., ale nie ma w nich nic szczególnego, gdyż to samo może dotyczyć na przykład decyzji o prowadzeniu samochodu (w istocie kwestie moralne związane z prowadzeniem samochodu zarówno z punktu widzenia środowiska jak i bezpieczeństwa są znacznie bardziej poważne niż te związane z seksem).”

Peter Singer

Etyka praktyczna
Źródło: str. 17.

Peter Singer: Cytaty po angielsku

“The core of ethics runs deep in our species and is common to human beings everywhere. It survives the most appalling hardships and the most ruthless attempts to deprive human beings of their humanity. Nevertheless, some people resist the idea that his core has a biological basis which we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors.”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 2, The Biological Basis Of Ethics, p. 27

“It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about these responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.”

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Peter Singer

Preface To The 2011 edition, p. xi
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)

“It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values that we hold.”

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Peter Singer książka Practical Ethics

Źródło: Practical Ethics, 3rd Edition (2011), Ch. 3: Equality for Animals? (p. 49)

“Human beings are social animals. We were social before we were human.”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 3

“The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go.”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 4, Reason, p. 88

“Ethics seems a morass which we have to cross, but get hopelessly bogged in when we make the attempt.”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 167

“The goal of maximizing the welfare of all may be better achieved by an ethic that accepts our inclinations and harnesses them so that, taken as a whole, the system works to everyone's advantage.”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 157

“Those who claim to care about the wellbeing of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests; moreover, since a vegetarian diet is cheaper than one based on meat dishes, they would have more money available to devote to famine relief, population control, or whatever social or political cause they thought most urgent. … when nonvegetarians say that “human problems come first” I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.”

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Peter Singer książka Animal Liberation

Źródło: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 6: Speciesism Today

“If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 5

“Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 4, Reason, p. 88

“[One thing] underpins, makes consistent, and gives meaning to all our other activities on behalf of animals. This one thing is that we take responsibility for our own lives, and make them as free of cruelty as we can. The first step is that we cease to eat animals. Many people who are opposed to cruelty to animals draw the line at becoming a vegetarian. It was of such people that Oliver Goldsmith, the eighteenth-century humanitarian essayist, wrote: "They pity, and they eat the objects of their compassion."”

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Peter Singer książka Animal Liberation

Źródło: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian

“Everyday we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 3, From Evolution To Ethics?, p. 69

“When my ability to reason shows me that the suffering of another being is very similar to my own suffering and matters just as much to that other being as my own suffering matters to me, then my reason is showing me something that is undeniably true…. The perspective on ourselves that we get when we take the point of view of the universe also yields as much objectivity as we need if we are to find a cause that is worthwhile in a way that is independent of our own desires. The most obvious such cause is the reduction of pain and suffering, wherever it is to be found.”

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Peter Singer

p. 238 http://books.google.com/books?id=BoDMBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT238
Writings on an Ethical Life (2000)

“Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles.”

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Peter Singer

Afterword To The 2011 Edition, p. 187
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)

“Let us consider first the view that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life. We may call this the “sanctity of life” view. People who take this view oppose abortion and euthanasia. They do not usually, however, oppose the killing of nonhuman animals—so perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this view as the “sanctity of human life” view. The belief that human life, and only human life, is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism.”

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Peter Singer książka Animal Liberation

Źródło: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal

“The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with selfinterest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.”

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Peter Singer książka Animal Liberation

Źródło: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 6: Speciesism Today

“To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.”

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Peter Singer książka Animal Liberation

Źródło: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian

“To be honest, I was somewhat disappointed… It's had effects around the margins, of course, but they have mostly been minor. When I wrote it, I really thought the book would change the world. I know it sounds a little grand now, but at the time the sixties still existed for us. It looked as if real changes were possible, and I let myself believe that this would be one of them. All you have to do is walk around the corner to McDonald's to see how successful I have been.”

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Peter Singer

Quoted by Michael Specter on the impact of the book Animal Liberation, " The Dangerous Philosopher http://www.michaelspecter.com/1999/09/the-dangerous-philosopher/", The New Yorker, 6 September 1999.

“Ethics is inescapable.”

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Peter Singer

Preface, p. xv
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)

“When my ability to reason shows me that the suffering of another being is very similar to my own suffering and matters just as much to that other being as my own suffering matters to me, then my reason is showing me something that is undeniably true.”

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Peter Singer

... The perspective on ourselves that we get when we take the point of view of the universe also yields as much objectivity as we need if we are to find a cause that is worthwhile in a way that is independent of our own desires. The most obvious such cause is the reduction of pain and suffering, wherever it is to be found.
p. 238 http://books.google.com/books?id=BoDMBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT238
Writings on an Ethical Life (2000)

“One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today’s factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy.”

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Peter Singer książka The Most Good You Can Do

Źródło: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015), Chapter 15: Preventing Human Extinction (p. 177)

“We do not have to make self- sacrifice a necessary element of altruism. We can regard people as altruists because of the kind of interests they have rather than because they are sacrificing their interests.”

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Peter Singer książka The Most Good You Can Do

Źródło: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015), Chapter 9: Altruism and Happiness (p. 103)

“Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.”

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Peter Singer książka The Most Good You Can Do

Preface (p. vii)
The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015)

“The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.”

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Peter Singer

Źródło: The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (2017), p. 343

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