Good riddance to a warped philosopher
By DAVID S. ODERBERG
Tonti-Filippini bemoaned the loss to Melbourne caused by the appointment of Professor Peter Singer (pictured) to a position at Princeton University, one of America's leading colleges. Tonti-Filippini praises Singer for his ``fierce independence of thought'' and the ``healthy polemic that he inspired''. Which leads me to think that the former St Vincent's hospital bioethicist does not really understand what Singer represents, nor has any inkling of what is going on at Princeton.
On 30June last year, I had published an opinion piece in the Washington Times critical of the Singer appointment. This was followed by numerous articles across America agreeing in their condemnation of Princeton's decision. Among a number of prominent papers, The Wall Street Journal has published several opinion pieces critical of the appointment, and The New York Times recently quoted some of Singer's harshest academic critics.
Last week, hundreds of students and academics denounced Princeton in a major public protest against Singer's appointment. This follows the pattern
established in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and elsewhere, where lectures and conferences have been cancelled because of demonstrations by disabled and other groups against Singer's presence.
Disapproval of Singer's views and his public expression of them has come from no less a figure than Simon Wiesenthal, the world's leading Nazi hunter. When Singer was invited to address a Swedish book fair in 1997, Wiesenthal wrote to the organisers saying, ``a professor of morals who justifies the right to kill handicapped newborns ... is in my opinion unacceptable for representation at your level''.
All of this seems to have been missed by the Australian media, which continues its love affair with academia's Dr Death, as though nothing were wrong. The fact is, something is very wrong when someone with Singer's ideas is appointed to an institute known as the University Centre for Human Values, in one of the world's premier places of learning.
Singer is an outspoken advocate for the killing of any ``non-person'' who does not have a life ``worth living''. This includes ``defective'' babies (his word), the senile, the terminally ill, the comatose and the severely disabled. Time and again Singer has said that disabled babies and children have no right to life, and if their lives turn out, according to some criterion best known to himself, to be ``not worth living'', they can be killed with impunity.
For all that Singer is falsely portrayed in the media as being a prominent campaigner for animal rights, the truth is he does not believe anyone has rights, human or animal, because rights are ``a convenient political shorthand'' for ``the era of 30-second TV news clips''. The only individuals worthy of serious protection, then, are those with ``lives worth living'', but even they can legitimately be killed, says Singer, if ``the balance of advantage'' tips against them.
One of Singer's most notorious examples, found in his textbooks, involves the haemophiliac infant. For Singer, even a baby with such a mild condition can be killed if this ``has no adverse effects on others''. In other words, if the parents, and society at large, want the haemophiliac baby dead because she is a burden on them, killing her does no wrong. Indeed, if the parents go ahead and produce another ``normal'' baby, then far from their dead baby having been murdered, the sum total of human happiness has been increased by the killing and subsequent replacement.
In another, perhaps more infamous example, Singer compares the life of a newborn baby and that of a snail, and concludes that, as far as killing either one is concerned, they fall morally into the same basic category of ``non-person''. Non-persons, for Singer, are ``replaceable'', much like farmyard animals (his analogy). Indeed, any adult who happens to become a ``non-person'', say by becoming a ``senile elderly patient'', can be killed with morality's blessing if the sum total of human happiness requires it. Killing a severely disabled `non-person'', for instance, might be a moral duty, not just an ``option'', because, like all good consequentialists, Singer's only criterion of right and wrong is the weighing of costs and benefits.
Autonomy and consent - these are useful, but can be overridden if the benefits outweigh the costs. Rights - well, they're good for soundbites. Good and evil - well, for Singer they are in the eye of the beholder.
And Tonti-Filippini would have us believe that Melbourne has lost an important contributor to public philosophical debate, that it has been ``diminished''? He mourns the sterility of bioethical discussion in Australia, taken over as it has been by the technocrats and biotechnologists themselves.
The fact, as he only obscurely appreciates, is that we have Singer to thank for that. Too many biotechnologists hold Singer's views. They attended his first-year courses, they learned from his followers, they read his books and articles, they heard his speeches. Now they advocate what he advocates, and Singer can leave Melbourne's shores proud of a job well done.
Meanwhile, the protests get louder, the denunciations increase, and the outrage continues to pour forth from the disabled, the elderly, the young, the vulnerable, and all those who see the darkness at the heart of Singer's warped philosophy. The truth is that Melbourne has not lost by Singer's move. America most certainly has.
Dr David S. Oderberg, a graduate of the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford, is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Reading, England. E-mail: opinion at theage.fairfax.com.au