彼得·辛格

彼得·阿尔伯特·大卫·辛格（英语：Peter Albert David Singer，1946年7月6日—），著名澳大利亚哲学家，现代效益主义代表人物，动物解放运动家，美国普林斯顿大学生物伦理学教授，澳大利亚墨尔本大学应用哲学与公共伦理中心荣誉教授。他专事于应用伦理学的研究，从效用主义的观点来思考伦理问题。他以著作《动物解放》、论文《饥荒、富裕和道德》而闻名。

辛格曾两次担任蒙纳士大学哲学系主任，并在那里创立了人类生物伦理学中心。1996 年，他作为绿党候选人竞选澳大利亚参议院，但未成功。2004年，辛格被澳大利亚人文社会理事会评为澳大利亚年度人文主义者。2005年，《悉尼晨锋报》将辛格列为澳大利亚十大最具影响力的公共知识分子之一。辛格是澳大利亚动物协会的联合创始人，也是The Life You Can Save的创始人。

生平

彼得·辛格于1946年7月6日出生于澳大利亚维多利亚州墨尔本。他的父母是奥地利犹太人，1938 年奥地利被纳粹德国吞并（Anschluss）后从维也纳移民到澳大利亚，并定居在墨尔本。

他曾就读于墨尔本大学，在1967年以优异的成绩获得了墨尔本大学学士学位，还在1969年获得了哲学硕士学位。然后他前往英国牛津大学学习，并于1971年获得了哲学学士学位。他曾经两度在莫纳什大学任哲学教授，在那儿，他成立了人类生物伦理学中心。其于1975年出版的《动物解放》（Animal Liberation）标志了动物解放运动的开端，本书更被誉为“动物解放运动的圣经”，虽然他本人撇清这个封号，不过他对整个运动影响甚大，并担任“澳大利亚与新西兰动物组织联合会”副会长，且以“非暴力”作为动物解放运动方向。

于东亚的活动

彼得辛格曾到访东亚各国演讲交流，如于2016年到访台湾讨论动物权益，又曾于2015年及2024年到访香港，于2007年到韩国演讲等。

Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher who is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer's work specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secular, utilitarian perspective. His book Animal Liberation (1975) criticized intensive animal farming and speciesism, and shaped the animal rights movement. His essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" argues for the moral imperative of donating to help the global poor, using the drowning child analogy. For most of his career he was a preference utilitarian. He revealed in The Point of View of the Universe (2014), co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian. His books The Life You Can Save (2009) and The Most Good You Can Do (2015) are influential in the effective altruism movement.

On two occasions, Singer served as chair of the philosophy department at Monash University, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics. In 1996, he stood unsuccessfully as a Greens candidate for the Australian Senate. In 2004, Singer was recognised as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. In 2005 The Sydney Morning Herald placed him among Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals. Singer is a co-founder of Animals Australia and the founder of the non-profit organisation The Life You Can Save.

Early life and education

Peter Albert David Singer was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on 6 July 1946. His parents were Austrian Jews who immigrated to Australia from Vienna after Austria's annexation (Anschluss) by Nazi Germany in 1938, and settled in Melbourne. His paternal grandparents were taken by the Nazis to Łódź, and were most likely murdered, since they were never heard from again. His maternal grandfather, the educator and psychologist David Ernst Oppenheim (1881–1943), was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Oppenheim was a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and wrote a joint article with Sigmund Freud, before joining the Adlerian Society for Individual Psychology. Singer later wrote a biography of Oppenheim.

Singer is an atheist and was raised in a prosperous, non-religious family. His father had a successful business importing tea and coffee. His family rarely observed Jewish holidays, and Singer declined to have a bar mitzvah. Singer attended Preshil, and later Scotch College. After leaving school, Singer studied law, history, and philosophy as a resident of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne, earning a bachelor's degree in 1967. Singer explained that he elected to major in philosophy after his interest was piqued by discussions with his sister's then-boyfriend. He earned a master's degree for a thesis entitled Why Should I Be Moral? at the same university in 1969. He was awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Oxford and obtained from there a Bachelor of Philosophy in 1971 with a thesis on civil disobedience supervised by R. M. Hare and published as a book in 1973. Singer names Hare, Australian philosopher H. J. McCloskey and British philosopher J. L. H. Thomas, who taught him "how to read and understand Hegel", as his most important mentors.