ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Australian Peter Singer is one of my favourite philosophers because he writes about everyday issues that thoughtful citizens need to think about clearly.  I’ve reviewed a couple of his books about philanthropy (The Most Good You Can Do, and The Life You Can Save) but this latest title Ethics in the Real World  is different because it ranges widely over a variety of topics and as the sub-title says, it’s 86 Brief Essays on Things That Matter.  The 82 essays are short pieces of less than 1000 words written for newspapers or from Singer’s monthly column for Project Syndicate, a news service for media outlets in countries around the world.  As such, the essays resemble opinion pieces, and I didn’t find them as satisfying as his other books which offer a sustained and reasoned argument supporting his points of view.  It’s a book best dipped into on and off IMO.

The topics are arranged under headings which are self-explanatory:

• Big Questions
• Animals
• Beyond the Ethics of the Sanctity of Life
• Bioethics and Public Health
• Sex and Gender
• Doing Good
• Happiness
• Politics
• Global Governance
• Science and Technology, and
• Living Playing Working

Singer is best known for his controversial views on animal liberation, on medical treatment for very premature babies and on euthanasia, but these pieces show that he can also present confronting arguments about other issues.  In ‘The Ethical Cost of High-Price Art’, for example, he tackles the art market, suggesting that donors who finance the purchase of expensive artworks would do better to donate to saving lives in the developing world.  On thinner ice, he distinguishes also between the intrinsic value of certain types of art. Discussing a Christie’s auction which sold $745 million worth of postwar and contemporary art he lists works by Barnett Newman, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol, each of which sold for more than $60 million.  Some of these, he acknowledges were bought as investments, but…

…if profit is not the motive, why would anyone want to pay tens of millions of dollars for works like these?  They are not beautiful, nor do they display great artistic skill.  (p.186)

The article goes on to make it very clear that Singer has a low opinion of modern art, indeed he is downright scornful about Jeff Koon’s art as a critique of luxury and excess:

Art as opposition to the widening gap between the rich and the poor!  How noble and courageous that sounds.  But the art market’s greatest strength is its ability to co-opt any radical demands that a work of art makes, and turn it into another consumer good for the super-rich. (p.188)

What’s frustrating about these short pieces is that there’s no room for him to clarify inconsistencies.  In the same piece, he tells us that donors financed the purchase of Duccio’s ‘Madonna and Child’ by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  He acknowledges that in The Life You Can Save he said that the donors could have spent the $45 million in a better way.  He says that he hasn’t changed his opinion, but …

… the Met’s Madonna is beautifully executed and 700 years old.  Duccio is a major figure who worked during a key transitional moment in the history of Western art, and few of his paintings have survived.  None of that applies to Newman or Warhol.  (p.188)

Now, I too would rather look at the Duccio than anything by the artists Singer dismisses, but still, in this context, the scorn for modern art looks more like populism than the reasoned thoughts of a major 21st century philosopher.

On the other hand, ‘The High Cost of Feeling Low’ is a cogent and compelling argument for treating depression and for developing public policy to prevent it.  The value of a short, snappy article like this (in whatever newspaper syndicated it) is that it provides an economic argument as well as a moral argument for spending more on treating depression.  CEOs of insurance companies that deny benefits for depression and bean-counting politicians are much more likely to read a brief piece that talks the language of cost-benefit analysis to them.  So brevity has its value.

With the US election looming (and many of us taking more notice of it than we usually do) I was interested in ‘Why vote?’ Singer compares the Australian compulsory voting system with its 95% turnout with the American 60% and makes some interesting points.  He gives the example of a recent election in Poland where so many people didn’t bother to vote that their prime minister was elected with only 6 million votes out of a potential 30 million.  That this was not what the people intended was shown when they were bundled out of office only two years later.  The trouble is that

… since our own vote makes such a tiny contribution to the outcome, each of us still faces the temptation to get a free ride, not bothering to vote while hoping that enough other people will vote to keep democracy robust and to elect a government that is responsive to the views of a majority of citizens.  (p.229)

To counter that, Singer offers possible reasons for voting:

• it’s enjoyable, and you may not have anything better to do with the time spent doing it [he doesn’t mention sausage sizzles and cake stalls, always powerful incentives to get down to the local primary school!]
• you might feel that it’s your civic duty
• you can’t complain if you don’t like the government that gets elected
• you might think that the chances of your vote influencing the outcome is miniscule, but the outcome is so important, it’s worth spending the time
• even if you don’t think your vote counts, it’s like cheering on your football team!

Here in Australia where the social norm of voting is well-established, we look on at the US system with bafflement.  With such high levels of anxiety about Trump holding the keys to the nuclear arsenal, I’m sure I won’t be the only one to be very cross if he wins because of voter inertia…

I’d recommend Ethics in the Real World for reading at relaxed weekend breakfasts … theses pieces are beaut conversation starters about topics of interest to everyone.

Author: Peter Singer
Title: Ethics in the Real World, 86 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
Publisher: Text Publishing, 2016
ISBN: 9781925355857
Review copy courtesy of Text Publishing

Available from Fishpond: Ethics in the Real World: 86 Brief Essays on Things That Matter