Is that a public intellectual or a unicorn?

You might be thinking to yourself, "what is a public intellectual"? Well it's quite simple really. A public intellectual is two things: public and an intellectual. You might have brilliant intellectual thoughts flowing through your mind but if they are never shared with the masses they don't really do any good. So perhaps this blog is my attempt to unleash my wildly intellectual thoughts on the public thereby claiming my title as a public intellectual. Probably not, but I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

Having cleared that up, the question is not why is Peter Singer a public intellectual, rather it is what role does he fill as a public intellectual and why is he important. Let's start with an overview of Peter Singer's views, career, and important pieces of work. According to the New Yorker,  "Peter Singer may be the most controversial philosopher alive; he is certainly among the most influential”. He is a utilitarian philosopher best known for helping found the modern animal rights movement and his work in bioethics. He is currently a bioethics professor at Princeton University. Singer’s views are quite controversial, especially on the topics of stem cell research, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.

Singer’s book Animal Liberation has been cited as one of the most influential books in the modern animal liberation movement. He popularized the term speciesism, which means prejudice or discrimination based on species. In his most comprehensive work, Practical Ethics, Singer describes his principle of equal consideration.

In the previous chapter I gave reasons for believing that the fundamental principle of equality, on which the equality of all human beings rests, is the principle of equal consideration of interests. Only a basic moral principle of this kind can allow us to defend a form of equality which embraces all human beings, with all the differences that exist between them. I shall now contend that while this principle does provide an adequate basis for human equality, it provides a basis which cannot be limited to humans. In other words I shall suggest that, having accepted the principle of equality as a sound moral basis for relations with others of our own species, we are also committed to accepting it as a sound moral basis for relations with those outside our own species - the nonhuman animals.

According to Singer, the fundamental interest that entitles one to equal consideration is the “capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment”. This theory applies to his views on abortion, euthanasia and infanticide, which make him a very controversial philosopher. The following excerpt summarizes his views on infanticide:

I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.  That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do.  It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents. 
Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment.  That will often ensure that the baby dies.  My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support – which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection - but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely. 

On euthanasia, Singer supports law reform to allow people to opt for voluntary euthanasia when their quality of life has fallen so much that they would prefer not to continue living. This is similar to his argument for infanticide, which is that infants do not have the self-consciousness to make such a decision therefore when the infant’s quality of life is so poor sometimes killing them is not as wrong.

When it comes to the abortion debate, Singer debases the pro-life argument on the premise that it is not necessarily wrong to kill a human fetus because membership in a species does not determine personhood. Singer defines personhood as being rational and self-conscious, aware of oneself as an extended body existing over an extended period of time with the ability to have desires and make plans. Pro-life advocates argue that life begins at conception and therefore it is wrong to have an abortion. Singer argues back against the latter part of that statement.

In a strictly biological sense, the opponents of abortion are right to say that abortion ends a human life. When a woman has an abortion, the fetus is alive, and it is undoubtedly human – in the sense that it is a member of the species homo sapiens. It isn't a dog or a chimpanzee. But mere membership of our species doesn't settle the moral issue of whether it is wrong to end a life. As long as the abortion is carried out at less than 20 weeks of gestation – as almost all abortions are – the brain of the fetus has not developed to the point of making consciousness possible. In that respect, the fetus is less developed, and less aware of its circumstances, than the animals that we routinely kill and eat for dinner.

In my opinion, the way Singer frames the pro-choice argument makes him an important public intellectual. As the election approaches, social and economic issues become even more crucial. Pro-lifers were cunning in their choice of a slogan. If someone is not pro-life then what are they? Anti-life? Pro-death? It was the first huge challenge for pro-choice advocates. ‘How do we come up with an opposing slogan to pro-life?’ They came up with pro-choice, which was the beginning of the flawed counter-argument in the debate. As Singer states, the pro-life argument is as follows: “It is wrong to kill an innocent human being. A human foetus is an innocent human being. Therefore it is wrong to kill a human foetus.” Singer makes the point that in order to challenge their position, one must not focus on a woman's right to choose but rather debase the pro-life argument by countering that it is not wrong to have an abortion because a fetus does not possess the qualities of personhood.

In some ways pro-choice is a good term. You might not believe in abortion and I have no issue with a person who says that abortion is not for them. As Singer recognizes, to have an abortion is to end a potential life. I believe Hillary Clinton explains this aspect of the debate very well.

I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting the decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard.

Pro-choice supporters need to acknowledge that abortion is a profound and emotional experience for women to go through. Yet that is no reason to overturn a decision that states that banning abortion denies women of their constitutional right to privacy. Furthermore, I find it ironic that Republicans are so concerned with overregulation by the government yet they support giving the government regulatory power over such a personal issue. As Hillary Clinton says, “I do not believe any government should have the power to dictate, through law or police action, a woman’s most personal decision.”

I wanted to write about Peter Singer because I feel he has made a big contribution to the abortion debate, which is something I feel strongly about. In addition, I feel that the way he makes his argument for maintaining the legality of abortions exemplifies what it means to be a public intellectual. He does not argue on the basis of his personal or religious values. He uses facts, reason, and evidence to create a solid argument for abortion. In his blog, The New Democratic Review, Stephen Mack points out the crux of Singer’s contribution as a public intellectual. He quotes Peter Beinart:

What these (and most other) liberals are saying is that the Christian Right sees politics through the prism of theology, and there’s something dangerous in that. And they’re right. It’s fine if religion influences your moral values. But, when you make public arguments, you have to ground them—as much as possible—in reason and evidence, things that are accessible to people of different religions, or no religion at all. Otherwise you can’t persuade other people, and they can’t persuade you. In a diverse democracy, there must be a common political language, and that language can’t be theological.

Mack goes on to explain the issue with Beinart’s argument for “dialogic neutrality” by discussing how “American political history is the history of activist theologians from the right and the left.” A public intellectual, simply defined as both public and an intellectual, can most certainly be a religious figure. Where religion needs to be left behind is in the political sphere. That is why the most powerful public intellectuals will leave religion out of their arguments as Peter Singer does in his abortion argument.

This is why the public intellectual is such an important figure. With the Internet it's easy for people to become lost in shallow debates with no real depth such as ‘Abortion is murder’ or ‘Democrats want to take money from people that work hard’.  Whether it is lack of time of lack of interest, people these days have fallen into the trap of taking such arguments at face value and not requiring evidence and reasoning. This needs to be prevented by stimulating legitimate debates amongst university students. Force people to self-educate on the issues that are important and start debating them in a civil and intellectual way rather than a mess of personal and religious beliefs. Without this, I fear public intellectuals will become as rare as unicorns. You might think you spot one but it's really just a white horse in a costume.   

and just for fun..