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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
What is the meaning of life? Peter Singer’s new book offers us this answer (258-9)':
If we are to find meaning in our lives by working for a cause, that cause must be... a ‘transcendent cause’, that is, a cause that extends beyond the boundaries of our self. There are many such causes... No doubt a commitment to each of these causes can be, for some people, a way of finding meaning and fulfilment. Is it... arbitrary, then, whether one chooses an ethical cause or some other cause? No; living an ethical life is certainly not the only way of making a commitment that can give substance and worth to your life: but for anyone choosing one sort of life rather than another, it is the commitment with the firmest foundation. The more we reflect on our commitment to a football club, a corporation, or any sectional interest, the less point we are likely to see in it. In contrast, no amount of reflection will show a commitment to an ethical life to be trivial or pointless... living an ethical life enables us to identify ourselves with the greatest cause of all.
In Singer’s view the greatest cause of all is “to make the world a better place”, a cause which Singer also calls, apparently without irony (or indeed even humour), “taking the point of view of the universe” (274). “Making the world a better place”, as Singer understands it, in fact means only “the reduction of pain and suffering, wherever it is found” (275). What is the reflective justification for seeing this project as the only one involved in “making the world a better place”?
1 Singer, Peter. How are we to live? Ethics in an age of self‐interest. Oxford, OUP, 1997Google Scholar. Pp.318. £8.99
2 Henry Sidgwick's phrase: The Methods of Ethics, Vllth edition, 382. The phrase and the thinking behind it is trenchantly criticised by Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy 105–109, and Making Sense of Humanity 153–171. These are well known sources that Singer just ignores.
3 Not in fact that Singer is against sin; but I won't pursue that here.
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