Burnt Orange Report

Hooray for Pointy-Headed Intellectuals

By Jim Dallas

Peter Singer isn't my favorite contemporary philosopher (that title goes to Richard Rorty, since pragmatism seems (to me) more convincing than utilitarianism, and because I like Rorty's writing style). But you can't really argue with a man when he's stating the obvious; when you're right, you're right:

Singer has made himself noticed outside the ivory tower: his conviction that animals have significant moral rights means he opposes using them for food as well as for experimentation; a principled openness to euthanasia under various medical circumstances has led to picketing by groups of disabled people. In ''The President of Good & Evil,'' he confronts the ethics of the man he calls America's ''most prominent moralist,'' George W. Bush. As a philosopher Singer must abjure the cynicism with which, he tells us, many of his friends greeted his intention seriously to study the president's ethics. For one thing, Singer's concern is with the views rather than with the man who says he holds them. In any case, he argues, ''tens of millions of Americans believe that he is sincere, and share the views that he puts forward on a wide range of moral issues.'' Hence they are, as he says, worth thinking about.

Much of Singer's discussion proceeds on the basis of common sense, as when he points out that Bush's argument for tax cuts -- that the government has no right to take ''your money'' -- is undermined by his acceptance of taxation for a wide variety of government purposes. But Singer also calls on elements of theory to develop his analyses, as when he notes that ''ownership is not a natural relationship between a person and a thing'' but ''a social convention'': in the United States, law defines how much you get to keep of the money you make using public resources like roads.

Singer is a generous critic. In discussing Bush's reverence for life, evidenced in his opposition to stem cell research, he constructs the most plausible arguments possible against the sacrifice of unwanted embryos, to demonstrate convincingly how unsustainable they are. But he can hardly help observing that Bush's ''culture of life'' cohabits jarringly with his enthusiasm for capital punishment and readiness to inflict civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Singer is led, on issue after issue, to a double conclusion: Bush's views are not intellectually defensible, and his behavior shows he doesn't believe in them anyway.

I'm not entirely sure that John Kerry is intellectually self-consistent either (am I stating the obvious?), but neither does he parade as a moralist, dodging tough questions by rambling on, using loaded jingo-jargon rhetoric (case in point, the prime-time press conference a few weeks ago).

A man's gotta know his limitations.

Thanks to DailyKOS user libby for noting Times review of Singer's book.