ABSTRACT
In his book Practical Ethics Peter Singer argues that human beings as such have no right to life and one or two critics claim that he deliberately or accidentally suppressed this and related aspects of his philosophy in his account of the protests. But there remains a question about these protests which to my mind has not received enough discussion, namely, the question of freedom of expression; for Singer claims that he was a victim, the victim of people opposed to the principle of free speech. The protesters who saw Singer’s views as a species of Nazism were partly right and partly wrong. The philosophy of personism differs from Nazi doctrine in some respects and resembles it in others. The dogma is utilitarianism, which rests on nothing stronger than the intuitions of utilitarians, and the definition comes from John Locke.
