The book Practical Ethics is an introduction to applied ethics written by modern bioethical philosopher Peter Singer. It was originally published in 1979 and has since been translated into a number of languages. The book caused outrage in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The 1993 second edition has new chapters on refugees and the environment, and new sections on equality and disability, embryo experimentation, and the treatment of academics in Germany. A third edition of Practical Ethics was published in 2011. It doesn't have the chapter on refugees, and has a new chapter on climate change.
The work analyzes, in detail, why and how beings' interests should be weighed. He states that a being's interests should always be weighed according to that being's concrete properties, and not according to its belonging to some abstract group.
The book studies a number of ethical issues including: race, sex, ability, species, abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, embryo experimentation, status of animals, political violence, overseas aid, and obligation to assist others.
Famous quotes containing the words practical and/or ethics:
“Whatever practical people may say, this world is, after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas. It is a matter of the very greatest importance that our theories of things that seem a long way apart from our daily lives, should be as far as possible true, and as far as possible removed from error.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)