Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
    Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
    Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
    Audiobook8 hours

    Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter

    Written by Peter Singer

    Narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words.

    In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness. Singer asks whether chimpanzees are people, smoking should be outlawed, or consensual sex between adult siblings should be decriminalized, and he reiterates his case against the idea that all human life is sacred, applying his arguments to some recent cases in the news. In addition, he explores, in an easily accessible form, some of the deepest philosophical questions, such as whether anything really matters and what is the value of the pale blue dot that is our planet.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 13, 2016
    ISBN9781515980049
    Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter
    Author

    Peter Singer

    Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and laureate professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. The most prominent ethicist of our time, he is the author of more than twenty books, including Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, and The Life You Can Save. Singer divides his time between New York City and Melbourne, Australia.

    More audiobooks from Peter Singer

    Related to Ethics in the Real World

    Related audiobooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Effective Altruism

      Oct 9, 2019

      Effective Altruism
      9 min read

    • Article

      Conflicting Views

      Sep 25, 2023

      Conflicting Views
      4 min read

    • Article

      This Essentially Meaningless Conflict

      Sep 22, 2017

      MARILYNNE ROBINSON’S accomplishments are impressive by any standard: she has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal, among other honors. But perhaps a better measure o

      8 min read

    • Article

      How To Disagree Well

      Jan 27, 2022

      IT WAS ON CHRISTMAS EVE that I realised I’d been subjected to a social media drive-by shooting. That pinnacle of modern ecclesiastical power, the president of Humanists UK, Professor Alice Roberts had deduced from the headline of an interview I gave

      3 min read

    • Article

      Under The Microscope

      Nov 17, 2021

      Under The Microscope
      7 min read

    • Article

      Think Yourself Better: 10 Rules Of Philosophy To Live By

      Feb 4, 2023

      The thing that separates human beings from other animals is our extraordinary capacity for complex, abstract thought. This is what has given rise to our diverse cultures, our scientific achievements, our ability to envisage the future and, hopefully,

      9 min read

    • Article

      How To Live (like A Stoic)

      Jan 23, 2018

      How To Live (like A Stoic)
      4 min read

    • Article

      Changing Minds

      Oct 28, 2019

      Changing Minds
      5 min read

    • Article

      What’s Philosophy For?

      Aug 10, 2020

      What’s Philosophy For?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Remaking Morality

      Aug 31, 2021

      Remaking Morality
      5 min read

    • Article

      Duty And Loyalty

      Mar 28, 2019

      Duty And Loyalty
      5 min read

    • Article

      Are Suicide Bombings Really Driven by Ideology?

      May 24, 2018

      Harvey Whitehouse doesn’t like how New Atheists like Richard Dawkins make religion out to be a mere “set of propositions” amounting to a “failed science.” In a 2013 YouTube video, Whitehouse—the director of the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary A

      8 min read

    • Article

      Scientists Have No Defense Against Awe

      Jun 12, 2016

      Eileen Pollack, author of The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club, hinted at the complexity of the relationship between science and the soul in a recent essay: “We need scientists who recognize the reality of this illusion we st

      5 min read

    • Article

      Steven Pinker Has His Reasons

      Nov 17, 2021

      A few years ago, at the Princeton Club in Manhattan, I chanced on a memorable chat with the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. His spouse, the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, with whom he was tagging along, had been invited onto a panel to discuss th

      19 min read

    • Article

      Change Maker

      Dec 3, 2021

      Change Maker
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Problem With Reason

      Aug 26, 2020

      The Problem With Reason
      8 min read

    • Article

      Primalfear

      Jul 25, 2021

      Rob Verkerk The Politics of Health An article by Lisa Schonhaar and Gisela Wolf in the UK’s Independent newspaper entitled“5 Habits of Stupid People that Smart People Don’t Have”gives us something of a framework that might help in our efforts to ext

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Ethics in the Real World

    4/5

    39 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      “Words do have consequences, and what one generation says but does not really believe, the next generation may believe, and even act upon.”

      This was a great overview of Peter Singer's ethical essays. I enjoyed reading them a lot. Each essay is about 3-4 pages - making them very easy to get through. He covers a pretty good range of topics, in plain English. His views are mostly utilitarian. The topics cover a large range of topics, from Environmental topics to areas such as Abortion.

      One reason for losing a star, is I believe it would have been better had he provided more "post-scripts" or follow ups, for older essays. Some essay's had been originally posted in 1999-early 2000s, and I think some of them needed more of an update at the end to give a perspective on how things had changed since then. Particularly, where technology had moved forward significantly.

      If you want to read some Ethics, this is certainly a good place to start. There are lots of little nuggets of wisdom in here, and certainly a lot to consider.

      “We need to get over our reluctance to speak openly about the good we do. Silent giving will not change a culture that deems it sensible to spend all your money on yourself and your family, rather than to help those in greater need—even though helping others is likely to bring more fulfillment in the long run.”
    • 4/5
      In this book, Dr. Singer explores several controversial topics and gives his opinion. I found his section on abortion to be the most interesting.