The Loving Tensions of Peter Singer

In reading a conversation between Peter Singer and Alex Voorhoeve, I was struck by a central tension in Prof. Singer's explanation of his ethical views.  It is this.  On the one hand, the Princeton University professor insists that human persons share equal respective value and should be both considered and treated on radically equal terms.  On the other hand, he acknowledges that meaningfulness in human relationships stems from considering and treating human persons on fundamentally different terms. How do we reconcile these ideas and senses?

Significance from our interpersonal connections comes from, or is constituted largely by, relational partiality.  I feel a greater sense of love from others when I believe that they view me as special rather than as common.  I want to know:  Am I especially important or "just one among others"?

Consider this example.  I might view my brother or son with more affection, and treat them differently, than I do a man or his son in, say, Uzbekistan.  Should I?  We all share in our common humanity.  Yes, my proximity to my brother and son leads to greater affinity with them than with the Uzbeks.  But should that make a difference in my outlook and behavior?

Professor Singer answers no, but he understands the tension involved in his view:

I agree that a good part of our happiness must come from close, loving relationships. Psychological evidence shows that good relationships of this kind are the main reason why contented people are so. ... I would say [however] that our rational nature enables us to see that we are just one among others; that, from the impartial point of view, there is no reason why our lesser interests or the lesser interests of those closer to us should outweigh the greater interests of others.  But close relationships require that you give greater weight to the interests of those close to you. So of course there is conflict. (Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics, p. 62)

Now, Prof. Singer is here trying to deflect implicit criticism of his thoroughgoing utilitarianism, which would require that we weigh the perhaps greater utility (or happiness, or good) of a stranger more heavily in our moral calculus than we would the perhaps slightly lesser utility of a close relation.  He is doing so in part by appealing to authority, and none other authority than Immanuel Kant.  Logically, as a justification, this part of the appeal is an informal fallacy (technically, a form of the genetic fallacy).  Merely because someone famous with great stature may have held a similar view does not mean that the view in question is correct.  As an explanation, however, the analogy goes farther to elucidate why it is that Prof. Singer holds moral views that may strike us initially as just weird and counter-intuitive -- such as giving greater consideration to two boys over there than to my son here.

I.  Kant and Reason Trumping Passions

Kant held, in short, that humans possess in common their rational nature, which is characterized by radical autonomy to act free from the control or dictates of their passions.  Therefore, humans are obligated to consider and to treat other human persons as ends in themselves, and never as (only) a means.  (See Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 421, 429, 432, 434, 438-39.)  Kant was not a utilitarian; Prof. Singer is.  But both hold that sometimes what is morally required violates our instinctive reaction or first impulse.

Peter Singer (b. July 6, 1946)

We might, for instance, find it inconvenient to delay our already tardy progress to an important job interview in order to assist a lost child on the street.  We might feel the tension of our interest pull against the interest of the child's well-being and that of her mother.  However, Kant and Prof. Singer in their respective deontological and utilitarian ways would likely say that ethically we are bound to suppress our natural impulse to keep walking and are bound instead to assist the child.

For Kant, this might be because we ought to make it our maxim (a) to treat humanity always as an end and (b) to act in such a way that our action may become by our will a universal rule.  After all, it would not be a desired rule that everyone always everywhere ought to disregard the vulnerable among us who have an urgently manifest need.  I would not like that if I were vulnerable and had an urgently manifest need.  Would you?

For Prof. Singer, it might be because our acting so to prevent suffering (that of the child and the mother) is of greater numerical and qualitative interest for them directly and humanity generally than the inconvenience and consequence of my being late to a job interview, even a very important one.  Moreover, I might find happiness in contributing to the happiness of others.

"Just one among others" -- in one sense this is true:  we share a common humanity with other human persons, and we ought to be informed in our ethical thinking and acting by that commonality.  Certain forms of discrimination (i.e., making a distinction between two or more things) ought to be banished.  Chattel slavery, for instance, based on the premise that one group is inherently superior to another, should have no place in a world in which we are "just one among others."  This seems, better, this is fundamentally right.

In another sense, however, discrimination -- just making distinctions -- is perhaps not only permitted but also ethically admirable, and maybe it is even morally required.  What becomes of the virtue of loyalty, for instance, if one's loyalties are, in the nature of the utilitarian case, flexible?  Loyalty at its root is a commitment to privilege someone or something over another.  Loyalty involves discrimination.  Is loyalty then a vice?

This is a tension with which Kant and Prof. Singer, as well as their followers wrestle:  namely, the notion that one ought to love all without exception and without distinction (we are "just one among others"), while simultaneously admitting that love inevitably involves making distinctions.

II.  Toward Some Resolution

So far I have only really described this tension; I have not yet offered a resolution to it.  Frankly, I do not know if there is a full and universally satisfying resolution to it.  I do have some suspicions about about a trajectory along which resolution may lie.  Let me briefly sketch one.

Maybe one hint toward some reconciliation of this tension can be found in the Christian moral tradition.  It is also apparent in other traditions, but a clear formulation of what I have in mind exists within St. Paul's letter to the churches of Galatia:  "So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to the household of the faith" (Galatians 6:10).  Here we read St. Paul's yoking universality ("everyone") and particularity ("especially to the household of the faith").

If St. Paul affirms both ethical universality and particularity, perhaps there are two related ideas in his formulation:  opportunity and intensity.

1) Opportunity.  This may involve physical nearness, proximity, which is how we typically conceive of it.  Perhaps, however, it also involves the ability to help once the instance inviting benevolence is presented to me, crosses my path, or hits my awareness, whether near or far away.  This is the sense that Prof. Singer has in mind.

If one thinks of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the occasion for the Samaritan's doing good was the occasion of becoming aware of the victim's need.  Of course, in that case, there was physical proximity.  The victim was lying right in front of those who passed by without helping, and they are condemned for ignoring the urgent need and withholding compassion once they became aware of the man's plight.  The Levite who crossed the street is singled out as acting wrongly precisely also for creating more distance between him and the victim.  Opportunity involves both awareness and ability.  Those aspects need not be restricted to close physical proximity or exclude a third party:  the Samaritan engaged others to help while he was distant. 

​2) ​Intensity.  Benevolence is a both/and matter.  For the apostle it is a special kind of both/and proposition, because it includes intensity:  "both ... and especially ...":  do good both to all people and especially to those within your group membership.  St. Paul highlights the duty to act when confronted with the occasion, to be sure.  Professor Singer would agree.  But St. Paul also enjoins intensity and focus:  we ought in particular to seek out opportunities to show benevolence to those within affinity circles close to us, and perhaps also to benefit them quantitatively and qualitatively more than others ("especially").  Professor Singer would seemingly balk.

The apostle is not troubled by this both/and-ness in the same way that Prof. Singer is.  Why not?  Several answers are likely.  For St. Paul, key reasons are a mixture of his Christian convictions, personal history, and sociological or ecclesiological aims.

Paul the Apostle

He has just finished in chapter 5 of Galatians urging his hearers to "keep in step with the [Holy] Spirit" rather than the "flesh" as the driving force of the totality of their lives.  The Spirit is what is to animate their thoughts, words, and deeds as those who are now alive to God and alive to one another (see 2:19-20).  So we might reasonably infer that what St. Paul has in mind is something peculiar to Christians:  The indwelling Spirit empowers and motivates their ethical action, and their activity reflects the Spirit's own primary particularity among the Christian community but also universally beyond it.

This helps to make sense of the reasons related to his personal history and sociological aims.  St. Paul was earlier a persecutor of followers of Jesus because they were a perceived threat to his former in-group (see 1:13), and now, sociologically, he feels a threat from some members of his current in-group to the integrity of the community's core beliefs, actions, and identity (see 1:6-9).  Therefore, he finds it necessary, vivified by the Spirit as he now is, not only to preserve what he formerly tried to destroy (his conversion mandate requires this reversal), but also to parent the community to full maturity.

III.  Does Universality Require Particularity?

What about the rest of us?  Perhaps like the apostle, most of us do not question, and in fact enthusiastically subscribe to, the "both ... and especially ..." approach to ethics that St. Paul advocates.  Maybe we do so, like him, from a combination of our religious convictions, personal history, and sociological aims.  Maybe, however, we do not, and maybe we have trouble explaining why we believe it "natural" to care for those close to us, and why it is "odd" for us to deny particularity and to think of treating others outside of our affinity groups as perhaps more privileged than those inside them.

There exists also a naturalistic, secular, evolutionary explanation for in-group bias, which has to do with beneficial strategies (e.g., reciprocal altruism) for getting one's genes into the next generation.  This is one theory, among others, that would explain descriptively why we are the way that we are. This theory, though, faces Hume's challenge of moving from is to ought:  from description to prescription, from fact to value, from observation to obligation. Should we act in this way or (also) in another?

David Hume (1711-1776)

If the question that I set for myself is how do we reconcile the tension to act beneficially toward everyone and especially toward those within our in-groups, then St. Paul's opportunity and intensity approach balances that "both/and especially-ness" -- the universality and the particularity facets -- as well as any.  Indeed, the shape of that moral vision has, in the West, contributed over time to greater humaneness, for instance, the abolition of chattel slavery.

If the question that I set is why should we reconcile this tension between universality and particularity, that is, why ought we to embrace both facets rather than just one, maybe the best answer now that will prevail upon the most people is the drawbacks of the alternative.  What if we seek, in perhaps liberal high-mindedness, to do away with affective partiality in our ethics?  What if we rid ourselves of privileging some over others in our daily lives, with the result, for instance, that we transformed loyalty (which requires partiality) into a vice?  If this universally and equally inclusive, as well as completely impartial, approach to matters of life were even possible (and I do not believe that it is), what would be the result?

Jonathan Haidt paraphrases Alasdair MacIntyre, who laments the contemporary push for just this sort of death to particularity.  According to MacIntyre, this push has eroded the cultivation of character as a matter of moral consideration, because moral character finds significance within a specific community's narrative identity, what it means to have "good character" within that distinct social community:  "The modern requirement that ethics ignore particularity is what gave us our weaker morality -- applicable everywhere, but encompassing nowhere.  MacIntyre says that the loss of a language of virtue, grounded in a particular tradition, makes it difficult for us to find meaning, coherence, and purpose in life" (Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, 167).

If being moral and acting ethically is primarily about one's identity rather than an issue, if being moral is primarily about one's cultivated character rather than assorted quandaries, then we should acknowledge that identity formation occurs most deeply and lastingly within close, concrete relationships.

If we are seeking to answer the why? question (why should we reconcile the universal and particular moral facets?), then maybe the answer is right before us, hiding in plain sight. It is constitutive of the tension itself between universality and particularity. We ought to reconcile these two ethical aspects because, if we do not reconcile them, we risk dismissing the primary source of "meaning, coherence, and purpose in life."  Even Prof. Singer admits, "I agree that a good part of our happiness must come from close, loving relationships. Psychological evidence shows that good relationships of this kind are the main reason why contented people are so."

If we should seek after the good of other people -- if that is a moral obligation -- then maybe we also need to admit that promoting the good of others universally involves promoting their close, loving relationships in their life particulars.  Opportunity to do this leads to benevolent intensity within close proximity.  It involves especially the loving relationships in which we are ourselves most closely interwoven.  Therefore, perhaps it is the case that, within the loving tensions of benevolence, universal obligation requires particular application, particularly.