Jewish Singers Biography
Peter Albert David Singer, B.Phil. (graduate degree in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, England), is a renown Australian-born Jewish philosopher born on July 6th 1946. For over thirty years he has challenged traditional notions of applied ethics. He is world famous for giving the impetus to the animal rights movement. Today he holds the chair of ethics at Princeton University. Singer has also held twice the chair of philosophy in his native land at Monash University where he also founded the Centre for Human Bioethics. Peter Singer is a rationalist philosopher in the Anglo-American tradition of utilitarianism. He teaches “practical ethics”, which he defines as the application of a morality to practical problems based on philosophical thinking rather than on religious beliefs. In 2009 Singer would make it to the Time magazine list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”.
Peter Singers’ parents were Viennese Jews who had escaped the annexation of Austria and had fled to Australia in 1938. His paternal grandparents would be deported to Lodz, a concentration camp in Poland, and Singer would never know what really happened to them. His maternal grandfather, moreover, would die in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is now Czech Republic. Singer’s father was a tea and coffee importer while his mother was a medical doctor.
Peter Singer would for a while attend Scotch College in Melbourne, Australia. After leaving school Singer would study law, history and philosophy at the University of Melbourne where he would graduate in 1967 with a Bachelor or Arts. Subsequently he would receive in 1969 an MA for his thesis “Why should I be moral?”. After that Peter Singer would be rewarded for his promising work with an offer to enter the University of Oxford, which he would accept, leading him to earn a B.Phil., which is in spite of its name is a graduate degree in Philosophy in 1971. His dissertation would be on civil disobedience, supervised by the famous English moral philosopher R.M. Hare. Singer would later publish this same thesis as a book in 1973 with the title of “Democracy and Disobedience”.
His 1975 book “Animal Liberation” would greatly influence the modern movements of animal welfare. There he argues against speciesism, which is the discrimination between beings on the sole basis of their species, and in this way it is almost always in practice in favor of members of the human race against non-human animals. The idea is that all beings that are capable of both suffering and experiencing pleasure, that is, sentient beings, should be regarded as morally equal in the sense that their interests ought to be considered equally. Professor Singer argues in particular that the fact of using animals for food is unjustifiable because it causes suffering disproportionate to the benefits humans derive from such consumption. According to him it is therefore a moral obligation to refrain from eating animal flesh (vegetarianism) or even go as far as not consuming any of the products derived from the exploitation of animals (veganism).
In one of his more light-hearted books, Isaac Bashevis Singer depicts his childhood in one of the over-populated poor quarters of Warsaw, a Jewish quarter, just before and during the First World War. The book, called In My Father's Court (1966), is sustained by a redeeming, melancholy sense of humour and a clear-sightedness free of illusion. This world has gone forever, destroyed by the most terrible of all scourges that have afflicted the Jews and other people in Poland. But it comes to life in Singer's memories and writing in general. Its mental and physical environment and its centuries-old traditions have set their stamp on Singer as a man and a writer, and provide the ever-vivid subject matter for his inspiration and imagination. It is the world and life of East European Jewry, such as it was lived in cities and villages, in poverty and persecution, and imbued with sincere piety and rites combined with blind faith and superstition. Its language was Yiddish - the language of the simple people and of the women, the language of the mothers which preserved fairytales and anecdotes, legends and memories for hundreds of years past, through a history which seems to have left nothing untried in the way of agony, passions, aberrations, cruelty and bestiality, but also of heroism, love and self-sacrifice.
Peter Albert David Singer, B.Phil. (graduate degree in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, England), is a renown Australian-born Jewish philosopher born on July 6th 1946. For over thirty years he has challenged traditional notions of applied ethics. He is world famous for giving the impetus to the animal rights movement. Today he holds the chair of ethics at Princeton University. Singer has also held twice the chair of philosophy in his native land at Monash University where he also founded the Centre for Human Bioethics. Peter Singer is a rationalist philosopher in the Anglo-American tradition of utilitarianism. He teaches “practical ethics”, which he defines as the application of a morality to practical problems based on philosophical thinking rather than on religious beliefs. In 2009 Singer would make it to the Time magazine list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”.
Peter Singers’ parents were Viennese Jews who had escaped the annexation of Austria and had fled to Australia in 1938. His paternal grandparents would be deported to Lodz, a concentration camp in Poland, and Singer would never know what really happened to them. His maternal grandfather, moreover, would die in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is now Czech Republic. Singer’s father was a tea and coffee importer while his mother was a medical doctor.
Peter Singer would for a while attend Scotch College in Melbourne, Australia. After leaving school Singer would study law, history and philosophy at the University of Melbourne where he would graduate in 1967 with a Bachelor or Arts. Subsequently he would receive in 1969 an MA for his thesis “Why should I be moral?”. After that Peter Singer would be rewarded for his promising work with an offer to enter the University of Oxford, which he would accept, leading him to earn a B.Phil., which is in spite of its name is a graduate degree in Philosophy in 1971. His dissertation would be on civil disobedience, supervised by the famous English moral philosopher R.M. Hare. Singer would later publish this same thesis as a book in 1973 with the title of “Democracy and Disobedience”.
His 1975 book “Animal Liberation” would greatly influence the modern movements of animal welfare. There he argues against speciesism, which is the discrimination between beings on the sole basis of their species, and in this way it is almost always in practice in favor of members of the human race against non-human animals. The idea is that all beings that are capable of both suffering and experiencing pleasure, that is, sentient beings, should be regarded as morally equal in the sense that their interests ought to be considered equally. Professor Singer argues in particular that the fact of using animals for food is unjustifiable because it causes suffering disproportionate to the benefits humans derive from such consumption. According to him it is therefore a moral obligation to refrain from eating animal flesh (vegetarianism) or even go as far as not consuming any of the products derived from the exploitation of animals (veganism).
In one of his more light-hearted books, Isaac Bashevis Singer depicts his childhood in one of the over-populated poor quarters of Warsaw, a Jewish quarter, just before and during the First World War. The book, called In My Father's Court (1966), is sustained by a redeeming, melancholy sense of humour and a clear-sightedness free of illusion. This world has gone forever, destroyed by the most terrible of all scourges that have afflicted the Jews and other people in Poland. But it comes to life in Singer's memories and writing in general. Its mental and physical environment and its centuries-old traditions have set their stamp on Singer as a man and a writer, and provide the ever-vivid subject matter for his inspiration and imagination. It is the world and life of East European Jewry, such as it was lived in cities and villages, in poverty and persecution, and imbued with sincere piety and rites combined with blind faith and superstition. Its language was Yiddish - the language of the simple people and of the women, the language of the mothers which preserved fairytales and anecdotes, legends and memories for hundreds of years past, through a history which seems to have left nothing untried in the way of agony, passions, aberrations, cruelty and bestiality, but also of heroism, love and self-sacrifice.
Singer's father was a rabbi, a spiritual mentor and confessor, of the Hasid school of piety. His mother also came from a family of rabbis. The East European Jewish-mystical Hasidism combined Talmud doctrine and a fidelity to scripture and rites - which often merged into prudery and strict adherence to the law - with a lively and sensually candid earthiness that seemed familiar with all human experience. Its world, which the reader encounters in Singer's stories, is a very Jewish but also a very human world. It appears to include everything - pleasure and suffering, coarseness and subtlety. We find obstrusive carnality, spicy, colourful, fragrant or smelly, lewd or violent. But there is also room for sagacity, worldly wisdom and shrewd speculation. The range extends from the saintly to the demoniacal, from quiet contemplation and sublimity, to ruthless obsession and infernal confusion or destruction. It is typical that among the authors Singer read at an early age who have influenced him and accompanied him through life were Spinoza, Gogol and Dostoievsky, in addition to Talmud, Kabbala and kindred writings.
Jewish Singers
Jewish Singers
Jewish Singers
Jewish Singers
Jewish Singers
Jewish Singers
Jewish Singers
Jewish Singers
Jewish Singers
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