The Life You Can Save

I went to see philosopher and public intellectual extraordinaire Peter Singer talk at the RSA on Monday, and then had the luck/privilege to attend a small private seminar led by him at LSE's Centre for the Study of Human Rights. Quite intimidating - only one other student and me, surrounded by prominent professors of philosophy/law/sociology/politics etc. The topic of the seminar was 'When should we speak of rights and when should we not?' - the various responses to which I can't begin to even summarise now; suffice to say that most attendees accepted that rights-talk was problematic, sometimes counter-productive, and there were lots of examples given featuring animals (Singer being well-known for his animal-welfare activism) and embryos.

But Singer is in the UK mainly to promote his new book on aid and world poverty, 'The Life You can Save.' I haven't read it all yet, but this was the basis for his speech at the RSA. In a nutshell: we should all be doing more to help the world's poor. Not exactly revolutionary, but argued in his characteristically rigorous, logical, highly persuasive style. Here is an extract from the book, here is a review by AC Grayling, and here is a website where you can pledge to meet Singer's standard of giving (for most of us, 1-5% of our income). Incidentally, Singer himself gives 1/3 of his income to charity, mainly to Oxfam I understand.