Welcome to Within Reason.

My name is Alex O'Connor, and my guest today is Peter Singer.

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher and is famed for being perhaps the most

important contributor to the field of practical ethics in living memory with works such as

famine, affluence and morality in 1972, animal liberation in 1975, practical ethics in 1979, and the life you can save in 2009.

Peter Singer is often credited with putting animal ethics on the map with animal

liberation and that's a book that he's reissuing as Animal Liberation Now, and that's a book you can

pre-order by using the links available in the description. With that said, I hope you

enjoy the following conversation with Peter Singer, thank you so much for being here.

I'm very happy to be with you, Alex.

I'm looking forward to talking today your reissuing animal liberation which many

people see as one of the most if not the most important work in the history

or at least the recent history of animal ethics.

First published in 1979 and then I think reissued in 95.

I've had a chance to read through the revised edition,

Animal Liberation Now.

And I noticed that a few things had changed in the introductory chapter,

putting forward the ethical case for our moral consideration of animals. I noticed that some arguments have

been adapted, some redacted entirely, it seemed. I wondered, what is it that made you feel now

was the time to update this volume?

Well, in fact, it hadn't been updated since 1990. I think the 95 reissue was something that came out with a different a new preface maybe but the

text itself was written before 1990 so if you looked at, for example, the experiments I describe in the chapter on experiments on animals, they would all be from 1989 or earlier, and clearly know 33 years after that that's becoming a bit

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