INTRODUCTION

One might expect a 65-year-old philosopher who has espoused preference utilitarianism for virtually his entire career to be pretty set in his ways. Indeed, many consider Peter Singer to be the kind of ideologue and extremist who would never reconsider arguments against his long-standing positions. It might be surprising to some, then, that Singer is undergoing a major shift in his thought at this late stage of his career – one which may even end up challenging the very foundations of his views. He hints at this shift in the new edition of Practical Ethics, but it was at the aforementioned ‘Christian Ethics Engages Peter Singer’ May 2011 conference in Oxford where he revealed many more details about it.

Part of the shift appears to have been facilitated by the ongoing work of the philosopher Derek Parfit who has apparently convinced Singer to become more open to objectivity in his moral theory. But attentive readings of Singer's corpus reveal that, for some time now, he has become less and less interested in defending his utilitarianism as a detailed moral theory, and has instead become more concerned with engaging a diverse readership on the practical implications of taking a generalized, other-centered point of view: