Entretien avec Peter Singer sur Jonathan Glover et l'éthique du faire-mourir

Résumé Abstract Dans le cadre de ce numéro spécial consacré à Jonathan Glover, nous avons demandé à Peter Singer de revenir sur l’influence qu’a pu exercer sur lui l’ouvrage Questions de vie ou de mort , ainsi que le séminaire de Glover à Oxford auquel Peter Singer assista à la fin des années soixante. L’un des arguments récurrents de Peter Singer réside dans la critique de la distinction traditionnelle entre les actes et les omissions. Mais Glover n’est sans doute pas étranger à cette remise en cause, même si les deux penseurs ne semblent pas vouloir en tirer exactement les mêmes conséquences. L’enjeu s’avère être le suivant : de quoi sommes-nous réellement responsable et quel est le degré d’exigence auquel doit s’élever la morale? For this special issue dedicated to Jonathan Glover, Peter Singer was asked to reflect on the influence that the book Causing Death and Saving Lives had on him, as well as the Glover seminar in Oxford that Peter Singer attended in the late 1960s. One of Peter Singer's recurring arguments is the criticism of the traditional distinction between acts and omissions. But Glover is no stranger to this questioning, even if the two thinkers do not seem to want to draw exactly the same conclusions. What is at stake is this: what are we really responsible for and how demanding should our morality be? Mots-clés

Pour un utilitariste, il est clair que la question de savoir si la peine de mort est légitime ou non ne peut être tranchée qu'en fonction des conséquences de ce châtiment. Si, par exemple, des études permettaient de prouver que pour un assassin exécuté, il se produisait deux meurtres en moins, alors un utilitariste se devrait de soutenir la peine de mort. Telle est la raison pour laquelle je n'ai jamais beaucoup écrit sur ce sujet. Du point de vue de la perspective philosophique qui est la mienne, tout dépend des données empiriques qui, comme vous l'indiquez, ne mettent en évidence aucun effet dissuasif de la peine de mort.

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Peter Singer 8 is probably the author of the two most famous and successful books in applied ethics, namely Animal Liberation (1975) and Practical Ethics (1979). He is even regarded as one of the main founders of this branch of moral philosophy. On the occasion of this special issue dedicated to Jonathan Glover, we asked Peter
Singer to be more explicit on the way he might have been influenced by the Oxford philosopher. It will probably become increasingly obvious to the readers of this interview that the Australian philosopher owes some of his crucial ideas to Jonathan Glover. This is the case in particular of Glover's critique of the belief that life is "sacred" and of the moral distinction between acts and omissions. Our hypothesis here is that Singer made these ideas more radical and accepted all there counterintuitive consequences, whereas Glover is sometimes more reluctant to accept them. This is probably the reason why Jonathan Glover always defended some kind of moral pluralism (a consequentialist approach combined with respect for the individual's autonomy). On the contrary, it is wellknown that Peter Singer fully defends some kind of strict utilitarianism.

Peter Singer, thank you very much for accepting to answer a few questions on the occasion of the release of a French translation of Jonathan Glover's seminal book Causing Death and Saving Lives [1]. In 1979 you published the first edition of your Practical Ethics [2], also dealing with life and death issues. You were a student at Oxford in the late 1960's [more accurately, a student from 1969-1971, and a Radcliffe Lecturer from 1971 to 1973 and you attended Glover's lectures, as well as Parfit's, Glover's and Griffin's seminars]. Forty years later I think it would be very interesting to ask you how influential Glover's work has been on your own views. My first question is about the method to be followed in moral philosophy. In 1974, you opposed John Rawls' concept of "reflective equilibrium" as a method of testing which of rival theories is to be preferred. You argued that Rawls tended to take for granted too many moral judgments we intuitively make instead of criticizing them. Moreover, you claimed that this method can only lead to a subjectivist point of view since "the validity of a moral theory will vary according to whose considered moral judgments the theory is tested against" [3, p.30]. Do you think these criticisms apply as well to Jonathan Glover's conception of an "interplay between responses and general beliefs"? [1, p.26-28]
Yes, I think to some extent they do, although not to the same extent as to Rawls. My impression is that Glover is more willing to criticize intuitions, as shown by his discussion of our intuitions about the sanctity of life. I did see that as one important advantage of preference utilitarianism. I was, however, already predisposed to this view, because I accepted R.M. Hare's universal prescriptivism [5], and his argument that preference utilitarianism follows from that metaethical view, properly understood. (Hare put forward a limited form of that argument in his Freedom and Reason [6], but left an escape-hole for the person he called "the fanatic". He attempted to close that hole in his later work, Moral Thinking [7]). More recently, the arguments put forward by Derek Parfit in On What Matters [8] against David Hume's view of practical reason, and in favor of the objectivity of normative reasons for action, persuaded me to reject all forms of non-cognitivist metaethics, including universal prescriptivism. I now find non-naturalist objectivism to be the most defensible metaethical position. That opens up normative possibilities other than preference utilitarianism. Hence in The Point of View of the Universe [9], Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and I defend classical, or hedonistic, utilitarianism. That book contains only a brief discussion of the wrongness of killing, but that discussion does give more weight to indirect reasons against killing.

What about the notion of a worth-while life? Glover was conscious that some people may be reluctant to use these terms. In your book Should The Baby Live?, you more or less explicitly referred to this notion. What is your criterion of a life that is not worth living?
Some people are understandably reluctant to use this notion because of its abuse by the Nazis. But they used the term to refer to a life that is "unworthy of life" because it is a blot on the Aryan race, or the German Volk. In Should the Baby Live? [10] Helga Kuhse and I use the concept from the perspective of the individual living the life. For example, the life of a baby born with a condition like epidermolysis bullosa, in which the skin is constantly blistering and breaking, and there is no available treatment, and early death is inevitable, is a life that is not worth living because it is one in which the infant suffers greatly, and there are no compensating benefits for the infant. This is, admittedly, an extreme case, but there are others without such suffering, but also without positive experiences eitherfor example, the life of an infant who will never become conscious.
In Should the Baby Live? [10], as well as in other works such as Practical Ethics [2] and Rethinking Life and Death [11], I considered it important to show that the idea that some lives are not worth living is widely accepted in clinical practice, for instance in decisions to withdraw life-support in infants whose lives could be prolonged, but where the prognosis is for a life with only minimal consciousness. As Glover also pointed out, such decisions are defended with a number of distinctions, such as those between acts and omissions and killing and allowing to die, as well as the doctrine of double effect. These distinctions are of dubious ethical significance, but they enable those making them to disguise the fact that they are judging some lives to be not worth living, and that the decisions they are making are contrary to the principle of the sanctity of human life, as it is standardly expressed. In addition to Causing Death and Saving Lives [1], and my own work on this issue, I recommend Helga Kuhse's detailed treatment in The Sanctity-of-Life Doctrine in Medicine: A Critique [12], as well as Jeff McMahan's The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life [13].
Glover gives great importance to a person's autonomy for its own sake, even though he admits that there might be outweighing reasons to override it. One could have the impression that his moral theory tries to combine a Kantian element (autonomy) with a consequentialist approach. On the contrary, you clearly refuse to respect autonomy for its own sake [2, p.99]. You don't consider it as an independent principle. But the kind of preference utilitarianism you defend gives great weight to a person's desire to go on living. Don't you think you are quite close to each other after all, on a practical level?
On a practical level, we were close to each other, as long as I was a preference utilitarian. As I have indicated above, I no longer hold that position, so we are not so close any more.
You famously rejected the doctrine of the sanctity of life. Glover had judged it inacceptable as well, even though he conceded that "there is embedded in it a moral view we should retain" [1, p.42], namely the idea that it is usually directly wrong to take a worth-while life. Would you agree that there is something to be retained from this doctrine? Or do you consider your own critique as more radical than Glover's?
My critique is more radical than Glover's, because I offer a more forceful critique of our speciesism which lies behind the view that the sanctity of life protects all members of the species Homo sapiens, but does not extend to nonhuman animals, even though individual chimpanzees, elephants, dogs or pigs may have higher cognitive capacities and experience more pleasure and less pain than some human beings. In saying this, I should make it clear that I do not believe that Glover himself defends such speciesism, merely that objecting to it is not, for him, a central concern, as it has been for me since I developed the ideas that I presented in "Animal Liberation" [14]. Indeed, one is tempted to see a link between your article and his critique of the distinction between acts and omissions, killing and allowing to die, and his final chapter on "moral distance". Is it the case?

You regretted that in Glover's book
I'm sure it is.
As you once noticed, you were not the first philosopher to suggest that infanticide may be justified in some cases. In chapter 12 of Causing Death and Saving Lives, Glover explicitly argued that "it can be right to kill a defective baby and then have a normal one you would not otherwise have" [1, p.163]. How do you explain that you were the victim of such intolerance and very violent reactions [17]?
The intolerant and violent reactions you are referring to occurred in Germany, and subsequently in other German-speaking countries, Austria and Switzerland, and they happened only after Practical Ethics [2] had appeared in a popular German translation. Extracts from this translation then circulated among both conservative Christian groups, and more radical disability organizations. That led to the violent reactions. I'm not sure if Causing Death and Saving Lives [1] was similarly available in German translation. If not, that could explain why the protests were directed at me rather than at Glover.

Causing Death and Saving Lives focuses on human lives and does not contain anything about the way we should treat animals. Does it mean that Glover did not influence you at all on this major topic?
That's correct. The major influences on me regarding animals were a different Oxford group -Richard Keshen, who at the time was a Canadian graduate student in philosophy, and two other Canadians, Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch, who together with John Harris edited the path-breaking volume Animals, Men and Morals [18], which I reviewed in my first writing on this topic, the article "Animal Liberation" which appeared in The New York Review of Books [19]. Another influence was Richard Ryder, then a psychologist at the Warneford Hospital in Oxford, who coined the term "speciesism". I first came across it on a leaflet he wrote against experiments in which chimpanzees were infected with syphilis.
It seems to me that you never developed your ideas at length on the death penalty, at least not in your books. But in a 2011 article you mentioned the fact that capital punishment has no deterrent effect. 10 As a utilitarian philosopher, is it the only reason why you think this punishment should be abolished? If so, do you concede that this argument will never justify any absolute and unconditional rejection of capital punishment, at least on a theoretical level?
For a utilitarian, whether capital punishment is justified must depend on its consequences. If, for example, research showed that for every murderer executed, there were two fewer murders committed, a utilitarian would have to support capital punishment. That is why I have never written at length about capital punishment. From my philosophical perspective, it all depends on the empirical research, which as you mention, does not show a deterrent effect.
In the same article you also mentioned a strong attachment to the idea of "retribution" which might explain why so many Americans still support death penalty. In these conditions, how can preference utilitarianism justify the abolition, when every execution seems to fulfill a strong and shared desire among the population? Some would claim that a utilitarian has no choice but to take men as they are and maximize the satisfaction of their preferences… I don't think we have to take people as they are. Preference utilitarians, and classical hedonistic utilitarians too, should give equal weight to the future. Therefore they should try to educate people so that in the long run, there will be greater preference satisfaction for everyone. The same argument applies to racial prejudice, or to people who enjoy watching cruel sports. As long as we just accept such preferences or forms of enjoyment, we will never make progress towards a society with greater preference satisfaction, or happiness, for all.
Peter Singer, thank you again for participating to this first tribute to Jonathan Glover in a French academic review. I hope this interview contributed to emphasize your similarities, as well as your differences.