Abstract
Many people will find it scandalous that a Catholic theologian should engage sympathetically with a philosopher so notorious for holding positions contrary to Christian teaching, a philosopher who has advocated not only abortion but also infanticide, and whose ethical theory would leave some human beings effectively treated as subhuman. The philosopher I am thinking about is, of course, Aristotle and the Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas. What may now seem curious about this example is that when Christian engagement with Aristotle first became the subject of fierce controversy, in the thirteenth century, these ethical topics played little if any role in the debate. It was Aristotle’s views about creation and the immortality of the soul which stirred emotions. Indeed, in the light of the later theological attempts to resist the slave trade, and the use of Aristotle in defence of that abomination, theologians may have wished that Aristotle’s errors in ethical theory had been criticised more robustly in a previous age.
The moral of this tale is that Christians have always engaged with the thought of non-Christian philosophers, and this has always entailed engaging with thinkers who start in a different place and who hold beliefs some of which are incompatible with Christian doctrine or practice. It is in a way surprising, then, that it has taken so long for a Christian theologian to attempt a serious and sympathetic reading of Peter Singer, given that, as Charles Camosy reminds us, Singer is ‘probably the world’s most influential living philosopher’ (p. 2). Until this point there have been plenty of books and articles by Christians about Singer, but these have been, almost without exception, focused on what is wrong with Singer’s theory. What has been lacking is a sustained attempt to set out what is right with Singer, from the perspective of Christian ethics. Indeed, without some grasp of what Singer has got right, without some degree of intellectual sympathy with this project, it is difficult to provide the kind of careful and sensitive reading through which to identify what is wrong.
Camosy’s method is to consider normative questions before addressing more general matters of ethical theory, and to identify areas of agreement or overlap before locating key points of difference. Indeed it is precisely clarifying the areas of agreement which allows the differences to be located accurately. This method, which is in essence the approach of a mediaeval quaestio disputata, not only helps one understand Singer’s position better, it also helps clarify the ethical issue itself and the way that Christian ethics could or should approach it. One discovery that emerges from this is the common ground that utilitarians and Christians have in opposing the cult of ‘autonomy, privacy and consumerism’ (p. 252), which saturates our culture. Thus, for example, in relation to abortion the rhetoric of a ‘right to choose’ only gains purchase, according to Singer, if the unborn child lacks the moral status of a person, so this ‘needs to be proven before we can legitimately apply the principle to the case of abortion’ (p. 14, quoting Singer, Practical Ethics, p. 131).
In a similar fashion Camosy finds areas of agreement both in ethical theory and in practical conclusions (especially in relation to duties to the poor and the cruelty of factory farming). During this discussion he also brings to light elements of the Christian tradition which people may not be aware of, such as the lively early-modern debate about the possible salvation of ‘extraterrestrial rational life’ (p. 123). It is Christian doctrine that human beings have been created in God’s own image and likeness (Gen. 1.26), but there is nothing contrary to Christian doctrine in the idea that God has created other, nonhuman, persons. And if God has created angels and might have created extraterrestrial rational life, then it cannot be ruled out that some of the species with which we are familiar, the great apes, the dolphins or the elephants, might be discovered to be persons. Camosy is also surely correct in saying that, even if none of these species are persons, an animal might nevertheless be ‘in such proximity to human persons with regard to knowing and loving’ (p. 132) as to merit a very high moral status. Camosy is mistaken in saying that the United Kingdom has given great apes the status of human beings (p. 133), but he is correct that the United Kingdom has currently suspended experimentation on such creatures. There is no inconsistency in someone welcoming this stance while accepting, in the current state of knowledge, the use of mice and rats in biomedical research. Not all animals are equal.
Camosy has thus presented a perspective on Peter Singer in relation to Christian ethics that is novel and that brings out aspects of both which are often overlooked. He has shown that there are areas of agreement between Christians and utilitarians both in relation to theory and in relation to practical issues, about which they could make common cause.
However, if intellectual sympathy is a virtue, one of the intellectual virtues, then it will lie as a mean between polar opposites. As there is a vice of lack of sympathy which leads to caricaturing the other, so there is an opposite vice of excess of sympathy, mischaracterising positions as closer than they are, overlooking mistakes and minimising differences. In my view, Camosy’s book is a classic case of such sympathetic excess.
The persistent effort to present Singer in the best light is evident in the language where areas of agreement are described as ‘significant and non-trivial’ (p. 8), ‘considerable’ (p. 81), ‘significant and wide ranging’ (pp. 133, 137), ‘stunningly similar’ (p. 141) and a ‘dramatic overlap’ (p. 213), whereas areas of disagreement are generally referred to as ‘surprisingly narrow’ (p. 8) or ‘actually quite narrow’ (p. 39) and ‘pale in comparison’ (p. 176) with the similarities. Only twice are disagreements admitted to be ‘substantial’ (pp. 81, 213). However, even here Camosy sees room for cooperation on ‘important public policies’ (p. 82) or sees Singer ‘rethinking’, so that, ‘he is now open to … even more points of contact with Christian ethics’ (p. 213). However, the more defensive the prose, the less convincing it is. Singer’s denial that ‘severely mentally disabled human beings are persons’ (p. 40) cannot remotely be described as a ‘narrow disagreement’ (p. 39) nor does Singer himself seem to regard this disagreement as narrow. Camosy presents this difference as narrow because, he argues, it is based on a ‘fairly technical philosophical argument’ (p. 27) about the significance of potentiality. However, to understand this difference as narrow requires the privileging of theory (the technical argument) over the impact of theory in terms of practical conclusions (the life or death of disabled infants). However, this ordering of theory and practice runs counter to Camosy’s apparent approval of Singer’s recent attempts to ‘downplay differences in ethical theory’ (p. 179) in favour of practical agreement. If what matters is practical agreement on questions such as poverty or factory farming, then it will not do to downplay the significance of practical disagreement on matters such as infanticide. In general the discussions of agreements and disagreements between Singer and Christian ethics would be more interesting if they were less of an exercise in special pleading and more an attempt at dispassionate analysis.
In relation to end-of-life issues Camosy again underplays differences, this time by the simple device of presenting an exception as though it were the rule. Not all Christian ethicists will follow the teaching of John Paul II and of the Vatican, that ‘the administration of food and water (whether by natural or artificial means) to a patient in a “vegetative state” [is, in principle,] morally obligatory’ (p. 63). However, for those who do, it should be clear that the practical implications will be very different from the stance of Peter Singer who argues that such patients are nonpersons and that it would not be ethical to waste resources by feeding them. To establish agreement here, Camosy imagines an exceptional case in which the Church would agree that feeding could be withdrawn. Though his charactering of the exception is problematic, Camosy is right that there can be exceptions, and the Vatican is explicit about this. Where I take issue with Camosy is in presenting exceptions as showing agreement rather than as showing the more general disagreement.
The same pattern is found when Camosy discusses ethical theory. Somewhat idiosyncratically, Camosy uses consequentialism as an umbrella term, of which teleology is a subset, with utilitarianism being a subset of teleology (p. 182). However, if one takes Aristotle or Aquinas as the archetypal exponents of teleology then it is very difficult to see utilitarianism as a subset of this approach. Similarly, the term ‘consequentialism’ was coined by Elizabeth Anscombe to describe ethical approaches in which prohibitions could always be set aside given the prospect of sufficiently bad consequences. In this sense Peter Singer and R. M. Hare are consequentialists whereas Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas are not. My criticism here is not so much with Camosy’s use of these terms but that these are defined in a way that does not help to clarify important distinctions.
My final concern about the excess of sympathy that Camosy shows for Singer’s position is that it leads him to fail to show sufficient intellectual sympathy with those who have opposed Singer. This is not only true of Camosy’s treatment of thinkers such as Robert George and John Finnis, which is superficial. Of still more concern is the lack of sympathy Camosy shows for people who are threatened existentially by Singer’s ideas.
If one has a disability, or cares for a person with a disability, one cannot treat with indifference comments repeated by Singer (still present in the 2011 edition of Practical Ethics, p. 167) that ‘killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.’ Nor can one treat with indifference the description of people with severe mental impairments as nonpersons. So strong is his wish to identify with Singer that, in recounting the phenomenon of popular protest against Singer in Germany, Camosy resorts to invoking the deaths of Singer’s grandparents in Nazi concentration camps (p. 42). It is not clear if this move is supposed to exonerate Singer from moral criticism or simply to deflect sympathy away from those protesting. Among these most prominently were disabled people who had had to struggle to be recognised as fully human and who felt directly threatened by Singer’s ideas. Surely they deserve acknowledgement. In a similar way, Camosy criticises those who wished to maintain Terri Schiavo’s assisted nutrition and hydration for fighting ‘a proxy war over abortion policy’ (p. 64), but he does not mention her parents, who were in fact at the centre of this legal fight. Even if Camosy disagreed with them (which he hints is his position), he should at least have expressed a word of sympathy for those whose overriding concern was to continue to care for and to feed their daughter. The perspective of such people is notable by its absence from this book. This book has much to recommend it as the counterweight to that sizeable literature of anti-Singer polemic by Christians, and it would be useful for students who should be encouraged to move beyond simple polarities in ethical theory. The weakness of this book is the lack of a more robust critique of Singer’s position, but this could easily be offset if it were used in conjunction with a more critical volume, for example, the very rich collection by Oderberg and Laing, Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics.