Ep. 531 – The Buddhist and the Ethicist with Peter Singer

Mindrolling with Raghu Markus

Philosopher, author, and activist Peter Singer joins Raghu to chat about his new book, The Buddhist and the Ethicist.

Pick up your copy of Peter Singer’s book HERE

This week on Mindrolling, Peter and Raghu have a comprehensive conversation on:

• Singer’s coming of age in the 60’s
• The background of Venerable Shih Chao-Hwei
• The ethical outlook of utilitarianism
• Examining the consequences of our actions
• The problems that come with not thinking about the future
• The Bodhisattva tradition
• Bhakti Yoga and merging with the supreme being
• Having compassion for those that suffer, human and non-human
• Looking at theories of human nature and basic goodness
• Karma’s compatibility with utilitarianism
• The ways that we leave traces in the world

About Peter Singer:

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher and Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He also is also an author, and is best known for his writings about poverty and liberating animals. He wrote the book Animal Liberation, in which he argues for vegetarianism and co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country’s largest and most effective animal organization. Most recently, he published a book of eye-opening dialogues with Venerable Shih Chao-Hwei, a Taiwanese Buddhist monastic and social activist. Learn more about Peter Singer on his website.

“Compassion is one way of looking at how we ought to be thinking about all sentient beings. We ought to be thinking about them with concern for their well-being. When you use the term compassion, at least to westerners, that suggests a feeling, an emotion, something like we might say empathy that we have with them. That’s something that utilitarians would want to encourage because we need to think about what its like for other beings in the various possible states of the world that could result from our doing a variety of things.” – Peter Singer

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