Greatest good for the greatest number: philosopher Peter Singer will anger his traditional lefty fans with a clear-eyed account of the benefits of globalization.

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg
• Position: The Ethics of Globalization - Book Review

ONE WORLD: The Ethics of Globalization by Peter Singer Yale University Press, $21.95

YES, IT'S THAT PETER SINGER. THE one who has suggested that animals sometimes have the same rights as people, that the old should be euthanized to divert resources to the young (though he would spare his own infirm mother), that Americans should give away almost everything they possess to the developing world and live themselves like the developing world's poor (Singer donates to charity but he hasn't given almost everything away, as he advised others to do, and won't give to bums on the street). The Peter Singer who has said that utilitarian arguments can justify killing the innocent if benefits to others are large (a chilling thought, but also U.S. policy, as it is on utilitarian grounds that U.S. forces have killed some innocent people during the campaign against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; presumably, Singer supports this). The Peter Singer who has suggested that severely handicapped infants should be killed for their own good (strangely, only people who were not born severely handicapped take this view), whom The New Yorker has called the world's "most influential living philosopher" (which mainly tells us how little anyone cares about living philosophers, a state of affairs which the profession has largely brought on itself), and whose appointment to a chair at Princeton University aroused considerable alumni protests and the cancellation of some pledges. People have even protested the name of the chair he holds--Singer is now the Ira DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values of Princeton. How can Singer have a chair at the University Center for Human Values, the line goes, when he is inhuman?

Yes, that Peter Singer. Since his views are much hashed over, it may be best to skip beyond his prior statements here, other than to make two points. First, as I wrote in the previous paragraph, Singer has "suggested" most of his notorious positions. There is, in fact, an awful lot of high-class weasel-wording in his work, indicating either that he can't make up his mind or that he wants to have it both ways, grabbing attention by saying stark things, then indignantly claiming misquotation and pointing to some buried caveat when attacked. Second, when The New Yorker called him out on how he can say that other people's aging mothers should be put down like old horses but that his own should receive only the very best care in an expensive nursing home, Singer replied, "Perhaps it's more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when...