Rethinking Life and Death - 2nd Edition by Peter Singer (Paperback)

About the Book

Can killing an embryo for genetic reasons be justified? How long should we prolong the lives of people in vegetative states? Does a person who is clinically brain dead still have legal rights? In this 1995 Australian National Book Award winner, philosopher Peter Singer explores these and other questions in a major reexamination of the meaning of life and death--under the spotlight of 21st-century technology.

Book Synopsis

The new commandments according to Rethinking Life and Death.
--If you must take human life, take responsibility for the consequences of your decisions.
--All human life is not of equal worth; treat beings in accordance to the ethical situation at hand.
--Respect a person's desire to live or die.
A profound and provocative work, Rethinking Life and Death, in the tradition of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, examines the ethical dilemmas that confront us as we near the twenty-first century.

Review Quotes

"Peter Singer . . . has probably has a larger popular readership than any professional philosopher since Bertrand Russell, and more success in effecting changes in acceptable behavior." --The New England Journal of Medicine

"Singer convincingly argues that [our traditional Western] definition [of death] is inadequate . . . he challenges the disjunction between our willingness to tolerate withdrawing means to sustain life and our rejection of measures . . . that would actively end it." --The New York Times Book Review

"Far from pointing a way out of today's moral dilemmas, Singer's book is a road map for driving down the darkest of moral blind alleys . . . Read it to remind yourself of the enormities of which putatively civilized beings are capable." --The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Peter Singer teaches at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. One of founding fathers of the Animal Rights Movement, he is the author of the bestselling Animal Liberation.