This is a followup to my recent post about Peter Singer denying equal moral status to children until after two years of age.
Defenders of Peter Singer like to say that we critics are just too dull to really understand what the great man is saying. And hence, we distort his thinking on issues like infanticide. But the real problem for Singerphiles is that we understand precisely what he advocates–and more importantly, where such thinking would lead.
I make it a habit not to use Nazi analogies. Singer is not a racist or anti Semite. Nor is he a totalitarian. But he does believe that babies past the second year are not persons, and don’t have the same moral status as those of us who (at least today) possess sufficient self awareness to earn that status. He also believes that disabled infants can be killed as a matter of compassion and to serve the family’s interests.
Preventing suffering and promoting the interests of family and state were the bases for advocating infanticide permissiveness policies in Germany throughout the 1920s and 1930s. This eugenics/utilitarian/compassion meme led to the first authorized killing in the Baby Knauer. Here’s what I wrote about it in Culture of Death, quoting three notable history books that focused on the case:
The first known German government-approved infanticide, the killing of Baby Knauer, occurred in early 1939. The baby was blind and had a leg and an arm missing. Baby Knauer’s father was distraught at having a disabled child. So, he wrote to Chancellor Hitler requesting permission to have the infant “put to sleep.” Hitler had been receiving many such requests from German parents of disabled babies over several years and had been waiting for just the right opportunity to launch his euthanasia plans. The Knauer case seemed the perfect test case. He sent one of his personal physicians, Karl Rudolph Brandt, to investigate. Brandt’s instructions were to verify the facts, and if the child was disabled as described in the father’s letter, he was to assure the infant’s doctors that they could kill the child without legal consequence. With the Fuhrer’s assurance, Baby Knauer’s doctors willingly murdered their patient at the request of his father. [Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, pp. 95-96; Lifton, Nazi Doctors, pp. 50-51; Gallagher, By Trust Betrayed, pp. 95-96.]
And here’s how BK’s father later described his conversation with Brand about the killing of his boy, again as presented in COD:
Baby Knauer’s father was quoted by Lifton in, The Nazi Doctors, as stating in 1973 that Brandt assured them “we wouldn’t have to suffer from this terrible misfortune because the Fuhrer had granted us the mercy killing of our son. Later, we could have other children, handsome and healthy, of whom the Reich could be proud.” [Lifton, p. 115]
And here’s what Singer wrote about infanticide to protect the interests of a hypothetical future sibling in Practical Ethics (p. 186):
When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of the happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if the killing of the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others it would . . . be right to kill him.
Compare what Singer wrote and what Brandt told the father of Baby Knauer. What is the difference? I can’t see any. Both supported infanticide as a means of ending suffering and making a happier future possible for later-born infants.
Singer has also defended himself by stating that the German infanticide was in secret, which he opposes. That was generally true, but not in the Baby Knauer case.
Awful things said in a charming Australian accent are still awful. Singer is our most influential contemporary thinker. Much of what he advocates has been done–terribly–before. That is why his views must be exposed, and argued against, at all opportunities.
November 24th, 2010 | 1:28 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, Wesley J. Smith. Wesley J. Smith said: Peter Singer: Views on Infanticide Nothing New–But Just as Bad » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things.. http://bit.ly/ggMIre [...]
November 24th, 2010 | 2:05 pm
Also, infanticide may have started out a secret, but it soon became public knowledge when family members suddenly started “disappearing” and families who had already pulled loved ones out of institutions got letters informing them that said loved one had passed away…yet it still went on for years, then, perhaps, with more secrecy. It’s no secret that dutch doctors murder about 100 infants a year, yet it still goes on. Disgusting.
November 24th, 2010 | 2:35 pm
Of course Peter Singer would disagree with what the Nazi did (and said so many times), but you fail to understand him, and accuse him of things he disagrees with.
So you collect a “straw man” and a “reductio ad hitlerum” in the same post.
congrats
http://bit.ly/hzN1IY
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 24th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Well, now you disappoint me. What he advocates is precisely what was done in Baby Knauer. That is undeniable, no matter how hard he–or your–strive to deny it.
November 24th, 2010 | 3:41 pm
I have to agree with Unnamable: the comparison between Peter Singer’s views and those of the Nazis is a clear argument ad Hitlerum.
Was the killing of Gerhard Kretschmar (Baby Knauer) motivated by compassion? Hardly. The child’s parents were concerned about their suffering and about raising children worthy of the Reich. The paediatrician involved reportedly referred to the child as “this monster” and full-scale registration of infants to be exterminated began three weeks after the incident. The evils of Action T4 did not follow “naturally” from this first killing. Rather the intervention served as a pretext to launch a plan Hitler had prepared long before he had ever heard of Kretschmar.
It is true that the Nazi’s often spoke of “ending suffering” – but dictators often speak of “liberating” people even as they grind them into subjection. We appreciate, in these cases, that the actors’ motives are rather different from the sentiments expressed. Does anyone believe that the Nazis who killed millions against their will and took perfectly happy disabled children away from their unwilling parents were really concerned about the suffering of their victims? Isn’t it far more likely that, just as they conducted these killings in secret and falsified medical records (even in the Kretschmar case), they modified the description of their actions to make them more palatable to the German public and to their sympathisers outside Germany?
Even if, for argument’s sake, we admit that Baby Kretscmar’s killing might have been motivated completely by compassion (on the part of the child’s parents and doctors), where do we go from there? Is your argument that the massive euthanasia program which followed shortly after resulted from compassionate killings which somehow got out of hand? That maybe the Nazis’ wish to reduce suffering somehow snowballed into the Holocaust and the extermination of all those deemed unfit (even if neither they nor their parents wished these exterminations to take place)? How can any reasonably person seriously believe that Peter Singer’s ideas are the first steps along this path?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 24th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
It wasn’t Hitler. It was the rejection of human exeptionalism that led to the infanticide call in eugenics.
My argument is that Singer’s call for infanticide is precisely what happened in the Baby K case. That case opened the door for the wider policy. When you state that some of us are killable, you open very dangerous and pernicious doors.
What is they say about forgetting the lessons of history?
November 24th, 2010 | 4:28 pm
“forgetting the lessons of history”
Hmmm, we mustn’t forget to include the following:
infanticide of the Carthaginians, Syrian infant sacrifices to Jupiter, the cult of Ishtar, and Jehovah who clearly permitted infant slaughter in Numbers.
Infanticide and those espousing it is as old as hominids. Nothing new.
Singer’s position is hardly different from ancient societies, mythologies and religions.
Yawn
If society can waste time and effort on this age-old drivel, perhaps our economy isn’t as bad as we fear?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 24th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
David. You never surprise.
Those old societies actually DID it. And the Netherlands is now. It is definitely worth “wasting our time” to point out very bad thinking, because ideas come before actions. And we, or at least I, want to stop those actions from happening. This isn’t just a mind game.
November 24th, 2010 | 4:35 pm
The thing is, Singer’s motivations are worse because he tries to justify it by happiness. Its stupid: happiness is not some ledger sum where a hemophiliac infant takes one point away and a normal baby adds one point.
But that is what he does. He thinks that killing a potentially unhappy baby is balanced somehow by the healthy babies that survive. The loss is not outweighed, neither individually or as a society, and it’s cold blooded in the extreme to think it is.
November 24th, 2010 | 5:01 pm
More often than not, people mis-learn the lessons of history – blinded by superficial similarity while failing to appreciate significant differences in historical context.
Most people accept that “some of us are killable” (e.g. enemy combatants, condemned murderers, people in “Sand Pebbles” situations . . .) – but I understand where you’re coming from and tend to agree. The “dangerous and pernicious door” opened is however not one which leads to the horrors of the Nazi euthanasia programs (or anything remotely like it). There is only so much havoc the compassionate can wreak.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 24th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Raven the C: you make me shake my head. Surely you understand the difference between killable based on conduct, e.g., war, self defense, and deemed so based on attributes or capacities, e.g. racism, religious belief, “personhood.” The distinction couldn’t be more important. And I did not say it will lead to Hitler. There are other ways to be evil.
November 24th, 2010 | 6:59 pm
The problem with Singer, is he’s internally inconsistent. He argues, on the one hand, that, in order to be a “person”, one must have 1)self consciousness. 2) rationality. 3) autonomy.
Do two year olds fit his criteria? No doubt they’re self conscious. How about rational, or autonomous. Unless one advocates an incredibly elastic definition of these terms, no two year old has them.
I have a proposition for Dr. Singer: bite the bullet, and show us how “rational” you really are, and advocate nonpersonhood status for all humans until they’re out of their teens (or at least eighteen).
I won’t hold my breath. Singer pretends to take the argument to its logical conclusion, be when his argument has profoundly disturbing implications (that rationality and autonomy aren’t reached, until eighteen or so) he chooses not to be so rational after all.
November 24th, 2010 | 7:25 pm
Peter Singer makes some seriously wrong assumptions. First he assumes people with disabilities always suffer and that those caring for them always suffer. He also assumes that if you suffer you can’t know happiness.If suffering is enough to kill people I dare say who would be left.If happiness is dependant upon a life without suffering who on this earth could ever be happy. He assumes that happiness and suffering cannot exist together. If you ask almost any mother she will tell you that her greatest happiness followed her greatest suffering. Ask any gold medalist about their greatest moment and they will tell you about the many months of training they suffered through to get there. We cannot know happiness without suffering. You cannot create happiness by eliminating those who will suffer.
November 24th, 2010 | 7:28 pm
Smith!!
I’m actually in agreement – Singer’s “ideas” are ages old – across a variety of platforms, as I added. Another example of recycled thinking…yawn.
Singer is the Lady Gaga of ethics. Shock always seems to sell, regardless of how recycled the stunts are.
Since those ancient societies performed infanticide, doubtful there is need for Peter Singer to raise these issues.
Economic and ecological realities will impart a far greater impact than Singer. I doubt Grog and Thak killed their cavebabies because they considered the infant to lack “self-awareness”. Probably the dominant reason was the reality that they could not feed the kid and/or it was born with a condition that could not be reasonably cared for without putting the tribe at risk. Do people really need to turn to Singer for window dressings? (I ain’t saying the curtains are pretty)
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 24th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Glad to hear it David. I like the Lady Gaga line. The only problem is, she is what is becoming of music.
November 24th, 2010 | 7:30 pm
@wesley: then you don’t understand what the “reductio ad hitlerum” fallacy is.
After all, vegetarians must be evil, since Hitler was vegetarian. And, you know what, Singer is vegetarian! I think we have the final proof that he’s an evil man. I’ll let you use this amazing proof for your next article.
November 24th, 2010 | 7:36 pm
You know better than I whether Professor Singer was advocating killing of disabled infants or was using a hypothetical situation to make a point about ethics. What has Professor Singer said?
In an earlier post you did not accept the Professor’s claim that he wasn’t advocating policy or law. This is what academics do. They think. They talk. They discuss. This is what goes on at universities.
Clearly, Adolph Hitler is amongst the most evil and vile humans, ever. Do you really think Professor Singer is in the same league as Hitler? You may have heard that Hitler actually was responsible for torturing and killing millions of fellow humans. Has Professor Singer killed anyone?
Why in your wildest dreams would you think it appropriate to compare an academic competitor to Hitler? You make me shake my head.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 24th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Can’t you read, Jeffrey? I most certainly did not compare him to Hitler. In fact, I said he wasn’t racist nor totalitarian. I showed an event that is equivalent to what he advocates. But better to accuse me of Hitler mongering that actually pay attention and ponder.
And he wasn’t just making a point about ethics. What would be the point in that? He is an advocate across a wide array of anti human exceptionalism issues. He wants babies to be able to be killed if it serves parents interests. They already are killed in the Netherlands. So it isn’t just mind game musings.
November 25th, 2010 | 12:57 am
RC-Um, RC, Peter Singer does NOT advocate infanticide based solely on compassion. He CLEARLY advovates for infanticide in which parents are concerned about THEIR suffering, which, you claim, is the difference between his view and that articulated by the father of baby Knaur.
November 25th, 2010 | 2:38 am
It’s hard to know what singer is really up to, in espousing such odious nonsense. But, one of the consequences, no doubt unintended by Singer, is his theory, regarding human personhood, reaches such absurd conclusions, that people will immediately conclude that it must have a flaw in it. This is a reasonable heuristic, to go by, that if a theory leads to crazy, non-common sensical conclusions, it must have a fallacy in there, somewhere.
So, ironically, for Singer, people will tend to dismiss his theory, without fully engaging it, due to its clear unreasonableness.
One must be careful, though, in concluding that ALL theories, that lead to conclusions that contradict common sense are false. Sometimes they’re discovered to be true, but not in Singer’s case.
Singer is a man of many talents, (he’s a scholar on the nineteenth century philosopher Hegel), but he’s an object lesson for those who try and combine preference utilitarianism, and personhood, and devise criteria, for the latter, that are wholly arbitrary, and without a rational basis.
November 25th, 2010 | 3:02 am
“Would it ever be possible to justify involuntary euthanasia on paternalistic grounds, to save someone extreme agony? It might be possible to imagine a case in which the agony was so great, and so certain, that the weight of utilitarian considerations favouring euthanasia override all four reasons against killing self-conscious beints. Yet to make this decision one would have to be confident that one can judge when a persons’s life is so bad as to be non worth living, better than the person can judge herself. It is not clear that we are ever justified in having much confidence in our judgments about wheteher the life of another person is, to that person, worth living. [...] the only kind of case in which the paternalistic argument is at all plausible is one in which the person to be killed does not realise what agony she will suffer in the future, and if she is not killed now she will have to live through to the very end. On these grounds one might kill a person who has [...] fallen into the hands of homicidal sadists who will torture her to death.”
Practical Ethics, 201
November 25th, 2010 | 3:57 am
Wesley,
You claim you weren’t comparing his actions to those of Hitler. What purpose does the comparison serve then? If Singer’s motivations are different and the subsequent events are unlikely to occur, what was the point of the Kretschmar reference? Were you merely saying “Bad men have done this before”?
As I wrote earlier I understand where you’re coming from when you worry about declaring that “some of us are killable”. My point is that we, as a society, already consider it permissible to kill several categories of genetically human creatures (e.g it is, in the US legal to kill a pre-viable fetus or certain others we label “brain dead” because they do not exhibit a certain kind of brain activity). That door is wide open already.
The morality or otherwise of killing a human based on their possession (or lack) of certain attributes depends very much on which attributes are selected. Saying that we may kill a creature which neither has an interest in its own life nor benefits from the continuance of its own existence if this killing is beneficial appears eminently plausible and, in my opinion, only becomes problematic when we start to consider if, first of all, these assessments may be made unambiguously and, secondly, if due to certain ingrained psychological predilections this process of objective assessment and termination will have a detrimental impact on society. These are however, pragmatic issues and different from the theoretical question of whether such killings are, in and of themselves, unethical.
This is very different from summarily declaring individuals “non-persons” or “killable” based on irrelevant criteria such as race, gender or religious belief. Even if we disagree with the perspective, I’m sure we can all appreciate how a capacity such as “self-awareness” is relevant to the concept of personhood (which has always, since its inception, been viewed as relating, in some sense, to “rationality”).
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 25th, 2010 at 11:41 am
First, the eugenics Holocaust wasn’t “Hitler,” although he authorized it. It was eugenics and the idea of a life unworthy of life, first notably promoted by Hoche and Binding in 1920. Singer has angrily denied his views can be tied to anything that happened in the Holocaust because he is Jewish. But that is wrong. His views can be tied to one aspect of it, one driven by doctors that had eschewed human exceptionalism. And his statements juxatopsed next to Brand’s assertions, should chill the blood.
If I had said Hitler would set up death camps, be radically anti Semitic, promote economic fascism, be militaristic, anti democratic, etc. etc., you might have a point. But he does support infanticide. Doctors were hanged for engaging in infanticide. The world was once horrified by infanticide. That he can assert that, and be at Princeton, is notable. He speaks in passive language. But arguing that a baby is not a person (in addition to other human beings) and that they therefore have a lower moral status, is dangerous, it is anti human equality, it is the basis of eugenics thinking, and must be resisted at all turns to protect the most vulnerable among us.
It is important to look at history to show how supposedly current ideas have been tried–and the consequences thereof. Trying to deflect the illustration with the dismissive, “You’re calling him Hitler!” is just a way of avoidance.
November 25th, 2010 | 4:09 am
Wesley: Thank you so much for posting this. I, and lots of us, would have missed this if you hadn’t taken the time to put it up. Thanks! I think Singer’s views are pretty awful. I think they are evil. Yep. Evil. Big E.
But I have a question for the folks–at least the Christian folks–here who are on the Princeton payroll. Singer’s views get wide notice because of his Princeton professorship. The Princeton administration hired him because they liked what he was saying. Princeton continues to promote his views. When Singer was hired, did any of the Christian faculty quit their jobs in protest, saying that they couldn’t be part of an institution that would promote such murderous viewpoints? Maybe. But I didn’t hear of it. And for the Christian faculty that stayed on the payroll, what would Princeton have to do to make you quit taking Princeton money and get a job elsewhere? If Princeton were to give Pol Pot an endowed professorship (OK, Pol Pot is dead, but let’s say he wasn’t), would that be OK with you? Would you still stay? You wouldn’t have a problem being voluntarily part of an institution which consciously and purposefully promoted murder? And what do y’all think about the German professors–like Heidegger–who joined the Nazi Party, for the sake of their pay cheques? I’m not joking. It’s a serious question I have for you. It’s not like you have to work at Princeton, I bet you could get a job elsewhere. Why do you choose to stay with an institution that embraces and promotes such wickedness? Is the price just right? Or is it the fake Gothic chapel? Or maybe the eyebrows that go up when you tell folks that your work at Princeton? What would Princeton have to do to make you quit?
November 25th, 2010 | 7:32 am
Singer’s view is not outlandish or extreme. He just takes seriously the view that many pro-choice people have: that being a member of the species homo sapiens, and merely having the potential to have interests and care about your lives, does not make one a person. He simply reasons consistently about this matter post-birth.
This is an error, but the corrective is not human exceptionalism which seems to arbitrarily favor living things with human DNA. This no Christian could accept…especially those who agree that angels have full moral status.
No, the correct response is to return to metaphysics…to ‘kinds of things.’ There are these things called ‘persons’ and all human beings are persons because they are the kinds of things (whether sleeping, immature, comatose, etc.) that have full moral status. But there are other creatures which might be the same kind of thing: angels, aliens, dolphins, primates, etc.
November 25th, 2010 | 8:54 am
@Bret: “people will immediately conclude that it must have a flaw in it”.
Well, different people have different reactions. When premises + reasoning give a disturbing result (contrary to your moral intuitions) you usually have three possibilities (plus their combinations)
1) say the premises are wrong (reductio ad absurdum)
2) modify your moral ideas and accept the consequences.
3) say that the reasoning is wrong.
It’s not obvious when we should choose between (1) or (2). Singer does (2).
November 25th, 2010 | 12:47 pm
@Wesley: in addition to hiding behind the concept of “human being” and playing the nazi card you are also mixing different problems.
Would you have any problems with voluntary euthanasia in the case of a terminally ill patient?
What is your reasoning?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 25th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Absolutely not. Read my book FORCED EXIT. It’s in its third printing. Read my many articles from my articles archive. Or do a search of the site.
November 25th, 2010 | 2:44 pm
@wesley: I see. I browsed it quickly on Amazon. If I understand correctly you are a lawyer, and instead of leaning towards ethical arguments that show that something is good or bad, you argue that a certain policy has effects that you hope your reader would find bad.
That is, you argue about what the consequences or certain legislations are, but not about whether a certain a certain fact is morally good or bad.
I would rather be killed now than being tortured for a week and then killed. Being trapped in a painful body when life has lost every interest to me, and without any reasonable hope that I will change opinion in the future, is a dreadful scenario to me. I’m very happy to live in a country where I have the option to decide how to end my life in a peaceful way.
Your arguments then don’t seem to be very forceful to me.
Have you ever written about your *philosophical* argument against voluntary euthanasia?
I could even agree that even if some act *can* be good, it is possible that a legislation that tries to implement it will cause more damage than good, and such legislation must then be considered bad.
(e.g. weapons for self-defense might be good, but giving everybody rights to bear arms will end up killing more innocent people than saving lives)
November 25th, 2010 | 8:50 pm
“I’m very happy to live in a country where I have the option to decide how to end my life in a peaceful way.”
Are you living in America? If so, by all means, move to the Netherlands.
November 26th, 2010 | 4:50 am
@safepres: of course I do not live in the USA. So what? trying to find an ad-hominem attack? good luck.
November 29th, 2010 | 11:05 pm
I apologize for being so far behing and not having read many of your other post but like some say life was taking place for me.
Anyway Wesley, keep reminding your readers of what you think and believe is truly right and/or wrong in your heart of heart and in the long run, “IT” will be well worth the effort even if many may think that you’re in error on some occasions.
Personally I like to think that there’s good in every human heart or God’s Angels would not allow them to stick around for very long on His Earth. I can almost hear some right now thinking something like this; there goes this so called Christian trying to force is so called Faith on us again.
I could go on and on, on fire telling you that yes, even Hitler had some good in him but when the devil, lucifer and/or satan convince a follower that something is right but in the long run the followers find out that “IT” is really evil, well as we know, some things can just not be accepted by God and His Angels but because of Our Father’s Great LOVE, for all His Children and if they ask Him for forgiveness with a sincere heart cell where the ESC soul flame has not been completely extinguish in their heart by evil acts, well then there’s still a chance for a quantum leep to repeat “IT” all over again and get “IT” right cause never forget that nothing is impossible for God.
I’ll close by thanking our Heavenly Father for having created us in His Own Image but as Jesus said in so many words, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, “IT” won’t make “IT” to The Father’s Kingdom.
I hear ya Wesley! Some humans have so much Love for God’s Children that they are simply trying to rush the process for their well being. :)
Believe “IT” or not but there are human cells out there who still believe that we’ll get to live forever and ever and some dead cells might even be given a day off for good and if that day is given to us by God The Father Himself, well that’s an eternal pass to a world that He created by His water side.
Call me crazy if “IT” makes you happy folks but that’s my story and I’m sticking to “IT” :)
Keep up the good words and work Wesley and by the way for what “IT” is worth, Happy First Week of Advent.
Peace
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