Marcus George Singer

Marcus George Singer (born January 4, 1926 in New York City , † February 21, 2016 in Madison , Wisconsin ) was an American philosopher .

Life

Singer studied at the University of Illinois until 1948 . He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1952 . Since 1952 he taught at the University of Wisconsin – Madison .

His main field of work was moral philosophy . Singer criticized Kant's rigor with regard to the application of the categorical imperative . He was president of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association from 1985 to 1986 .

Generalization in ethics

Singer became known in the ethical discussion of the present through his work Generalization in Ethics (German: generalization in ethics ). The monograph, which emerged from a dissertation (1952) and was published in the first edition in 1961, advanced to become a classic of English-language moral philosophy. In the work Singer turned against moral skepticism . Following Kant, he wants to show "how moral judgments can be rationally justified, how confused moral questions can be resolved rationally and how moral disputes can be rationally built up" (26). For Singer, the fundamental principle of moral reasoning is what is known as the argument of generalization : “If everyone did x, the consequences would be disastrous (or undesirable); therefore no one should do x ”(86). He derives this argument from two higher principles: from the principle of generalization , from which it follows that “what is right (or not right) for one person is right (or not right) must be ”(25), as well as from the principle of consequences (“ If the consequences of A x not doing were undesirable, then A x should do ”, 88).

Works

• Generalization in ethics. On the logic of moral argumentation ( Generalization in Ethics. An Essay in the Logic of Ethics, with the Rudiments of a System of Moral Philosophy , 1961), trans. v. Claudia Langer u. Brigitte Wimmer, Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 1975 ( Review (PDF; 179 kB) by Richard Mervyn Hare )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ madison.com