Peter Singer’s Course on Effective Altruism Puts Philosophy Into Worldly Action

This week, Peter Singer’s online course on Effec­tive Altru­ism is get­ting under­way on Cours­era. Based on the philoso­pher’s books, The Life You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do, the course intro­duces stu­dents to the con­cept of Effec­tive Altru­ism, which asserts that “liv­ing a ful­ly eth­i­cal life involves doing the most good one can.” Par­tic­u­lar­ly, the course promis­es to exam­ine the philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings of Effec­tive Altru­ism, “present remark­able peo­ple who have restruc­tured their lives in accor­dance with it, and think about how effec­tive altru­ism can be put into prac­tice in your own life.” The intro­duc­to­ry video for the course appears above. You can enroll free here.

A phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton, Singer first became well-known when he pub­lished Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion in 1975 and helped put an intel­lec­tu­al frame­work around the ani­mal rights move­ment. More recent­ly, he has brought his util­i­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy to bear on glob­al pover­ty. Some­times con­tro­ver­sial, Singer is unde­ni­ably influ­en­tial. (He was named world’s third most influ­en­tial glob­al thought leader in 2013.) The Effec­tive Altru­ism course gives you a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to famil­iar­ize your­self with Singer’s style of thought, and put phi­los­o­phy into mean­ing­ful action.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Life You Can Save in 3 Min­utes, by Peter Singer

Richard Dawkins’ Uncut Inter­views with Peter Singer & Big Thinkers

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er