Peter Singer, Emmanuel Levinas, Christian Agape, and the Spiritual Heart of Animal Liberation

This article affirms Peter Singer’s calls for universal benevolence and for animal liberation. Singer, however, is unable to provide grounds for his ethics and is unable to answer the question, “why act morally?” I suggest Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas unfolds an essentially Christian notion of agape that unveils a reasonable moral ground for ethics that answers the question, “why act morally?” A Levinasian ethic also forecloses some of Singer’s more notorious conclusions and better articulates and legitimates the moral dynamics and ethical contentions that made Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” and Animal Liberation so influential.