Thomas Aquinas and Peter Singer about the extension of the term “person”

Abstract

Singer establishes his notion of “person” on the basis of the qualities exhibited by a determined individual, refusing to attribute this dignity to an individual for the simple fact of belonging to the human species. Singer accuses of “speciesists” those who reserve the category of person to all human beings and deny it to the members of other biological species, even if they exhibit some kind of rationality (pace Köhler). In order to examine Singer’s proposal, we depart from the definition of person exposed in Summa Theologiae I, q. 29, a. 1. Against Singer’s thesis, the arguments that endorse this Thomistic notion are based on the ordinary convictions of common sense to which Moral Philosophy has explicitly resorted to justify ethical theories. This paper shows what is right and wrong in Singer’s argument and why Singer is wrong. It concludes that, in order to defend what Universidad Pontificia Singer claims (the principle that prohibits inflicting harm on animals), it is not necessary to suppose that “the great apes” are to be considered as persons.