Singer on the Expanding Circle: The Point of View of the Universe

The Quote

"If we accept that our own interests count, and we can find no non-arbitrary reason for denying that the interests of others count equally, reason pushes us toward a more universal standpoint, one that takes into account the interests of all those affected by our actions."

— Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)

Historical Context

The Expanding Circle was published in 1981, a decade after Peter Singer had completed his doctoral studies at Oxford under R. M. Hare and six years after the publication of Animal Liberation, the book that made him famous. In Animal Liberation, Singer had argued that the principle of equal consideration of interests, which most people already accept in the context of race and gender relations, should be extended to nonhuman animals. The Expanding Circle steps back from the specific question of animal ethics to ask a broader and more fundamental question: why should we extend our moral concern beyond the narrow circle of self-interest at all? What is it about human beings, or about reason, that pushes us toward a more inclusive morality?

The book was written against the background of sociobiology, the discipline founded by E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), which sought to explain human behavior, including moral behavior, in terms of evolutionary biology. Sociobiologists argued that altruism and moral behavior evolved because they helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. We care about our children because genes that predispose us to care about our children are more likely to be passed on. We care about our tribe because tribal cohesion conferred a survival advantage. But this raises a troubling question: if morality is just an evolutionary adaptation, why should we care about people, animals, or future generations that evolutionary pressures never equipped us to care about? If our moral instincts were shaped by natural selection to serve the interests of our genes, is there any reason to take them beyond the contexts in which they evolved?

Singer's answer is nuanced. He accepts the sociobiological account of how our moral instincts evolved but argues that it does not follow that morality is nothing more than those instincts. Human beings have evolved the capacity for reasoning, and this capacity, once it exists, has a logic of its own. Reason is not merely a tool for serving our evolved interests; it is a faculty that can, and does, push us beyond them. The same capacity for abstract thought that lets us recognize our own interests also lets us recognize that our interests are no different, in kind, from the interests of others. And once we make that recognition, the demands of consistency carry us forward, expanding the circle of moral concern beyond anything that natural selection could have produced.

Philosophical Interpretation

The passage captures the core argument of The Expanding Circle in a single formulation. It begins with a premise that almost everyone accepts: that our own interests count. This is not a controversial starting point. Even the most committed egoist acknowledges that their own interests matter to them. The question is whether there is any non-arbitrary reason to stop there, to count our own interests while dismissing the interests of everyone else.

Singer argues that there is not. If I ask why my interests matter, the only answer I can give is that I am a being capable of suffering and enjoyment, a being with preferences and projects, a being to whom things matter. But this is a description that applies equally to every other sentient being. My capacity for suffering is not different in kind from the capacity for suffering of a person on the other side of the world, or of a nonhuman animal in a factory farm. If my suffering matters because it is suffering, then their suffering matters for the same reason. To count my suffering while dismissing theirs is to draw a line that has no principled basis, a line that is, in Singer's terms, arbitrary.

The key move in the argument is the claim that reason "pushes" us toward this conclusion. Singer is not saying that we have a moral intuition that pulls us toward impartiality. He is saying that the logic of reasoning itself, once we accept certain premises, carries us forward to conclusions we did not anticipate. This is what Singer calls the "escalator of reason." Once we step on it, by accepting that our own interests count and asking whether there is any relevant difference between our interests and the interests of others, we cannot get off at whatever point we like. Reason carries us upward to a more and more inclusive standpoint.

The metaphor of the expanding circle gives the argument its name and its power. Throughout human history, the circle of beings whose interests we are willing to take into account has expanded. In the earliest human societies, moral concern was largely confined to the family or the band. As societies grew larger and more complex, the circle expanded to the tribe, the city, the nation, and eventually, at least in principle, to all human beings. The abolition of slavery, the extension of political rights to women, the recognition of the rights of racial minorities, and the development of international human rights law are all, on Singer's view, episodes in the expansion of the moral circle. Each was driven not by a new moral instinct, evolution works far too slowly for that, but by the application of reason to existing moral commitments.

The passage's conclusion, that reason pushes us toward "a more universal standpoint, one that takes into account the interests of all those affected by our actions," is where the argument becomes truly radical. For if the circle of moral concern can expand from family to tribe, from tribe to nation, and from nation to humanity, then there is no principled reason to stop at the boundary of our species. The same reasoning that tells us that the suffering of a person in a distant country matters equally with our own suffering tells us that the suffering of a nonhuman animal, capable of feeling pain in the same way we are, matters equally too. This is the connection to Singer's animal ethics: the expanding circle of moral concern must, if reason is consistent, extend beyond the human species to all sentient beings.

This argument has profound implications for the concept of compassion. Compassion, on Singer's view, is not merely a warm feeling toward those who are close to us. It is the practical expression of the recognition that the interests of others count equally with our own. The expanding circle is the gradual widening of compassion's reach, driven by the logic of reason rather than by the accidents of proximity or sentiment. And it has implications for justice, since a theory of justice that takes the universal standpoint seriously cannot confine its concerns to the citizens of a particular nation or the members of a particular species.

Related Concepts

The expanding circle connects to several broader philosophical traditions. In the utilitarian tradition that runs from Jeremy Bentham through John Stuart Mill to Singer, the principle of equal consideration of interests is the foundational moral principle. Bentham's dictum that the question is not whether animals can reason or talk but whether they can suffer is the earliest formulation of the idea that the circle of moral concern should be drawn at the line of sentience, not the line of species or rationality. Singer's expanding circle argument provides the philosophical foundation for this claim, explaining why reason itself pushes us toward a more inclusive moral concern.

The argument also resonates with the Enlightenment ideal of universal reason. Kant's categorical imperative, which demands that we act only on principles that we could will to be universal laws, is an earlier version of the idea that morality requires us to go beyond our personal standpoint. Singer's argument differs from Kant's in its foundation, Singer grounds morality in interests rather than in rational autonomy, but shares the conviction that reason is the engine of moral progress and that its demands are inherently universal.

Learning Path

To deepen your understanding of Singer's expanding circle argument, consider the following path:

1. Start with the thinker: Read the full Peter Singer page to understand his biography, his utilitarian philosophy, and the full range of his contributions to ethics.
2. Explore the philosophical context: The expanding circle argument is grounded in utilitarianism. Engaging with the utilitarian tradition illuminates the theoretical background of Singer's work.
3. Connect to compassion and justice: The expanding circle is, at its core, an argument about compassion and justice, about why we should care about the suffering of distant beings and what we owe them.
4. Explore the topics: The argument speaks to questions of compassion and purpose, asking what it means to live ethically in a world of suffering.
5. Read the primary source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (Princeton University Press, 1981; reprinted with a new preface, 2011) is the primary source of the argument discussed here.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Peter Singer." Covers Singer's utilitarianism, his animal ethics, and his arguments about poverty and global justice.
2. Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981; reprinted with a new preface, 2011). The primary source of the argument discussed in this entry.
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Consequentialism." A comprehensive overview of consequentialist moral theory, including utilitarianism.
4. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Peter Singer." An accessible overview of Singer's philosophy and its intellectual context.