Faith Sommerfield Memorial Lecture - The Completed Life Initiative

Peter Singer

This inaugural lecture will feature the renowned philosopher Peter Singer. He has been described as the world’s most influential philosopher. Born in Melbourne in 1946, he has been professor of bioethics at Princeton University since 1999. His many books include Animal Liberation – often credited with triggering the modern animal rights movement – Practical Ethics, The Life You Can Save, The Most Good You Can Do, and Ethics in the Real World. In 2023, he published Animal Liberation Now, a fully revised and updated version of the 1975 original.

Singer’s writings have also inspired the movement known as effective altruism, and he is the founder of the charity The Life You Can Save. In 2021 he was awarded the $1 million Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, which he donated to nonprofit organizations working for the causes he supports. In 2023 he received the Frontiers of Knowledge Prize for the Humanities, from the Spanish BBVA Foundation.

About the lecture series:

The Faith Sommerfield Memorial Lecture was established at Columbia University School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Program in Bioethics in early 2023 to commemorate the life of Faith Sommerfield, the late Founder of the Completed Life Initiative. The Faith Sommerfield Memorial Lecture aims to implement a yearly lecture series on broadening the scope of end-of-life care—specifically, what it means to live a good life and how a person might achieve a good death. For many, the thought of death may be a topic to be avoided for as long as possible. For people like Faith, however, having a good death was as important as having a good life. Faith had encountered her first experience of a bad death when a close childhood friend died from leukemia, which prompted Faith’s deep contemplation of mortality and invigorated her belief system regarding the importance of a chosen death. This belief of a good death has always been at the heart of Faith’s contemplation of the completed life.

Faith Sommerfield

Faith Sommerfield established the Completed Life Initiative in late 2019. She died peacefully at the time of her choosing in the Fall of 2022. Her vision for the Initiative was to leave an impact for the greater good by promoting conversation, authentic understanding, and legislation that empowers people to face their death with self-determination and, above all else, dignity. She was grateful to have a voluntary death when she believed her life had been completed.