Reverence for Life

from "The Ethics of Reverence for Life," Albert Schweitzer, in “Christendom” Magazine, 1936

“Here, then, is the first spiritual act in man’s experience: reverence for life. The consequence of it is that he comes to realize his dependence upon events quite beyond his control. Therefore he becomes resigned. And this is the second spiritual act: resignation. …

“I have said that resignation is the very basis of ethics. Starting from this position, the will-to-live comes first to veracity as the primary ground of virtue. If I am faithful to my will-to-live, I cannot disguise this fact, even though such disguise or evasion might seem to my advantage. Reverence for my will-to-live leads me to the necessity of being sincere with myself. And out of this fidelity to my own nature grows all my faithfulness. Thus, sincerity is the first ethical quality which appears. However lacking one may be in other respects, sincerity is the one thing which he must possess. Nor is this point of view to be found only among people of complex social life. Primitive cultures show the fact to be equally true there. Resignation to the will-to-live leads directly to this first virtue: sincerity.

“Having reached this point, then, I am in a position to look at the world. I ask knowledge what it can tell me of life. Knowledge replies that what it can tell me is little, yet immense. Whence this universe came, or whither it is bound, or how it happens to be at all, knowledge cannot tell me. Only this: that the will-to-live is everywhere present, even as in me. I do not need science to tell me this; but it cannot tell me anything more essential. Profound and marvelous as chemistry is, for example, it is like all science in the fact that it can lead me only to the mystery of life, which is essentially in me, however near or far away it may be observed.

“What shall be my attitude toward this other life? It can only be of a piece with my attitude towards my own life. If I am a thinking being, I must regard other life than my own with equal reverence. For I shall know that it longs for fulness and development as deeply as I do myself. Therefore, I see that evil is what annihilates, hampers, or hinders life. And this holds good whether I regard it physically or spiritually. Goodness, by the same token, is the saving or helping of life, the enabling of whatever life I can to attain its highest development. …

“Reverence for life is a universal ethic.

“We do not say this because of its absolute nature, but because of the boundlessness of its domain. Ordinary ethics seeks to find limits within the sphere of human life and relationships. But the absolute ethics of the will-to-live must reverence every form of life, seeking so far as possible to refrain from destroying any life, regardless of its particular type. It says of no instance of life, "This has no value." It cannot make any such exceptions, for it is built upon reverence for life as such. It knows that the mystery of life is always too profound for us, and that its value is beyond our capacity to estimate. We happen to believe that man’s life is more important than any other form of which we know. But we cannot prove any such comparison of value from what we know of the world’s development. True, in practice we are forced to choose. At times we have to decide arbitrarily which forms of life, and even which particular individuals, we shall save, and which we shall destroy. But the principle of reverence for life is none the less universal.”

Commentary: There is simplicity, yet universality, to Albert Schweitzer's ethic of Reverence for Life. Each of us, with a will-to-live, reveres one's own life. (We want to live and to live without suffering.) Through reason we see the same will-to-live in all other life forms. And what we want for self, life and freedom from suffering, we logically and compassionately, that is ethically, extend to those life forms. Yet we cannot live without taking life and inflicting pain. We endure ambivalence when we affirm and act from a simple ethical rubric: it is good to enhance life and it is evil to destroy life.

Search yourself: In what ways do you act so as to do as little harm as possible? (Example: as a vegetarian I eat eggs for protein, yet have vowed to buy only cage-free eggs, since caged hens appear to endure extraordinary suffering.) Also, because we must live with a resulting moral ambivalence (inevitably we take life and cause suffering for our particular welfare), how do you express reverence to the life forms that have been harmed?