From Traditional the Ethics of Neighbor to the Ethics of Reverence for Life: The Unfinished Step (A. Schweitzer, H. Jonas, S. Donnelley)

Abstract

This is a preface to the translation of one of Albert Schweitzer’s major works, Philosophy and Animal Welfare Movement (Philosophie und Tierschutzbewegung), included in the modern “canon” of Schweitzer’s texts on the reverence for life. We analyzed the development of the ethical thought from the traditional ethics of attitude towards fellow beings through the principle of reverence for life to the modern ethics of life, as outlined in Schweitzer’s works and those of his followers. Our main tasks were to comprehend modern versions of human­ism, the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of life itself, as well as to confirm the relevance of Schweitzer’s ideas through the concepts of life developed by his followers, using com­parative analysis as the main research method. As a result, we showed the continuity and relevance of Schweitzer’s ideas in the new moral realities of the 21st century. The traditional ethics of attitude towards fellow beings is naturally expanded, recognizing living creatures and life in general as the objects of a moral, humane attitude. In addition to the principle of reverence for life, examples of a new ethics are H. Jonas’s ethics of responsibility and onto­logical axiology, as well as S. Donnelley’s ethics of the living, which, in particular, rises the issue of the animals’ individuality. The man’s need to use animals for his own purposes and choose between different life forms, as well as his ability to destroy life itself remains a ma­jor moral problem of the new ethics. Albert Schweitzer paid particular attention to this in his works, one of which was translated by the authors of the article into Russian.