In 2023, during a debate in a European parliament on whether to ban the live cooking of lobsters in consideration of animal welfare, a member of parliament countered: “If reverence for life means that even crustaceans should not be harmed, then shouldn’t antibiotics, which kill countless bacteria daily in hospitals, also be banned?”
Philosopher Albert Schweitzer has proposed in his representative opus The Philosophy of Civilization that, “Until he expands the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.” This quote is the synthesizer of his best-known philosophical thinking, “reverence for life,” as well as his lifelong pursuit for respecting all sentient beings. But what contributed to the puzzling disparity between the idealized philosophy and the practical outcome just like that in the lobster cooking case? To resolve the asymmetry between the “reverence for life” philosophy and the modern-age animal welfare measures, it is indispensable to trace this philosophical theory to its very source—Schweitzer’s own life experience.
It all began 150 years ago, when a little German boy was doing his prayers at a church with many other devout Christians. He felt confused and disturbed, though. Everybody was praying for wellness and fortune for humans close and aloof. “Why doesn’t anyone pray for the well-being of animals? Don’t they have the same sense of pain and will of living as us?” he thought to himself. And of course, this little boy’s name was Albert Schweitzer. For Schweitzer, nondiscrimination had been, since childhood, nothing but an intuition, an obligatory duty.
Growing up into a preeminent philosopher, Schweitzer had begun to be influenced by other philosophical ideas. A theory by Kant once spoke to him: “So far as animals are concerned, we have no direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as means to an end. That end is man.” This anthropocentrism, however right it may seem, is actually indulgence for humans to narrow their circles of compassion endlessly. So he turned from European philosophy to Indian philosophy instead. The prevailing ideology “ahimsa” (non-violence), initiated by Gandhi, calls for doing no harm to all life. However, social discrimination such as caste segregation was still the default within ahimsa, forbidding “all lives” from being treated equally. It had appeared to Schweitzer that no circle of existing philosophies’ was vast enough for “all living things.”
“I would consider myself justified in living till I was thirty for science and art, in order to devote myself from that time forward to the direct service of humanity.” Leaving all his fortune and fame for a humanitarian clinic in Lambarene, Gabon, Schweitzer was shown by Africa more of the world that was cruel yet realistic. He went through every deep lament when forced to kill a poisonous mosquito, held every patients’ hands as they were dying of malaria, but he had also felt the joy of hearing every newborn’s cry, while curing so many with his medical skills and his compassion for them. The impotence of philosophy, the weight of reality, and his own beliefs were at war within him—every form of life was compromising to another, suffering its own destruction. Just as Schweitzer said later in his books, “I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.” It was one day in 1915, on the voyage on the Ogowe river, Schweitzer got his eureka: “Ehrfurcht vor dem leben” was his original words, meaning “reverence for life.” This wasn’t a complete eureka, though—given that Schweitzer had basically figured everything out for a philosophical breakthrough. With all lives compromising to other lives, it is consequent that we assume every life holds the same will to live as others do when facing these trade-offs (otherwise life A won’t have to compromise with life B but could have unidirectional compression towards the latter if it had a stronger will to survive). We therefore are obliged to treat other lives’ will to live like our owns—namely, when faced with the matter of life and destruction, we stand in our own shoes as much as we are standing in every human-being’s shoes, every animal’s shoes, and every living creature’s shoes.
Therefore, by bringing these conclusions together and back to the quote’s original context, it is just to hold that the mere existence of “a circle of compassion” is unjustified owing to the subsequent existence of a center of the circle, representing the observer himself and no others, and its different radii to points in the circle, which corresponds to the observer’s graded hierarchy of reverence for different lives. Once with the “center” and “radius” being disproved, by definition of math, the circle rhetoric subsequently disintegrates. And once the circle disintegrates, man no longer draws a line between self and others, nor does he cling to a privileged center—and in that absence of division and anxiety, he finds peace.
Having comprehended all the content above, it had become ineluctable for me to bring Schweitzer’s philosophy out of his own context and into our context, our modern, realistic dilemmas, where “the circle” has never been more formidable. There is a conspicuous paradox in modern animal protection that has been overlooked by most humans: humans spare no effort to protect cute pets, marine animals, and endangered species, yet consumes tons of beef, pork, lamb every day, feeling perfectly justified. Is it due to evolutionary discrimination? Or aesthetic centralism (where humans sentence animals to different fates judging by their appearance)? The precise answer is beside the point. All that should be seen from this situation is that no matter what the rules are, the judge in the game is always humans. Whether we are harming or conserving these animals, we are the ones making judgments regarding their fates rather themselves. This profound alienation between subjects and objects has enhanced the concept of the circle of compassion as well as the inequality of points inside and outside the circle.
However, many argue that to disintegrate the circle, to put all living things in the same position in today’s world, is undoubtedly impractical—how absurd it could be if guinea pigs, chickens, and dolphins all go to work and vote! I have nothing to hold against these counter-arguments. It is against evolution for all living things to achieve equality in the biosphere. But I do have a correction to make. When Schweitzer practised medicine in Africa, he made no attempt to impose European modes of production and lifestyle onto the local populations, but instead, he learned the native language, observed the traditional customs, and he even learned from Africa’s witch doctors since locals tended to trust witchcraft more than western medicine. Weaving himself into the dimension of all living things in the environment, Schweitzer didn’t pursue absolute equality but instead sought peaceful coexistence. This is not a retreat from reality of any kind but a wise reverence—just enough for the system to function while ensuring all lives to be respected. After all, we need to have “reverence for life,” not to push forward “equality for life.”
“Reverence for life” is, in fact, feasible in many aspects of life. For starters, law is the firmest guarantee of survival a society can provide for individuals. Our current legal approach to animal welfare could be concluded as a concentric-circle-mode, where the most privileged species are humans, followed in descending orders by mammals, pets, poultry, experimental animals, insects. Gradual legal reform can serve as a practical approach to disintegrating the circle. For example, in the lobster cooking debate referred to at the essay’s beginning, the regulation could be to admit not onyl lobster but also other seafood species as sentient beings rather than to impose special restrictions on a single variety.When laws no longer prioritize “species” as the primary classification criterion, but instead base decisions on “perceptual capacity” and “life will,” the central position of humans as the focal point would be naturally eroded.
Furthermore, a new form of animal conservation and sanctuary is needed. Specifically, the urban and suburban areas should be the main battlefield of disintegration rather than more circles encircling animals, such as zoos and shelters. What is noticeable is that this step was never meant to dispel humans away from the center of the circle—land use should take human interests into account fair enough—but to establish more and more centers of interests for other lives. To set aside more vacant land for natural sanctuaries, to design more animal-friendly city areas...... These are not easy measures, admittedly, but it's precisely these dilemmas that outline the weight of “reverence for life.”
Last but not least, carnism may well be the deepest chasm that stands between humans and the “reverence for life.” What is most insightful that Schweitzer had left us is that no life lives innocently as we all simultaneously compromise to and being compromised by other lives. If no one can completely abstain from killing, then the ethical starting point shall not be “whether I kill,” but “whether I am fully aware I have killed.” Take the lobster mentioned at the beginning as an instance. What shows reverence for life doesn’t necessarily have to be to ban live-cooking of lobsters due to the high difficulty in widespread adoption of this regulation but could be an alteration in the meal prayers which adds mourn for the lives sacrificed for the meal. Realizing that every meal represents a loss and then opting for smaller losses is not a transformation from pure evil to pure kindness but a progress from contempt to reverence.
After all that has been said, I remain only a human being speaking grand words—one who, in the very act of writing this essay, presumes to decide for other lives. A selfish human, no less. And yet, time and again, in returning to the saying by Schweitzer with which we began, in each attempt to undo the circle, one learns something. That the full undoing—the circle disintegrated without residue—is a destination. Beautiful, perhaps possible, but difficult, and very, very far away. Not unlike that old dream of a world without division. But here is what we gain along the way: a peace. Not the peace of wars ended, nor the stillness of a tranquil mind. Something else. A peace among all living things.
Disintegrating the circle, not yet achieved. But already, in the trying, begun.
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