“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace,” wrote Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer while proposing a code of universal ethics he dubbed “Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben,” or Reverence for Life. It was arguably a landmark of modern environmental ethics, or possibly even an early vision of the modern environmental movement.

At its core, Schweitzer argues that human morality is incomplete if it remains anthropocentric. To extend protection to all species means recognizing that life itself, and therefore all living beings, have intrinsic value. To achieve inner peace, humans must see the natural world less as a resource for development and more as an interdependent community, and so protect everything we can.

Yet such a statement harbors an inherent paradox, as it relies on the assumption that this ‘protection’ is a universal, linearcourse of action with no side effects. It urges for compassion, yet fails to define how deep this compassion should go or who must bear the burden imposed when protecting one life restricts another. This essay further examines this paradox using two case studies involving seals, in order to discuss its place in 21st century and propose how environmental justice might be better approached in this rapidly changing era.

The Paradox of Compassion

An expansion of our human ‘circle of compassion’ is quite visible where I live, in China's ever evolving environmental protection landscape. In early 2019, the nation was shocked by one of the most significant wildlife crimes in its history: the theft of 100 seal pups from their natural breeding grounds in Liaodong Bay. The seal population there was already critically endangered, with fewer than 400 adults seen each year. The tragedy, which resulted in the death of 38 seal pups, brought about a wave of domestic animal-rights movements (Tong 2019)

The Chinese government responded with an extension of legal protection, officially upgrading the spotted seal to First-Class status in China’s list of Key Protected Wildlife Species. This gave seals the highest possible legal status in China, now comparable to giant pandas, effectively mandating that their lives be protected at all cost. Those who committed the crime were caught and sentenced, and the surviving seal pups were sent to rescue centers so they could be returned to their natural habitat. The government continued this expansion by designating the seals’ breeding grounds, the Panjin Wetlands (also a migratory home to more than 300 bird species), as an official government-protected area. Seal populations grew gradually under constant monitoring, as poaching activity in the area ceased.

I believe this was a successful application of Schweitzer’s quote: compassion was extended to spotted seals and, by extension, to their habitat and all living beings within it. The animals were better protected, and the public found peace in the legal actions taken. In March of 2025, I had the opportunity to visit the Panjin Wetlands and assist the work of the local NGO protecting the spotted seal. Seeing those seals dozing off on Wetland shores, free from the fear of their newborn pups being taken away, gave me a sense of hope.

In the winter of February 2026, I received another invite to visit. This time, I was able to visit one of the protection centers where the surviving seal pups of 2019 were sent: Liaoning Province Ocean and Fisheries Science Research Institute. Here I met Dr. Tian, the researcher and caretaker of the few surviving seal pups from the past incident, and his side of the conservation story opened my eyes to things the media never taught me.

Dr. Tian had led me to the basement enclosure where the few remaining survivors were kept. Due to the brutal conditions of their initial capture, several of the seals had been left permanently blind. Because of their new legal status, they could not simply be returned to the wild as they wouldn’t survive; however, they were also not ‘appealing’ enough to be taken to enclosures in zoos and aquariums.

As a result, the institute, which is itself a research organization and hence not adequately equipped to take care of many animals, is still legally mandated to provide lifelong care for these seals. The task costs millions annually, and government funding covers only a small fraction of the expense. The institute is essentially subsidizing our public ‘compassion’ out of its own pocket. Eye surgery for the seals required the best professionals, which was completely unaffordable, and I understood, from Dr. Tian’s tired gaze, that these seals would never see the sun again.

Every time I look back at pictures of these seals, forced to spend the rest of their lives in a small pool in the basement of the institute building, I am reminded that while the public found ‘peace’ in the news of the rescue, the actual subjects of compassion found nothing of the sort, and their caretakers were being crushed by the financial weight of a sentence that valued the idea of seal lives more than protecting actual seals.

And so we see how Schweitzer’s quote was paradoxically both followed and utterly disregarded at the same time. There was an extensin of compassion to other living organisms, yet that compassion only lingered on the surface. It became nothing more than a source of good public image and self-satisfied moralism that, in its rigidity, could not bring peace and instead created suffering for the people and animals it wanted to save.

The Paradox of ‘All Living Things’

While the Liaodong case brought me to see the hidden assumptions and burdens of Schweitzer’s narrative, I found a much larger, global version of the paradox in the Canadian Arctic. In 2010, the European Union (EU) implemented a total ban on seal products, a movement championed by a public that believed in protecting animal rights and denouncing animal cruelty. The ban led to the near collapse of the seal product market, and cruel hunting activities (such as clubbing the seal to death) have significantly decreased.

While the case no doubt fit with Schweitzer’s ideal to protect one more species in the long list of ‘all living things,’ it also reveals a flaw in the quote: when we extend compassion to one species, we often withdraw it from another, even if unintentionally.

The withdrawal of compassion is most evident in the failure of the ‘Inuit Exception’ of the EU seal trade ban. Seal hunting was a culturally significant way of life for many indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic. It is an essential part of their subsistence lifestyle (i.e., harvesting only the minimum needed and allowing for the consistent regeneration of resources), and, in more recent times, a source of income (Feller 2024). Although an exception was included to protect Indigenous livelihoods (Trade in Seal Products, EU 2026), it has been found to be ineffective due to ambiguous policies and complex regulatory requirements (Hossain, 2012).

The documentary film “Angry Inuk” exposed in-depth how bans on the seal trade have harmed food security and the well-being of Inuit communities. In an interview with the director of this documentary, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, she said, ‘often remembering their own family going into poverty when the EU and the Americans banned seal products (Gerber, 2019).”

What Schweitzer failed to envision in the 1920s was the fact that, in the 21st century, compassion for non-human animals could be ‘granted’ by complex power structures unfamiliar with the intricacies of the local system, located thousands of miles away, and thus become a source of environmental imperialism and injustice. By expanding compassion (and thus protection) to seals, humans are shrinking the same circle for other living beings (humans). No peace could be found by either community, as conflict between institutions continues over the ban.

Schweitzer’s ‘circle of compassion’ lacks an agency-based perspective that highlights potential conflicting interests between all parties involved. Yet if we cannot even resolve the relatively small conflict between the life of a seal and the human right to prosper, then the larger ‘peace’ Schweitzer envisions may never come to pass. For now, it exists only as a comforting thought for those with the power to give and take compassion as they will. Thus, the quote becomes another paradox: not all living things can be protected at once, and even if they are protected, peace may not be achieved.

Understanding the Quote

To answer the prompt directly, I understand Schweitzer’s quote as a goal to strive for in environmental conservation, yetalso a warning sign that exposes our moral blind spots. The two case studies I did, which were inspired by my decade-long love for and research on seals, have taught me that it is difficult to achieve environmental peace if compassion is enacted through a top-down, mandating relationship that couldn’t accommodate the nuances of reality.

The existence of a ‘circle’ of compassion ‘extended’ by man implies that humans being are still at the center of Schweitzer’s model, and have the power to dictate what is included and what remains outside their realm of protection. I have come to understand that this perspective may be flawed in itself, because it establishes a moral hierarchy where there might be none. It positions a specific group of people as ‘givers’ of compassion, and all other living things (including other humans) as ‘receivers‘. If compassion remains a gift granted by those in power and a burden to those forced to bear its weight, then peace would only be an option if those who bear that burden were silenced.

While I am in no way criticising our ongoing initiatives to conserve all living organisms, I do attempt to offer an explanation as to why conservation and environmental justice are much more complex than what Schweitzer was able toconvey. Therefore, I wish to reimagine the quote not as a circle drawn by the invisible hand of man. “Until she recognizes herself as a mere thread in the web of all living things, a human cannot find peace that is justified.” It may not be a perfect rendition of what Schweitzer meant, but it is the balance I strive to find within this essay.

Afterword

On the quiet night of March 9th, at the Liaoning Ocean and Fisheries Science Research Institute, a small miracle happened. Two of the blind seals, both survivors of the theft incident, became parents to a healthy, sighted pup named Legacy. Though his parents may not be able to see the ocean anymore, Legacy will return to clear blue waters in their place and experience all the wonders of a well-protected marine environment. Every life and every community has a right to resilience and a future under the sun.

Bibliograph

Tong, Ying. 2019. “盗猎大案！斑海豹产子期间100只幼崽惨遭盗猎 37只死亡_新闻_央视网(Cctv.com).” Cctv.com. 2019. http://m.news.cctv.com/2019/02/18/ARTI9XpZU71hVxlTCTbkO7GK190218.shtml.

Feller, Thomas R. 2024. “Seal Hunting | EBSCO.” EBSCO Information Services, Inc. | Www.ebsco.com. 2024. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/science/seal-hunting.

“Trade in Seal Products.” 2026. Environment. March 9, 2026. https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/trade-seal-products_en#implementation.

Hossain, Kamrul. 2012. “The EU Ban on the Import of Seal Products and the WTO Regulations: Neglected Human Rights of the Arctic Indigenous Peoples?” Polar Record 49 (2): 154–66. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0032247412000174.

Gerber, Leah. 2019. “Life with the Seal.” Alternatives Journal 44 (1): 54–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/26815082.