On this day in vegan history · January 14, 1875
Albert Schweitzer Is Born
A doctor who left Europe for a jungle hospital in Gabon came back with one phrase that argued every living thing, not just people, deserves ethical weight.
The facts
- Born
- January 14, 1875, in Kaysersberg, Alsace
- Occupations
- Physician, Lutheran theologian, organist, philosopher
- Core idea
- Reverence for Life (Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben)
- Recognition
- 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for the philosophy of Reverence for Life
Albert Schweitzer was born on January 14, 1875, in Kaysersberg, in the Alsace region then newly part of the German Empire. He trained as a theologian, organist, and physician, and eventually left Europe to run a hospital on the Ogooué River in what is now Gabon. On a boat trip there, searching for a single idea to ground all ethics, the phrase 'Reverence for Life' came to him. His claim was blunt: every creature that wills to live has a stake in that will being respected, not only people. He never organized an animal rights movement himself, but the writers who later did found in his phrase a foothold for extending moral concern past the human species.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Ethics is nothing other than Reverence for Life. Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil.
Albert Schweitzer, in Civilization and Ethics
Source: Wikipedia -
So we are brothers and sisters to all living things, and owe to all of them the same care and respect, that we wish for ourselves.
James Brabazon, describing Schweitzer's Reverence for Life, in Albert Schweitzer: A Biography
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Schweitzer never called himself an animal rights advocate, but his idea that moral standing follows from the will to live, not from being human, gave later thinkers a serious hook to argue that animals belong inside the circle of ethics too.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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