In his
paper, “Reverence For Life”, Schweitzer presents several ideas
concerning a particular type of disposition that he labels as an
ethic. This disposition is unique in that it does not appeal to
traditional discourses in logic, nor in any type of pragmatism. What
we get is a set of ideas meant to depict a passion driven attitude
that is also burdened by a self-imposed responsibility. Those who
experience this passionate responsibility partake in, what Schweitzer
calls, a “reverence for life”. This is complimented by a
“will-to-live”, what makes the experience of such passion
possible because it is the creative force behind it. Many see these
notions as confounding and vague. Despite such popular ridicule, I do
not intend to challenge Schweitzer's notions, rather I will seek to
provide a bit of clarity on the matter, and I will defend his ideas
against direct criticisms offered by Peter Singer.
I
accept that my defense may not satisfy those who are logically
disposed, but I do not intend to discredit Schweitzer's ideas by
contorting them to fit into a system that he seemly opposed to some
degree. Instead, I will present a defense that attempts at an honest
depiction of what Schweitzer may have had in mind, and in doing so, a
lingering sense of vagueness may remain for those seeking an argument
that disambiguates matters to the degree that normative claims are in
clear sight.
Two
terms are key in Schweitzer's framework: the “will-to-live” and
“reverence for life”. Both leave much to be desired in terms of
clarity, so let's begin with the will-to-live. Schweitzer starts by
focusing on his own human condition: he is a life, and that life
wills to continue living. Afterward, there is an immediate move to
extend the same analysis to all entities that seemly express the same
will. This will consists of both a creative faculty as well as
destructive. The former holds in the sense that one is disposed
toward life in such a manner that new relationships are established
between oneself and others that involve assistance in enabling the
will-to-live of others to flourish. While the thought of such
relations may be inspired by entities and phenomena external to
oneself, the activity one engages in to substantiate such
relationships is purely an inward struggle, and one cannot rely on
external entities to initiate such a constructive force. The
will-to-live is destructive in the sense that it is utterly
individualistic, and in the struggle to express itself, it overpowers
and nullifies other entities that are also trying to express a
will-to-live. This is basically the survival aspect of the duality.
While
the will-to-live is a motivating drive featuring what appears to be
two opposing faculties, having a reverence for life is to view this
opposition as an unfortunate enigma in which the destructive aspect
is seemingly unavoidable and quite unfavorable. The latter is even
more so the case given that the reverence interprets all those with a
will-to-live as having equal value. One of Singer's criticisms is
that Schweitzer's life itself is nonsensical in that he advocates a
reverence for life while being involved in practices that both assist
life and take it. Schweitzer is quite aware of this problem
and Singer completely misses the point. The framework of the
reverence for life is hardly logical, and thus seems problematic as
an ethical disposition. The reverence is unique not so much in its
nature, which it is, but more so in how uncommon it is. The far more
popular notion is to involve oneself in affairs that are practical,
and often survivalist. This is not completely problematic for
Schweitzer, but becomes an issue when one's concern towards others
conflicts with practical discourse.
Since
such a disposition is to offer active care in regards to others on
the grounds that they posses a will-to-live, such devotion must be
made also in regards to oneself. In this sense, it is a kind of
self-devotion that initiates an ethical concern toward others. The
reverence for life views all with the will-to-live as beautiful and
worthy of generous enterprise. Anyone who has such reverence is also
in a state in which one views oneself as beautiful and worthy of
generosity, and the latter is expressed in a way that answers to
one's personal calling. Ethics, in Schweitzer's view, is thus a type
of self-devotion that involves a reverence to life by acknowledging
one's concerns regarding the will-to-live of others. Seeing as the
reverence is a self-observing state, one cannot depend on the
external world to provide the means to act accordingly, and instead
one must rely on oneself to enact the creative faculty of the
will-to-live. Given this, one is condemned to be aware of whether or
not one is answering one's calling.
Self-devotion
places one in an ethical state in that one is aware of sharing
circumstances and aspirations with other entities, and that one has
an enthusiastic drive to help others and must creatively act in order
for it to reach out and engage with the world in a way that seeks to
aid others and allows for the will-to-live of others to flourish.
From this we get self-abnegation in that through the creative
faculty, self-devotion answers the call of reverence by attempting to
maneuver around the unfortunate enigma of the will-to-live, an
attempt to evade it's own survivalist faculty. The paradox to this
theory is that by attempting to stamp out the destructive faculty in
oneself when possible, to aid in the capacity of expression of others
silences any intention of interfering with their own inward
struggle. To do otherwise would be to nullify the creative faculty of
the other. Thus, Schweitzer's view is presenting readers with a type
of existential challenge in which one asks oneself whether or not
you're being honest with yourself in regards to how your thoughts and
feelings are matching up with your actions. The reverence imposes on
oneself, by oneself, a responsibility to attempt at a successful
match up. Unethical conduct arises out of a negligence of self,
either by slacking off in regards to personal commitments, or
disregarding them completely.
In
the case of animal testing, practitioners should not be able to
partake in any comfort of success if the reverence is present in
them. Scientists might be acting on a utilitarian principle in which
the sacrifice of a few animals is at the benefit of many humans, but
whether or not this practice is factually beneficial should not
matter in the slightest to those with a reverence for life.
Scientists who personally harbor the reverence and do not feel that
this honors oneself, and in this way others, are involved in
unethical conduct in that their personal expression is insincere. A
deed's rational benefits make little difference against the
self-imposed notion that one has negated one's creative faculties.
The reverence looks to evade the unfortunate enigma, and does not
seem to take solace in quantitative consequences of pleasure.
I
think it obvious that Singer will consider the reverence impractical,
and that personal commitments will not do the trick to provide the
greatest amount of pleasure across the board. In “The Place of
Nonhumans in Environmental Issues”, Singer makes several direct
criticisms at Schweitzer. First off, he finds the position in which
the reverence values all life equally as being unjustifiable. Why
should the interests of a fly be on par with most other more
conscious beings? Next, Singer questions the will-to-live, claiming
that it is not possible for certain entities that have no conscious
states to have such a will. Singer places great weight on
consciousness, or some degree of self-awareness in regards to the
conditions of life, as a requisite of a being to have interests, and
as such to be included in normative considerations; not all beings
will make the cut. For Singer, it does not matter what one's personal
disposition may be in regards to what beings are worthy of generous
treatment, it's more the case of whether a being meets an objective
standard of consciousness to even be considered to have interests.
Another
complaint is that Schweitzer provides us with no way to make
normative comparisons between valued lives if one life has to go. For
Singer, a utilitarian view can easily settle such dilemmas by being
able to assess which life in question has more value attached to it
by evaluating each in terms of conscious pleasure. If one seems to
have more than the other, then the choice is clear. His final
criticism was mentioned above concerning Schweitzer himself.
Firstly,
Schweitzer does not seek to provide justification in the traditional
sense. The equality of life that the reverence holds is not an
objective claim that has evaluative properties, rather, it is a
creative faculty of the will-to-live. If one interprets a fly as
having value, then to discredit that belief on the grounds of
popularly conceived notions of objective standards is to commit an
unethical negligence. When Singer is confused as to how the fly's
demise is regrettable, this is to say that it is not regrettable to
him, but the same may not apply to oneself. If one experiences
regret, then to deny or suppress it is to commit unethical conduct.
As for denying the will-to-live to beings that lack consciousness,
whether or not an entity posses a will-to-live or not does not depend
on objective factors, but rather it is creatively the case if one
interprets oneself and the other as possessing this passionate will.
A further objection may be that this is horribly arbitrary, and may
potentially restrict many entities from having a will-to-live if one
does not stretch out the scope of their creative faculty enough. This
is possible, and even seems unavoidable given the destructive faculty
of the will, but the nature of the reverence consists of a
responsibility to others that is immensely enthusiastic given that it
is simultaneously a responsibility toward oneself. Schweitzer
expresses a certain faith that an enthusiastic self will do all it
can to extend itself to the aid of as many as possible.
The
third objection is way off the mark from Schweitzer's notions in that
Singer presents a situation as viewed from someone who is not
enthused at all, but is “impartial”. The situation calls for one
to choose between two entities in which one lives and the other dies.
Both entities are in view of the reverence, so the choice comes down
to two entities of equal worth. Singer makes this out to be an easy
decision that is absent of any “theoretical difficulty”. All that
need be done is weight-out which of the two possesses more value. For
Schweitzer there need not be any theoretical difficulty, just
personal difficulty. This is to return to the internal struggle
concerning the opposing faculties of the will-to-live. What
normatives are to arise out of such a regrettable situation? To think
that one may calculate their way to a “cleaner” outcome is
delusional in Schweitzer's framework: the reverence is always trying
to dodge the unfortunate enigma. Saying there is no difficulty in
choosing begs the question as to whether either of the two entities
were thought to be of equal, or any, value in the first place.
Our
conclusion consists of Singer's last attack. In his life, Schweitzer
did aid many at the expense of other entities (germs, as Singer
indicates). If germs make the scope of reverence, just as much as
humans do, then this is a regrettable situation. In choosing humans
over germs, he is not making explicit that one is more valuable than
the other. Rather, a creative engagement with the world always makes
some sort of impact, and not all will benefit from it. Utilitarian
hands are no cleaner in that it admits of sacrifice. The
differentiation that Schweitzer wishes to express is that
quantitative justification does not grant any solace in affairs that
involve creative aid and destructive
consequences. For Schweitzer, justification is an external aspect of
culture that one clings onto in order to suppress the angst of the
inward struggle. As an onlooker, Singer is in no position to comment
on anyone else's angst but his own. For anyone who considers oneself
as having a reverence for life, no judgment concerning the expression
of the will-to-live can come from without. All those who partake in
such judgment exhibit the destructive faculty in the guise of
“justification”. On a day-to-day basis one must ask oneself
whether or not the call of passionate responsibility was answered or
not.