The Internal Inconsistency of Albert Schweitzer’s Ethics: A Flaw or a Merit?

Abstract

The paper addresses the question of the internal inconsistency inherent to Albert Schweitzer’s ethics of “reverence for life”, related to the fact that in the physical world, one life is inevitably forced to suppress another, which makes a fully ethi­cal existence impossible. The contradiction between the will to live in me and the will to live outside of me that makes impossible a fully ethical existence within the framework of the principle of reverence for life is often presented as a fundamental flaw in Schweitzer’s ethics. However, a different approach to this fact is possible. The impossibility of a fully ethical existence leads a person to constant inner work on herself, that is, directs her to ethical action, to ethical progress. Therefore, the contradiction between the ethical and the necessary should probably be viewed not as a flaw, but, vice versa, as a merit of Schweitzer’s ethical conception