On Schweitzer’s "Reverence For Life" Ethical Thoughts

Albert Schweitzer(1875～1965), who received the Nobel Peace Prize in1954is thecontemporary philosopher, theologians, medical missionary and musicians. He creatively putforward the idea of Reverence for life which sparked the revolution of ethics. In addition,this theory brings the ethics into a new stage of development, and establishes a theoreticalfoundation for the proposed modern ecological ethics."Reverence for Life" is the core of Schweitzer’s ethics, also is a turning point of ethics.Schweitzer believes that we should reverence for all life, recognizing the nature of life,included animals and plants, denied the advanced life or lower life, and denied the life isvaluable or invaluable, which reflects the range of ethical concern extends to all life, it is trueethics.In order to analysis Schweitzer’s ethical thought and practice of his study, this paperadopts the methods of induction and value analysis by the perspective of ethics to discussthoroughly the practical value of Schweitzer Ethics. The article describes the research valueof current status to gives an overview of Schweitzer’s Ethics. Furthermore, from thetheoretical background and origins of Schweitzer ethics, analyzes the main reason for theformation of ethical thought Schweitzer and background. Then, author systematicallyanalyzed Schweitzer’s ethics three main contents of the system, the revival of social ethics,ideology and culture, self-improvement and personal ethical thought and the ecological ethicsthoughts of "reverence for life"."Reverence for Life" ethics ideological, is denied theadvanced life or lower life, and denied the life is valuable or invaluable, the same asreverenced his own life to reverenced another.Finally, through the "reverence for life" ethics in theory and practice limitations, miningtheory for the origin of Schweitzer ecological ethics of realistic significance, is theharmonious development between man and nature; the theory support of moral responsibilityexpand from person to nature; the anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric tension checksand balances. Thus put forward countermeasures and suggestions for ethical thought ofecological constructed: the first is to build eco-culture with Chinese characteristics, and thesecond is to establish a basic measure of our ecological ethics."Reverence for life" ethical thought in terms of theory and practice, it gives some enlightenment to the overallcontemporary humanity.