Respect for Life (Basic Statement over Fifty Years)

Author: Hans Walter Bell
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2003-09-01
Features: This book is part of the "Quill Translation" series, which currently has four volumes: Selected Diary of Kierkegaard, The Temptation of Love, and Letters to the Provincials. It is a small pamphlet on the theme of bioethics, compiled from some of his memoirs, speeches, and excerpts from his monographs. The content includes reflections on his personal life journey, the flow of his thoughts and morals, discussions on the relationship between ethics and culture, and the interpretation of the essence of morality. Throughout the text, philosophical insights and religious compassion flow side by side. The tone of writing is gentle and humble, but he did not abandon the "slingshot" of thought—he raised it high, aiming at the fervor of war and the worship of technology.
As a personal life, it was a great misfortune, but as an ethicist, it was a blessing. He witnessed the two World Wars of the 20th century. Though he did not fight in the trenches, he was imprisoned in a French camp as a citizen of the warring Germany at the time. There, he met a prison chief with a humanitarian spirit and experienced too much suffering, hardship, forced labor, and cruelty. He witnessed the various forms of killing, torture, and oppression among humans, as well as the subtle and fragile human warmth in the midst of hardship, like a candle flame. This stirred deep within him a comprehensive and profound reflection on war and peace, plunder and humility, greed and restraint, civilization and barbarism, and conquest and reverence.
Humanitarianism is an important spiritual achievement of human thought and critique in the process of civilization. In essence, it is a rebellion against barbarism, marking the advancement of human civilization and the product of civilization overcoming barbarism. It not only emphasizes the value of humanity but also, in the social machinery controlled by the majority, upholds the rights of the minority (such as ethnic minorities and Black people), defends the interests and dignity of the vulnerable groups (such as women, children, prisoners, and detainees, and even animals in the case of the green movement) in authoritarian political and economic structures, and cares for the physically and mentally suffering among the poor, sick, disabled, and oppressed in prosperous, healthy, and peaceful social orders. All of these are directions for social reform that require moral courage. To fully practice and realize these visions of a civilized society, we need both the ultimate elevation of Schweitzer-style reverence for life (a will to life within the heart) and the historical struggles of Schweitzer, raising the "slingshot" of reflection and critique in a "fighting" humanitarian stance. This is a new insight I gained from rereading Schweitzer.