Environment Commentary

2 Pages 381 Words

Albert Schweitzer’s article on ‘The Problem of Ethics’ comments on people’s disregard for nonhuman life. Through his poetical style of writing Schweitzer not only comments on the matter, but also strives to inspire others to follow his lead.

Although I can understand how many readers would fancy Schweitzer’s style of writing, personally I felt unlinked to any real engagement. His writing is too abstract and goes overboard with metaphorical representations. For instance when commenting on the reverence of life ‘it makes us above perception of the world of objects and makes us into the tree that is safe from drought because it is planted by water’. This and many other rather dreamy illustrations drift away from realism and in turn drift the reader’s attention away from the text.

Despite Schweitzer’s style of expression, his ideas on the issue are nevertheless thought provoking. What I particularly found to be intriguing was his commentary on human beings choosing to kill some animals and not others, ‘whoever picks up a bird fallen from the nest finds himself having to kill small living creatures in order to feed his ward’. This idea astonished me because it never occurred to me that we as humans tend to place value on certain animals more than others. How can we so easily squash a fly and hold campaigns to save the white tigers?

This suggestion is similar to the broader issue presented in the article of how we validate killing human beings as unethical and think nothing of killing many other creatures. Although I agree with this pattern of thought to some degree, I am not fully convinced that it is unethical to kill all nonhuman creatures. I without a doubt believe it is horrifying to hunt and kill animals for leisure, yet I am not about to stop using pesticides. I justify my perspective by the fact that many insects can carry germs and diseases, but also recognise the flaw in my argument that human...