Albert Schweitzer
a Bioethics precursor
José Roberto Goldim
Núcleo
Interinstitucional
de Bioética
IEC
www.bioetica.ufrgs.br
Bioethics Research Laboratory
Bioethics Division
Hospital de Clinicas
de Porto Alegre
Brazil
Moral
Humanity Death Religion
Truth Responsibility Work
Poetic
Reflection
Philosophy Happiness Culture Theology
Civilization Spiritual act
Will-to-life
Action
Bioethics
Music
Knowledge
Service
Respect
Thoughts Progress
World
Ethics
Virtue
Humility
Health
Technical Skill
Person
Rational view
Life Reverence Living Dignity
Liberty
©Goldim/2011
Moral
Humanity Death Religion
Truth Responsibility Work
Poetic
Reflection
Philosophy Happiness Culture Theology
Civilization Spiritual act
Will-to-life
Action
Bioethics
Music
Knowledge
Service
Respect
Thoughts Progress
World
Ethics
Virtue
Humility
Health
Technical Skill
Liberty Person Rational view
Life Reverence Living Dignity
©Goldim/2011
1875-1965
1915
1927
Founder Precursor
©Goldim/2011
Reverence for Life
Aldo Van Rensselaer
Potter
Leopold
1948
Bioethics
1970
Land Ethic
Founder
Fritz
Jahr
Precursor
Albert
Schweitzer
Precursor
Andre Hellegers
Bioethics
Bioethics
Goldim JR.
Revisiting the beginning of bioethics: the contribution of Fritz Jahr (1927).
Perspect Biol Med. 2009 Summer;52(3):377-80.
Reverence for Life
Albert
Schweitzer
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
1915
1919
Insight
in Africa
Albert Schweitzer
Out of my life and thought.
New York, Mentor, 1949
(1933):124.
©Goldim/2011
Sermon
Sunday morning service
February, 19
at St. Nicolai´s Church
Albert Schweitzer
Reverence for life:
Sermons 1900-1919.
New York, Irvington, 1993
(1966):109.
1923
Book
Civilization
and Ethics
Albert Schweitzer
Civilization and Ethics.
London, Black, 1946
(1923):xviii
Reverence for Life
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
Albert
Schweitzer
1915
Insight
in Africa
Late on the third day (september, 1915),
at the very moment when, at sunset,
we were making our way through a herd
of hippopotamuses,
there flashed upon my mind,
unforeseen and unsought,
the phrase,
Albert Schweitzer
Out of my life and thought.
New York, Mentor, 1949
(1933):124.
©Goldim/2011
“Reverence for Life”.
Reverence for Life
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
Albert
Schweitzer
1915
Insight
in Africa
Now I knew that the ethical acceptance
of the world and of life,
together with ideals of civilization
contained in this concept,
has a foundation in thought.
Albert Schweitzer
Out of my life and thought.
New York, Mentor, 1949
(1933):124.
©Goldim/2011
Reverence for Life
Albert
Schweitzer
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
1919
Sermon
Life is feeling, experience, suffering.
Sunday morning service
If you study life deeply,
February, 19
looking with perceptive eyes into
at St. Nicolai´s Church
the vast animated chaos of this creation,
its profundity will seize you
suddenly with dizziness.
In everything you recognize yourself.
Albert Schweitzer
Reverence for life:
Sermons 1900-1919.
New York, Irvington, 1993
©Goldim/2011 (1966):109.
Land Ethic simply enlarges the
boundaries of the community to
include soils, waters, plants, and
animals, or collectively: the land.
Aldo Leopold
Sand County Almanac 1948:227
Reverence for Life
Albert
Schweitzer
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
1919
Sermon
Sunday morning service
February, 19
at St. Nicolai´s Church
Albert Schweitzer
Reverence for life:
Sermons 1900-1919.
New York, Irvington, 1993
©Goldim/2011 (1966):109.
Reverence for the infinity of life means
removal of the alienation,
restoration of empathy,
compassion,
sympathy.
Philosopher Schopenhauer, openly
invoking the Indian ideas,
considered, as a special quality of
his Ethics, the fact of having
claimed also to animals the feeling
of compassion.
Fritz Jahr, 1927
Reverence for Life
Albert
Schweitzer
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
1919
Sermon
Reverence concerning all life in the greatest
Sunday morning service commandment in its most elementary form.
February, 19
We take this prohibition
at St. Nicolai´s Church
(“Thou shalt not kill”) so lightly,
thoughtlessly plucking a flower,
Albert Schweitzer
Reverence for life:
Sermons 1900-1919.
New York, Irvington, 1993
©Goldim/2011 (1966):109.
Most people are naturally not so
sensitive as Ed. von Hartmann.
Everyone knows that plants are also
living beings that are injured when
the flower is cut, but the idea that it
also feels resentful at that is not
familiar to us.
Fritz Jahr, 1927
Reverence for Life
Albert
Schweitzer
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
1923
Book
Civilization
and Ethics
Albert Schweitzer
Civilization and Ethics.
London, Black, 1946
(1923):xviii
©Goldim/2011
That is what gives me the fundamental
principle of morality,
namely, that
good consists in maintaining,
promoting, and enhancing life,
and that destroying, injuring, and
limiting life are evil.
We must plead not for a moratorium on
new klowledge, but a coupling of
biological knowledge and human values.
Van Rensselar Potter
Bioethics, A Bridge to the Future, 1971:11
Reverence for Life
Albert
Schweitzer
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
1923
Book
Civilization
and Ethics
Albert Schweitzer
Civilization and Ethics.
London, Black, 1946
(1923):xviii
©Goldim/2011
A man is ethical only when life, as such,
is sacred to him,
and that of plants and animals
as that of his fellow men...
From Biopsychology to
Bioethics just one step is
required, the acceptance of
moral obligations to all living
beings, not only in relation
to humans.
Fritz Jahr, 1927
Reverence for Life
Albert
Schweitzer
Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben
1923
Book
Civilization
and Ethics
Albert Schweitzer
Civilization and Ethics.
London, Black, 1946
(1923):xviii
©Goldim/2011
Only the universal ethic of the feeling
of responsibility in an ever-widening
sphere for all that lives - only that
ethic can be founded in thought.
Bioethics as a new ethics science that
combine humbleness, responsibility
and an interdisciplinary competence,
intercultural, that potential our sense of
humanity.
Van Rensselaer Potter, Tokyo 1978
Bioethics as
an ethical reflection about living beings,
including human beings,
such as those living beings are presented
in everyday relationships in the living world and
in theoretical and practical contexts in science and
research.
Eve-Marie Engels
O desafio das biotécnicas
para a Ética e a Antropologia.
Veritas 2004;50(2):221
Bioethics is
a complex,
shared and
interdisciplinary reflection
about the adequacy of actions
related to Life and Living.
José Roberto Goldim
Bioética: Origens e Complexidade.
Revista HCPA 2006; 26(2):86-92
©Goldim/2011
Albert
Schweitzer
Fritz
Jahr
Aldo
Leopold
Van Rensselaer
Potter
1915
1927
1948
1970
Precursor
Bioethical Imperative
Respect every living being
on principle
as an end in itself and
treat it as such
if possible!
Land Ethic
Reverence for Life
©Goldim/2011
Bioethics
Life demands that
we see through
to the solidarity of all life
which we can
in any degree
recognize
as having some
similarity to the
life that is in us.
Albert Schweitzer, 1933
©Goldim/2011
www.bioetica.ufrgs.br
jrgoldim@gmail.com
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