Fritz Jahr and the foundations of global bioethics: The future of integrative bioethics ed. by Amir Muzur and Hans Martin-Sass (review)

Fritz Jahr and the Foundations of Global Bioethics is a collection of essays by international scholars that draws on the marked legacy of Fritz Jahr. Jahr is, perhaps, most well-known as the Protestant pastor who, in 1927, coined the term bioethics in one of his short essays exploring the relations of humans toward plants and animals. Fritz Jahr and the Foundations of Global Bioethics contains the most comprehensive collection of Jahr’s philosophical writings, accumulated from Jahr’s own life during his time at the University of Halle an der Saale in Germany.

Though Jahr’s scholarship has a topical breadth that reflects his training as a theologian, as a philosopher, he offers a novel contribution: he frames the concept of bioethics within a broad understanding of the ethics of living things. Consequently, one of the distinct goals of his scholarship is to found an ethics that includes the assumption of moral obligations not only toward humans, but also toward all forms of life, including plants. This collection is unique because it attempts to present the relevant body of primary scholarship that forms Jahr’s own “seed of integrative bioethics” and because it couples this primary scholarship with a broad body of diverse interpretations of the roots, stems, and branches of integrative bioethics that can be inferred from his original work.

Drawing on the history of philosophy and theology, Jahr’s writings reflect a consciousness of global thought. He does not limit his inquiry to European theory. Rather, his work on bioethics speaks somewhat of the broader force of life and what might comprise our obligations toward life in general, whether those obligations are rooted in Western or Eastern ideologies. Indian and Buddhist practices are referenced explicitly in order to connect the human soul to other forms of creation.

Within the broad interpretation of “bioethics,” as its etymology would suggest (literally the Greek bio-/-ethos, or the life-customs), Jahr’s work finds its home. As such, his essays have a historical significance for the later development of thought in animal ethics, environmental ethics, and bioethics in general. Certainly, his essays contain many of the precursory ideas or seeds of thought that many later theorists have developed: for example, Jahr’s ruminations on the significance of St. Francis of Assisi’s “warm sympathy” to animals and other forms of life can easily be seen as a rudimentary recognition of the inquiry developed in later scholarship on Assisi by environmental philosophers like Lynn White Jr.

Jahr’s work also contains the seeds of more contemporary approaches to animal ethics, notably Peter Singer’s utilitarian theory as outlined in Animal Liberation, for instance when Jahr notes explicitly that “[o]ur animal protection, therefore, has a utilitarian aspect . . . while we content ourselves with avoidance of unnecessary suffering” (4). Later, Jahr develops an obligation to animals through Kantian thought: for example, when he modifies the Kantian imperative and, early in his work, suggests an animal and plant ethics that commands us to “respect every living being on principle as an end in itself and treat it, if possible, as such” (4). The bioethical imperative is one of the stronger moments when we see how Jahr may lay down ideology with subsequent ramifications.

It should be noted that Jahr’s theological connections are clear, and his writing evidences this predilection. Engaging Christian tenets beyond a human scope, including a theoretical expansion of the Fifth Commandment’s “thou shall not kill,” Jahr is clearly utilizing Christian theological ideology to ground a developing, universal concept of the ethics of life. Jahr’s work is also unique in this regard: it straddles the border between theology and philosophy, often utilizing biblical primary source-material in founding a broader notion of ethics based on the respect for the life-force of living beings themselves.

This edition also includes some...