Albert Schweitzer's Reverence for Life

Ethical Idealism and Self-Realization

Mike W. Martin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317182733
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, Nobel Peace Laureate, theologian, and musician, developed a character-oriented ethics focused on self-realization, nature-centered spirituality, and moral idealism which anticipated the current renaissance of virtue ethics. Schweitzer's idea of 'reverence for life' underscores the contribution of moral ideals to self-realization, connects ethics to spirituality without religious dogma, and outlines a pioneering environmental ethics that bridges the gap between valuing life in its unity and valuing individual organisms. In this book Mike W. Martin interprets Schweitzer's 'reverence for life' as an umbrella virtue, drawing together all the more specific virtues, in particular: authenticity, love, compassion, gratitude, justice and peace loving, each of which Martin discusses in an individual chapter. Martin's treatment of his subject is sympathetic yet critical and for the first time clearly places Schweitzer's environmental ethics within the wider framework of his ethical theory.

Chapter 1

Introduction

The maintenance of one’s own life at the highest level by becoming more and more perfect in spirit, and the maintenance at the highest level of other life by sympathetic, helpful self-devotion to it – this is ethics.1

Albert Schweitzer, who lived from 1875 to 1965, sets forth an innovative moral perspective centred on self-realization, nature-centred spirituality and ethical idealism. Responding to a culture of violence and alienation, he regards ethics as a deeply personal response to needs for meaning and self-fulfilment. Pioneering an environmental ethics, he affirms the sacredness of life in its diversity and unity, linking ethics to spirituality without religious dogma. And anticipating the contemporary renaissance of virtue ethics, he makes ideals of character fundamental while celebrating individualism and wide tolerance in applying those ideals. Reverence for life emerges from the will to live present in each of us, widens by affirming our kinship with other life, and unfolds in a moral optimism of self-realization through service to others and the pursuit of excellence.

Reverence for life, as Schweitzer calls his moral perspective, is now widely appreciated in environmental ethics. Even there, however, it is not understood within the full context of his ethics of self-realization and ethical idealism. Moreover, Schweitzer’s ethics is incomplete. The demands of working as a jungle doctor and hospital administrator permitted completion of only two of the four planned volumes of The Philosophy of Civilization, his primary philosophical work, although he fleshed out his ideas in many additional writings. My aim is to offer a fresh interpretation that reveals the importance of his moral philosophy while shedding new light on his environmental ethics. In places I also raise criticisms and suggest revisions, agreeing with Schweitzer that we honour a system of thought by testing it rigorously for its truth.2

The phrase ‘reverence for life’ came to Schweitzer in 1915 while on a medical journey upstream from his hospital at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa.3 Reverence combines respect and awe, ethics and spirituality. Life includes humans, animals and plants, taken as individuals and as interconnected. The meaning of the phrase is not self-evident, however, and Schweitzer was dismayed when it became a catchphrase rather than an invitation to explore his writings. ‘The phrase is related to a whole line of thought’, he insists, and it must be understood in terms of ‘the purpose and the meaning of my work as a whole’.4 That body of work is more complex than appears at first glance.

To be sure, Schweitzer strives for simplicity, convinced that ‘whatever is deep is also simple’.5 He frequently encapsulates his ethics of reverence for life in epigrams; for example, ‘it is good to maintain and to encourage life; it is bad to destroy life or to obstruct it.’6 Nevertheless, the epigrams are intended to illuminate the ideals that should guide our responses to moral dilemmas, not to deny that perplexing dilemmas arise when the myriad moral reasons come into conflict. Indeed, reverence for life adds complexity by elevating moral demands and widening the circle of moral concern to include all life.7 Even the phrase ‘reverence for life’ has multiple meanings: it names a unifying moral aspiration (a multifaceted ideal), an umbrella character trait (a multifaceted virtue), a foundational principle of responsibility (a multifaceted obligation), and Schweitzer’s moral perspective in its entirety (an ethical theory).8

As an ethical theory, reverence for life has three focal points: self-realization, nature-centred spirituality and ethical idealism. First, self-realization combines striving for excellence with sharing in others’ lives. Excellence, like ethics itself, demands a deep sincerity with ourselves (authenticity) concerning what we care about most deeply. Ultimately, that caring is rooted in and unfolds our will to live – that is, our desires to survive, to affirm ourselves, and to pursue self-realization inspired by ideals. Because we are social creatures whose lives are intimately interwoven with others, sincerity involves forming personal projects of love – projects that express caring in a highly personal manner. The projects of love include those of family, profession, philanthropy, voluntary service and the pursuit of excellence in all other desirable endeavours.

Second, reverence for life grounds ethics in a nature-centred spirituality. As discussed in Chapter 2, Schweitzer abandons conventional religious dogma and is largely agnostic about a supernatural deity. Yet he is a profoundly spiritual thinker who affirms all life as sacred, at least in its creative aspects. He articulates an ethical mysticism whereby we achieve spiritual unity with other lives through active caring in the spirit of the unity of life and the preciousness of each life. Acts of sympathetic support have symbolic and spiritual meaning in bringing unity and peace into a world of conflict and violence. By widening the circle of moral concern to include all life, reverence for life completes the ethics of love embedded in world religions: ‘Reverence for Life is the ethic of love widened into universality.’9 At the same time, reverence for life is firmly rooted in this world. It emerges from the will to live found in each of us – our will to survive, develop and connect sympathetically with other life.10 Chapter 4 explores the implications of ethical mysticism, or what might be called biotheism, for environmental ethics.

Third, reverence for life is an ethics of ideals of goodness, including both moral goodness and non-moral goodness such as aesthetic appreciation and scientific understanding. It is a version of what philosophers call ethical idealism or (more misleadingly) perfectionism. As a unifying ideal, reverence for life does not replace the myriad specific ideals defining self-realization and responsibilities to others. Instead, it yokes them together and widens their scope. Likewise, as an umbrella virtue, reverence for life draws together and unifies more specific virtues, including ‘every kind of valuable enthusiasm’.11

In his published writings, Schweitzer devotes special attention to five moral ideals and their corresponding virtues: authenticity, compassion, gratitude, justice and peace loving. Authenticity (or sincerity with oneself) demands the full and balanced development of our talents on the basis of honesty with ourselves and within a framework of moral ideals. Compassion is manifested in the human ‘fellowship of those who bear the mark of pain’ and also in the ‘community of suffering’ connecting all creatures. Gratitude underlies the principle that ‘good fortune obligates’, an ideal of reciprocal giving and service that has broad significance. Justice is understood in terms of human rights, which illustrates that Schweitzer appreciates the special moral status of humanity even as he widens the circle of moral concern to include all living organisms. And peace loving implies a commitment to resolve conflicts without violence – although Schweitzer is not the unconditional pacifist he is usually taken to be. His emphasis on these particular virtues is important, and a chapter is devoted to each of them. It should be borne in mind, however, that his ethics of self-realization and ethical idealism is intended to embrace all valid moral virtues, indeed all ideals of excellence that define what he called civilization.

Reverence for life is not an amorphous affirmation of living creatures that leaves us without practical guidance. It is true, and important to note, that Schweitzer renounces the traditional philosophical obsession with moral rules that tell us exactly what to do and with ethical dilemmas that arise when rules come into conflict. Nevertheless, as Chapter 3 discusses, reverence for life provides moral guidance through specific ideals that function as signposts in a morally complex and ambiguous world. In addition, these specific ideals enter into personal projects of love that structure our lives. These projects require the ‘widest possible freedom’ to interpret and implement moral ideals in pursuing self-fulfilment.12 Schweitzer’s ethics is thus highly individualistic, but only within a framework of justified moral ideals and virtues.

At the same time, Schweitzer is more concerned with moral motivation than with prescribing detailed guidance. To this end, he seeks an elemental ethics that is simple, close to experience, rooted in natural desires, strongly motivating, and responsive to needs for meaning.13 An ethics of self-realization and ideals is flexible yet demanding in order to serve as a popular philosophy contributing to civilization.14 It also needs to be presented effectively. Schweitzer’s presentation combines theory with practice, inspiration with argument, and mystic evocations with reasoning. These combinations add power to his writing, although sometimes they generate problems of interpretation.

Additional interpretive challenges concern how to distinguish between (a) the requirements of reverence for life, as an ethical theory and an umbrella ideal allowing wide moral autonomy in interpreting and applying more specific ideals, and (b) Schweitzer’s personal interpretations and applications of specific moral ideals. Usually he simply states his views, at times leaving us unclear whether he intends general requirements or instead his personal applications – applications with which we might reasonably disagree in exercising our moral autonomy. For example, when he rescues caterpillars and mosquitoes, and when he objects to cutting flowers to put in vases, is he implying that reverence for life mandates similar responses from all of us? In linking ethics and spirituality, does he intend that we share his agnosticism about a supernatural deity, or could theists and atheists alike embrace his moral perspective? And is his (highly qualified) defence of early twentieth-century colonialism somehow implied by reverence for life? Even if he does intend these things, can we show that the central tenets of his ethical theory actually leave wider latitude for differences among reasonable persons?

Here, responses to these questions will be provided as we proceed, usually by highlighting the individualistic spirit of reverence for life that leaves room for each of us to apply ideals in a responsible but personal manner. Note, however, that such interpretative challenges are not unusual. Most philosophers do not neatly separate the mandatory elements in their ethical theories from their personal applications of the theory, and most of them have moral blind spots. Aristotle’s misogynist discussion of character and acceptance of slavery, Thomas Jefferson’s racism in applying human rights, and Immanuel Kant’s parochial views of sex are only a few of many examples. Even when thinkers see their own moral situation clearly, their ethical theories need to be adjusted to different historical settings. In any case, we should not confuse reverence for life with reverence for Schweitzer, as he would be the first to insist.

One thing is clear. For Schweitzer, philosophy matters. Notice the title he gives to the opening chapter of The Philosophy of Civilization: ‘How Philosophy is Responsible for the Collapse of Civilization’. We laugh, for the title might have been written by Woody Allen or Monty Python – as if philosophy could have any such cultural importance! Schweitzer believes it does. For him, the primary task of philosophy is to articulate values that give meaning to our lives and advance civilization.15 He seeks to ‘throw the belief in a new humanity, like a torch, into our dark age’.16

Note...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Ethics from Within
• 3 Ideals as Guides
• 4 Environmental Ethics
• 5 Authenticity: Reverence for Self
• 6 Compassion: Community of Suffering
• 7 Gratitude: Good Fortune Obligates
• 8 Justice as Human Rights
• 9 Peace Loving and Non-Violence
• 10 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index