Mentor Books, 1953, 213 pgs.
Summary: Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) is billed by the cover as “one of the twentieth century’s greatest men.” He was brilliant. His accomplishments in interpreting Bach, the construction and preservations of pipe organs, theological publications, and as a medical philanthropist in Africa are extraordinary. Much of this is traced in Out of My Life and Thought.
Schweitzer had realized that modern liberalism or the emerging Post-Enlightenment thought destroyed the possibility for positive culture. The driving impetus of his philosophy was first to be nice and second to give other people a reason to be nice. Corporate niceness allowed for the possibility of an environment where Bach, Mozart, philosophy, architecture, and human health could be appreciated and preserved. Positive culture was the social space necessary for Schweitzer and his friends to enjoy the finer things. Schweitzer was also rather fond of Jesus, not so fond as to suggest that Jesus was God, but at least a likeable and important teacher (48).
Yet having accepted that the Bible can’t be true in the details, Schweitzer could find no universal platform to build culture. The other great teachers—Confucius, the Brahmans, the Stoics couldn’t be really true either because their teaching was culturally bound and therefore not universal: but then he had an epiphany:
Lost in thought I sat on the deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal conception of the ethical which I had not discovered in any philosophy. Sheet after sheet I covered with disconnected sentences. . .Late on the third day. . .there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase, “Reverence for Life.” The iron door had yielded; the path in the thicket had become visible. Now I had found my way to the idea in which affirmation of the world and ethics are contained side by side! Now I knew that the ethical acceptance of the world and of life, together with the ideals of civilization contained in this concept, has a foundation in thought (124).
...The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort. The world, however, offers us the horrible drama of Will-to-Live divided against itself. . . [The thinking man] cannot bring about [life without death] because man is subject to the puzzling and horrible law of being obliged to live at the cost of other life, and to incur again and again the guilt of injuring and destroying life (126).
The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality. It is the ethic of Jesus, now recognized as a logical consequence of thought (180).
It goes on, but the brilliant Schweitzer now felt justified for being nice to big complex things and feeling guilty about killing small simple things. Or as he puts it, “every time I have under the microscope the germs which cause the disease, I cannot but reflect that I have to sacrifice this life in order to save other life” (181).
Schweitzer said these things with a great deal of charisma, wrote with capital letters and hyphenated words, spoke with a gentle German accent, and had a dramatic persona, but I am at a loss on how this can be taken seriously. We must kill to live, but must reverence life. Our reverence is directed toward life as life. Who or what decides what sort of beings may be deprived of life for our survival and pleasure? Hitler wanted to preserve German life and extinguish Jewish life. Schweitzer wants to extinguish the life of the flavivirus (the virus that causes Yellow Fever) but maintain human life. If one reverences life as life, who decides?
Nietzsche, Hitler, Genghis Kahn, gangbangers, and the local psychopath, have decided “will to power” decides what life is reverenced. There is no essential difference between the wicked tyrants’ philosophy and Schweitzer except his hoped for outcome of positive culture.
Benefits/Detriments: The book is helpful illustration of Romans 1:22, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools. . .” Perhaps of historic interest. (Might every evangelical mission board read of his promise to not preach in Africa which he quickly reneged on.) I am not sure if the best response to the waste of such a mind is to weep, laugh, or turn away in horror.
Schweitzer’s system offers nothing but a guilty conscience and an excuse to warm your hands over the dying embers of Western civilization as you’re nice to your neighbor.