» Albert Schweitzer Institute

Message from the Director
June 2020

Prof. Nancy M. Martin

Albert Schweitzer was born in 1875 in a time marked by assumptions of European white Christian superiority and racially-based categorization of all others as inferior that justified colonialism. Throughout his life he struggled against this, though he was not able to completely rise above it and is rightly criticized for this. Still his life challenges us to examine our own explicit and implicit racism and to find our individual ways to actively work to address the wrongs of slavery, colonialism, and continuing racial bias, oppression and exploitation. His philosophy of reverence for life calls us to live with authenticity, gratitude, and compassion, pursuing knowledge to the fullest but also seeking self-realization and transformation with radical self-honesty and a readiness to change. Were Schweitzer alive in our time, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have stood with us in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

 

Schweitzer’s decision to give up his thriving career as a scholar of philosophy and theology and as a renowned concert organist was motivated by his desire to serve others, in gratitude for his own life of privilege. He chose to re-train himself in medicine and to go to an area of Africa where there was great need. He went to be a doctor, not a missionary. Indeed the organization that sponsored him required him to raise all the money for the hospital himself and insisted that he promise not to preach but rather be "as silent as a carp" because they considered his theological ideas heretical. He readily agreed to their demands. Dr. Schweitzer’s specific choice to go to Africa arose out of his deeply held conviction that Europeans (and Americans) are morally obligated to give back to Africans in multiple ways because of the devastation and horrors they had perpetrated through the slave trade. Dedicating the rest of his life to providing medical care to those in need was his way to do so.

 

In developing his philosophy of reverence for life, Schweitzer was searching for a shared basis that might motivate human beings to act with compassion toward all and abandon violence against each other, a foundation more fundamental than religions and stronger than reason which had so dismally failed to curb human brutality. He would find that ground in the recognition that all living things have a will to live, not only to survive but to achieve fulfillment. In the case of human beings, this includes not only having sufficient food, shelter, safety and health care but also a life of dignity and respect and opportunities for education and the development of talents, dreams and aspirations. On the individual level, such a philosophy requires that we be committed to living with integrity and humility, facing our shortcomings and engaging our minds to the limits of our ever-changing knowledge, working to become the best human beings we can be and developing our individual capacities to the fullest. Realizing that so many have contributed to our lives, our response should be immense gratitude with a concomitant sense of duty/responsibility to find our individual "projects of love" as ways to invest our humanity in passionate service to others and in pursuit of justice and human rights to ensure that others also have this opportunity to thrive. And we must cultivate compassion, experiencing the will to live that flows through and binds us to all others as well as feeling deeply the suffering of others, motivating us to work to relieve it and eliminate its causes and to strive in myriad positive ways for mutual flourishing. Many thoughtful people and activists across the decades have found and continue to find inspiration in this philosophy of reverence for life into the twenty-first century. Among them are many members of our Chapman community including those who originally founded this campus Institute.

 

Yet Schweitzer was a man of his times and not ours. Many of his writings about African people strike us today as patronizing. Yet he offered alternate portraits of ethical and deeply thoughtful people that countered the prevailing dehumanization and denigration of Africans by Europeans and Americans in this era. Schweitzer also witnessed and understood deeply the ongoing destructiveness of colonial exploitation to African societies. Yet he was not able to fully rise above the racist assumptions of his European heritage. In his ongoing letter exchanges of respectful dialog with W. E. B. Du Bois late in his life, he infamously did not support full and immediate independence for African nations, as he believed that Europeans were obligated to provide support to repair the damage they had wrought because if they simply left, others would step in who would be complicit with continuing neo-colonial exploitation. Schweitzer has been strongly criticized for this position and rightly so.

 

His example reminds us of how important it is for us to confront not only explicit racism but also the implicit racism that afflicts us all. And his life and philosophy challenge us to live lives of authenticity, gratitude and compassion, and to find our own particular ways to transform our hearts and minds and our society and to work to eliminate racism and foster equality, as we stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and Black communities across our country.

 

Want to learn more?

1. Martin, Mike W. (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Chapman). Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life: Ethical Idealism and Spiritual Realization. Burlington, VT.: Ashgate, 2007. (Available as an E-book through the Chapman library)

2. Franck, Frederick; Janis Roze and Richard Connoly, eds. What Does it Mean to be Human?: Reverence for Life Reaffirmed by Responses from Around the World. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.