Abstract
Albert Schweitzer was a theologian and philosopher as well as a musician, musicologist, and medical doctor. In this wide-ranging book, David K. Goodin seeks to show how theology and philosophy, as well as Schweitzer’s views on Bach, melded together in his thought to produce what the latter, slightly elliptically, termed ethical mysticism. In the process he argues for the view that Schweitzer’s “theological” position was “agnostic” and drew on a tradition of apophatic theology, which had its origins partly in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and partly in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In the process of arguing this case, Goodin reveals the way in which Schweitzer’s thought reflects tendencies in some postmodern thinkers and will comment upon its lasting significance, while defending it from well-known objections.
Goodin shows how Schweitzer’s thought developed from a philosophy of religion to a philosophy of culture, as after the First World War, Schweitzer sought to construct a kind of world philosophy, which would right the sinking ship of western civilization. The cultural-philosophical program would never be completed, in part, because it was too ambitious, encompassing as it did significant strains of the western philosophical tradition, world religions, and elements of the western and eastern theological tradition, but partly also because Schweitzer didn’t have the time. At its center lies a conviction about the interconnected nature of humanity and the world (derived by various roots from Schopenhauer’s understanding of the world as will and imagination), a developed sense of ethics as a form of self-fulfillment (something Schweitzer derived from Nietzsche), of humanity as uniquely sympathetic (a view Goodin attributes to Schweitzer’s reading of Darwin), and of the necessity and limitation of rational thought. Emerging from this, Goodin maintains, is a form of ethical mysticism, in which humanity’s ability to be at one with the world, or what sometimes Schweitzer termed at one with the universal will to live, is conceived not in terms of a passive intellectualized state but in terms of ethical action, understood as reverence for life. Precisely because the world as it is defies reasonable explanation, and from which God cannot be deduced, this can be described as in some sense “agnostic.” Conceived from a Christian point of view, this idea becomes a kind of mystagogy, which, through a particular reading of Paul, Schweitzer understands is revealed in a form of discipleship of Christ (what Schweitzer in the second edition of his Quest of the Historical Jesus conceives of as living in accordance with the will of Christ). Schweitzer saw intimations of this mystical relationship with Christ in his book on Bach, though he did not share Bach’s pessimism, which set its face firmly on the world to come in contrast to Schweitzer’s this-worldly concerns. In such a construction Lambarene becomes a symbol of Schweitzer’s thought conceived of as ethical mysticism.
Some of what Goodin has to say is well known, not least Schweitzer’s reliance upon Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, though he attributes greater significance to the latter than some scholars do. Some is less well known, for instance, the importance to Schweitzer of Darwin, especially the latter’s The Descent of Man; and the way in which the Bach book carried religious overtones for Schweitzer. Goodin’s appeal to Christian apophaticism to account for Schweitzer’s “agnosticism” is certainly interesting, even if a tad unconvincing—Schweitzer rarely problematizes knowledge of God in the way apophatic theologians do—in fact his whole approach to God is non-ontological, a point Goodin would broadly concede. Schweitzer often appears far more concerned about the mysteries of the world, the perpetual yet hopeless quest for a Weltanschauung (as opposed to a view of life internally conceived, which Schweitzer believes can produce a form of certainty). It is precisely this which means that we must intuit a kind of moral purpose to the world, giving our actions in the world a Tillichian sense of existence “in spite of,” an idea which Tillich, who features in Goodin’s book, may well have derived from Schweitzer, even if the language is his own.
Goodin’s book, which is very clearly written, and often possesses a freshness, even when describing well-known aspects of Schweitzer’s thought, helpfully defends Schweitzer’s view of reverence for life against the accusations of sentimental impossibilism, as represented by Niebuhr but also many others. “Schweitzer insists that we must allow the demands of love-universalism to shape what human nature could become, and make whatever progress we can toward that divine telos. If some are crushed by the burden, or fail under the weight, it does not matter.” Reverence for life is about creating an attitude of mind inspired by an absolute ethic. Goodin’s attempt to show up Schweitzer’s opposition to Cartesian “egotism” understood in terms of the transcendental “I,” and to associate him with a train of thought leading to Derrida is also illuminating; and in this context apophaticism, or the apophatic, becomes another way of talking about the limits of our epistemological mastery of the world.
Much more could be said, not least about Goodin’s attempts to defend Schweitzer against those who would criticize his activities as a medical missionary, his account of Schweitzer as a biblical exegete (possibly the weakest element in this book), and of his relationship to liberal German Protestant thought more generally (here perhaps Goodin gives Schweitzer too distinctive and influential a position, especially when he compares him with Barth). But let me finish with two interrelated points. First, about Schweitzer’s agnosticism. I wonder, and here I join arms with Barsam against Goodin, whether Schweitzer really was an agnostic, and whether in fact his mysticism is sustainable at an intellectual level without God. Here, as Barsam points out, Schopenhauer would probably call Schweitzer out in defense of his own bleaker view of the universe. Second, Goodin seems by and large to want to keep the Christian part of Schweitzer’s thought separate from its philosophical expression (183). But is this sustainable? As Barsam attempted to show in the monograph to which Goodin refers, Schweitzer is desperate to show that “reverence for life” is a necessity of thought; and yet that is precisely what it is not, whatever other virtues it may have. It was Barsam’s contention that it only becomes that because Schweitzer believes in the transformative value of the will-to-love, understood as Christ. This point is never explicitly made by Schweitzer (how could it be, given what he says about the necessarily compelling nature of his ideas?), though it is there in the Paul book in particular. Barsam simply asserts that it is a necessary element if Schweitzer’s thought is to be made complete. Goodin no doubt has opinions on this thesis; and however one assesses it, it raises acute questions about the integrated nature of Schweitzer’s thought, of the relationship of biblical theology to philosophy, which remains a perennial concern of anyone interested in Albert Schweitzer’s work and life, as Goodin, in this stimulating book, shows in a different way.