Abstract
Practical reverence is seemingly paradoxical. It is a way of looking at and being in the world, as well as a set of concrete behaviors. Yet, teachers and educational leaders can carry out and model practical reverence to make schools more just and better places to learn. Schweitzer’s insight into and practice of Reverence for Life at his hospital in Lambaréné enlarges the scope of practical reverence by showing ways to connect it materially to other practices in schools. Practical reverence can be situated in a larger more comprehensive sense of moral education relevant to our times, emphasizing narrative and moral imagination.
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Notes
Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, trans. Antje Bultmann Lemke (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 201. Hereafter OOMLAT.
While acknowledging the extremity of his commitment, Mike W. Martin ingeniously calls Schweitzer’s commitment and his “ethical mysticism” another kind of “invisible hand” and contrasts it to Adam Smith: “Schweitzer’s writing sparkles with metaphors of moral unity, of invisible hands quite different than Smith had in mind.” Mike W. Martin, Meaningful Work: Rethinking Professional Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 16–17.
Thomas Donaldson, The Ethics of International Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
James R. Rest, Muriel J. Bebeau, Mickie Bebeau, Darcia Narvaez, and Stephen J. Thoma, Postconventional Moral Thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999).
See John Gunther, Inside Africa (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), Chapter 35, “A Visit to Dr. Albert Schweitzer,” 712–34. While acknowledging Gunther’s observations about the conditions at Lambaréné, Norman Cousins notes “It is not without significance that there wasn’t a single epidemic in all the years the Schweitzer hospital had been in existence. Research specialists interested in epidemiology found abundant evidence at the Schweitzer hospital that the traditional notions of sanitation were not as important as the circumstances under which a human being becomes ill.” Norman Cousins, “How Albert Schweitzer Exerted His Power,” Washington University Magazine, Spring 1975, 32.
J. F. Montague, The Why of Albert Schweitzer (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1965), 49. Hereafter Montague.
Norman Cousins, Dr. Schweitzer of Lambaréné (New York: Harper and Row, 1960).
Anthony G. Rud, Jr., “Learning in Comfort. Developing an Ethos of Hospitality in Education,” in The Educational Conversation: Closing the Gap, ed. James W. Garrison and Anthony G. Rud, Jr. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 119–28.
James Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer: A Biography, second edition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 13. Hereafter Brabazon.
Ann Hartle, Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Albert Schweitzer, The Primeval Forest (Including On the Edge of the Primeval Forest and More from the Primeval Forest), foreword by William H. Foege (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) (originally published 1931), 128. Hereafter Primeval Forest.
David T. Hansen, The Call to Teach (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995), 139.
Ann Cotrell Free, ed., Animals, Nature & Albert Schweitzer. http://www.awionline.org/schweitzer/as-idx.htm, 1982, 18. Hereafter Free.
John Dewey, Experience and Nature. In The Later Works, 1925–1953: Vol. 1, ed. JoAnn Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 34.
Walter Munz, “Reverence for Life at Lambaréné in Albert Schweitzer’s last years,” Trans. Patti M. Marxsen, paper presented at The Ethics of Reverence for Life Colloquium, Strasbourg, France, November 2005.
John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty. In The Later Works, 1925–1953: Vol. 4, ed. JoAnn Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 110–11.
W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Black Man and Albert Schweitzer” in The Albert Schweitzer Jubilee Book, ed. A. A. Roback, The Albert Schweitzer Jubilee Book (Cambridge, MA: Sci-Art Publishers, 1945), 126.
Jane Roland Martin, The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 41.
Norman Cousins, Dr. Schweitzer of Lambaréné (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 179.
Robert Payne, The Three Worlds of Albert Schweitzer (New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1957), 150.
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© 2011 A. G. Rud
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Rud, A.G. (2011). Schweitzer and Moral Education. In: Albert Schweitzer’s Legacy for Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230116238_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230116238_7
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