Reverence for Life (UK)

PERCY: "He refers only to the direct sayings of Jesus which have been handed down: ?love thy neighbour as thyself?, - ?love thine enemies?, - ?if someone strikes your right cheek, offer him your left also?, etc, -it is these statements he claims are the highest expression of ethical thought."

KLAUS: "And the 10 Commandments?"

PERCY: "Jesus of course lived in a jewish community in which the 10 Commandments were common knowledge; but he spoke only of two: ?Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.....? and ?Love thy neighbour as thyself?. If you can keep these two, you won?t transgress against any of the 10, which are more like social rules and guidelines, - points of support for those who can?t cope with the two which Jesus proclaimed. Schweitzer always refused to set up such rules and guidelines about his ?Reverence for Life?. He repeatedly came under pressure to do so in respect of vegetarianism, vivisection, animal experiments etc. People wanted him to say something categorical about these things, but he always avoided it; - only in the area of animal sports such as bull-?ghting and the like could he not contain himself and he condemned these outright. For him it was always a question of an individual decision in a speci?c situation, - a question of the individual conscience as the only relevant authority. And I think that in this he was a follower of Jesus - and that this is the truth about ethics."

KLAUS: "That makes a lot of sense to me."

PERCY: "There was something else that was very important to Schweitzer: he was looking for an ethic that was compatible with a life-af?rming view of the world. Nearly all ethical concepts which he found in the great religions seemed to him to go hand in hand with a life-negating world-view; a view in which the ?World? was evil, - was that to be shunned and from which to escape. Monastic life and hermitages in Europe and the life in ashrams and the retreats to the forest in the East are all examples of this way of life. For him the ethic which he sought for the future of humanity would have to cope with daily life in the market-place, - would have to stand its ground in the rough and tumble of life, and conversely, the life of society would have to be in harmony with the ethical conception and accept it as its basis."

KLAUS: "And he found such an ethic within Christianity?"

PERCY: "More as a possibility than in reality. It was exactly this, that he experienced as the great disappointment of western, - christian - civilization: that until now the realization of this possibility has left so much to be desired and that the 19 and 20 centuries moved further and further away from such a realization. He found beginnings of such ethical thinking with Zoroaster in the Middle East and with the ancient Chinese thinkers. In India he found both Buddhism and Hinduism to be too life-negating. Amongst European thinkers he mentions the Gnostics, Spinoza, Hegel and Kant in this context, but I really don?t know enough about these. Have you read any of them?"

KLAUS: "No, I?m afraid  I haven?t either."

PERCY: "To understand Schweitzer properly I would actually have to read all these people."

KLAUS: "But that would be a huge task."

PERCY: "And especially for me, since I am such a slow reader. One of my brothers in Vienna advised, that I should look these people up in an encyclopedia of philosophy. He thought that would suf?ce."

KLAUS: "And you don?t believe that it would?"

Once more I fell into a prolonged silence. It was wonderfully quiet up here and conducive to ?just sitting?. Eventually:

PERCY: "You know, it seems to me in this conversation, thinking about this question, that Schweitzer challenged humanity to conceive and imagine a culture and a civilization in which ethical thought is a fundamental ingredient. This challenge is perhaps his truly original contribution, and a fundamentally new concept for the West. Now if amongst these philosophers he found ?rst indications and beginnings of this, then it is most unlikely, that historians and the writers of encyclopedia would have found and recognized these also and included them in their summaries."

KLAUS: "You might be right about that. Then you will have to read the originals yourself. I wish you luck! But what do you mean by his truly original contribution?"