Reverence for Life
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Symposium 2000 will be a glorious opportunity to spread the appeal for world peace in a very positive way. Prominent scholars, educators, and world-peace activists from various fields - medicine, philosophy, music, environment, theology and humanities - will come together to introduce Schweitzer to a new generation and to focus world-attention on his words: "The abolition of atomic weapons will become possible only if world opinion demands it. And the spirit needed to achieve this can be created only by Reverence for Life. The course of history demands that not only individuals become ethical personalities, but that nations do so as well." Norman Cousins believed that Schweitzer could rightly be called "the conscience of our age." Dr. Schweitzer's discovery of the ethical premise which gave his life full meaning, Reverence for Life, happened in 1915 while he was undertaking an errand of mercy from his African hospital on a journey up the Ogowé River.
"...There flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase, 'Reverence for Life' ....now I had found my way to the ideas in which world-and-life-affirmations and ethics are contained side by side." From that time on, until his death in 1965, Reverence for Life guided Albert Schweitzer in all that he thought and undertook. Dr. Schweitzer - philosopher, humanitarian, medical missionary, musician, theologian - was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. His acceptance speech mentioned only briefly the dangers of nuclear war. But in 1957 he became convinced that he should join with such leaders as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Linus Pauling, in trying to inform and arouse public opinion on the dangers of nuclear armaments. From his hospital in the forests of Equatorial Africa, he spoke out vigorously and prophetically against the dangers of nuclear weapons and testing. Albert Schweitzer lived for two full decades into the atomic age. In the first decade after World War II, he became a world-acclaimed figure and many honors were bestowed upon him. So when he started speaking out on the issues of nuclear politics the world listened. On April 23, 1957, Schweitzer's speech, that became known as the "Declaration of Conscience," was broadcast from Radio Oslo, the city of the Nobel Peace Prize. In April, 1958, he gave three successive appeals to the world - again over Radio Oslo - and again his speeches made echoes around the world and were widely published. His leadership for the Nuclear Test Ban which he did so much to win received wide praise but moratoriums on nuclear testing were short-lived and 1964 witnessed China's first detonation of an atomic device in the atmosphere. On January 14, 1965, Schweitzer celebrated his 90th birthday in Africa, and by summer he felt a new deterioration in the world situation. He commented to his confidants at Lambarene: "Perhaps I should make another world-wide radio appeal, as I did in Oslo." This was not to be, for on September 4, 1965, Schweitzer died at his African hospital and was buried along the banks of the Ogowe River - the source of life that had given him his philosophy of Reverence for Life 50 years before. |
ALBERT SCHWEITZER COLLECTION - STEPHENS COLLEGE
ALBERT SCHWEITZER INSTITUTE AT CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY
ALBERT SCHWEITZER INTERNATIONAL WEBSITE
THE ALBERT SCHWEITZER INSTITUTE
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