MYSTICAL MOMENTS OF MODERN ETHICS
Cross readings in Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) and Martin Buber (1878-1965)
Monday 1st – Saturday 6th June 2015
The year 2015 commemorates the demise of two great figures of humanity: Albert Schweitzer and Martin Buber. The first, being 1952’ laureate of the Nobel Price for Peace, is world widely known for his life-ethics and his charitable medical project in Lambarene (Gabon). The fame of the other is due to his reactualisation of Chassidism and his dialogical philosophy. Both men respected each other profoundly.
The purpose of the Third International Albert Schweitzer Summer School is to explore systematically and critically the meaning and importance of the mystical moment in the respective enterprises of Schweitzer and Buber, in order to clarify their self-imposed quest for a deeper foundation of modernity. Of what kind of mysticism motivates them? How does it relate to more traditional, religious mysticisms? How to articulate the affinity between the dialogical and reverence-for-life principles? Could Schweitzer and Buber be advanced as representing a new modernized paradigm of mysticism and spirituality?
Participation is possible in two ways.
1. Attending participants
Auditors, eager to learn more about Schweitzer and Buber, but also ready to engage the (informal) discussions of presentations and studied text fragments. No specific philosophical or theological knowledge, neither about Schweitzer nor about Buber, is required.
2. Contributing participants
Participants are invited to present a short 30 minutes paper, that will be reviewed by the organizing scientific staff members. The papers should address the question of modernity and mysticism in the work of Schweitzer and/or of Buber. Presentations analyzing analogies and differences between the two authors have priority. By outstanding contributions, the organizers will strive for publication.
Optional topics:
– Shared intellectual horizons (neo-Kantianism, philosophy of life, expressionism)
– Esthetics, mystical experience and the enigma of life experiences
– The future of spirituality and the end of modernity
– Eschatology, messianism and utopism
– Mystical experience: an indispensable ethical complement?
– The decline of culture and its philosophical therapy
– Two vision of Jesus: one way of believing?
– Dialogical and ethical philosophy and the limits of rationality
– Academic philosophical resistance to Schweitzer and Buber
– Schweitzer’s Mysticisme of the Apostle Paul and Buber’s Ecstatic Readings