A Naturalistic Idealism in Ethics

A further widening of the circle...

The degree or depth to which Albert Schweitzer studied the later writings of Leo Tolstoy is a subject for future research. That Schweitzer read the later Tolstoy is evidenced by his reference to that portion of Tolstoy's oeuvre in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize (1952).

In a 1962 study of Schweitzer's thought (The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer), Henry Clark credits Georg Simmel with planting in a young Schweitzer's mind "the conviction that the will-to-live manifests itself in man as a drive towards self-transcendence. This means that self-perfection seeks to overcome the actual self of any given moment, in order that one may become the higher self that he is potentially" (Clark, 26).

This notion bears remarkable similarity to the view that Tolstoy expressed in The Law of Love and the Law of Violence: "We possess a single infallible guide and this is the Universal Spirit that lives in men as a whole, and in each one of us, which makes us aspire to what we should aspire; it is the spirit that commands the tree to grow towards the sun, the flower to throw off its seed in autumn, us to reach out towards God, and by so doing become united to each other" (Tolstoy, 112).

Both thinkers articulated a naturalistic idealism in ethics, though Schweitzer's commitment to Christian mission occasionally compromised his candor in this regard.