A Stranger and an Enigma
The Contexts and Contested Legacy of Albert Schweitzer
by James Carleton Paget
Hardback (Published)
(June 2025)
ISBN: 9783161557552
6.06 x 9.09 inches
Price: $212.00
In stock
This book reexamines the life of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer, reassessing in particular his many identities and his cultural and intellectual background. It presents a complex image of Schweitzer and questions his ongoing relevance in a world very different from the one in which he found fame.
Albert Schweitzer is principally known as a medical missionary who went to the Gabon just before the First World War and ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the early 1950s. In this volume, which consists of a lengthy introductory chapter followed by nine studies, most of which have been published before but appear here in modified form, an attempt is made to show how any assessment of Schweitzer must take into account his varied identities, both geographic and cultural (as an Alsatian born in 1875 and dying in 1965, he spent his first forty three years as a German and his next forty-seven as a Frenchman), and intellectual and aesthetic (in so far as he ever had a properly professional job, he was a theologian, though he thought of himself more as a philosopher, and music, in its varied manifestations, played a vital part in his life). Were these identities properly integrated and can one argue that in some way they came together in his decision to go to the Gabon? In the process of answering this question, others are addressed: why was it that Schweitzer became the icon he did and why he is now so little known except in German-speaking lands? And the extent to which his activities in Africa make him a figure of contested character in a post-colonial age? In the process of answering these and other questions, and drawing upon a wealth of recently published material, both primary and secondary, the volume presents its readers with a more complex and difficult image of Schweitzer, who can appear more distant and alien.
- By (author) James Carleton Paget
Other Titles in this Series
Le Jour de Dieu – Der Tag Gottes
5. Symposium Strasbourg, Tubingen, Uppsala. 11.-13. September 2006 in Uppsala
Volume 245
Paul and the Imperial Authorities at Thessalonica and Rome
A Study in the Conflict of Ideology
Volume 273
Doing Gender – Doing Religion
Fallstudien zur Intersektionalitat im fruhen Judentum, Christentum und Islam
Volume 302
Reading the First Century
On Reading Josephus and Studying Jewish History of the First Century
Volume 300
Semitisms in Luke’s Greek
A Descriptive Analysis of Lexical and Syntactical Domains of Semitic Language Influence in Luke's Gospel
Volume 401
Epochs and Styles
Selected Writings on the New Testament, Greek Language and Greek Culture in the Post-Classical Era
Volume 179
History and Theology in the Gospels
Seventh International East-West Symposium of New Testament Scholars, Moscow, September 26 to October 1, 2016
Der Exodus im Matthausevangelium
Die Rezeption der Exoduserzahlung in Mt 1-4 vor dem Hintergrund biblischer und fruhjudischer Schriftdiskurse
Frühjudentum und Neues Testament im Horizont Biblischer Theologie
Mit einem Anhang zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Was ist Gnosis?
Studien zum fruhen Christentum, zu Marcion und zur kaiserzeitlichen Philosophie
Volume 239
Jesus und die Steuerfrage
Die Zinsgroschenperikope auf dem religiosen und politischen Hintergrund ihrer Zeit mit einer Edition von Pseudo-Hieronymus, De haeresibus Judaeorum
Volume 294
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
Pre-Christian Religions, Rituals, and Beliefs in Central and Northern Europe
Interdisciplinary Investigations
Volume 5
The Therapeutae as the Best Paradigm for the Contemplative Life
A Contextual Reading of Philo of Alexandria's De Vita Contemplativa
