Early in his life, Gandhi …show more content…
Both men drew greatly from both of their traditions for nonviolence, while taking from other nationalities and traditions as well. Gandhi admired Jesus’ take on nonviolence in the Christian faith while at the same time Schweitzer admired the other cultures and traditions of the East. Particularly, for Schweitzer he admired the concept ahimsa. However, he felt ahimsa was limited mostly to humans and not as much to the non-human realm. Schweitzer knew about Gandhi through his research and knew that the ahimsa was closely related to the philosophy that he was searching for. These two important men were living in the same time period, looking for the same things, but never truly interacted, and never had their paths fully cross. I believe if they had met and worked together they might have come to an agreement or similar understanding to spread nonviolence and better respect for nonhumans.
I will first address the major similarity between the two men in regards to violence towards nonhumans and their rejection of negative treatments such as sacrifice, hunting for sport, and the use of animals in scientific research. Also, the two men were very similar in the belief that violence would sometimes become