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Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue

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I bought this book because I was impressed by a review, and I am well pleased with my choice. I have limited philosophy background, but the writing is clear and contains down to earth examples for the non philosophical. I was especially pleased that he discussed the importance of reverence in both religious and secular settings, and in several different cultures: Greece, ancient China, and present day university life . The importance of reverence as a feeling that nourishes compassion, justice, and other humane virtues is a lesson that I as a physician can relate to. Similarly, the interconnection between ceremony (offical ceremonies of state, and mundane one in families etc.) and reverence remind me of the importance of medicine as an art, not just as a science. I suspect other readers will find similar inspiration in their daily lives and tasks

Reverence is not dead. Humanity, however, stands at a critical crossroads in the survival of reverence, its lasting relationship with the virtue and with itself. In Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, Paul Woodruff draws on two disparate yet equally influential cultures to make that and another key assertion: reverence has permeated human history through culture, religion and all other intellectual thought. Despite its universality and historical impact, reverence now more closely resembles a ghost than a living being; it is among us, yet we remain oblivious of its presence.

Beginning with the importance and roles of reverence in ancient Greek and Chinese cultures to support his proposal, Woodruff proceeds to cite examples of both successes and failures of reverence in modern contexts ranging from the classroom to Little League Baseball to the Vietnam War, highlighting the remnants of this long-held virtue and showing what humanity can use as a departure point to reacquaint itself with reverence. He explains the differences between reverence and respect, suggests the importance of each in various contexts and asserts the ability and necessity of reverence to transcend both religious and cultural boundaries in an increasingly global society. He clarifies the symbiotic natures of reverence with both justice and ceremony in social and religious institutions and marks the pitfalls of inadvertently trading belief for harmony in the name of reverence in a chapter on relativism.

This intriguing little book is a treasure, true to its message, as Woodruff treats both his subject and his audience with the reverence he advocates in a literary Golden Rule. His prose is rich yet flows seamlessly and deftly from point to point. It is clear that he possesses a deep and thorough knowledge of classics and ancient cultures. Despite this abundant knowledge of his subject, he does not condescend; he allows his audience an accessible and essential view of the knowledge of the traditions he uses to support his thesis, treating them as peers with a genuine interest in learning.

Woodruff makes it clear in Reverence that this virtue, which stands on its own and plays an integral role in developing other virtues for oneself, is not merely an academic question for philosophers to play with in a vacuum. In this global society where nations, cultures, religions and ideologies - some coinciding, some conflicting - collide every day with far reaching consequences, reverence is a more necessary and practical virtue for both the survival of humankind and humanity. Reverence may no longer be a ghost; Woodruff fleshes it out.

Paul Woodruff, a Professor of Humanities at the University of Texas, writes about what he maintains we have lost sight of, reverence. While he admits the word is difficult to define, Mr. Woodruff says it "begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control--God, truth, justice, nature, even death." If we have reverence, we respect people lower than ourselves; we are kind to children. Woodruff differentiates between religion and reverence. He says that some people the most fervent about their religion do not have reverence. There is reverence outside religion. Reverence moderates war in all times and cultures. Reverent people do not say they speak on the authority of God either. Mr. Woodruff describes how a group of young people without traditional religion can experiene reverence at a memorial service for a friend when they share both their sorrow and silence.

The author gives many other examples of reverence or the absence thereof, citing references in both ancient China and ancient Greece as well as calling up the Victorian poet Tennyson.

I bought this book after having seen Mr. Woodruff discussing reverence in an interview by Bill Moyers. I must say that while the book is both thought provoking and thoughtful, it is far too long. The author repeats himself over and over. I could have gotten the point from a chapter or two on the subject in a book of essays or in a long journal article.

Having said that, I was so taken by Mr. Woodruff's comments on The Iliad that I ordered the translation he cites to reread this work for the first time in many years.

Christopher Lasch once raised what he called the "forbidden topic of limits" in our society. In his new book Reverence, Paul Woodruff explores in a fresh and compelling way the topic of implacable human limitations and what it means to acknowledge or fail to acknowledge them in the business of living. His work brings to light a much obscured dimension of human life and living, and ought to be of keen interest to philosophers, social theorists, social scientists, and seekers after wisdom generally.

In Woodruff's view, "reverence" has as much to do with politics and power as religion and often transpires outside the sphere of religion altogether. Reverence "begins in a deep understanding of human limitations" and from it "grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control"--God, the gods (beneficent or evil), truth, nature, justice--in his words, "conceived as an ideal, dimly grasped and much disputed"--death, or, if that is how one sees it, nothing at all. This capacity and its exercise is a virtue, indeed a cardinal virtue, Woodruff claims, in just the sense that courage or fairmindedness are virtues. He argues that reckoning with this dimension of human life is a universal, inescapable task. Of course, it takes myriad forms in different times and cultures. But he points out that people from very different religions commonly much admire one another's outlook and practices, which can't be based on the content of their creeds. It appears that we can detect and admire this quality anywhere. I would add (I am sure he would agree) that the same sense of admiration and commonality often occurs among religious and nonreligious individuals.

Woodruff explores how the Greeks before Plato and Confucius and his immediate followers in China, such as Mencius, defend reverence as an indispensable bulwark of human society, the thing that alone keeps leaders from trying to act like gods (tyranny and hubris for the Greeks), and is necessary if ordinary people are to find a place of belonging in society, with its inevitable differences and hierarchies, one that avoids the extremes, we might say, of emotional isolation and domination. Woodruff points out that Western philosophers since Plato largely ignore reverence, perhaps because they have so often pursued utterly objective and timeless truth. But poets from Homer and the Greek tragedians to Tennyson and Philip Larkin , and others like Lasch, bring it to the fore again and again.

Reverence, in Woodruff's words, is "the virtuous capacity for awe, respect, and shame" in the face of what "cannot be changed or controlled by human means" ( p. 7). In our time, we mainly hear praise of irreverence. But reverence is not only compatible with but often calls for the mocking of pompous solemnity and arrogant hypocrisy. Of course, more than irreverence is needed, lest we fall into mere negativity or cynicism. In the civic republican tradition, any viable alternative to excessive independence or subservience to others must include shared or overlapping notions of the common good and mutual deliberation about them. Most of us are understandably leery about these ideas. But Woodruff contends that we have to be serious about them because we simply cannot cultivate or practice virtues like courage, compassion, or reverence apart from membership and participation in the life of a community, including its ceremonies that powerfully install a sense of limits and mutual respect. For example, you can't be a courageous soldier in a unit of cowards who are unwilling to take risks because to take them yourself would amount to throwing your life away, which is foolish, not courageous. Similarly, you can't practice altruism or compassion among cruel or narrowly self-seeking individuals because to do so would simply be to portray yourself as a sucker in their eyes, and to an extent be one! Without a community, Woodruff points out, such virtues "have no outlet."

Consider the interesting example of respect. Respect "helps us avoid treating others with contempt, partly because it reminds us of our limitations, and partly because it can be shared in a variety of practices" (p. 7). Respect can be too "thin" when it is accorded to everyone regardless of "whether they respond to it or not" or are accountable for their actions. Kant's concept of respect as a mutual recognition of autonomy falls largely in this category. Respect also can be too "thick," as when it is claimed on the basis of unquestioned authority or expertise. The enormous limitations of all our perspectives, capacities for moral insight, and knowledge make such thick respect a recipe for stultification and arrogance. Reverence for our enduring limitations and imperfections requires a sense of common humanity. Thus, skillful leaders and knowledgeable teachers must extend respect to and really listen to their followers and students, just as the latter would be foolish not to feel and show respect for those in their communities who seem to have greater knowledge, maturity, or wisdom than they do. If so, reverence and an abiding appreciation of our human limitations requires the sort of just dialogue I outlined earlier in the paper, and is an essential virtue for the practice of that dialogue. Woodruff argues that the exercise of such virtues is "dependent on the presence of virtue in the community," and that we are therefore more dependent upon one another in the pursuit of a good life than we commonly acknowledge.

This book succeeds very well in "renewing a forgotten virtue," as Woodruff puts it. As a result of reading it, I am currently exploring how contemporary psychology and psychotherapy are somewhat distorted because they tend to obscure the crucial dimension of human life named by "reverence." I feel sure many others will find the book illuminating and useful, as well.

This book is valuable if only for framing the problem of how the strong ought to interact with the weak. As we in the USA approach war with a weaker nation, flush with confidence and righteousness, dismissive of counsel from far and near -- reverence is exactly the virtue most needed, and Woodruff's book makes this plain, even if not directly.

This book is not a veiled argument about something current. The reviewer who claimed this is a self-help book apparently only skimmed it, or perhaps has only skimmed self-help books. No contemporary self-help book would, as this one does, ground its claims in the likes of Thucydides, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, and Tennyson; no self-help book would, as this one does, fail to mention the internet; no self-help book would, as this one does, dare to omit a section on "[topic] in the business world."

Woodruff's book is what it claims to be -- a thoughtful account of what reverence is and why it matters. Since the book's subject is a feeling or a capacity for those feelings, it is inherently difficult to render in precise terms. I believe this accounts for what has been called its repetiveness, but I do not regard this as a flaw. A book characterizing love or courage would need to be similarly repetitive. Woodruff approaches and reapproaches an elusive topic from several perspectives and many literary sources, never pretending to exhaustiveness or rigor.

Readers may share my quibbles as to whether the book successfully distinguishes reverence from respect, modesty and humility; or to put the matter exactly, whether one virtue, reverence, should be considered distinct from and preferable to those values. But by whatever name we might call it -- and surely reverence will do -- the book achieves its aim, to elucidate reverence and call our attention to its rightful place among the virtues.

Paul Woodruff may have written one of the more important books I have ever read. At this time of near war and religious terror, with our country, and the world, being rapidly torn apart by political and sectarian certainties, Woodruff's book is as welcome as a breath of clean, gas free air might have been on the night of the Bhopal catastrophe. If I could afford it, and if I thought they would read it, I would send a copy to every politician and religious leader in the world. In the past 20 of the almost 68 years of my life, I have read many works of moral philosophy and ethics. Reverence has been one of the very few truly awe inspiring books I've ever read. And the remarkable thing about Reverence is that it can speak to almost any one, of whatever religious or political persuasion, or to those with none. It is written in such a manner as to be accessible to readers of almost any level above, say, the seventh grade, and speaks with comparable interest to those whose lives may have been devoted to a study of moral philosophy. According to Woodruff, while reverence may certainly be involved in religion, and in fact, religion without true reverence is one of the most distructive forces in the world, it should be embraced even more closely by the politician and the great leaders of the world, as well as us ordinary mortals. If you don't read anything else in the year 2003, read Reverence. William F Harrison

"Tracing the roots of the idea to ancient Greece and China, and following it through into our own time, Woodruff shows persuasively that the qualities he associates with reverence are crucial to the health of families, communities, armies, and political systems, and also to the health of the natural world insofar as it is influenced by human actions.

"Although the great erudition underlying his argument is evident in the notes, Woodruff carries his learning lightly, using narrative scenarios and Socratic dialogues to illustrate his points, drawing on his own experience as a teacher or soldier, quoting poetry, writing clear prose.

"This illuminating book would have been even more useful had he discussed what happens when the terms of reverence clash - as in debates over capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, pacifism, or experiments on animals. Still, to have rescued the ideas of virtue in general and reverence in particular from their ideological kidnappers, as this book does, is a worthy feat."

Scott Russell Sanders, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Christopher Lasch once raised what he called the "forbidden topic of limits" in our society. In his new book Reverence, Paul Woodruff explores in a fresh and compelling way the topic of implacable human limitations and what it means to acknowledge or fail to acknowledge them in the business of living. His work brings to light a much obscured dimension of human life and living, and ought to be of keen interest to philosophers, social theorists, social scientists, and seekers after wisdom generally.

In Woodruff's view, "reverence" has as much to do with politics and power as religion and often transpires outside the sphere of religion altogether. Reverence "begins in a deep understanding of human limitations" and from it "grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control"--God, the gods (beneficent or evil), truth, nature, justice--in his words, "conceived as an ideal, dimly grasped and much disputed"--death, or, if that is how one sees it, nothing at all. This capacity and its exercise is a virtue, indeed a cardinal virtue, Woodruff claims, in just the sense that courage or fairmindedness are virtues. He argues that reckoning with this dimension of human life is a universal, inescapable task. Of course, it takes myriad forms in different times and cultures. But he points out that people from very different religions commonly much admire one another's outlook and practices, which can't be based on the content of their creeds. It appears that we can detect and admire this quality anywhere. I would add (I am sure he would agree) that the same sense of admiration and commonality often occurs among religious and nonreligious individuals.

Woodruff explores how the Greeks before Plato and Confucius and his immediate followers in China, such as Mencius, defend reverence as an indispensable bulwark of human society, the thing that alone keeps leaders from trying to act like gods (tyranny and hubris for the Greeks), and is necessary if ordinary people are to find a place of belonging in society, with its inevitable differences and hierarchies, one that avoids the extremes, we might say, of emotional isolation and domination. Woodruff points out that Western philosophers since Plato largely ignore reverence, perhaps because they have so often pursued utterly objective and timeless truth. But poets from Homer and the Greek tragedians to Tennyson and Philip Larkin , and others like Lasch, bring it to the fore again and again.

Reverence, in Woodruff's words, is "the virtuous capacity for awe, respect, and shame" in the face of what "cannot be changed or controlled by human means" ( p. 7). In our time, we mainly hear praise of irreverence. But reverence is not only compatible with but often calls for the mocking of pompous solemnity and arrogant hypocrisy. Of course, more than irreverence is needed, lest we fall into mere negativity or cynicism. In the civic republican tradition, any viable alternative to excessive independence or subservience to others must include shared or overlapping notions of the common good and mutual deliberation about them. Most of us are understandably leery about these ideas. But Woodruff contends that we have to be serious about them because we simply cannot cultivate or practice virtues like courage, compassion, or reverence apart from membership and participation in the life of a community, including its ceremonies that powerfully install a sense of limits and mutual respect. For example, you can't be a courageous soldier in a unit of cowards who are unwilling to take risks because to take them yourself would amount to throwing your life away, which is foolish, not courageous. Similarly, you can't practice altruism or compassion among cruel or narrowly self-seeking individuals because to do so would simply be to portray yourself as a sucker in their eyes, and to an extent be one! Without a community, Woodruff points out, such virtues "have no outlet."

Consider the interesting example of respect. Respect "helps us avoid treating others with contempt, partly because it reminds us of our limitations, and partly because it can be shared in a variety of practices" (p. 7). Respect can be too "thin" when it is accorded to everyone regardless of "whether they respond to it or not" or are accountable for their actions. Kant's concept of respect as a mutual recognition of autonomy falls largely in this category. Respect also can be too "thick," as when it is claimed on the basis of unquestioned authority or expertise. The enormous limitations of all our perspectives, capacities for moral insight, and knowledge make such thick respect a recipe for stultification and arrogance. Reverence for our enduring limitations and imperfections requires a sense of common humanity. Thus, skillful leaders and knowledgeable teachers must extend respect to and really listen to their followers and students, just as the latter would be foolish not to feel and show respect for those in their communities who seem to have greater knowledge, maturity, or wisdom than they do. If so, reverence and an abiding appreciation of our human limitations requires the sort of just dialogue I outlined earlier in the paper, and is an essential virtue for the practice of that dialogue. Woodruff argues that the exercise of such virtues is "dependent on the presence of virtue in the community," and that we are therefore more dependent upon one another in the pursuit of a good life than we commonly acknowledge.

This book succeeds very well in "renewing a forgotten virtue," as Woodruff puts it. As a result of reading it, I am currently exploring how contemporary psychology and psychotherapy are somewhat distorted because they tend to obscure the crucial dimension of human life named by "reverence." I feel sure many others will find the book illuminating and useful, as well.

"Reverence" is a wonderful book. I highly recommend it for anyone who is concerned about being the best person you can be. I enjoyed the thoughtful discussions about how ethics are not found only among specific religions and that one does not have to be a theist at all to posess the greatist virtues man can posess and share with others.

It's nutrality concerning religion is refreshing and, I feel, the only honest way to look at the subject.

I have taken many things from this book that will help me guide my three girls toward their potential to become truely great people.

I am currently living in a tent in the desert and have been very fortunate to have had this book along with me.

Thoughtful and deep, Professor Woodruff's work on the forgotten virtue reminds and eloquently frames the virtue of reverence from a historical perspective based on contemporary need. How do we build a society of individuals without core guiding principles? How do we agree on principles without accordance on essential virtues? Why aren't ageless truths, simple as they may seem in our gilded digital age, not honored and treasured? I've read this small book several times and no doubt will read it countless more, and so should our leaders and every sincere person who wants a better future world.