Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Reverence is an ancient virtue that survives among us in half forgotten patterns of civility, in moments of inarticulate awe, and in nostalgia for the..." (more)
Key Phrases: imposter virtues, thick respect, joyful reverence, Son of Heaven, United States, Tennyson's Ulysses (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What is the difference between reverence and faith? Is reverence supposed to take the place of faith or belief? Does reverence belong to religion? In this simple, and often simplistic, little book, Woodruff, who teaches humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, probes the meaning of reverence and tries to recover it as an essential component of a moral life. He defines reverence very simply as "the well-developed capacity to have the feelings of awe, respect, and shame when these are the right feelings to have." In an admirable historical and ideological survey, he traces the roots of reverence to Greek and Confucian ideals. Yet contemporary society seems to have lost this capacity for reverence, a loss that is reflected in disdain for the government, destruction of the environment and disrespect for rules and rituals. How can we recover reverence and act more reverently? Taking a cue from Aristotle, Woodruff says that we become reverent by doing reverent things. Such a circular argument is not the book's only flaw. Woodruff covers his subject in the first 15 pages, demonstrating that it would have been more appropriate as a lengthy journal article. Although he offers a variety of different approaches to the same subject, Woodruff cannot overcome a deadening sense of repetition (e.g., reminding us on almost every other page that reverence and respect are not synonymous), ultimately defeating his valiant efforts to rehabilitate reverence for today.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Philosopher Woodruff had an epiphany: reverence, "the virtue that keeps human beings from trying to act like gods," has been forgotten in our society. People practice reverence, but without understanding or valuing it. To rekindle awareness of the virtue that "lies behind civility and all the graces that make life in society bearable and pleasant," Woodruff defines reverence and explains how it makes community life possible. Drawing on two classic traditions, ancient Greek philosophy and Confucianism, as well as the poetry of Tennyson, Yeats, and Larkin, Woodruff carefully separates reverence--the sense of a greater, transcendent force, the feeling of awe we feel in the presence of beauty--from faith, showing how tyranny occurs when reverence breaks down. Like courage, reverence is not tied to any one belief system, and, as Woodruff so eloquently argues, "habits of reverence" are essential to every sphere of life, from education to politics to land management to love. Clarion and worthy, Woodruff's treatise will give readers their own "Eureka!" moments and, hopefully, create a ripple effect. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195157958
• ISBN-13: 978-0195157956
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #147,011 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful book about a missing virtue, October 28, 2001

By	Nancy K. Oconnor (PAWHUSKA, OK United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (Hardcover)

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

56 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keeping Reverence Alive, April 6, 2002

By	Edward Garris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (Hardcover)

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.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New/Old Wisdom About Human Limits, November 13, 2001

By	Frank Richardson (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (Hardcover)

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.