What is America?
Poli 110J 07
The ambiguity of human virtue
• Politics & the critical dimension
– The capacity to say “no”
– The ability to imagine a different world
Reinhold Niebuhr
•
•
•
•
•
1892-1971
Labor activist
Pacifist in youth
Anti-communist
Theologian & public
intellectual
• “Christian realism” & just
war theory
• Critic of Vietnam war
Core Themes
•
•
•
•
•
•
Original sin
Humility
The inevitability of war
Morality + politics = responsibility
American history characterized by irony
“Christian realism”
– Vs. realism
– Vs. idealism
Key Terms
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pathetic
Tragic
Ironic
Sin
Bourgeois liberalism
Communism
The pathetic
• Pathos
• “Pathos is that element in an historic situation
which elicits pity, but neither deserves
admiration which elicits pity, but neither
deserves admiration nor warrants contrition.”
– Pity the appropriate response of the spectator
– No positive or negative moral attribution
The pathetic
• “Pathos arises from fortuitous cross-purposes
and confusions in life for which no reason can
be given, or guilt ascribed. Suffering caused
by purely natural evil is the clearest instance
of the purely pathetic.”
– No reason
– Cancer, earthquakes, etc.
The tragic
• Tragōidia
• “The tragic element in a human situation is
constituted of a conscious choices of evil for
the sake of good. If men or nations do evil in
a good cause; if they cover themselves with
guilt in order to fulfill some high
responsibility; or if they sacrifice some high
value for the sake of a higher or equal one
they make a tragic choice.”
The tragic
• Tragedy is a choice between conflicting goods
– Lesser evils, only bad choices
• An admission, not a denial, of guilt
– A realization that the lesser evil remains evil
• No such thing as a “tragic flaw”
The tragic
• “Tragedy elicits admiration as well as pity
because it combines nobility with guilt.”
– The appropriate response of the spectator to
tragedy is pity for the agent in the tragic situation,
admiration for its moral responsibility, and
condemnation for its guilt.
– For Niebuhr, the Cold War is tragic
The ironic
• Eirōneía (feigned ignorance)
• “Irony consists of apparently fortuitous
incongruities in life which are discovered,
upon closer examination, to not be merely
fortuitous.”
– An element of the comic, but more than comic.
Laughter, but also realization & insight.
The ironic
• Different from pathetic situations in that the
actor involved bears responsibility for the
situation.
• Different from tragedy in that the
responsibility is due to an unconscious
weakness rather than a conscious decision.
The ironic
• Strength becoming weakness due to vanity of
strength = ironic
• Realization of ironic complicity must lead to
“abatement of pretension, which means
contrition; or it leads to a desperate
accentuation of the vanities to the point
where irony turns into pure evil.”
The ironic
• Niebuhr understands Christianity as inherently
ironic.
– Ex) The Crucifixion as the final victory of Christ
Sin
• More than just doing bad things.
• Doctrine of original sin, roots in Augustine
• Humans inherently, not just tendentially,
corrupt.
• Resultantly, all human efforts must be
imperfect
• Humility thus a necessity
Bourgeois liberalism
•
•
•
•
Capitalist
Competitive elections
Rights-based legal system
Tendency to embrace the perfectibility of
humanity, rejecting universality of sin
• Tendency to pretend innocence
Communism
• For Niebuhr, this means Soviet communism
• Claim to possession of absolute knowledge,
and thus mastery, of historical processes.
• Led by the vanguard, a group that best
understands the historical dialectic, and thus
by definition acts for the benefit of the
proletariat
• Historical processes make final victory of
communism inevitable.
The limits of freedom
• Extravagant emphasis on individual freedom
– For Niebuhr:
– The freedom to completely make oneself is a
falsehood
– Humans occur within societies, and are partly
made by them
The limits of freedom
• In our culture, emphasis on overt, rather than
covert, forms of power.
• “Since property is a form of power, it cannot
be unambiguously a source of social peace
and justice. For every form of power, when
inordinate or irresponsible, can be a tool of
oppression or injustice.”
– Thus, too much emphasis on voluntarism
The limits of control
• “Despite the constant emphasis upon the
‘dignity of man’ in our own liberal culture, its
predominant naturalistic bias frequently
results in views of human nature in which the
dignity of man is not very clear.” (6)
– Science as a worldview
– The human as creature
The limits of control
• The acknowledgement of the reality of the
free self “introduces an unpredictable and
incalculable element into the causal sequence.
It is therefore embarrassing to an scientific
scheme.”
– The measurable as the real
– The human as object, not subject. Humans not
essentially different from molecules.
– Too much emphasis on control
• For Niebuhr, each of these things is bad
– Denies limits of human condition, which for his both
as creature and creator
– Both fantasies of total control, ignoring the limitations
of human power and knowledge
• Fortunately for Americans, their creed is
incoherent, and these two positions counteract
each other, leading to pragmatic adjustment
– Equilibrating power
• The menace of communism is in its coherency,
which enhances the power of its dogma
• Niebuhr sees in Communism a kind of
atheistic religion, with Russia as its holy land.
• For Niebuhr
– Communism describes property (ownership) as the
sole source of power
– Political power (government) is a front for this power
– Thus, only the property-less class (the proletariat) is
disinterested, and can act in the universal interest
• Since property is for Communists the only form of power,
the property-less have no particular interests to defend
• The vanguard are the first group to achieve
revolutionary class consciousness,
comprehending the laws of history
• Thus, they act in the interest of all humanity.
• Moreover, they act freely: finally
understanding the laws of history, they can act
in understanding of true reality
– N. sees here a contradiction: if everything is
historically determined, how can action be free?
• Thus, the Soviet government must adopt an
attitude of hostility toward all other forms of
government, denying their legitimacy and
viewing them as destined for overthrow
• The basic problem of the Soviets, for Niebuhr,
is pride
– Believe in the absolute truth of their dogma
– Embrace vanguard (Soviet gov’t) as infallible
• Moral reasoning by definition is for Niebuhr inherently
problematic, reflecting pride.
• “Too much certainty of justice always leads to
injustice.”
• America shares these messianic impulses, but
they have been checked by historical
contingency
– Ironically, America is less free at its moment of
greatest power than it was in its fragile infancy
– But pretensions to innocence, to newness, remain
• Realists, Idealists
Against “Realism”
• Cold War realists argued that any means was
justified in combating Communist nations
– Vanity, a pretense that America is so good as to
legitimate any means
– “Loyalty to the community is... Morally tolerable
only if it includes values wider than those of teh
community.”
– For Niebuhr, communities cannot be moral,
cannot transcend themselves.
Against “Idealism”
• For Niebuhr, the idea that the nation can
withdraw from the world, or that all
disagreements can be talked out.
– The first prizes moral purity over moral
responsibility
– The second is naive in its refusal to acknowledge
the Communist threat
• For Niebuhr, moral behavior requires
responsible engagement w/the world, which
will sometimes mean compromised morality
– To be good, one cannot be pure.
Niebuhr’s Religious Validation of
Politics
• P. 63
• Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in
our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by
hope.
• Nothing which is true or beautiful or good
makes complete sense in any immediate
context of history; therefore we must be saved
by faith.
• Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be
accomplished alone; therefore we are saved
by love.
• No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the
standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our
standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by
the final form of love which is forgiveness.
– A critical dimension not only on politics, but on
the self.
– Morality not relative, but our understanding of it
is flawed.
• Strangely enough, none of the insights derived
from this faith are finally contradictory to our
own purpose and duty of preserving our
civilization. They are, in fact, prerequisites for
saving it.
• If the US is destroyed, the “primary cause
would be that the strength of a giant nation
was directed by eyes too blind to see all the
hazards of the struggle; and the blindness
would be induced not by some accident of
nature or history but by hatred & vainglory.