"Niebuhr’s pessimistic account was based not merely on observation of the world as it is, but also on a theology which emphasized that sin is endemic to the human condition in history. Man, as a creature whose existence paradoxically combines spirit and matter, can sense his own “finitude and fragility” in the universe; annihilation and meaninglessness threaten all of his hopes, achievements, and affections. Thus man is tempted to prideful assertions of his will that provide an illusion of control and meaning. While he can ease his anxiety and pretension through faith in God rather than self, that faith is always imperfect (imperfect faith being, for Niebuhr, the essence of “original sin”). Reason can sharpen ethical sensitivity and practice, but, ironically, it can also sharpen the capacity to rationalize selfishness and the will to power”and, doubly ironic, sometimes both at the same time.I'm drawn this evening to Burke's meditation on "finitude and fragility."
The tendency to rationalize, Niebuhr argued, is especially pronounced in man’s “collective life.” While individuals in their personal dealings often transcend self“interest (hence “moral man”), nations dealing with other nations, or social classes with other social classes, have little or no capacity for self“transcendence (“immoral society”). Nations and classes have limited understanding of the people they harm by their unjust self“assertion; they lack appreciation for the often complicated laws and institutions through which such injustice is perpetuated; and they are more inclined to embrace rationalizations of self-interest than prophetic denunciations. These facts, for Niebuhr, explain why dominant groups rarely yield their privileges except when put under pressure by some countervailing social force.
Niebuhr’s “Christian realism” was not, however, a Darwinian or Machiavellian ethic of pure struggle and the will to power. Niebuhr stressed the relevance of agape , or Christian love, not as a directly practicable political principle, but as the ideal toward which justice strives and the standard of judgment on all political achievements in history. Moral, rational, and religious appeals might be subordinate factors in the struggle for justice, but Niebuhr still counted them as real: if rational and ethical considerations alone don’t make oppressors yield just concessions to the oppressed, they often do enable them to internalize rather than contest reforms once they are established.
Political power is necessary in politics, Niebuhr insisted, but it should be exercised by men and women who possess prudence, self“knowledge, forgiveness, and charity. Equipped with these faculties and theological virtues, they will be better able to fight for justice in a way that makes reconciliation possible. (Lincoln and Churchill were Niebuhr’s models in this respect.) There is already in Moral Man and Immoral Society a hint of the appreciation Niebuhr later developed for the American constitutional system, with its checks and balances and its genius for recognizing”and thereby channeling and containing”society’s inevitable conflicts."
"Man, as a creature whose existence paradoxically combines spirit and matter, can sense his own “finitude and fragility” in the universe; annihilation and meaninglessness threaten all of his hopes, achievements, and affections. Thus man is tempted to prideful assertions of his will that provide an illusion of control and meaning."
I'm struck, powerfully, by Niebuhr's alternative to the NRA's "WE'RE ON OUR OWN/EVERYBODY ARM UP" theology and ethic. For Niebuhr, it seems, the very fragility of life calls for a civilized and democratic community that negotiates and discerns and adjudicates conflicts and strains in human society. A gun in every hand, an angry man in every truck: this is madness, not democracy.
