A Rationalist View of Niebuhr

...It is the first full-length critique of Niebuhr's thought from an explicitly humanistic and naturalistic perspective...

...And if in this experience he found polarities, paradoxes and dialectical tensions, then he found what Plato and Hegel and Marx and Dewey also found—except that Niebuhr could never believe that the resolution of the paradoxes would be so easy and so certain...

...and would insist more than Dewey on the purely proximate character of any solutions arrived at by any means whatsoever...

...This does not mean that Niebuhr rejects a science of politics in the academic sense...

...that he sees coercive power, not as an inevitable evil, but just as "an evil of the times...

...that, if our dreams are unfulfilled, this is due simply to the divorce between theory and practice...

...It is an art...

...The important difference between a Dewey and a Niebuhr is that Niebuhr would deny that reason is the sole or even the chief instrument for problem-solv-in", would assert that reason is itself on occasion a pail of the problem...

...Part of the difficulty may reside in the antithesis in the title of the book...

...Because if Odegard wishes to prove that Niebuhr is disregardful of a science of politics, he has, of course, Niebuhr's most cordial cooperation in such an enterprise...

...Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch Dean, Pacific School of Religion Holtan Odegard's study of Rein-hold Niebuhr's political theology is to be welcomed on two counts...

...It was out of this experience that his theology developed...

...However, a well-rounded philosophy of democracy will always need both Dewey's "science" and Niebuhr's "sin...

...For instance, when Odegard cites four instances of Niebuhr's repudiation of an ultimate rationality in the universe, he is apparently unaware that both William James and John Dewey would assent to these same propositions...

...But if Niebuhr does not share in this liberal faith—and it is important to remember that long ago he began with something very much like it?then the change in his outlook was due, not to some superimposed theology, but to direct and intimate experience with social action, first in the problems of industrial labor in Detroit, and then with large domestic and international problems from his post in New York City...

...And if, as Odegard reminds us, Walter Reuther can now sit down and "bargain creatively" with the managers of capital, it is because, as both Reuther and Niebuhr cannot forget, there was a time when working-men and Socialist comrades pitted power against power and poured in sacrifice and devotion and even life itself, so that a subsequent generation might enjoy the luxury of the rational resolution of conflict...

...As for "creative bargaining," both Munich and Yalta taught us the limitations of that device...

...And Shakespeare sees as clearly as does Niebuhr that this is an aspect of man with which mere reason cannot cope...

...And in the review of the Kegley and Bretall book on Reinhold Niebuhr, Hook demonstrated his ample appreciation of the political functions of Niebuhr's thought...

...The fact that Shakespeare would not call it by the same name is irrelevant...

...It will need the second to wrestle with those more tragic dilemmas which can be neither borne nor overborne by simple science...

...Only let them not argue that those who find it necessary to turn their gaze toward grimmer realities are being "other-worldly...

...Nevertheless, as I lay down this book after a conscientious reading of it, I have the peculiar feeling that I simply cannot recognize in it the Reinhold Niebuhr with whom so many of us are acquainted in person or in print...

...It will need the first to promote a faithful attention to the rational procedures of society...

...The formula which unites the two is to be found nowhere in Dewey, but in Niebuhr's celebrated aphorism: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible...

...Another part of the difficulty derives from the fact that much of this book is simply an exhibition of an orthodoxy clubbing over the head a neo-orthodoxy while accusing it of being too orthodox...

...Let me acknowledge, then, that there are contributions which Dewey has made which do not fall within the province of Niebuhr's interests...

...Odegard is qualified in several respects to conduct this inquiry into the relationship of sin and science...

...and, best of all, an argument by a disciple of the late Irving Babbitt of Harvard that Dewey was the father of fascism...

...Indeed, all American pragmatists are irrationalists in repudiating the theory of an ultimate logical coherence in life, and in insisting that the role of reason is instrumental rather than dominant and constitutive...

...Odegard has entered thoroughly into the writings of Rein-hold Niebuhr, but that he has explored carefully the relevant literature of contemporary theology, and has brought to this inquiry a good background in history, political science and the philosophy of John Dewey...

...It also means that, like all good politicians and statesmen, and unlike the tradition that runs from Machiavelli through Marx to Murray Chotiner, he does not believe that politics in practice is a science...

...that he believes our troubles today are due, not to sin or to malice, but to "stupidity, inertia and circumstance...

...And that Niebuhr has in fact been for over three decades one of our most penetrating interpreters and bold leaders of political action has been unable to disturb the proofs in this dissertation...

...If there are individuals who prefer to focus their attention not on such problems but on the rationally ordered dilemmas of city-county planning, and on the comedies rather than the tragedies of Shakespeare, then that is their privilege...

...His graduate studies at Wisconsin in political science and his present position with a city-county planning commission must have given him some acquaintance—so one would think—with sin...

...an argument by a positivist, that Dewey was not a logician...

...Also, it would have enhanced Ode-gard's entire critique if he had started with a more careful appreciation of the large body of common insight which a Dewey and a Niebuhr share with the tradition of American pragmatism...

...We learn that our author is in favor of the "transactive approach" to human affairs...

...His undergraduate training at Harvard in biochemistry must have taught him something about science...

...man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary...

...Now it is probable that a Sidney Hook, who stands more squarely in the tradition of John Dewey, would find more merit in Odegard's writing than does the present critic...

...Odegard speaks of the dogmatisms, the ossified concepts, the mere generalities in Niebuhr's thought, but appears to be blissfully unaware of the peculiarly dogmatic character of his own liberal rationalism...

...Niebuhr has none of Dewey's interest in scientific method and in organized intelligence, little of Dewey's concern for the institutions and structures of political democracy in their positive functions...

...That Dewey was in fact a logician, a metaphysician, and an ardent apostle of democracy could never destroy the beauty of the deductive demonstrations to the contrary...

...From an empirical point of view, both Niebuhr and Shakespeare are looking at the same side of human nature...

...If the rationalist does better with the first half of the aphorism, the theologian does better with the second half...

...Moreover, there is abundant evidence in this book not only that Mr...

...As for Niebuhr's preoccupation with sin, this is an indictment we may bring against him as we bring it against the William Shakespeare of the tragedes...

...Indeed, I am reminded of certain brilliant a priori arguments I have heard about John Dewey: an argument by a philosophical idealist, that Dewey was not a metaphysician...

...The important question for the political scientist is not whether Niebuhr's preoccupation with sin offends against some dogma of rationalism, but whether or not it sharpens his grasp of the realities of fascism, Communism, domestic strife, and international tension...

...Also, in contrast to shorter essays by humanists that have already appeared, this dissertation pays Niebuhr the courtesy of taking seriously his theology and of insisting that the theology has an organic relationship to the political teaching...

...But it does mean, for one thing, that he finds political science, like all the so-called "social sciences," shot through with presuppositions of an unscientific character, which are too easily sanctified by being blanketed into the process of scientific inquiry...

...that the truly efficacious way of resolving our problems is that of "creative bargaining...