Abstract
At the heart of the political realist ethic of international politics which Niebuhr developed through the 1930s and 1940s to replace his pacifism was a belief that without coercion there could be no order, and without order there could be no justice. This chapter examines these claims and the bases on which they rest, namely, Niebuhr’s view of human nature and of human community.
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Notes
Niebuhr, Europe’s Catastrophe and the Christian Faith (London: Nisbet 1940) 28.
Niebuhr, Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History (London: Nisbet 1938) 114.
Niebuhr believes that faith makes clear very important elements of reality which rationalism misses. We must admit that we do not know, on the basis of rational analysis alone, all we need for our collective life. There is dogmatic hubris of reason which blinds us to important elements of reality such as evil and self-regard. We cannot understand our discordant nature or the world without ‘suprarational’ religion. This conclusion was reached by the mathematician, physicist, engineer and philosopher Blaise Pascal who decided that there is ‘nothing so consistent with reason as this denial of reason’ (A. J. Krailsheimer, Pascal: Pensées [Harmondsworth: Penguin 1966] no. K182).
Niebuhr, Discerning the Signs of the Times: Sermons for Today and Tomorrow (London: Student Christian Movement Press 1946) 139–42.
Niebuhr, The Self and the Drama of History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1955) 223.
Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (London: Nisbet 1952) 142.
Augustine, The Political Writings, ed. Henry Paolucci (Chicago: Gateway Editions 1982) 1.
See Dun and Niebuhr, ‘God Wills Both Justice and Peace’, Christianity and Crisis 15 (13 June 1955).
In Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era, 1934.
Niebuhr, ‘The Limits of American Power’, Christianity and Society vol. 17, no. 4 (Autumn 1954) 5.
Niebuhr, Tower and Justice’, Christianity and Society vol. 8, no. 1 (Winter 1942) 10.
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© 1997 Colm McKeogh
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McKeogh, C. (1997). Force and Order. In: The Political Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25891-8_3
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