Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by Reinhold Niebuhr, 277 pages
This
is a book founded upon a simple observation, namely that human
immorality is amplified by ever larger societal structures - a group of
people can make a decision that no individual in the group would make,
precisely because none of them feel directly responsible for it.
Indeed, it is the nature of the nation-state that it is able to turn
even selfless self-sacrifice into the servant of selfish immorality, as
when a heroic soldier dies in an unjust war. This simple observation
has major implications. Neither reason nor religion, according to
Niebuhr, are adequate to the task - as valuable as they are, they are
too easily co-opted and made servants of injustice.
Unfortunately, this leads to an all-encompassing moral
cynicism, which views all of society as nothing but a mad scramble by
individuals and factions for power and influence. A fully "just"
society being impossible, and peace being impossible without justice,
even violence cannot be excluded as a political tool, except possibly on
prudential grounds. Niebuhr does not deny the existence of moral
values, but he does claim that they cannot be established or maintained
on a societal level except through coercion. The only recourse, then,
is to a dismal utilitarianism.
Niebuhr's logic is compelling if and only if the reader
accepts his unstated premises. For those who do not accept the dogma of
the total depravity of man, or Hobbes' location of the motivating force
of government in a war of all against all, or Marx's identification of
justice with the equalitarian cause, however, it cannot satisfy.
No comments:
Post a Comment