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Niebuhr's Critique of Rationalism: A Limited Validation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
The life and thought of Reinhold Niebuhr are characterized by a running debate with rationalism. As a Christian, Niebuhr saw it as his task to defend the Biblical view of man against corruption by an opposing view found in the rationalist tradition of Hellenic philosophy. As a modern Christian, Niebuhr felt even more compelled to resist the incursion of rationalism into Christianity represented in theology by liberal Protestantism and in ethics by the Social Gospel movement.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1972
References
1 New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932. Ch. 2.
2 Niebuhr insists, for example, that while religious faith cannot be subordinated to reason, “the religious faith through which God is apprehended … cannot be in contradiction to the subordinate principle of meaning which is found in rational coherence …” Op. cit. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941), I, 165.
3 See, for example, Plato's, paean to reason as “the soul's pilot,” in Phaedrus 247b in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds. Hamilton, E. and Cairns, H. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 494.Google Scholar
4 See Kant's chapter, the Incentive of Pure Practical Reason, in the Critique of Practical Reason, trans, by White, Lewis Beck (Indianapolis: The Liberal Arts Press, 1956), 74–92.Google Scholar
5 Kant maintains that men's perception of the “sublimity” of their “supersensuous” rational vocation by itself “effects respect for their higher vocation.” Ibid., 91.
6 See Aristotle's discussion of the “incontinent man” in the Nicomackean Ethics, Bk. VII, Chs. 1–3, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. McKeon, Richard (New York: Random House, 1941), 1036–42Google Scholar. Earlier, in Book III, Ch. 1, Aristotle makes the more comprehensive rationalist claim that every wicked man is ignorant of what he ought to do …” Ibid., 966.
7 See The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 3f., 14, 112.
8 Ibid., 277–84.
9 There are, of course, many other aspects of Niebuhr's understanding of sin, especially his detailed introspective analysis of the relationship between the experience of moral freedom and guilt. See ibid., 255–60. But his insistence on the experienced fact of responsibility for sin reflects his conviction that the individual is not compelled to sin by reason or any other determinative factor.
10 Toulmin, Stephen, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960)Google Scholar ; Baier, Kurt, The Moral Point of View, Abridged Edition (New York: Random House, 1956)Google Scholar ; Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press, 1971)Google Scholar ; and Gert, Bernard, The Moral Rules (New York: Harper and Row, 1970).Google Scholar
11 Op. cit., 160ff.
12 A similar objection to Baier's procedure is made by Kai Nielsen in his excellent article, Why Should I Be Moral? in Methodos XV, No. 59–60 (1963), 275–306.
13 Op. cit., 96.
14 This seems to be precisely the conclusion to which Nielsen comes in his treament of the question. See op. cit., 292.