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Power and Suspicion: The Perspectives of Reinhold Niebuhr1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

John Patrick Diggins
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Abstract

This essay seeks to bring Reinhold Niebuhr into the postructuralist dialogue in order to suggest that his writings are far more constructive about the human predicament. The essay begins by presenting eleven positions commonly taken by poststructuralists. It then examines similarities between Niebuhr and postructuralist thinkers in their interrogation of the Enlightenment to expose the illusions of reason and progress and in their exposure of the Marxist philosophy of history as a false teleology that dramatizes truth and freedom emerging triumphant from conflict and struggle. Instead of posing postructuralist constraints and incarceration, however, Niebuhr's theology and philosophy of history offer indeterminate potentialities for freedom. Whereas the poststructuralists fetishize systems and structures, Niebuhr believes in the possibilities of human agency. And while Foucault presents us with a theory of oppression without an oppressor, Niebuhr seeks to show how power issues from ourselves, from the sin-prone ego that prevents consciousness from rising to knowledge of the motives for its own actions. The essay argues, finally, that in Niebuhr power and morality meet in one, with a suspicious glance at the disavowal of power and the pretensions of morality, and with responsibility for the use of power remaining within mind, will, and conscience.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 6 , March 1992 , pp. 141 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1992

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References

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3 The literature on poststructuralism is overwhelming. A good place to begin is Culler, Jonathan, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982Google Scholar); for an intelligent attempt to apply poststructuralism to political thought, see Connolly, William, Political Theory and Modernity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988Google Scholar); to diplomatic thought, see DerDerian, James, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987Google Scholar).

4 John Adams contended, against Jefferson, that there is no such thing as a “natural aristocracy” of talent and virtue; certain people have undue power and influence for the worst reasons (money, looks, air, gait, etc.) and thus, if elected to office, must be safely isolated in the upper chamber, where their abilities can be exploited and their power placed under surveillance and control. See Diggins, John Patrick, The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp. 69–99Google Scholar.

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