Reinhold Niebuhr Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

One month after Glen told me that he had terminal cancer, I was sitting with him at his dining table in Pasadena, California, discussing an autobiography that he intended as his final book. Glen asked me, "What should I include in my... more

One month after Glen told me that he had terminal cancer, I was sitting with him at his dining table in Pasadena, California, discussing an autobiography that he intended as his final book. Glen asked me, "What should I include in my autobiography?" I insisted that he finally write about race. I knew that the topic was important for him as one of the central concepts influencing the connection he made between the way of Jesus and justice within his overall project in theological ethics. Throughout his long and fruitful career that included active participation in the Civil Rights Movement, advocating for human rights, opposition to the death penalty, opposition to torture, advocacy for Palestinians, for the environment, and for just peacemaking, one could hear an underdeveloped response to racism. But it was subtle, and awkward. He wanted to talk about it to improve his understanding. I was sure that he should finally do so in his autobiography. Glen had stories. During the Civil Rights Movement he was an activist, partnering with other activists who struggled for an end to Jim Crow segregation. His family was involved in that work as well, in a collective advocacy for a better society and in opposition to practices of authoritarianism and domination that target society's most vulnerable. Glen's activism stemmed from his formative childhood years in a Christian family that valued integrity and fairness and paid attention to social issues.

During the twentieth century the protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was an important public intellectual. From the Thirties until the Sixties he wrote numerous historical, theological and political works, and was a tireless polemicist... more

During the twentieth century the protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was an important public intellectual. From the Thirties until the Sixties he wrote numerous historical, theological and political works, and was a tireless polemicist and animator of some journals. Not only has he influenced the development of American politics but also he has inspired the reflections of some authors of classical realism in IR. This essay analyses the inextricable and fertile relationship between politics and religion in Niebuhr’s theory. Rejecting both sentimental idealism and cynical realism he argued a “Christian realism” in which the legacy of St. Augustine’s thought was strong. Through his tamed realism, that was based on the Christian view of human nature and history, Niebuhr analysed and judged national and international politics of the United States. In this way, he offered a prophetic world order vision that is probably still valid today.

The paper provides an account of an emerging critique of the implicit assumptions underpinning HR Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture typology, particularly those related to Christology, culture, and Christendom. A consideration of this critique... more

The paper provides an account of an emerging critique of the implicit assumptions underpinning HR Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture typology, particularly those related to Christology, culture, and Christendom. A consideration of this critique along with a sketch of alternative typologies of “Christ and culture”, and some traditions of post-Christendom engagement with culture and society, suggests that there are good reasons why we should remove this tool from the public theologian’s toolkit.

While an emerging group of scholars has made productive inroads investigating emotion’s role in politics, the way in which scholars face these emotions remains an issue in need of updated study. While no article can provide definitive... more

While an emerging group of scholars has made productive inroads investigating emotion’s role in politics, the way in which scholars face these emotions remains an issue in need of updated study. While no article can provide definitive conclusions on such a topic, the current effort posits one narrative device that IR scholars might utilise in order to cope with the realities of politics – irony. Irony is useful in that it allows us a ‘critical distance’ from our subject without requiring us to abandon our emotions. The article briefly reviews several scholarly positions or practices, from objectivism to verstehen, which confront, quarantine or accommodate scholarly emotionality in varied ways, before articulating the benefits of irony. It proposes two forms of ironical study drawn, respectively, from the work of Reinhold Niebuhr and Richard Rorty.

This article appeals to classical realism for new insights into the role emotions play in shifting the terrain of political allegiance in global politics. Although undetected in readings emphasizing rational statecraft, realists such as... more

This article appeals to classical realism for new insights into the role emotions play in shifting the terrain of political allegiance in global politics. Although undetected in readings emphasizing rational statecraft, realists such as Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr were centrally concerned with human emotions and their political impact. While following the intellectual currents of their time in regarding emotions as fixed impulses, these realists' deep appreciation for the contingencies of history also led them to cast emotions as socially conditioned mechanisms of adaptation. By revisiting the texts of classical realism, this paper develops a fresh account of how emotion responds to and engenders change in the social world – in particular, change in the location of political allegiances. I then show how Morgenthau and Niebuhr applied these ideas not only to the nation-state but also to the most vexing transnational phenomena of their time – communism and liberal internationalism. In conclusion, the paper speculates that these reflections on dynamic allegiances at the transnational level offer realists and other international relation theorists insight into the emotional appeal, adaptability, and organizational complexity of contemporary non-state movements and actors.

This article revisits the early realist understanding of tragedy in international relations in order to highlight its debt to continental philosophical thought and tragic theology. Far from sharing a view of tragedy as objective... more

This article revisits the early realist understanding of tragedy in international relations in order to highlight its debt to continental philosophical thought and tragic theology. Far from sharing a view of tragedy as objective externality, early realists engaged with the existential conditions that make up the paradoxical structure of experience: human beings’ constant albeit frustrated striving to make the world intelligible and ascribe meaning to their actions. The upshot of this article is that early classical realists, such as Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr, entertained a view of tragedy as a necessary fiction, that is, a fabricated but real condition that is inextricably linked with the constitution of subjectivity and human agency. This paradoxical view of tragedy as an ‘enabling obstacle’ that contests the idea of tragic destiny as inescapable determinism finds its roots in the continental philosophical and theological background of their thought but is more consistently exhibited in Niebuhr’s theological anthropology.

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive,... more

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

This blueprint for a constructive public theology assumes that Christian theology already includes public discourse. Following David Tracy's delineation of three publics--church, academy, culture--further constructive work leads to a... more

This blueprint for a constructive public theology assumes that Christian theology already includes public discourse. Following David Tracy's delineation of three publics--church, academy, culture--further constructive work leads to a public theology conceived in the church, reflected on critically in the academy, and meshed with the wider culture. Public reflection on classic Christian doctrines in a post-secular pluralistic context takes the form of pastoral illumination, apologetic reason, theology of nature, political theology, and prophetic critique.

In his Lays of Ancient Rome (1842), Thomas Babington Macaulay, brithis diplomat and scholar, offers one of the most outstanding examples of non-existent Roman literature: the ancient songs of archaic Rome. Without the work of the... more

In his Lays of Ancient Rome (1842), Thomas Babington Macaulay, brithis diplomat and scholar, offers one of the most outstanding examples of non-existent Roman literature: the ancient songs of archaic Rome. Without the work of the historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, such a work would never have taken place. We will deal briefly with the ideological framework in which this work is inscribed, which comes to illustrate how much of our certainties and truths does not stop being the result of complex theoretical constructs.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a titanic thinker. Judged by the power, depth, and scope of this thought, he was arguably "the greatest American theologian of the twentieth century," as Gary Dorrien suggests. He was an astute theological critic, a... more

Reinhold Niebuhr was a titanic thinker. Judged by the power, depth, and scope of this thought, he was arguably "the greatest American theologian of the twentieth century," as Gary Dorrien suggests. He was an astute theological critic, a shrewd theorist of power, a discerning 1 political psychologist, and a tremendous apologist for the Christian faith in the modern world. He was also an incredible writer. He painted a sweeping portrait of human life, at once full of endless possibilities, but also tragic and fragmentary, full of cruelty and sin and egoism. His contributions to theology, social ethics, and politics were immense. He elaborated an organic and dynamic relationship between religion and politics, provided a rational justification for social ethics as an autonomous discourse, and creatively reinterpreted the doctrine of original sin in a way that united his own theology and politics under the banner of a single, coherent realist vision. As a theological critic, he constructed an elaborate typological system by means of which he was able to set Christianity into a sprawling dialogue with major worldviews within the western tradition, and articulated a sophisticated and compelling alternative to Barthian "neo-orthodox" theology. As a political thinker, he formulated a powerful critique of the ethical attitudes of the privileged classes, still relevant today with little need for qualification, and in many ways the most impressive aspect of his early writings on politics.

In the disciplines of political science and international relations, Machiavelli is unanimously considered to be “the first modern realist.” This essay argues that the idea of a realist tradition going from the Renaissance to postwar... more

In the disciplines of political science and international relations, Machiavelli is unanimously considered to be “the first modern realist.” This essay argues that the idea of a realist tradition going from the Renaissance to postwar realism founders when one considers the disrepute of Machiavelli among early international relations theorists. It suggests that the transformation of Machiavelli into a realist thinker took place subsequently, when new historical scholarship, informed by strategic and political considerations related to the transformation of the US into a global power, generated a new picture of the Renaissance. Focusing on the work of Felix Gilbert, and in particular his Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the essay shows how this new interpretation of Machiavelli was shaped by the crisis of the 1930s, the emergence of security studies, and the philanthropic sponsorship of international relations theory.

While the practice of reinventing realism is by no means novel, recent reinventions have taken a decidedly reflexive turn. This article examines how three particular scholars — Anthony Lang, Michael Williams, and Richard Ned Lebow — have... more

While the practice of reinventing realism is by no means novel, recent reinventions have taken a decidedly reflexive turn. This article examines how three particular scholars — Anthony Lang, Michael Williams, and Richard Ned Lebow — have revived some important and relatively obscured principles from classical realists, thereby recovering some practical ethics important for contemporary world politics. The article outlines the principles held in common by this scholarship. Reflexive realism has also resurrected and re-emphasized a once obscured critical voice of realists like Hans Morgenthau. In the process, it has served as a launching pad for a serious critique of eschatological-based philosophy, including neoconser- vatism. Several avenues for the future development of reflexive realism are also identified.

American Quarterly
Vol. 59, No. 3, Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States (Sep., 2007), pp. 833-855

Σε αυτό το κεφάλαιο, εξετάζεται η κομβική συμβολή του Νίμπουρ στην ανάπτυξη ενός διεθνολογικού στοχασμού, με κατεξοχήν θεολογικά θεμέλια, που προσπαθεί να ισορροπήσει μεταξύ τραγωδίας και ελπίδας, ή αλλιώς, μεταξύ της αποδοχής της... more

Σε αυτό το κεφάλαιο, εξετάζεται η κομβική συμβολή του Νίμπουρ στην ανάπτυξη ενός διεθνολογικού στοχασμού, με κατεξοχήν θεολογικά θεμέλια, που προσπαθεί να ισορροπήσει μεταξύ τραγωδίας και ελπίδας, ή αλλιώς, μεταξύ της αποδοχής της αμαρτωλότητας της ανθρώπινης φύσης που ρέπει προς την σύγκρουση και την αρπακτικότητα και της πίστης στην δυνατότητα του ανθρώπου να πραγματώσει τους όρους της συλλογικής του συνύπαρξης με κριτήρια την δικαιοσύνη και την αγάπη. Με όρους διεθνούς πολιτικής, ο Νίμπουρ υποστήριξε την αναγκαιότητα οι διεθνείς δρώντες να εξισορροπούν ανάμεσα σε μια ανεπιφύλακτη απόρριψη του ειρηνισμού, από τη μια πλευρά, και μια εξίσου ισχυρή καταδίκη ενός υπερφίαλου επεμβατισμού, από την άλλη. Ο Νίμπουρ στάθηκε απόλυτα επικριτικός και προς τις δυο αυτές ακραίες διεθνείς συμπεριφορές μη διστάζοντας να χρησιμοποιήσει θεολογικοπολιτικά επιχειρήματα που οι συνομιλητές του, οι διαμορφωτές εξωτερικής πολιτικής, και το αμερικανικό κοινό της εποχής θεωρούσαν αναπόσπαστο μέρος της αμερικανικής πολιτικής κουλτούρας. Σε κάθε περίπτωση, η κριτική του Νίμπουρ στην αμερικανική κοινωνία, ειδικά πριν τον Β΄ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο, καθώς και η ενίοτε σκληρή ψυχροπολεμική του ρητορική, κινδυνεύουν να παρεξηγηθούν αν δεν τοποθετηθούν στο ερμηνευτικό πλαίσιο του ηθικοπολιτικού στοχασμού που του υπαγόρευε η θεολογική του συγκρότηση. Τέλος, η ευρύτητα και η ευελιξία της σκέψης του, ένας ευδόκιμος συνδυασμός ρεαλιστικού ήθους και ηθικής της ευθύνης, μπορούν να εξηγήσουν την αμείωτη δημοφιλία του αλλά και την αναβίωση της πνευματικής του κληρονομιάς στην πολιτική σκηνή των ΗΠΑ, κυρίως κατά την περίοδο του λεγόμενου ‘πολέμου κατά της τρομοκρατίας’.

While Reinhold Niebuhr's realist political philosophy continues to find advocates in many quarters on account of its explanatory power, his Christian ideals have had difficulty gaining purchase in the material world. The tension between... more

While Reinhold Niebuhr's realist political philosophy continues to find advocates in many quarters on account of its explanatory power, his Christian ideals have had difficulty gaining purchase in the material world. The tension between particular political interests and universal moral ideals threatens not only to undermine Niebuhr's efforts to preserve the ethical quality of politics but also his grounds for hope. The source of this problem can be traced to a weakness in the Christological foundations of Niebuhr's Christian realism—specifically to his intentional severing of classical Christology from politics in his appropriation of Augustine's realism. After examining the reasons for this rejection of classical reflections about Jesus, this article explains how the Christology of Niebuhr's favorite early Christian realist, Augustine, makes possible a theological reasoning that expands the social imagination, and promotes a deeply principled and hopeful material transformation, while not forfeiting its critical and explanatory capacity.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s support for the foundation of the state of Israel is argued to be an expression of his Christian realism, and as such is based on his ethics but not his theology. The first section assesses Niebuhr’s support for Jewish... more

Reinhold Niebuhr’s support for the foundation of the state of Israel is argued to be an expression of his Christian realism, and as such is based on his ethics but not his theology. The first section assesses Niebuhr’s support for Jewish return to the Land of Israel in relation to modern protestant and Jewish support for relocation of the Promised Land back from America to British Mandate Palestine. The second section demonstrates that Niebuhr’s support for Zionism grew out of his threefold moral, political and theological realism. This meant taking into account Israel’s relation to the United States, and increasingly evidenced a national supersessionist outlook. The third section argues that this shift was undertaken via the role of the temporarily messianic nation, whereby the USA replaced Israel as a nation with a mission. In the fourth section, it is argued that the natural theology that underlies Niebuhr's ethics constitutes a 'Hebraic' turn which is ironic given that he does not ground his Zionism in the covenant with Abraham. The last section argues that Niebuhr’s support for Israel’s foundation needs to be understood within his reconstruction of natural law, along with his critique of the fusion of nationalism and religion in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As Niebuhr’s approach to Israel was based on ethics not dogmatic theology and exegesis, and as it became part of a notion of America as messianic, it failed to be passed on adequately to the mainline protestant churches.

Reinhold Niebuhr could not think thoroughly about the Holocaust. This may surprise some, for Niebuhr is generally known as the hard-headed realist who understood sin and evil to be real and active in the world. Niebuhr could not think... more

Reinhold Niebuhr could not think thoroughly about the Holocaust. This may surprise some, for Niebuhr is generally known as the hard-headed realist who understood sin and evil to be real and active in the world. Niebuhr could not think thoroughly about the Holocaust because he could not think thoroughly about the emergence of a new type of evil. If Germans took pleasure in the destruction of Jews for its own sake, then the meaning of history is itself put at risk, at least for those who would learn from Niebuhr. For all his realism about sin and evil, Niebuhr cannot imagine a world in which the mysterious meaning of history will not be revealed at the end of days. For many who survived the Holocaust, Auschwitz was the end of days. This does not make their experience definitive for the rest of us. It does mean that evil, when pursued for ends that are fundamentally meaningless, threatens both faith and confidence in the meaning of history. In thinking about the Holocaust, this essay draws not only on Hannah Arendt, but also on my own research in the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimony at Yale University.

Ele alınan bu çalışmada realizmin uluslararası ilişkilerdeki yerinin analizi yapılmış, realizmin ortaya çıkışı, düşünsel temelleri, uluslararası ilişkiler tarihi içerisinde gelişimi, kendisine yöneltilen eleştiriler ve uluslararası... more

Ele alınan bu çalışmada realizmin uluslararası ilişkilerdeki yerinin analizi yapılmış, realizmin ortaya çıkışı, düşünsel temelleri, uluslararası ilişkiler tarihi içerisinde gelişimi, kendisine yöneltilen eleştiriler ve uluslararası sistemin gerektirdiği durumlar sonucunda geçirdiği değişim ortaya konmaya çalışılmıştır.

This book is a study of pragmatic conservatism, an underappreciated tradition in modern American political thought, whose origins can be located in the ideas of Edmund Burke. Beginning with an exegesis of Burke's thought, it goes on to... more

This book is a study of pragmatic conservatism, an underappreciated tradition in modern American political thought, whose origins can be located in the ideas of Edmund Burke. Beginning with an exegesis of Burke's thought, it goes on to show how three twentieth-century thinkers who are not generally recognized as conservatives―Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Peter Viereck―carried on the Burkean tradition and adapted it to American democracy. Pragmatic conservatives posit that people, sinful by nature, require guidance from traditions that embody enduring truths wrought by past experience. Yet they also welcome incremental reform driven by established elites, judiciously departing from precedent when necessary. Mindful that truth is never absolute, they eschew ideology and caution against both bold political enterprises and stubborn apologies for the status quo. The book concludes by contrasting this more nuanced brand of conservatism with the radical version that emerged in the wake of the post-war Buckley revolution.

Reinhold Niebuhr's "The Irony of American History" (1952) still has immediate contemporary relevance in its "Christian realist" warning about arrogance in foreign policy. But it's also marked by very conventional Cold War analysis and... more

Reinhold Niebuhr's "The Irony of American History" (1952) still has immediate contemporary relevance in its "Christian realist" warning about arrogance in foreign policy. But it's also marked by very conventional Cold War analysis and untenable views about "national character" and Eastern cultures.

Realism is one of the most used and abused concepts in the political lexicon. It is often interpreted as a cynical or a-moral view of politics. This dictionary entry provides the essential elements of “Christian realism”, and shows its... more

Realism is one of the most used and abused concepts in the political lexicon. It is often interpreted as a cynical or a-moral view of politics. This dictionary entry provides the essential elements of “Christian realism”, and shows its presence within the Social Doctrine of the Church. By rejecting both the traps of a cynical realism and the illusions of a sentimental idealism, “Christian realism” allows for a better understanding and a more adequate praxis of politics.

This paper, a draft of the concluding chapter to a book manuscript, makes a restrained case for restraint. The strongest case for restraint begins by appreciating the myriad factors that make it so difficult to realize today. I propose a... more

This paper, a draft of the concluding chapter to a book manuscript, makes a restrained case for restraint. The strongest case for restraint begins by appreciating the myriad factors that make it so difficult to realize today. I propose a constructivist understanding of restraint via three precepts that acknowledge how restraint involves … (1) both agents and structures; (2) a mixed ontology of mind and body and/or materials and ideas, and, finally; (3) a moral quality. This more comprehensive understanding of restraint discloses the challenges that make it difficult, but not impossible, to materialize. I add two further, contemporary temporal contexts that complicate a politics of restraint.
From this, I focus on some of the common resources for restraint – both domestically and internationally – and then pivot to a case for restraint today, not only for the US, but its citizens, and within global politics more broadly. I propose three meta-normative reasons for favoring restraint over vitalism, and a model for a ‘strategic narrative’ of restraint: (1) restraint is less subject to manipulation than vitalism; (2) restraint produces ‘real’ or more grounded results and a more precise delineation of causal claims, and it (3) prevents community fragmentation and perhaps even promotes community re-vitalization. These are brought to bear upon a ‘strategic narrative’ of restraint that can maintain more clarity of judgment and foster a ‘politics of limits’. The model for such a strategic narrative is Reinhold Niebuhr’s ‘Serenity Prayer’ from 1943, that has been re-appropriated and used for a variety of purposes. Restraint, I assert, helps us cope with our late/post-modern predicament. While it can be rendered passive, for these reasons it should also be considered a form of power, as it conditions us to resist other actors and environments getting ‘us’ to ‘do what we otherwise would not do’.

Riflettere sul regno di Dio aiuta a non separare le dimensioni individuali e sociali della spiritualità cristiana. In questa cornice, il presente articolo vuole presentare tre degli aspetti della relazione tra la società umana e la... more

Riflettere sul regno di Dio aiuta a non separare le dimensioni individuali e sociali della spiritualità cristiana. In questa cornice, il presente articolo vuole presentare tre degli aspetti della relazione tra la società umana e la costruzione del regno: 1. La società umana ritarda il regno del male, e lo si può pensare col concetto paolino di ‘katéchon’ nell’interpretazione politica che propose Carl Schmitt; 2. Più positivamente, anche se lo stato non è il regno, il regno s’istaura pure nella storia con la collaborazione anche politica degli uomini, come lo studia il realismo agostiniano di Reinhold Niebuhr; 3. Ancora più positivamente per le società umane, Adam Mickiewicz aiuta a considerare che l’instaurazione del regno in questo mondo passa anche attraverso il molteplice apporto delle diverse culture.

The nature and conduct of U.S. foreign policy is not difficult to understand. It is in fact quite simple. A modicum of common sense is all that is necessary. What employment of common sense reveals is exactly what one would expect on any... more

The nature and conduct of U.S. foreign policy is not difficult to understand. It is in fact quite simple. A modicum of common sense is all that is necessary. What employment of common sense reveals is exactly what one would expect on any minimally rational assumptions: the foreign policy of the United States reflects the interests of the business community which largely formulate state policy. While various sectors of internationally-oriented private capital have diverse material interests, they converge on the need for access to the markets and resources of the world. The overarching principle of U.S. policy, which reflects these shared class interests, is therefore to sustain an overall framework of order in which American capital is ensured access to the markets and resources of the world, as well as a favorable investment climate. All of these priorities are stated explicitly in the internal documentary record, as are the corollary principles, which include consistent support for authoritarian regimes, opposition to freedom, democracy, and human rights, as well as systematic opposition to independent development. In cases where states pursue a course of independent development (as in Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Iran, Brazil, Nicaragua, and so on), the United States predictably intervenes to restore “stability” which means a favorable business climate, usually achieved through harsh repression. The “communist threat” is then invoked as a pretext for intervention and aggression. Since no communist threat actually exists, even in cases where communists are present, policymakers are forced to consciously fabricate a threat to justify intervention. These are the basic outlines of U.S. foreign policy, obvious once considered, demonstrably accurate when weighed against the facts.

There are different ways to understand the gospel’s call to peace—and that’s a good thing.

This chapter examines Reinhold Niebuhr's anti-utopian defence of democracy, conceived primarily as a political arrangement marked by balance of power, rule by the governed, and a liberal constitutional order. Niebuhr's democracy, however,... more

This chapter examines Reinhold Niebuhr's anti-utopian defence of democracy, conceived primarily as a political arrangement marked by balance of power, rule by the governed, and a liberal constitutional order. Niebuhr's democracy, however, is both a procedural form of government and a substantial ethical commitment. His essayistic style traversed disciplines in search of a pragmatic public philosophy that might navigate between hope and despair given inevitable conflict in democratic life. Pregnant with broader claims of morality and theology, his dialectical method crystallizes deep patterns of thought in what came to be known as his Christian Realism. The chapter places these views in historical context and notes their critical reception, highlighting debts to Augustinian, Marxist, Calvinist, and Kantian traditions. But the focus is normative and contemporary. Renewed questions about the uncertain prospects of democracy and its challenges suggest an op portunity to assess what is living and what is dead in Niebuhr's influential account.

Paul Tillich e l’influenza del demoniaco sugli Stati, in «Avvenire», 23 giugno 2018, p. 22 (recensione a P. Tillich, Il demoniaco. Contributo a un’interpretazione del senso della storia, Ets, Pisa, 2018, e P. Tillich, Filosofia del... more

Paul Tillich e l’influenza del demoniaco sugli Stati, in «Avvenire», 23 giugno 2018, p. 22 (recensione a P. Tillich, Il demoniaco. Contributo a un’interpretazione del senso della storia, Ets, Pisa, 2018, e P. Tillich, Filosofia del potere, Glossa, Milano, 2018).

During the Twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr was not only an important public intellectual but also a seminal thinker in IR. His prophetic voice echoed in the American culture from the Thirties until the Sixties and beyond. At the same... more

During the Twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr was not only an important public intellectual but also a seminal thinker in IR. His prophetic voice echoed in the American culture from the Thirties until the Sixties and beyond. At the same time, statesmen and public opinion found in his political theory an essential contribute both for reflection and action. However the protestant theologian suffered a harsh contrast by scholars, in particular by the positivist ones. This article analyses the path of Niebuhr’s international political thought across the ‘Great Debates’ of IR. From the First ‘mythical’ debate until the last and still open one it examines the role of Niebuhr’s Christian realism in the development of the discipline. By using Flannery O’Connor’s concept of ‘realist of distances’ this essay tries to prove how Niebuhr was able to anticipate and, what’s more, exceed all debates.

In a famous exchange with his brother H. Richard in the pages of The Christian Century over the U.S. response to the Manchurian crisis, Reinhold Niebuhr reproached the moral complacency of the pacifist’s detachment from the affairs of the... more

In a famous exchange with his brother H. Richard in the pages of The Christian Century over the U.S. response to the Manchurian crisis, Reinhold Niebuhr reproached the moral complacency of the pacifist’s detachment from the affairs of the world. Christian realists, however, have always had an uneasy relationship with pacifism. Striving to reconcile the Christian command of love with the harsh realities of power as the consequence of universal sinfulness, Christian realists tended to oscillate between the two sides of a pendulum swinging from Christian pacifism (as in the case of early Martin Wight) to the endorsement of interventionist policies (as in the case of Jean Bethke-Elshtain’s defence of the ‘War Against Terror’). This chapter argues that while this ambivalence has been a source of frustration for both sympathisers and critics, it should primarily be recognised as an asset that accounts for Christian realism’s continued relevance and resurgent popularity.

This review introduces a sampler about Reinhold Niebuhr in German. Theologians and social scientists of the University of Heidelberg show convincingly that Niebuhr' Christian Realism implies important pillars in order to construct an... more

This review introduces a sampler about Reinhold Niebuhr in German. Theologians and social scientists of the University of Heidelberg show convincingly that Niebuhr' Christian Realism implies important pillars in order to construct an up-to-date social ethics.