Niebuhr as Thinker and Doer

Abstract

The vivid and more than life-sized image that many of us shared of Reinhold Niebuhr as thinker and doer is still alive, but dimmed by events and the passing years. As one set of problems follows another, his manner of grappling with them seems very near, yet very far from practice. To read him again is to rediscover how inseparably for him philosophy and action were joined, how durable and lasting are his insights and judgments, and how strongly his writings hold up decades later. What sets him apart is a style and temper toward current problems that remain unique. Whatever the problem, he either starts with a general proposition or moves from the particular in that direction. It is the principle or complex of principles that is important to him, not the once-and-for-all solution. Indeed, he could never escape the conviction that false gods and absolutes were man's most virulent social disease.