Tragedy and History in Reinhold Niebuhr's Thought

Abstract

Reinhold Niebuhr begins an essay he wrote for Nation in 1938 by not ing that one of the recurring motifs of Greek is the hero's deeper involvement in his own fate through his very efforts to extricate himself from it.1 Niebuhr calls this abundant proof of the profound insight [of the Greek dramatists] into human tragedy and suggests that were [in fact] not writing melodrama but were interpreting history.2 essay was occasioned by Niebuhr's deep distaste for the unwillingness of democratic nations of the West to challenge the increasingly aggressive posturing of the axis powers in the years leading up to the second World War. war they seek to avoid, Niebuhr (as it turns out, correctly) pointed out, will be thrust on them as a direct consequence of their inability to act. The history of our era seems to move in tragic circles, says Niebuhr with more than a hint of irony, strangely analogous to those presented symbolically in Greek tragedy.3 In hindsight, it would appear that Niebuhr saw himself as a spectator of world events tragically unfolding before him much like an ancient Greek specta tor of Oedipus's futile attempts to avoid killing his father by acting precisely in such a manner as to cause his father's death. tragic point of view is always that of a spectator. Tragedy comes not from the plot in and of itself but rather is a function of the spectators' knowledge, or more correctly fore-knowledge, that the protagonist's actions are from the beginning inevitably and fatally flawed. What gives Greek its special and unmistakable poignancy is the spectator's identification with the inescapable nature of the hero's fate. hero qua hero is doomed to fail; there is no possibility of escape. Niebuhr is often assailed by his critics for being a relentless pessimist. Such criticism, though sometimes needlessly acerbic, is not entirely unwarranted. Niebuhr himself would probably have preferred being called a realist, or a