Abstract
In this paper, we are interested in extending out the dialectical models of religious ethics and political theology that Reinhold Niebuhr and Emmanuel Levinas began by enacting a conversation between these two theorists. We do this by presenting and critically comparing Niebuhr’s and Levinas’s thought as concerns three key issues in moral and political theory: (1) the nature of persons, (2) the source and content of the moral ideal of love and the political ideal of justice, and (3) the impossibility and yet continued practical relevance of ideals for social life. Ultimately, we conclude that they mutually offer reasons to find hope in the face of political cynicism.
Highlights
In this paper, we are interested in extending out the dialectical models of religious ethics and political theology that Reinhold Niebuhr and Emmanuel Levinas began by enacting a conversation between these two theorists
He continues on to propose that “this motivational deficit is a moral deficit, a lack at the heart of democratic life that is intimately bound up with the felt inadequacy of official secular conceptions of morality” (Critchely 2007, p. 8). In his own positive proposal, Critchley turns to Alain Badiou, Knud Ejler Løgstrup, and Emmanuel Levinas for support in articulating a “conception of ethics that begins by accepting the motivational deficit in the institutions of liberal democracy, but without embracing . . . nihilism” (Critchely 2007, p. 8)
We are interested in extending out the dialectical models of religious ethics and political theology that Niebuhr and Levinas began by enacting a dialogue between these two theorists
Summary
Central to both Niebuhr’s and Levinas’s thought is the depth/transcendence of personality. God (Niebuhr), even one’s own selfhood is dynamic to such a degree that self-understanding is never a final achievement, but merely a constant epistemic and ethico-religious task It is in light of this task that political theology is never a matter of how best to conceive of social life and organization, but of how to live with other persons defined by a singularly infinite dignity. Niebuhr and Levinas both offer robust resources for religious ethics and political theology as concerns their notion of relational personhood, but given the specifics of their variant accounts, it is crucial that we avoid thinking that they would align at the level of social theory and public policy. Their work is more of a resource for how to conceive of the basic categories according to which political philosophy could be undertaken as a theological task, on the one hand, and according to which theology (whether Jewish or Christian) could be undertaken as a political activity
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