Thesis advisor: Michael J. Himes / Reinhold Niebuhr is among the most politically and theologically influential--and most misunderstood--American thinkers of the twentieth century. This misunderstanding is the product of a tendency among Niebuhr's admirers and critics alike to overlook the elaborate interplay of the theology and politics in Niebuhr's thought. I argue that Niebuhr understood himself as a preacher to religion's "cultured despisers," and that Niebuhr construed this role in fundamentally theological terms. As a consequence, there is a dynamic theology underlying his political engagement with the broader culture. Chief among the "cultured despisers" drawn to Niebuhr's thought were the political realists who dominated early Cold War politics. They were particularly compelled by the political insights of Niebuhr's Christian Realism, and proceeded to incorporate these insights into own realist visions. I argue that in the act of appropriating Niebuhr the political realists unwittingly absorbed much of his theology; and in neglecting to recognize the theological underpinnings to Niebuhr's political insights, they ended up misconstruing Niebuhr in important ways. I seek to demonstrate that fully appreciating Niebuhr's contributions to political discourse requires an awareness of how theology suffuses even his most overtly political writings. This project consists of two parts. Part One examines the theological formation of the concept at the heart of Niebuhr's Christian Realism: namely, the doctrine of original sin. From the outset, Niebuhr maintained that elaborating the full political implications of original sin required a theological structure. Through sustained conversations with theological contemporaries Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Emil Brunner, and his brother H. Richard Niebuhr, Reinhold elaborated the distinctive theological anthropology, understanding of grace and redemption, and account of the dynamic interplay between faith and history underlying his exploration of original sin and its political implications. Niebuhr's Christian Realism, I suggest, is inextricably theological. Part Two analyses Niebuhr's reception among three of the most prominent midcentury political realists: Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Arthur Schlesinger. Although they were among Niebuhr's most astute interpreters, all three figures wrongly presumed that they could extricate the political elements of Niebuhr's thinking on original sin from the theological structure in which this thinking was embedded, and import only these political elements into their own realist visions. Their uses of the concept of original sin indicate that they both adopt far more of Niebuhr's theology than they ever intended to, and misconstrue some of his most profound insights. I close by considering what a theologically grounded Christian Realism has to offer political discourse. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

I offer an interpretation of John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr that highlights the role of virtue in the visions of democracy that both writers articulated. Based on this interpretation, I argue that Dewey and Niebuhr both implied that virtue is necessary for democracy to thrive, despite the fact that they spent much of their careers in intellectual conflict with each other. Specifically, I claim that they were both committed to the value of humility and mutuality for democratic society. Humility and mutuality are virtues with profound importance for democracy that logically flow from Dewey's framework of American pragmatism and Niebuhr's Augustinian Christian theology. I argue that their ironic and unnoticed commitment to humility and mutuality as democratic virtues helps us to understand their shared critique of capitalism. For Niebuhr and Dewey, the democratic self stands in contrast with the capitalist self: the moral agent required and rewarded by capitalism is one who is severely deficient in humility and mutuality. I contend that the conception of democratic virtue that Dewey and Niebuhr shared, which informed their common critique of capitalism, led them to revise socially-inherited notions of property ownership, enact political solidarity with the working class, and support the struggles of labor unions. This virtue-ethical interpretation demonstrates that two writers with deeply conflicting worldviews can both hold that democracy and capitalism are irreconcilable at the level of the moral agent.

Reinhold Niebuhr remains at the center of a national conversation about America's role in the world, and commentators with divergent political and religious positions look to his 1952 work, The Irony of American History, in support of their views. In this study, Scott R. Erwin argues that an appreciation of Niebuhr's theological vision is necessary for understanding the full measure of Irony and his perspective on life more broadly. Such a study is important because many individuals reading Irony today fail to acknowledge the central role that his Christian beliefs played in his writings. Niebuhr described his theological vision as being 'in the battle and above it,' and, it was this perspective that led Niebuhr, in Irony, to assert that America must both take 'morally hazardous action' in combating the aggression of the Soviet Union and engage in critical self-evaluation to prevent the country from assuming the most odious traits of its Cold War foe. Niebuhr developed his theological vision over the course of the 1930s and 1940s through engagement with Christian doctrine, as most readily seen in his academic works such as The Nature and Destiny of Man, and engagement with current events, as seen in his many journalistic writings during this period. By focusing primarily on Niebuhr's writings between 1931 and 1951, Erwin traces the development of his Christian interpretation of human nature and history, establishes how it informed his theological vision, and reveals how that theological vision underlay his writings on current affairs.

Thesis advisor: Lisa S. Cahill / This dissertation makes a case for renewed attention to the notion of collective agency and responsibility in Christian ethics. The overarching argument is that the kinds of moral claims we frequently make on social groups cannot be adequately reduced to individual or structural terms, and that a rightly construed sense of collective agency can help fill this conceptual gap. This view is in keeping with important elements of Christian reflection on the nature of social interaction and social life, and the main goal of the dissertation is the development of a model for understanding some groups as collective moral agents. After a survey of treatments of the problem of collective agency and responsibility in the Bible and Christian theology in the introduction, the dissertation turns to the work of two major figures in twentieth century Christian ethics, Jacques Maritain and Reinhold Niebuhr, to provide the central elements of this view of collective agency. Namely, these figures supply contrasting but mutually correcting accounts of individual intersubjectivity, structural non-reducibility, and collective intentionality in social groups. Perspectives from the social sciences and from analytic philosophy help clarify the issues at hand and adjudicate the differences between Maritain and Niebuhr. The dissertation ends with a theological synthesis of the forgoing discussion, proposing a view of the potential for collective moral agency that takes account of the capacity for both friendship and coercion in human intersubjectivity, for both community and conflict in social organization, and for both intentional creativity and impersonal functionality in the interaction of individual and structural elements of social life. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

The question of the nature and meaning of history has become increasingly important in contemporary thought. In theological circles, it has become the central theme of discussion. Thereare a number of reasons why this is so. The events of the times in which we live have brought about a definite rejection of any knowledge-equals-progress idea of history as well as a call for interpretation of the profound social crises which we confront. The widespread influence of existentialism, with its emphasis on relativism and subjectivism, has brought into question not only the nature of history, in terms of present reality, but also the validit of the historians' pursuits. Beginning from the point of Christian ethics and giving considerable attention to the nature of man, [Reinhold] Niebuhr develops his concept of history quite differently from [Rudolf] Bultmann. It will be the task of this paper to examine the idea of history in the thought of each of these men and then, through a critique and comparison, evaluate each in terms of their strengths and weaknesses as well as their similarities and differences.

Liberalism is often criticized as too moralistic and removed from the realities of politics; and too complacently accepting of injustices. Such criticisms, familiar among contemporary political theorists, were expressed far more forcefully in the earlier twentieth century. Liberalism then came under attack from anti-liberals who wholly rejected the institutional and ethical limits on the political deployment of violence and fear insisted upon by liberals. Such anti-liberals advanced arguments for political ruthlessness on behalf of a truer morality - either the morality of pursuing morally imperative political goals; or the morality of "realistically" responding to threats to public order. Liberals found themselves faced with a dilemma: to adhere to their principles at the price of hampering their ability to combat both existing injustices, and the threat posed by ruthless anti-liberal movements; or to abandon their scruples in seeking to defend, or transform, liberal society. The criticisms and challenges confronting liberalism between the end of World War I, and the end of the Cold War, thus centered on opposing responses to problems of political ethics. They were also shaped by opposed ideals of political ethos - the "spirit", dispositions of character, sensibility and patterns of perception and response, which characterize the way in which actors pursue their values and goals in practice. In this dissertation I reconstruct these debates, and explicate the ethical claims and questions involved, presenting accounts of the opposed - yet often convergent - positions of moral purism, end-maximalism, and realism. I offer accounts of the ethical arguments and ethos of such anti-liberals as Lenin, Trotsky, and Lukacs; and explore the ambivalent commitments and ambiguous arguments of Max Weber, who influenced both critics and defenders of liberalism. Finally, and primarily, I reconstruct the ethical arguments and ethos of "tempered liberalism" - a strain of liberalism, represented by Reinhold Niebuhr, Isaiah Berlin, and Adam Michnik, which sought to re-imagine liberalism as an ethos which rejected both the innocence and complacency of some earlier liberalisms, and the ruthlessness of anti-liberalism, and steered a "moderate" ethical path between hard-headed, skeptical realism, and values of individual integrity and idealism. / Government

Svenska kyrkan har flera gånger offentligt engagerat sig i migrationsfrågan. I den här uppsatsen analyseras, utifrån en dekonstruktion av skriften ”Detta vill vi! Kyrkorna och migrationsfrågorna”, hur Svenska kyrkans nationella ledning använder kärleksbudskapet för att motivera sitt engagemang i migrationspolitiken. I dekonstruktionen identifieras tre temor som berör rörelse, inkludering respektive makt. Materialet från dekonstruktionen diskuteras även utifrån Reinhold Niebuhrs och Jacques Derridas etik. Ett resultat från dekonstruktionen är att begreppet kyrkan som något transcendent eller som en organisation har betydelse för hur kärleksbudskapet kommuniceras. Vidare föreslås utifrån arbetet i uppsatsen att även människans egenkärlek skulle behöva diskuteras i en skrift som ”Detta vill vi! Kyrkorna och migrationsfrågorna”. Ett annat resultat är att i kyrkornas budskap finns en inneboende maktkamp mellan kärleksbudskapet och de politiska lagarna, vilket skulle behöva belysas i skriften. / The church of Sweden has several times engaged in migration politics. In this study the use of the love commandment by national level of the church of Sweden to motivate its engagement in migration politics. The analysis is based on deconstruction of the leaflet “Detta vill vi! Kyrkorna och migrationsfrågorna”. Within the deconstruction three themes are identified that relate to movement, inclusion and power, respectively. Further, the material from the deconstruction is discussed from the ethics of Reinhold Niebuhr and Jacques Derrida. A result of the deconstruction is that the concept church as something transcendent or as an organization has an impact on the communication of the love commandment. Based on the results of the study, it is recommended that the self-love of the human being should be brought up in a leaflet as ”Detta vill vi! Kyrkorna och migrationsfrågorna”. Another result is that within the message of the church there is an inherent conflict between Jesus’ message of love and the political laws, and this conflict would need to be illustrated in the text.

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<p>“What characterizes an acceptable theory of self-realization?” The thrust of the present dissertation is towards seeking an answer to this central problem, which stems from the fundamental human experience that life involves change, and that in a modern society such change is often expected to be towards a realization of potentials and the good life for the individual. </p><p>The dissertation has a three-fold purpose. The first is to clarify the content of five modern theories of self-realization from three academic fields. The theories are those of the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow, the philosophers Charles Taylor and Alan Gewirth, and the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Bernard Lonergan. These are methodologically studied by the help of seven analytical questions. The second purpose is to perform a lengthwise comparatative analysis of the five theories, the results of which lead to the third; namely to critically discuss several elements of the reality of human life which have proven to be missing or supressed in much of the material.</p><p>The theoretical framework for the dissertation runs along two axes: one concerns what is developed as a distinction between internalism and relationalism, and the other is to cast a critical light on the lack of attention paid by the the theories of self-realization to experiences which run counter to optimistic ideas of individual development, such as death, loss and dependence. </p><p>The dissertation concludes with an outline for a constructive position based on the necessity of a theory’s closeness to experience, and on the need for reconcilitation of what may seem to be unabridgeble in human life. A theory of self-realization must do more than formulate positive conditions for change. It must also take into consideration conditions that are not directly related to, and sometimes even run contrary to, realization of the self.</p>

“What characterizes an acceptable theory of self-realization?” The thrust of the present dissertation is towards seeking an answer to this central problem, which stems from the fundamental human experience that life involves change, and that in a modern society such change is often expected to be towards a realization of potentials and the good life for the individual. The dissertation has a three-fold purpose. The first is to clarify the content of five modern theories of self-realization from three academic fields. The theories are those of the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow, the philosophers Charles Taylor and Alan Gewirth, and the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Bernard Lonergan. These are methodologically studied by the help of seven analytical questions. The second purpose is to perform a lengthwise comparatative analysis of the five theories, the results of which lead to the third; namely to critically discuss several elements of the reality of human life which have proven to be missing or supressed in much of the material. The theoretical framework for the dissertation runs along two axes: one concerns what is developed as a distinction between internalism and relationalism, and the other is to cast a critical light on the lack of attention paid by the the theories of self-realization to experiences which run counter to optimistic ideas of individual development, such as death, loss and dependence. The dissertation concludes with an outline for a constructive position based on the necessity of a theory’s closeness to experience, and on the need for reconcilitation of what may seem to be unabridgeble in human life. A theory of self-realization must do more than formulate positive conditions for change. It must also take into consideration conditions that are not directly related to, and sometimes even run contrary to, realization of the self.