Even the Devils Believe

I just finished reading Reinhold Niebuhr's classic work, Moral Man & Immoral Society. I'm not quite sure how to react to it, though I've relied on some of Niebuhr's insights fairly heavily over the years. More than anything, Niebuhr tries in this book to problematize the quest for perfect justice within any political system, warning against the kind of partisan messianism the religious right has suffered from for decades and which the religious left seems to be plunging into head-long these days.

But for all my sympathy with Niebuhr's stick-in-the-mud pessimism, I'm walking away from Moral Man & Immoral Society believing he problematizes too many things. Most importantly, I'm not sure N's attempts to blur the distinctions between violence and non-violent resistance or create distinctions, albeit modest ones, between individual sin and social sin are wholly successful. As something of a disciple of Arendt, the latter idea is the one I find the most disturbing:

"An Englishman in office," [Gandhi] declares, "is different from an Englishman outside. [...] It is possible, therefore, for me to condemn the system in the strongest terms, without considering you to be bad and without imputing bad motives to every Englishman." It is impossible completely to disassociate an evil system from the personal moral responsibilities of the individuals who maintain it. An impartial teacher of morals would be compelled to insist on the principle of personal responsibility for social guilt. But it is morally and politically wise for an opponent not to do so. Any benefit of the doubt which he is able to give his opponent is certain to reduce animosities and preserve rational objectivity in assessing the issues under dispute.

As a curb against arrogant judgment of all who are perceived to be in an oppressing class, this is probably useful. It is certainly also useful as a political stratagem, to make someone who is indeed contributing to some greater sin comfortable enough to face that fact. However, I don't believe it is always, even often, "morally wise" to disconnect personal culpability from social sin.

Not to fall prey to self-Godwining, but the example that springs immediately to mind is Adolf Eichmann, and the treatment of him in Hannah Arendt's account of his trial. Eichmann was undoubtedly formed by the anti-Semitism of early 20th century Europe. Furthermore, he was motivated by quite human, quite rational, quite understandable concerns — the desire to be promoted to Colonel of the SS, to better provide for his family and to help his nation. The details of his own evil deeds (helping coordinate the transport of Jews to death camps throughout Europe) were embedded in a much wider sin committed by an entire society. It would be easy to see motives for separating Eichmann's guilt from that wider sin, since he was such an upstanding citizen and might be receptive to gentle correction, as long as that correction didn't implicate him too harshly.

But this is exactly the opposite of what Arendt does — instead, she points to Eichmann as an example not of how responsibility for banal, socialized sin should be separated from the sinner, but as an indication of just how insidious and banal profound evil can be. When faced with someone like Eichmann — or with the protectors of racial apartheid in 1930s America, which is an example frequently referenced in Moral Man & Immoral Society — I have to agree with Arendt that the social nature of the sin makes it all the more critical that we address it head-on.

I understand the rationale for Niebuhr's category of social sin. We're surrounded by a huge variety of such sins — the destruction of the environment, continued subtle discrimination against a host of groups for jobs and other benefits, and so forth. If any of us went out and began accusing others of their indirect role in these problems, we would be surrounded by judgmentalism, hypocrisy, and not much else. Applying a metric of personal responsibility to social moral failings without any sense of proportion would be problematic.

But I suspect the willy-nilly application of Niebuhr's dichotomy has taken its toll as well, by letting folks on the left who have inherited his ideas feel that they bear no onus to help resolve these problems. I think I spy precisely this dichotomy in the leftie religious politics that heaps blame on a variety of groups for the social ills we face — as long as those groups don't belong to our particular brand of leftie religion. Niebuhr reminds us that the most effective ethics is one that calls us to repentance as well as those we see as our enemies — but in Moral Man that critical piece of the puzzle is drowned out by hundreds of pages that problematize the very tools that have proven most effective at fighting social ills in the 20th century — religious idealism and spiritually-motivated non-violent resistance. His disjunction between individual morality and the impossibility of perfect social justice cedes too much moral culpability to institutions.

Reinhold Niebuhr undoubtedly holds some of the keys to solving our society's most difficult problems. We are mired in an absurd political messianism that sways people by making promises it cannot keep and by claiming a connection to transcendent values it cannot live up to. But Arendt provides a necessary corrective to too wide an application of the idea of social sin — we cannot and should not give up so much of our claim to moral autonomy that we find ourselves railing helplessly against forces that we can, in fact, band together to change.