Reinhold Neibuhr: Moral Man and Immoral Society Chapter 1 "Man and Society the art of living together"

Who is this Person?

Reinhold Neibuhr (1892-1971)was an American theologian, ethicist and public figure. He was active during the first half of the 20th century and his ideas had wide impact on leaders and culture in that time. He wrote widely on ethics and politics and was a public intellectual figure.

I am interested in him in the context of education because of his inspiration for Myles Horton who founded the Highlander Folk School who I was introduced to in a wonderful book called “We make the Road by Walking”. Horton credited Neibuhr with helping to form his activist philosophy of education and his moral understanding of society.

Why am I reading this book?

I am reading this book primarily based on the legacy of Myles Horton and his attribution of his worldview to the time he spent as a student of Neibuhr before his time at Highlander folk school. I am also interested in what his thinking says about the nature of education which I believe is a system made up of ethical folks that adds up to an immoral system. 

I am also sort of interested in how this intersects with the ideas of other philosophers I am reading. 

An important thing to remember in reading this book is its historical context. Here Niebuhr is writing before the start of world war two but after world war one. The collapse of the American (and world) economic system laid bare the explorations of capitalist systems on the average man and was leading to a rise in sentiment that capitalist controlled democracies might not be the way forward.

So much of what Niebuhr was seeing in his own time seems to echo today. 

Chapter 1: Man and Society: the Art of Living Together

Neibuhr begins his book in a very pessimistic tone. He isn’t one for the inherent good or triumph of man over his challenges. The very first paragraph lays that out pretty clearly (p1)

“ the Humane Society has roots which light deeper in history than the beginning of human life, men have made comparatively little progress in solving the problems of their aggregating existence. Each century originates a new complexity and generation faces and new vexation in it. For all the centuries of experience, men have not yet learned how to live together without compounding their vices in covering each other with mud and with blood. This society in which each man lives is at once the basis for and the nemesis of that form is that fullness of life which each man seeks. “

I don’t disagree but, DAMN. 

He concludes with an even grimmer outlook for the future

“human Society will never escape the problem of equitable distribution of the physical and cultural goods would provide the preservation and fulfillment of  human life “

Neibuhr makes a point that it is in conquering nature’s challenges to life through technology and co-operation that man has increased his cohesion and developed his societies but this development has created man-made systems for inequity and exploitation. 

It may be that there will be no salvation for the human spirit from the more and more painful burdens of a social injustice until the ominous tendency in human history has resulted in perfect tragedy. 

Shopenhaur would be proud of this doom and gloom outlook on human suffering. Human injustice seems to only end for Niebuhr when humanity ends itself. 

Neibuhr outlines a natural basis for altruism but says essentially that , at scale, that altruism tends to break down and that no social co-operation at the national scale is possible without coercion. He points to the ideals of education and higher angels of our nature as well meaning but ultimately misguided.  p.3-4

“While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant others what they claim for themselves. Zoe educators ever since the 18th century have given them selves to the pond illusion that justice voluntary corporation waited only upon him or universal more adequate educational enterprise, there is good reason to believe that the sentiments of benevolence and social goodwill will never be so pure or powerful, and that the rational capacity to consider the rights and needs of others in fair competition with our own will never be so developed as to create the possibility for the anarchistic millennium which is the social utopia either explicit or implicit of all intellectual or religious moralism 

all social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion. Well no state can maintain its unity purely by coercion neither can I preserve itself without coercion. Whether factor of mutual consent is strongly developed, and we're standardized approximately fair methods of adjudicating and resolving conflict of interest within an organized group of an established, the coercive factor in social life is frequently covert, and becomes apparent only in moments of crisis and in the groups policy towards recalcitrant individuals. Yet it is never absent.

… Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet where the ethical and course factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises. The democratic method… Is really much more coercive than at first seems apparent. The majority has its way, not because the minority believes the majority is right ( few minorities are willing to grant the majority the moral prestige of such a concession), but because the votes of the majority are a symbol of social strength. Whenever a minority believes that it has some strategic advantage which outweighs the power of numbers, and whenever it is sufficiently intent upon its ends, or desperate enough about its position in society it  refuses to accept the dictates of the majority“

Niebuhr looks to the relationships of minority groups to majority control as one of tension (obvs) and points at the nature of political unrest and revolt as often short sighted and dependent on the perspective of the minority in its relationship to power. p.5 (emphasis mine)

Should a minority regards on strength, whether economic commercial, as strong enough to channel to power of majority, it may attempt to rest control the state apparatus from the majority, as in the case of the fastest movement in Italy. Sometimes it resort to arm conflict even if the prospects of victory are nun too bright as in the instance of the American Civil War in which the southern planting interests out voted by the combination of Eastern industrialists and western agrarians resolve to protect their peculiar interests and privileges by forceful dissolution of a national union.  The coercive factor is, in other words, always present in politics. If Economic interests do not conflict too sharply, if the spirit of accommodation partially resolve them, and if a democratic process has achieved moral prestige and historic dignity, the coercive factor in politics maybe come to convert to be visible by the casual observer. 

I feel like neibuhr has accurately described modern American politics here, that the coercion of the political system remains hidden to those who have the privilege to be served by it and the minority members of the society suffer because their economic interests, and their lack of accommodation of them in the wider body politic are unresolved by that system and the oppression of that system undermines prestige for them making its coercion central to their experience in ways it isn’t to the majority. 

Its that force that is used to coerce that is foundational to societal organization p6:

Limitation of the human mind and imagination, the inability of human beings to transcend their own interests efficiently to envisage the interests of their fellow men as clearly as they do their own makes force and inevitable part of the process of social cohesion. But the same force which guarantees piece also makes for injustice. “Power, "Said Henry Adams, "is poison"; and it is poison which blind the eyes of moral insight and lames the wheel of moral purpose 

The role of power in human relations does blind the eye of moral insight by centering the concern of the powerful and disincentivizing them to reduce their own position for the good of the group. Niebuhr goes on to outline places where, in historical societies this has been the case before drawing this conclusion about his own, and our own, society: p7

“the two most obvious types of power our military and economic, though in primitive societies the power of the priest, partly because he dispenses supernatural benefits and partly because he establishes public water by message less arduous and those of the soldier, files without a soldier and the landlord. The chief difference between the agrarian civilization, which lasted from the rise of ancient Babylon in Egypt the fall of European feudalism, and the commercial industrial civilizations up today is that in the former the military power is primary, and in the ladder it has become secondary, to economic power. …

the businessman in industrial overlord are gradually you surfing the position of eminence and privilege once hell by the soldier and the priest. In most European nations their sentency over the land of aristocratic of military traditions is not as complete as in America. “

 Niebuhr is calling out here that the truest root of power, and thus responsibility for the state of society, is in the economic interests that leverage the other methods of power. We see this today in both lobbying/special interest actions of politicians for the ultra wealthy and also in the evangelical prosperity gospel.

Niebuhr goes on p.7-9

“ our interest at the moment extra cost at any kind of significant social power develop social inequality. Even if history as viewed from other than equalitarian perspectives, it is granted that differentials and economic awards are morally justified and socially useful, it is impossible to justify the degree of inequality which complex societies inevitably create by their increased centralization of power which develops with a more elaborate civilization. The literature of all ages is filled with rational and moral justification of these inequalities, but most of them are specious. If superior abilities and services to society deserve special rewards it may be regarded as axiomatic at the rewards are always higher than the service is warrant. No impartial society determines the rewards. The man of power who controls society Grant these prerequisites to themselves. Whenever special ability is not associated with power is in the case of the modern professional man, is excess of income over the average is ridiculously low in comparison with that of the economic overlords, who are the real centers of power in an industrial society. Most rational and social justifications of unequi privilege are clearly after thoughts. The facts are created by the disproportion of power which existed and given social system. They justifications are usually dictated by the desire of the men of power to hide the nakedness of their greed, and by the inclination of society itself to the other brutal facts of human life from itself. This is a rather pathetic but understandable inclination; since the facts of a man's collective life easily rob the average individual of confidence in the human enterprise. The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with all of the collective activities of the human race, Springs chiefly from this source; that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience. They therefore invent romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to Obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior. Sometimes they are anxious to offer moral justifications for the brutalities from which they suffer as for those which they commit. The fact that the hypocrisy of men's group behavior, about which we should have much more to say later, expresses itself not only in terms of self justification but in terms of moral justification of human behavior in general, symbolizes one of the tragedies of the human spirit: availability to conform it's collective life to its individual ideals. As individuals men believe that they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other. As racial economic and national groups they they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.“

Niebuhr is hitting the nail on the head here as is K from men in black: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxRTPtevw3lhe3ndXil_55jak7ivlMqu5B

This power, directed by the powerful can be domination of other out groups but also subjugation of minority groups within the society itself as the power (economic or military or spiritual) becomes concentrated at the top of the hierarchies the very things that tie those at the bottom to the group are robbed from them. p.11 

All through history one may observe the tendency of power to destroy its very raison d'être. It is suffered because it achieves internal unity and creates external defenses for the nation. But it grows to such proportions that it destroys the social peace of the state by animosities which its extractions arouse, and enervates the sentiment of patriotism by robbing the common man of the basic privileges which might find him to his nation. Words attributed to Plutarch by Tiberius Gracchus reveal the hollowness of the pretensions by which the powerful classes in less there slaves in defense of their dominions: "The wild beast and Italy had at least their layers, dens and caves where to they might retreat; where as the men who fought and died for that land had nothing in it save air and light… The poor folk go to war to fight and die for the delights riches and superfluities of others”

SOAD provides the question: ( https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxOq-fh74BKpZV60s_SXOw7CtHyafU3JOS)

Niebuhr has a view of the powerful as the engines of despair in society and views their largess in the context of their positions and power relations as well as the idealism of those who think their humanity can be appealed to p.13: 

“the man of power, though humane impulse may awaken in him, always remain something of the beast of pray. He may be generous within his family, and just within the confines of the group which which he shares his power and privilege. With only rare exceptions, his highest moral attitude toward members of other groups is one of we're like sportsmanship toward those who equal his power and challenging, and one of philanthropic generosity towards those who possess less power and privilege. Is philanthropy is a perfect illustration of the curious compound of the brutal and moral which we find in all human behavior; or his generosity is at one to display it has power and an expression of his pity. Is generous impulses freeze within him if his power is challenged or his generosities are excepted without grateful humility. 

I also read this view of philanthropy as preserving dependence in Friere who wrote in pedagogy of the oppressed.6-7: 

“Those who work for liberation must not take advantage of the emotional dependence of the oppressed— dependence that is the fruit of the concrete situation of domination which surrounds them and which engendered their unauthentic view of the world. Using their dependence to create still greater dependence is an oppressor tactic. Libertarian action must recognize this dependence as a weak point and must attempt through reflection and action to transform it into independence. However, not even the best-intentioned leadership can bestow independence as a gift. The liberation of the oppressed is a liberation of women and men, not things. Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others. Liberation, a human phenomenon, cannot be achieved by semihumans. Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them. When people are already dehumanized, due to the oppression they suffer, the process of their liberation must not employ the methods of dehumanization.:

 The idea that humanity is inherent and that systems ought to reduce inequality inorder to promote freedom isn’t a new one. Niebuhr laters states that powers which seek to do this always end up replicating this system of inequality and replace capitalist oligarchs with communist oligarchs.  The Goal and ideology may be stated as different but human nature is the same.

No matter what, niebuhr seems to think, we are subverted by the tools and the thinking that allow us to come together- we use them to tear at each other and rip ourselves and others apart p.15-16

“Societies  are perennial harassed not only by the fact that the coercive factors in social life (which the limitations of human intelligence and imagination make an inevitable) create injustice in the process of establishing peace; but also by the tendency of the same factors, which make for an easy peace within a social group, to aggravate Intergroup conflict. Power sacrifices justice to peace within the community and destroys peace between communities.”

There is a check on the power of leaders to attack other communities that has arisen in the democratic era but it carries with it a large loophole. Populism and alignment with a mythic or philosophical or emotional anchor point will allow to a population to empower a ruler to create injustice, war, and worse. Niebuhr points this out when he talks about the reign of Napoleon and then later with the role of Roosevelt in the Spanish American war and invasion of Cuba p18-19

“the ambition and vanity which prompted him could be veiled and exalted because the will to power of an adolescent nation and the frustrated impulses of pugnacity and martial order of the pitiful little "men in the street "could find in him symbolic expression and vicarious satisfaction… The frustrations of the average ma, who can never realize the power and glory which his imagination sets as the ideal, makes him the more willing tool and victim of the imperial ambitions of his group. … The same power. Which prompts the fear that prevents immediate action, also creates the mounting hatred which guarantees ultimate rebellion.”

This is also the rise of trump and fascism: The cruelty is the point because hurting the right people means protection of the in-group that holds the power. The pitiful and pugnacious man in the street can find vicarious satisfaction in that cruelty because the spiritual, and cultural powers cast him in the role of mythic victim/oppressed hero.

“the society is in a perpetual state of war. Lacking moral and rational resources to organize its life, without resort to coercion, except in the most immediate an Internet social groups, man remain the victims of the individuals, classes and nations by who is force a momentary coerced unity is achieved, and for the conflicts that are certainly created. The fact that the coercive factor in society is necessary and dangerous seriously complicates the whole task of securing both peace and justice… there are definite limits of moral Goodwill and social intelligence beyond which even the most vital religion and the most astute educational program will not carry a social group… the problem which society faces is clearly one of reducing force by increasing the factors which make for a moral and rational adjustment of life to life; of bringing such force as it still necessary under responsibility of the whole society; of destroying the kind of power which cannot be made socially responsible; and I'm bringing forces of moral self-restraint bear on types of power which could never be brought completely under social control. “  p19-20

 Here Neibuhr is underlining his idea of human societies; They need to be coercive to be unified but that coercion sews the seeds of their fracture. The neccesity and danger of that coercion is the complicating factor. One would like to think that people could be moral enough to take the actions needed to balance those scales but Niebuhr doesn’t believe that to be possible on a societal scale. While an individual may be virtuous and well-meaning all individuals aren’t so. This allows cover for the powerful to remain so and to manipulate the structures to preserve their power. P.21  

“the stupidity of the average man will commit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and withdraw his activities from effective control since it is impossible to count on enough moral Goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for the good of the hall, it must be destroyed by corset methods and he's will always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those abolished”

“so difficult is it to avoid the sililla of despotism in the Caribdis of anarchy valley safe to Hazard the prophecy that the dream of perpetual peace and brotherhood for human society is one which will never fully be realized. It is a vision prompted by the conscience and inside of individual man but in capable of fulfillment by collective man.  … Collective man, operating on the historic and Monday and seen, must contain himself with a more modest goal. He's concerned for some centuries to come is not the creation of an ideal society in which they will be uncoerced in perfect peace and justice, society in which there will be enough justice, and which coercion will be sufficiently nonviolent to prevent his common enterprise from a issuing into  complete disaster.  That goal will seem too modest for the romanticist; but the romanticists have so little understanding for the perils in which modern society lives, and overestimate the more resources at the disposal of the collective human enterprise so easily, that any goal regarded as worthy of achievement by them must necessarily be beyond attainment.” P.21-22

Overall however Neibuhr is (to me) a realist about the structures and motivations of human behavior. The aggregate of mankind isn’t a moral organization. It’s a practical organization and the rules and norms by which it relates to other groups and to the groups that comprise it are self selected, hierarchical, and coercive and self sustaining.


Man and society are at odd with and sustained by each other. Niebuhr recognizes this tension as a reality of human society and a product of human nature. This tension between the individual morality and the collective coercion and will to power is how he frames the whole book.