Reinhold Neibuhr: Moral Man and Immoral Society Chapter 2: The Rational Resources of the Individual for Social Living
The Rational Resources of the Individual for Social Living
If we begin from the conclusion of chapter one Neibuhr has laid out a puzzle for us. There is not going to be an ideal society with perfect peace and justice without coercion. So what are individuals to do? What are the resources that they should engage with. That seems to be the ends of the next two chapters. What Rational (secular) and Religious resources can an individual use to exist inside this social context?
Neibuhr begins this discussion with the following explanation for the rationalist approach to dealing with social injustice through increasing intelligence:
“ Since the ultimate sources of social conflicts and injustices are to be found in the ignorance and selfishness of men, it is natural that the hope of establishing justice by increasing human intelligence and benevolence should be perennially renewed… Rationalists [are] inclined to believe that injustice could be overcome by increasing the intelligence of men. They held , either that men were selfish because they were too ignorant to understand the needs of others or that they were selfish because the victims of their egoism were too ignorant to defend themselves against their exactions. Or they believed that the injustices of society were due to a perpetuation of ancient and hereditary abuses, which were sanctioned by irrational superstitions and would be abolished by reason”
Neibuhr here has laid out 3 ways in which education/increasing intelligence can act as a check on injustice:
Increasing the moral awareness/intelligence of the transgressor. This is an arguement for learned empathy and morality. This is the social exposure and integration argument. People will not be as prone to injustice if they see themselves as part of larger networks of people. And learning to see others as people is part of that kind of broader liberal moral education.
Cultural solidarity and awareness as a check on greed. If the individual is perpetuating injustice it is because in society there is fertile ground for it. Education of the masses as to the nature of their suffering and the resulting solidarity would take away the ability of the unjust to act as they do because their victims would be empowered to act as a check on injustice.
Education can allow us to view traditional and cultural injustice through the lens of “rational” thought and preserve those things that point toward a just society while pruning those things that perpetuate injustice. This is the critical lens that we are aiming to apply to culture.
I still see these general ideas in popular culture and educational discourse all the time. The rich should be moral, but if they aren’t we should be smart enough to curb their power. Tradition can be powerful but thought should mediate its effect so that we are being intentional about what we preserve.
The general thrust is that that thinking and thought can be reliable ways to counter injustice. Is that true?
Neibuhr would argue that it isn’t. He begins a discussion of these ideas of reason by tracing the roots to the age of reason. Neibuhr asserts that in the age of reason the causes for social injustice were largely seen as a reliance on superstition and religious morals that were driving inequality. The belief was that if we addressed the rational resources of the people they would no longer be bound by these superstitions and injustice would work itself out.
This is reason # 3 above.
Neibuhr cites Condorcet
“ Condorcet, one of the most fervent apostles of the age of reason, expressed the faith of his generation when he declared that universal education and the development of the printing press would inevitably result in an ideal society in which the sun would shine “on an earth of none but freemen, with no masters save reason; for tyrants and slaves, priests and their hypocritical tools will have all disappeared”
Neibuhr points out that this same kind of idealization of the human intellect is still prevalent in our own reformers and educators. We have embarked on this project for hundreds of years yet injustices persist.
“the traditions and superstitions which seemed to the eighteenth century to be the very root of injustice have been eliminated without checking the constant growth of social injustice”
Is education a worthless pursuit then? Neibuhr says no, but education itself will not solve social justice on a societal scale. It operates in a different level of human experience:
“The optimism of the rationalists and educations is not without value. If their optimism should be too unqualified, it need not result in serious error, when they deal with the facts of individual life. Education can no doubt solve many problems of society , and can increase the capacity of men to envisage the needs of their fellow and to live in harmonious s in equitable relations with them…. But individual limitations have a cumulative effect in societies and moral attitudes that tend to diminish them are decreasingly adequate when directed to masses and not individuals. Any error in the appraisal of the moral resources of individuals is accentuated when it is made the basis of political theory and practice” (emphasis added) p.25
I think this is an important note for educators and for folks involved in education. The idea is the plane you make the difference on is interpersonal. That interpersonal work is important but it cannot form the basis for eradication of social injustice.
It is still worth doing and imperative to the endeavor of social justice but it cannot be the nostrum for all the ills. The individual failings of people collectively create massive injustice. Remediating these is never truly effective. You can’t create in each person an enlightened buddha.
Neibuhr then engages in an exploration of why this is. He asserts that man is a fully conscious creature with drives both rational and natural, impulses both selfish and unselfish. Man does not differ from nature except for the capacity of man’s reason to direct natural energy.
Reason for neibuhr isn’t so much the captain of a riverboat but the banks of the river, directing its natural flow.
For Neibuhr Reason isn’t the primary motivator but a mediator and and augmentation to man’s natural state. Reason is what allows us to transcend ourselves. Reason allows us to make more nuanced choices in relation to evironments and other lives. Reason allows for harmony with others. BUT:
“Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life. Reason may extend and stabilize, but it does not create, the capacity to affirm other life than his own… His natural impulses prompt him not only to the perpetuation of life beyond himself but to achievement of harmony with other life.”
I am less sold on mans total consciousness than neibuhr is but I agree here. Reason is what allows us to choose but it isn’t what frames the choices. It isn’t what drives us. I think “nature” here is responsible for a lot of what human beings do. Consciousness and reason often provide justification after the fact.
Reason and morality is the next place that neibuhr turns. He sees the divide between rationalism and moral impulse as laughable:
“ Stoics and Kantians, who derive man’s moral capacities purely from his reason and consequently set the mind at war with the impulses, are therefore alone ways driven to the absurdity of depreciating the moral quality of social impulses, which are undeniably good but obviously rooted in instinct and nature”
Stepping off from dunking on Kant Neibuhr says:
“ Practically every moral theory whenever utilitarian or institutional insists on the goodness of benevolence, justice, kindness, and unselfishness. Even when economic self seeking is approved as in the political morality of Adam smith, the criterion of judgement is the good of the whole… the function of reason for every moralist is to support those impulses which carry life beyond itself and to extend the measure and degree of their sociality . It is fair therefor to assume that growing rationality is a guarantee of man’s growing morality”
Oh, Reinhard. Its clear that you are writing before the horrors of the holocaust and the moral bankruptcy of Objectivism. Rationality and Morality will be divorced and it will be a messy breakup. He continues:
“ The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends. In each instance a development of reason may increase the moral capacity”
Neibuhr is saying here that rationality can work with the better angels of our nature to allow us an increased moral capacity and sense of duty to the other. But there are limits that he lays out in the following pages. He delves into some sociology here and there is a big red CITATION NEEDED kind of character to this writing. For Neibuhr these social moral attitudes are dependent on relationships and personal contacts. We are more likely to help our friends and neighbors than to help people far removed from our lives. This causes friction in societies where we are fellows with a large number of strangers with whom we share responsibilities.
“The dependence of ethical attitudes upon personal contacts and direct relations contributes to the moral chaos of a civilization, in which life is related to life mechanically and not organically, and in which mutual responsibilities increase and personal contacts decrease.”
“The ability to consider or even to prefer the interests of others to our own is not dependent on the capacity for sympathy. Harmonious social relations depend upon the sense of justice as much as, or even more than, upon the sentiment of benevolence.”
In a society that has wide membership its not necessarily sympathy that carries the weight of our moral concern its justice. This ties back to the preceding paragraph. Our responsibilities and social contract that tie each to the other need to be honored equally, the transgression against one could be transgression against another. This is a rational sense of justice that isn’t based in feeling but in practical concern. Black Lives Matter.
Neibuhr, perhaps unknowingly, then opens the door to the misapplication of this rational morality.
“As truth is judged by its harmonious relation to a previously discovered system of truths , so the morality of an action is judged by the possibility of conforming it to a universal scheme of consistent moral actions.”
I don’t think he is talking about this when read in context with the following paragraphs but what this made me think about is ol’ #3 from the beginning of the chapter. This is why critical dialogues are important because this is the mechanic of tradition. My actions are moral and justified because they align with a pre-existing moral code. Critical dialogue is the disruptive rational morality that confronts that system. Anyhow Neibuhr is talking about something different.
“ This means, in terms of conduct, that satisfaction of an impulse can be called good only if it can be related in terms of inner consistency with a total harmony of impulses”
Unreason may approve the satisfaction of an impulse in the self and disapprove of the same impulse in an another. But the reasonable man is bound to judge his actions, in some degree, in terms of the total necessitates of a social situation. Thus reason tends to check selfish impulses and grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others”
The social effect of this rationality is social cohesion. It never truly rises to full realization of that idea but it moves in that direction. Neibuhr makes a powerful observation about the effect of the force of reason inside a political system
“ The force of reason makes for justice , not only by placing inner restraints upon the desires of the self in the interest of social harmony, but by judging the claims and assertions of individuals from the perspective of the intelligence of the total community. An irrational society accepts injustice because it does not analyze the pretensions made by the powerful and privileged groups of society. Even that portion of society which which suffers most from injustice may hold the power responsible for it in reverence. A growing rationality in society destroys the uncritical acceptance of injustice. It may destroy the morale of dominant groups by making them more conscious of the hollowness of their pretensions, so that they will be unable to assert their privileges with the same degree of self deception. It may furthermore destroy their social prestige in the community by revealing the relation between their special privileges and the mystery of the underprivileged. It may also make those who suffer from injustice more conscious of their rights in society and persuade them to assert their rights more energetically. The resulting social conflict makes for a political rather than a rational justice but all justice in the less intimate human relations is political as well as rational, that is, it is established by the assertion of power against power as well as by the rational comprehension of, and arbitration between conflicting rights”
1934 folks. 90 ish years ago and Neibuhr was writing about the social conflicts and the mechanics of privilege that we are currently fighting in our present culture. What’s more. It wasn’t even totally his thought he has this amazing footnote
“ Robert Briffault,in his Rational Evolution (pp.209-210) makes a convincing analysis of this function of reason in the attainment of justice. His thesis is summed up in his words “ No resistance to power is possible while the sanctioning lies , which justify that power, are accepted as valid. While that first and chief line of defense is unbroken there can be no revolt. Before and injustice , any abuse or oppression can be resisted the lie upon which it is founded must be unmasked and clearly recognized for what it is.”
That book was written in 1919. What are we even doing with our time here on earth?
The changes that this rational social justice results in might not be a moral achievement ,when thought of at the individual level, but a rational one. After all its not an appeal to morality but justice that spurs these changes. But…
“ From the viewpoint of society itself it does represent a moral achievement. It means that the total society, and each constituent group, judges social relations not according to custom and tradition but according to a rational ideal of justice. The partial perspective of each group makes the achievement of social harmony without conflict impossible. But a rational idea of justice operates both in initiating and in resolving conflict.
The development of reason and the growth of the mind makes for increasingly just relations not only by bringing all impulses in society into reference with, and under the control of, an inclusive social ideal, but also by increasing the penetration with which all factors in the social situation are analyzed.”
This feels very american to me. It also brings into focus the lasting damage that right wing media and cultural conceptions about our ideals have done in our ability to understand and reason toward justice. What is our inclusive social ideal? Do we have one? Maxine Greene talks about american freedom as a a negative freedom, individual to the point of being toxic (my view). How does an inclusive social ideal develop from that? You’re free to fuck off?
Neibuhr talks about this in another excerpt that I am taking at length because its powerful to me that this is nearly 90 years ago
“If the psychological scientist aids men in analyzing their true motives, and in separating their inevitable pretensions from the actual desires, which they are intended to hide, he may increase the purity of social morality.
If the social scientist is able to point out that tradition and customary social policies do not have the results, intended or pretended, by those who champion them, honest social intentions will find more adequate instruments for the attainment of their ends, and dishonest pretensions will be unmasked.
Thus, for instance, a laissez faire economic theory is maintained in an industrial era through the ignorant belief that the general welfare is best served by placing the least possible political restraints upon economic activity . The history of the past hundred years is a refutation of the theory; but it is still maintained, or is dying to lingering death, particularly in nations as politically incompetent as our own.
Its survival is due to the ignorance of those who suffer injustice from the applications of this theory to modern industrial life but fail to attribute their difficulties to the social anarchy and political irresponsibility which the theory sanctions. Their ignorance permits the beneficiaries of the present anarchic industrial system to make dishonest use of the waning prestige of laissez faire economics.
The men in power in modern industry would not, of course capitulate simply because the social philosophy by which they justify their policies had been discredited. When power is robbed of the shining armor of political, moral, and philosophical theories, by which it defends itself, it will fight on without armor; but it will be more vulnerable, and the strength of its enemies increased.
When economic power desires to be left alone it uses the philosophy of Laissez Faire to discourage political constraint upon economic freedom. When it wants to make use of the police power of the state to subdue rebellions in the ranks of it helots, it justifies the use of political coercion and the resulting suppression of liberties by insisting that peace is more precious than freedom and that its only desire is social peace. A rational analysis of social facts easily punctures this pretension also. It proves that the police power of the state is usually used prematurely; before an effort has been made to eliminate the causes of discontent, and that it therefore tends to perpetuate injustice and the consequent social disaffections. Social intelligence may, in short, eliminate many abortive means to socially approved ends , whether they have been proposed honestly or dishonestly and may there for contribute to a higher measure of social morality….
Men will not cease to be dishonest merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their own deceptions. Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it. They will use whatever means are most convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise. “
That whole excerpt is essentially right on. Neibuhr here has predicted so much of what is to come in the next 80 years. This bodes ill for the rational resources and recourses though.
“ Men will never be wholly reasonable, and the proportion of reason to impulse becomes increasingly negative when we proceed from the life of individuals to that of social groups, among whom a common mind and purpose is always more or less inchoate and transitory, and who depend upon a common impulse to bind them together.”
The recourse against the structures of power is critical thought and action but that action is often too small to upset the status quo and neibuhr says in the above quotation that as the group gets bigger the nuance and reason tends to bleed away and its impulse that binds large coalitions together. Reason functions to motivate on an individual level but in groups its all about the feeling.
What about individual moral character? What is the feeling rooting morality to the individual?
Conscience. But what is a conscience? Is it socially constructed?
“ The individual character of conscience does not preclude the determination of most moral judgements by the group. Most individuals lack the intellectual penetration to form independent judgements and therefore accept the moral opinions of their society. Even when they do form their own judgements there is no certainty that their sense of obligation toward moral values, defined by their own mind, will be powerful enough to overcome the fear of social disapproval. The social Character of most moral judgements and the pressure of society upon an individual are both facts to be reckoned with; but neither explains the peculiar phenomenon of the moral life usually called conscience.”
Neibuhr puts it beyond the scope of his present investigation but he posits that conscience is both socially and individually constructed and functions as a moral resource. A reference point for the feeling of justice of right and wrong.
“ Conscience is a moral resource in human life, but it is not as powerful as those moralists assume, who would save mankind by cultivating a sense of duty . It is more potent when it supports one impulse agains another than when it sets itself agains the total force of the individuals desires. It operates more effectively when it consolidates and stabilizes family life for instance, than when it attempts to carry impulse beyond the objectives determined by nature”
Appeals to conscience aren’t strong enough to provoke action in most people. Neibuhr is a someone who carries a pessimistic (realistic) view of humanity and morality. For all the goods that rational approaches to morality and resources to combat injustice there are cracks in the foundation that are down to the basest human traits. He starts addressing these traits in the coming pages:
“The possibility of extending reason doesn’t guarantee that it can be extended far enough to give a majority of individuals a comprehension of the total social situation in which they stand. The ability of reason does not provide a sufficient check to prevent the conflict of impulses, particularly the conflict of collective impulses in society
Folks can’t comprehend the whole of their positionally and relations to others. Its too vast for anyone to understand completely. Meaning we are all operating in the dark some time.
No amount of rationality will allow folks not to come into conflict with collective impulses and actions.
“ In analyzing the limits of reason in morality it is important to begin by recognizing that the force of egoistic impulse is much more powerful than any but the most astute psychological analysts and most rigorous devotees of introspection realize”
Man’s ego entangles his reason and reason interacted with ego to justify actions that place an individual at the center of the action.
“ Reason may check egoism in order to it harmoniously into a total body of social impulse. But the same force of reason is bound to justify the egoism of the individual as a legitimate element in the total body of vital capacities. Which society seeks to harmonize…. Rationalism in morals may persuade men in one moment that their selfishness is a peril to society and in the next moment it may condone their egoism as a necessary and inevitable element in the total social harmony.
The egoistic impulses are so powerful and insistent that they will be quick to take advantage of any such justifications.”
The rationalism of the ego is the part of your brain that says …but its ok when I do it because….
Why? Neibuhr quotes Bentham:
“Man, from the very constitution of his nature prefers his own happiness to that of all other sentient beings put together”
Neibuhr points to this as pessimistic but his own views of people aren’t that far removed.
“ The larger the group the more difficult it is to achieve a common mind and purpose and the more inevitably will it be unified by momentary impulses and immediate and unreflective purposes . The increasing size of the group increases the difficulties of achieving a group self-consciousness, except as it comes in conflict with other groups and is unified by perils and passions of war. It is a rather pathetic aspect of human social life that conflict is seemingly unavoidable prerequisite for group solidarity… So, civilization has become a device for delegating the vices of individuals to larger and larger communities. The device gives men the illusion that they are moral; but the illusion is not lasting.”
The idea here is that someone has to be the enemy and group cohesion offers group identity and its accompanying rational justifications for immorality. (If everyone is doing it…. If American’s do it it must be freedom….). The notion of a nation/state as a device for moral money laundering is a powerful one. It allows a diffusion of responsibility so no one person is ever culpable. A powerful armor to resist moral thinking.
Neibuhr ends the chapter with a down note on mans ability to reason and rationally understand morality in an international community. He doesn’t believe that we are capable of developing the skills we need before the collapse of society, but Bentham is the pessimist!
“ Thus modern life is involved in both class and international conflict; and it may be that class privileges cannot be abolished or diminished until they have reduced the whole of modern society to international and intra-national chaos. The growing intelligence of mankind seems not to be growing fast enough…”
After reading this chapter I am impressed by how astutely Neibuhr saw the mechanics of society. His dim view isn’t wrong. I do appreciate that his pessimism isn’t rooted in apathy or a call to abandon reason or society. His view as I am reading him is essentially : Societies are the best things we have going, They have critical areas of injustice, there are mechanics that cause these areas of injustice and we should try to fix them while being realistic about the limitations of what can be done. There will never been a just society free of coercion. There will never be peace through reason alone. That doesn’t mean we stop trying.
I appreciate that. As a teacher I try to make a difference on the individual level, as someone pursuing a Masters then a Ph.D to impact the systems of education I am also going to try to work at a systemic level. This may not shift a society but It may move the needle at those levels. I’m not going to stop trying.