Review of John Connelly's From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012)
ISBN 9780674057821
Reviewed by Gene Zubovich
It may seem strange that a nearly four-hundred page book would be dedicated to fifteen sentences of the proclamation Nostra Aetate, a Vatican II document of 1965 dealing with the relationship between Catholics and other religions. But the subject matter is by no means small: these paragraphs changed the official Catholic teaching on the Jews that had prevailed for 1,700 years. Indeed, John Connelly does not shy away from the word “revolution” in the title of his book, From Enemy To Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965.
Connelly, an historian of East-Central Europe whose first book dealt with the transformation of higher education under Stalinism in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, began this research a decade ago, setting out to find Catholic resistance to Hitler's persecution of the Jews during the 1930s. Much to his surprise he found Catholic critiques of antisemitism largely absent. When appeals on behalf of the Jews did appear they lacked a concrete moral language and were full of anti-Judaic assumptions.[1] Catholics, particularly German-speaking Catholics, were part of an intellectual tradition that could not accept Jews as anything other than a cursed people who were destined to suffer for their historical rejection of Jesus.
Connelly does not claim that Catholics didn't help Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, but he does argue that those who helped Jews most—like women's groups—were farthest removed from theological disputes (42). It was the theological absence, the lack of clear statements by bishops or the Vatican, that Connelly sees as the church's biggest failure.
What, then, happened between the 1930s and the Vatican II proclamation of 1965 that declared the Jews to be the “older brothers” of Christians who ought not be converted to Christianity? Connelly argues that the roots of the proclamation came from a small group of Catholics in 1930s Vienna who were concerned with the treatment of the Jews in Nazi Germany. [2] Vienna proved to be a fertile ground for men like Karl Thieme and Johannes Oesterreicher, who formulated a specifically Catholic argument against antisemitism. Thieme, Oesterreicher, and nearly all of the other anti-racist activists in their circle were converts to Catholicism from Judaism and Protestantism. They eschewed nationalisms and freely moved about from place to place without a feeling of rootedness. Without such border-crossers, as Connelly calls them, Catholicism could not have found a new language to speak about the Jews. Without them, he argues, “the Catholic Church would never have 'thought its way' out of the challenges of racist anti-Judaism” (287).
Connelly's early chapters discuss the prevalence of antisemitism within the Catholic Church during the first half of the twentieth century. He points to German-speaking lands as particularly prone to racist assumptions. The border-crossers of Vienna had to contend with a German-language theological tradition in which words—like “Volk” and “Erbsünde” (“inherited sin” instead of “original sin”)—trapped theologians in a biological and racial understanding of theological problems. The chief task of the border-crossers was to root a critique of antisemitism in Catholic theology and to provoke Catholic officials to speak clearly on behalf of the Jews.
At the moral and intellectual center of the battle against racist acquiescence to Nazi policy was an Austro-Jewish convert named John (“Johannes” prior to 1940) Oesterreicher, who became the primary architect of the Vatican II statement on the Jews. Here the book approximates a bildungsroman, as we follow Oesterreicher's (and by extension the Catholic Church's) intellectual and spiritual growth. We witness his quixotic attempt to get Pious XII to speak out clearly on behalf of the Jews during the late 1930s (he asked the Pope to free Catholic soldiers from their oath to Hitler) and his desperate attempt to formulate a Catholic anti-racist theology based on the sparse statements of past popes and councils. He broadcast sermons into Nazi territory that referred to Hitler as the anti-Christ and called on Germans to oppose the Nazi “enemies of the Lord” (161). All the while he continued to believe that the Jews were a people destined to suffer until they turned to Christ. In fact Oesterreicher continued his missionary activities to the Jews until he narrowly escaped arrest and near-certain death by boarding a ship to New York City in 1940.
His parents were not so lucky. His father died in a concentration camp, “thank God, of pneumonia,” he wrote to a friend. “My poor mother, however, was taken to Poland; I need not tell you what that implies” (232-3). This profound personal loss moved Oesterreicher to search for new ways to talk to and about Jews, but the basic missionary impulse remained. Six months after he arrived in the US, Oesterreicher was preaching in New York City and began missionary work amongst New York Jews. Many of the harsh words like “curse” “deicide” and “enemies of God” that had been used by Catholics, including Oesterreicher, in the prior decades disappeared from Catholic discourse during the 1940s and 1950s along with much of the racist antisemitism, but the missionary impulse and anti-Judaism remained intact.
During these years little was said by Catholic theologians on Christian-Jewish relations. The few statements that were made came mainly out of interfaith conferences organized by the American occupation forces and were based on the model of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. For the first time, at least in the twentieth century, Catholic and Jewish leaders in Europe began talking to one another. And it would be through dialogue with Jews that men like Oesterreicher would change their views. His friend and sparring partner Karl Thieme, for example, would ultimately call for an end to a mission to the Jews after a Jewish author pointed out the antisemitic language he had used his book published in the 1930s (198). But these conversations had limited impact on the Church at the time—those who engaged in conversations with Jews did so despite Vatican warnings against interfaith conferences.
Behind the indifference of the Catholic Church toward relations with the Jews was a subtle shift that is described by Connelly but needs further elaboration. Catholics became less likely to read worldly events as providential, demanding acquiescence to God's work. They did not want to say that the Holocaust was God's punishment for the Jews. Instead, “a new way of reading the signs of the times” meant “rejecting as presumptuous the idea that any human can know whether and how God might punish humanity” (173). How this change came about is solely attributed to the Holocaust but there were certainly other developments that helped propel this momentous change, which seems underemphasized in this book. The earlier reading of events was a major theological presupposition of those (including Oesterreicher) who believed that Hitler's persecution of the Jews was part of a curse resulting from deicide. After the Holocaust, Catholics came to see worldly events as something that required ethical action.
But things were slow to change. Oesterreicher founded an institute at Seton Hall University that he described as “missionary” in 1953. Yet, somehow, his attitude began to shift in ways he would never fully acknowledge. By the late 1950s he began describing his work at Seton Hall as “ecumenical” and began turning away entreaties from missionaries interested in working with Jews.[2] He came to emphasize—based on a passage from Romans 9 through 11—that missionary efforts ought to be directed at Catholics themselves and that the eschatological expectations of Jewish conversion en masse would remain mysterious and uncertain. Based on these passages of St. Paul's writings, as well as the thinking of his Austrian cohort, Oesterreicher found new ways to talk about Jews as “older brothers,” words that would find their way into the Vatican II statement on the Jews.
The book concludes with the developments of Vatican II. Connelly makes clear that the new statement was by no means inevitable. In fact, he argues, the theological implications of De Judaeis (the statement on the Jews) went further than many of the bishops who voted for it were comfortable with. Early drafts of the proclamation had absolved Jews of ancient charges of deicide and spoke of the Jews as clearly loved by God. This new way of talking about the Jews was opposed by some Catholic leaders but also by several Arab states in the Middle East. Catholic bishops working in Muslim lands worried about repercussions of the statement. Indeed, the Syrian and Jordanian governments protested against the absolution of Jewish guilt for Christ's crucifixion (250). The conservative Roman Curia, the theological center of Catholicism, shortened the draft to exclude any mention of deicide and expressed hope that Jews would one day join the church. But reports of the early draft had already been leaked to the press and the ensuing controversy, including a statement by Holocaust-survivor Rabbi Abraham Heschel that he would prefer Auschwitz over conversion, meant that backtracking would be impossible without severe humiliation. In the end the statement lacked any mention of the Holocaust or the Church's own responsibility for antisemitism. But the refutation of the deicide charge was reinstated and the statement spoke in positive language that God continued to love the Jews. Many contemporary observers complained that the statement was mild and should have been made long ago. But Connelly is persuasive in showing what a major departure this was from just decades earlier.
Specialists in American intellectual history will note that liberalism plays no role in the story told in From Enemy To Brother. The United States is one of the settings for Connelly's story and he notes the more tolerant atmosphere of US Catholicism in comparison with that of Europe. But the roots of the Vatican II proclamation on the Jews are found in an Austro-fascist context, where many of the protagonists adopted a form of personalism that had much in common with fascist corporatism. Connelly stresses that the conditions of Austria were ripe in creating border-crossers and that there were advantages to thinking through specifically Catholic arguments in that context. But all this begs the question: why did American Catholics and Protestants, who began talking to Jews well before their Europeans counterparts, not develop a more accommodating theology?
The United States, after all, had a strong tradition of religious tolerance that expressed itself in the “tri-faith” or “Judeo-Christian” concepts.[3] And individual figures developed promising ideas about the Jews earlier than in the European context. Reinhold Niebuhr, a major theologian during the middle of the twentieth century, is a particularly good example of someone arising out of the liberal tradition and developing positive attitudes towards Jews. As late as 1923 Niebuhr had argued for a mission to the Jews but just three years later he changed his mind in an article that praised Jews for their ethics and theological tradition. In the same article he sounded like a modern-day pluralist when he disavowed the need for Jews to convert and encouraged Jews to perpetuate their own communities. This would later lead Niebuhr to become one of the first and most prominent religious figures to sound warnings about Nazi treatment of the Jews and to urge government aid. He would also become a life-long supporter of Zionism.
Niebuhr’s thought on the Jews was largely ignored by his peers, much like Oesterreicher’s, and it was not until Vatican II that Protestant denominations would reconsider their positions on Jewish conversion. Indeed the story of Protestant inaction on behalf of the victims of the Holocaust parallels the Catholic one. In the US the leading Protestant journal The Christian Century expressed skepticism toward atrocity stories. The Federal Council of Churches, the united voice of ecumenical Protestantism, sponsored a Day of Compassion in 1942 but it ended in embarrassment because of low participation and general indifference.[4] Moreover, Niebuhr himself did not fully develop his thoughts on the Jews until the 1960s and 1970s, largely in response to Vatican II.[5]
As it turns out, many of the critiques of racism and antisemitism produced by Protestants and Catholics during the mid-century were more often rooted in political liberalism than in theology. Leading protestants often spoke confidently, prior to the 1960s, as spokesmen for the American liberal tradition and they saw little need to tackle issues of pluralism from a theological standpoint.[6] American Catholics had a more tentative relationship with American liberalism prior to Vatican II. But figures like John Courtney Murray were working in the 1940s and 1950s to reconcile the two. And when American Catholics spoke out on behalf of Jews, as they did in the wake of Kristallnacht, they usually spoke the language of political liberalism.[7]
Perhaps recourse to political liberalism created an atmosphere in which difficult theological issues could be avoided. Why bother reconciling the book of John with Romans when you could appeal to the Bill of Rights or the principle of equality of all peoples? Connelly, however, makes it clear that there is a special relationship between Catholics and Jews that could not be done away with through appeals to universal equality (248). One simply could not simultaneously affirm equality of all peoples while believing that Jews lived under a curse.
From Enemy to Brother should become required reading for historians interested in modern religion, cosmopolitanism, and pluralism. The book provokes difficult questions about the American liberal tradition and its relationship to religion. How did American theologians reconcile the affirmation of universal equality with the kinds of theological problems described by Connelly? Were the kinds of arguments against antisemitism produced by American theologians who affirmed the notions of “Tri-Faith” or “Judeo-Christian” America less tenable and convincing than those produced by Oesterreicher and other border-crossers? Did Protestants coexist as easily with the American liberal tradition as they believed they did?
From Enemy to Brother is a powerful and moving account of the origins and passage of the 1965 statement on the Jews that changed centuries of official Catholic teaching. It is a book that pushes historians to explore new avenues in intellectual and religious history. For specialists in American intellectual history in particular Connelly's book raises important questions and opens up new subject matter for discussion.
_____________________
[1] On the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Judaism, a distinction Connelly uses but does not fully accept, see George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)
[2] Connelly acknowledges the scholarship on French Catholic thought on the Jews and discusses the work of Leon Bloy and Jacques Maritain. He contends, however, that the German-language Catholic group went further than the French, since the latter group never moved beyond its anti-Judaic assumptions. He further argues that the German-language thought is more relevant to the discussion of Vatican II
[32] At the time “inter-faith” was the most common way to describe relations between Christians and Jews, which implied a much clearer separation than “ecumenical”. On the notion of “interfaith” see Kevin Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Postwar Catholics and Jews Held America to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
[3] Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Schultz, Tri-Faith America. William R. Hutchison, Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
[ 4] On the Day of Compassion, see Marty, Modern American Religion, Volume 3, pp. 61-62. On Protestant indifference toward Jewish suffering see Robert W. Ross, So It Was True: The American Protestant Press and the Nazi Persecution of the Jews; also David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust. The major exceptions were the historical Peace Churches (Quakers, Brethren, etc.) and the Unitarian Church.
[5] On Niebuhr as a product of the liberal theological tradition see Richard Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York: Pantheon, 1985) and Gary Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition (New York: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2008); see also Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism and Modernity, 1900-1950 (New York: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003).
[6] On the interrelationship between political and theological liberalism see Leigh E. Schmidt and Sally M. Promey, ed., American Religious Liberalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012).
[7] John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003); American Religious Responses to Kristallnacht, ed. Maria Mazzenga (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
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Gene Zubovich is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. He is completing his dissertation on Protestant social thought during the 1940s.
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Jumat, 28 September 2012
Kamis, 12 April 2012
Book Review: Beuttler on Schultz's Tri-Faith America
Reviewed by Fred Beuttler
Carroll University
America as a “Protestant” Nation?
A few years ago I was at a conference on religion and neuroscience and was arguing with a German theologian over which of our two countries was more democratic. We went back and forth on various aspects of our respective cultures, such as science, religion, political procedure, and so forth. After trading points, she finally got all flustered and said that “you Americans aren’t as democratic as we Germans, because we trust our government.” I burst out laughing. No American would think that that is the basis for democracy – in fact, a deep skepticism of any official truth promulgated by any governmental establishment is almost second nature to us. Dissent is far more engrained in the American tradition than deference to an establishment, ecclesiastical or otherwise.
This anecdote came to mind as I was reading Kevin Schultz’s excellent book, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held America to its Protestant Promise. He brilliantly examines how the idea of America as a “Protestant nation” in the early and mid-twentieth century was replaced by what he calls a “new national image” of a “Tri-Faith” America, that the country by the 1950s was composed of three separate, equally American faiths: Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. The new concept of a “Judeo-Christian” tradition helped to supersede the nativist conception of a Christian, or even Protestant America, as evidenced not only in the most extremist elements in the 1920s, but also in the thoughts of President Franklin Roosevelt, who mentioned as late as 1942 that the United States was “a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance.” A decade later most agreed with President Eisenhower’s understanding of the relation between democracy and a “deeply held religious faith,” including his “and I don’t care what it is.”
Kevin Schultz’s book begins with the story of the Four Chaplains – two Protestant ministers, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi – who gave up their life vests and drowned after the torpedoing of the U.S.S. Dorchester in February, 1943. This became a vital symbol of American unity against totalitarianism, and was widely recognized during and after the war. While an incredible story of heroism, the Dorchester incident reinforced the painstaking work of a young Presbyterian minister, Everett R. Clinchy, who had become head of the new National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) in 1928. While the idea of a “triple-melting pot” was noticed even in the 1950s, by Will Herberg most famously, one of Schultz’s significant contributions is to reveal how new ideas become widely disseminated in twentieth century America culture.
The NCCJ was part of a larger “goodwill” movement of many after World War I, to oppose nativist calls for “one-hundred percent Americanism,” immigration restrictions, and discrimination against Jews and Catholics. After traveling to Nazi Germany, Clinchy denounced Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews, and helped organize a seven-week thirty-eight city speaking tour, with a priest and a rabbi, as a “Tolerance Trio,” talking about the brotherhood of man under the Fatherhood of God.” These “trialogues” were seen as widely successful, and soon the NCCJ were sending out numerous other tolerance trios across the country, as well as organizing local chapters of the organization. Schultz argues that the NCCJ became one of the leading organizations for a new kind of America, one that would emphasize an inclusive cultural pluralist vision, “centered on the common foundation Protestants, Catholics, and Jews shared.” Leading up to World War II, the NCCJ stressed the linking of religion and democracy, anticipating President Eisenhower’s belief in democracy and deeply held religious faith.
One decision the organization did make, however, was to concentrate on interreligious activity and the acceptance of the tri-faith ideal, rather than expand beyond religion to include race. Schultz tells how the Clinchy and the NCCJ board consciously chose to maintain its religious focus, not because it was unsympathetic to racial equality, but rather for fear of becoming a secular “General League Against All Intolerance,” of which there were numerous others. Schultz does not really mention it, but ironically, the NCCJ changed its name in the 1990s, to the National Conference for Community and Justice, a move from pluralism to secularism that would have appalled the Rev. Clinchy.
This book, which began as dissertation under David Hollinger at Berkeley, has been widely and very positively reviewed. It would be an ideal supplemental text for courses in twentieth century American intellectual history, although it is a little pricey in hardcover. Chris Beneke praises the book for revealing that “between the labor-capital divide of the 1930s and the racial divide of the 1960s, there was an ideological contest over the religious composition of the nation.” David Reimer, at H-Judaic praises its study of the decline of bigotry and the growth of toleration, pointing to a “virtual second disestablishment of Protestantism in American society,” although he is frustrated with the focus on ideas rather than social change.
Yet the focus on ideas and their reception is precisely the book’s most important contribution. The book is divided into two parts, the first, on “Inventing Tri-Faith America, Ending ‘Protestant America,’” on the ideological campaign, and the second part, “Living in Tri-Faith America,” which describes various ways in the ideal was implemented in post-war America, in the suburbs, public schools, and college fraternities.
Schultz makes a broad and substantial claim that it was the tri-faith ideal that “softened” the ground for the Civil Rights movement, arguing that “the most successful civil rights language was that borrowed from Tri-Faith America,” rather than that of secular equality or labor rights arguments. It was this “usurpation of the religious high ground” by Martin King and others in the movement, which helped create “a broad white acceptance of American pluralism.” While he does not make it explicit, Schultz implies that this new religious creed was the necessary foundation for the successes of the Civil Rights movement.
Schultz concludes with warnings of a return to a “Protestant America,” complaining of how the new religious right in the 1970s and after have co-opted the concept Judeo-Christian, in a “visceral reaction” to the anticipated trajectory of where he sees the Tri-Faith ideal headed. For he notices the cultural shift from pluralism to secularism, one symbolized in the new name of the NCCJ. “Since the late 1970s, there has been a remarkable transition in the country’s religious sociology,” he says, unfortunately emphasizing “sociology” rather than the significance of ideas. However, he rightly points out that, instead of the divisions between the three faiths of democracy, as had been the case from the 1920s to the 1960s, “by the 1970s conservative Protestants, Catholics, and Jews all began to feel they had more in common with one another than with their co-religionists who happened to be liberal.” This is probably the most significant shift in the religious and cultural landscape since 1960, and this ideological divide between liberalism and conservatism will lead to increasing polarization, not along lines of religion or race, but rather of ideas, as people seem to be sorting themselves out on cultural lines.
Schultz sees the success of the Tri-Faith ideal in formulating “principles of group communalism, group rights, and religious privacy,” helped usher in the second disestablishment of religion,” and softened the ground for the Civil Rights movement. “But whatever else they accomplished, perhaps their most significant victory was to limit the appeal of a return to Protestant monism, something Everett Clinchy might have been most proud of.”
But this is where Schultz’s perspective fails, I think, for there simply was not a “Protestant monism” in the mid-twentieth century, when Clinchy’s own denomination was shattered in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, an ideological disruption that has persisted into the present. It may be understandable from a Catholic or Jewish perspective, but the very idea of “Protestant monism” does not reflect religious reality at least since the Great Awakening, if not the days of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. The story Schultz is telling is the opening up of the Protestant Establishment, which did exist in the mid-twentieth century, to the Tri-Faith ideal, and then to a secular establishment as at present.
It may be that the assumption of Protestant monism is not the right narrative – certainly it is operative at some level, but it may obscure more than it clarifies. An establishment center, surrounded by numerous outsiders, may be different than a model of constant religious competition, of a churning pluralism as a tradition of religious dissent. America may have been a “Protestant nation” in mid-century, as Franklin Roosevelt saw it, although the patrician Roosevelt would doubtless have overlooked the varieties of fundamentalists, Pentecostals, and other religious groups, who, while Protestant, were certainly not part of an “establishment.” But Protestantism has never been unified in America. The closest it has come to that was for not even twenty years, in the early days of the Federal Council of Churches. In fact, Protestantism is sort of like what John Dewey thought of “religion” – there is no such thing, only “religions.” Protestantism, born in dissent, has always bred further dissenters.
This anomaly is clearly seen at where Kevin Schultz currently teaches, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where I myself was once on staff. There never has been a “religious studies” department at UIC, but it was the first public university in the country to have a “Catholic Studies” program, to go along with Jewish Studies. Yet, conceptually, it simply would not make sense to have a “Protestant Studies” department there. What would such a program look like?
Indeed, the Four Chaplains story is a more revealing one than Schultz lets on. The four chaplains had met at Harvard in the Army Chaplain School, in 1942. That same year, a group of evangelical Protestants had formed an organization to counter perceived discrimination against theological conservatives in the military chaplaincy, which was then controlled by the Federal Council of Churches. The Christian Century style of mainline Protestantism obscured the vast divisions that were at place in American religion. The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy had shattered any consensus between the wars, driving more conservative Protestants out of mainline institutions, as they formed their own. Certainly there was a Protestant establishment that was roughly coterminous with the Federal Council, but there were also a large group of dissenters. The two Protestant chaplains were familiar with both Protestant traditions, the mainline and the evangelical. One of those martyred chaplain’s father was Daniel A. Poling, whom Schultz calls a “fiery conservative Protestant,” and who called himself an Evangelical. He would more than likely be at home in the modern religious right. Yet it was Poling who helped build a Chapel of Four Chaplains, as Schultz mentions.
So it may be too much for Kevin Schultz to claim that the development of a Tri-Faith America leads to an end of Protestant monism. For since American beginnings, official truth enforced by an establishment has been met by dissent – that is the true tradition, of a small ‘p’ protestantism. That is even true within Roman Catholicism, where “Americanism” was earlier seen as a heresy. The book Tri-Faith America ends with a note to an increasing religious diversity, as a Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and new agers become a larger part of American religious pluralism. But, just as with Catholics, one can predict that these faith traditions, as they live in a culture of American religious freedom, will increasingly breed dissenters.
It may be that, one day, Protestant Christians, or Christians of any variety, may cease to be a majority in America. But even though there is no longer a Protestant Establishment, America will always be a nation of protestants.
Kamis, 16 Februari 2012
The Catholic Mind Of Rick Santorum
One could do worse in analyzing Santorum's thinking than starting with a primary source: an essay penned by the candidate himself and published on January 20, 2012 (hat-tip to Ethan Schrum for pointing me to this). These two pieces have a lot of meat in them (both containing deeper issues on which to ruminate), but I'm going to stick to Santorum himself today. What follows is an interlinear, but non-exhaustive, breakdown of the ten-paragraph piece (links, bolds, and underlines mine):
In 1977, Peter Berger and the late Richard John Neuhaus published a now-famous essay, “To Empower People,” which argued that “mediating structures” such as family, church, charities, and neighborhood associations are essential for a healthy civil society.* I entirely agree, and as those who have followed my career will know, I attempted to develop these ideas throughout my time in the United States Senate and in my own 2005 book, It Takes a Family. I believe passionately that the family is the basic building block of society, and that in contrast to President Obama’s immense sums of borrowed money being spent on entitlement programs and his undermining of charities and religious liberty, we can and must do far better—here in South Carolina and throughout the country.
Neuhaus is of course famous for many things, not the least for being a confidant of, or at least an inspiration to, President George W. Bush. Here Santorum is trying to go a little deeper---trying to capture something of the spirit Tocqueville observed about American society. The first sentence of this piece, however, has been cribbed from the publisher's blurb for a collection of essays edited by Michael Novak titled To Empower People: From State to Civil Society (not coincidentally promoted at the American Enterprise Institute's website). As a post-World War II emigrant intellectual from Austria, Berger is someone who ought to get more attention here at USIH, especially since James Davison Hunter was apparently one of Berger's students.
My problem with this paragraph is its maxim that "the family is the basic building block of society." It's true---as far is it goes---and Catholics return to this principal over and over again, but many treat it as if it's the end of the story. Even conservatives, especially politicians, who espouse "mediating structures" often de-emphasize those structures in favor of talking about "family values" in the context of the Culture Wars. I agree with Andrew Hartman that this talk is sincere and not merely a Republican political canard. The language captures something fundamental---that it is related to an identity crisis, instigated by own ongoing
Two historians, Michael Kazin and Thomas Sugrue, have tackled the issue of subsidiarity in recent pieces about Newt Gingrich, Saul Alinsky, and President Obama. Just last week I referenced those pieces (point #4) at USIH. Gingrich accidentally and indirectly denigrated subsidiarity by trashing Saul Alinsky. Apparently Gingrich was unaware of the Alinsky's links to one of the great Catholic cosmopolitan thinkers of the twentieth century, Jacques Maritain. Maritain found a way to support both subsidiarity and international human rights, while also respecting personhood and the political process. I don't foresee Santorum referencing Maritain anytime soon in campaign speeches (despite the former's enthusiasm for natural law, which as Molly Worthen reminded us does connect with Thomas Aquinas). But at least Santorum has not rhetorically ruled out the connection, the possibility, for liberal Catholics who lean right and may be unhappy with Obama.
Wikipedia offers two entries for subsidiarity---one with a kind of secular bent, and oriented toward European politics, and the other focused on the Catholic teaching of subsidiarity. I linked to the secular one in the excerpt above, but the Catholic one applies as well. Here are the first few lines from the Catholic-oriented entry:
"The principle of subsidiarity was developed by German theologian Oswald von Nell-Breuning.[2] His work influenced the social teaching of Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno and holds that government should undertake only those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups acting independently. Functions of government, business, and other secular activities should be as local as possible. If a complex function is carried out at a local level just as effectively as on the national level, the local level should be the one to carry out the specified function. The principle is based upon the autonomy and dignity of the human individual, and holds that all other forms of society, from the family to the state and the international order, should be in the service of the human person."
Returning to Santorum...
In the last three years, the current President has added more to America’s deficit than the collective total of all prior presidents—and this comes at tremendous cost to our children and grandchildren, and it is not working. Unemployment continues to exceed the promised “8 percent” he told us his whopping $787 billion stimulus package would guarantee. But even more problematically, Mr. Obama’s policies have made far too many of us less resilient, less responsible and less free. Food stamps usage has increased by 41 percent since the President took office. More than 1 in 7 U.S. adults—and an astonishing 1 in every 4 children—today receive food stamps. The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program received billions in additional annual spending. Subsidized housing, the Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) and the numbers of children born out of wedlock—are all up. As a father this breaks my heart. This should not be.
This is, to say the least, a very one-sided definition of freedom. First, it is not the assistance that makes people "less resilient, less responsible and less free." Indeed, this assertion is inconsistent with existential Christian theology and philosophy which would assert that freedom begins with a state of consciousness about one's own responsibility for her/his relationship with God. Not that Catholicism has ever been exceedingly friendly to Christian existentialism. Is there, by the way, a historical theological-philosophical study out there of Catholic existentialism, or of Soren Kierkegaard's influence on Catholic thought? My point here is that there is nothing in Catholic theology, including the principal of subsidiarity, that necessitates an inverse relationship between government assistance and less resilience, responsibility, or freedom. Only Catholic ideologues like Father Coughlin assert this absolutely.
Returning to Santorum's essay (though the intellectual returns are diminishing)...
I will address this issue of father-absence and family-strengthening head-on, because doing so makes sense both culturally and economically. Today, more than 25 million American children, at least 64% of African Americans and 36% of Hispanics, live in father-absent homes. Research tells us that low-income children without a father at home are five times more likely to remain poor. Children growing up without a dad are 2-3 times as likely to become teen parents and engage in criminal behavior: for these young people, economic realities follow cultural-relational realities, not the other way around. We need courageous fathers; that’s what moms want and America’s children need.
I'm not qualified to speak about this point in relation to social science and American intellectual history. I wonder if Santorum is working from research within the conservative tribe, by Charles Murray no less, on the so-called breakdown of the working-class male work ethic over the past 30-40 years? Anyway, it's clear that Santorum prioritizes culture over economic drivers. It's a very Catholic way of seeing the world. Santorum sees a conservative-liberal dichotomy: liberals believe that work availability engenders a work ethic, conservatives believe people are the way they are (e.g. working-class whites are now lazy and overprivileged, won't accept retraining, and jobs hence should be outsourced). But Catholic conservatives like Santorum believe that if we can change the culture, the economy will grow again. Hence conservative Catholics believe that the Culture Wars will literally pay in the long run for America. ...Returning to the essay.
As president I will support state and local funding options that strengthen marriage and support for low-income families so that dads are incentivized to support their children and be involved in their lives. I will not attempt to “transform” faith-based and community organizations into bureaucratic arms of the federal government, but will instead look to devolve resources to states, much as I did in 1996 in reforming welfare. And put wind behind the back of great charities like the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities which have been discriminated against by liberal courts, regulators, and now the Obama Administration.
So, Santorum doesn't want to make "faith-based and community organizations into bureaucratic arms of the federal government," but he'd be happy to make them arms of the state government to recreate America's Christian "moral establishment" at a more local level? He needs to read David Sehat's study of what happened when that was the case. Check out the four reviews in our round table on David's book (here, here, here, and here), as well has his response. ...Back to Santorum's essay.
It's hard to take seriously a paragraph anchored by the incendiary political rhetoric of "Obamanomics" and "Obamacare," but I'll give it my own Catholic analysis. Whether one agrees the his reasoning or not, Santorum's political point about the religious employers-contraception debate must have had political legitimacy because the Obama administration modified their policy. I don't think it's wrong to measure that kind of legitimacy in relation to actual actions. There were many religious leaders who feared the long-term implications of religious institutions being forced to deliver health care that conflicted (potentially or really) with moral teachings. The administration therefore gave way (though some Catholic bishops, and probably Santorum, felt the administration's move is still inadequate).
Beyond that I'll make only one observation: Isn't it interesting how Santorum has made our economic and cultural situation dependent on long-range cultural and political problems (i.e. family breakdown and federal overreach), but also largely blamed those same problems on policies enacted over only three years by a Christian president who supports responsible fatherhood (and with one full year, and counting, of those policies refracted by a Republican House and gridlocked Senate)? ...Back to the essay.
Moreover, his Administration stopped Catholic Charities from their long-standing partnership with government to help women who are victims of sex trafficking because they do not support abortion, just vulnerable women being abused. Is that caring for the least of these, respecting the free exercise of religion, or is that playing to the extreme left to the detriment of women? Many on the left care more about being politically correct and imposing their agenda than caring for those with HIV or kids that need adopted. They didn’t stop there. They told a positive marriage program to help teenage girls that they could talk about marriage just not abstinence. So marriage is OK just not fidelity.
I'm not qualified to speak on either the Catholic Charities-sex trafficking or teen abstinence program issues. But I can say anecdotally that I've not seen any poll numbers that support the notion of raped and abused women being forced to keep the resultant babies. On this point abolitionist pro-lifers, Catholic and otherwise, are strongly at odds with American culture.
I was the best advocate for private sector charitable activity and giving incentives in Congress for many years, taking on those who wanted to restrict freedom and civil society, and successfully passing several provisions into law that enabled the donation of food to the hungry, good equipment to volunteer firefighter companies, and large IRA contributions to faith-based groups, education, and other charitable groups. I will continue to be an advocate for the little platoons of faithful servants who help their neighbors all around our country.
Now for the big finish...
Saturday's primary election is an opportunity to send a clear message to the current president that freedom is back. We do not want a European-style welfare state; we want freedom to be neighbors to our neighbors. We want the federal government to focus on keeping us free and standing for our values and interests around the world. With your help, I will defend our country, restrain federal spending, restore the honor of marriage and family, while respecting civil society which forges local solutions to the challenges we face in America.
Line one from the first paragraph above is a standard talking point of the post-1960s New Right. It is also one of the three points from Albert O. Hirschman's 1991 book, The Rhetoric of Reaction: the perversity thesis. In a nutshell, the helpful hand of the mid-century welfare state only results in a decrease in the real welfare of the recipient via spiritual degradation. I don't get the pivot here to Tocqueville beyond the association already made above to subsidiarity. It is an anachronistic association in that Tocqueville was unaware of how voluntary associations would work in a post-industrial, globalized industrial-financial state.
I don't mean to say that references to Tocqueville in 2012 are useless, but rather that they have to be done carefully. And that care must also be used in relation to romantic medieval visions of village subsidiarity that dominated the thinking of late nineteenth-century thinkers like Chesterton, Belloc, and others who influenced early twentieth-century American Catholicism. - TL
Kamis, 29 September 2011
The Irritating Genius of Reinhold Niebuhr: The Question of Anti-Catholicism
[Updated 2:15 pm CST, 9/29]
At the end of the summer I finally picked up Reinhold Niebuhr's The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. I say finally because the book had been on my shelf for years. I am not 100 percent sure when I bought my copy (almost exactly like the one pictured to the right); I may have purchased it before moving to Chicago in 1997. The point is that I've been carrying it around for years---through five moves, a marriage, more than a few jobs, and three cities---based on the fact that it was written by a prominent, famous author. And I kept it even though I am Catholic and I knew the author was Protestant. I had suspected that Niebuhr had the potential to transcend sectarian differences---to be ecumenical. I bought the book even before I decided to study intellectual history, and was therefore not aware that David Hollinger and Charles Capper's The American Intellectual Tradition source book includes a selection from Children.
Upon reading I learned, in short order, that the book is a treatise on Protestant Christian political philosophy. How I had missed the quintessentially Niebuhrian subtitle---"A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense"---after all these years is beyond me. Thanks to my dissertation work I had known, before scrutinizing the table of contents, that Niebuhr was involved, for a time, in the late 1940s effort called "The Committee to Frame a World Constitution" (which produced a book--a preliminary draft of a world constitution). Niebuhr had dropped out, however, due to philosophical differences. Even so, I was still surprised to see that Children would cover "The World Community" in its final chapter.
I'm not here, however, to simply relay to you my personal story of delay and surprise in relation to Niebuhr and the book's contents. I'm here, in fact, writing about the book because it raised my expectations, dramatically, after getting only ten pages or so into it. Niebuhr is deceptively easy reading; he slowly unfolds his philosophical points with a sense of caution and humility, as well as an acumen for the problematic areas of practice (i.e. he's always on the watch for how humans corrupt good things, especially reason). His one-hand/other-hand thinking appeals to minds who imagine counterpoints quickly after formulating an argument. Niebuhr's self-dialogue is paradoxically both intellectually comforting and disquieting; you feel like he's leaving no stone unturned.
I was disappointed, then, to perceive some not-so-latent anti-Catholicism in Children. Because I am Catholic, you might argue that I am predisposed to seeing anti-Catholicism, and there may be some truth to that. By reputation, however, I came into the book thinking of Niebuhr as one of the most important theologians of the twentieth-century English-speaking world; I had understood his Protestantism to be a lower-case. I expected ecumenism, and was surprised to find otherwise.
Indeed, the potential for anti-Catholic thought arose as early as page 8 (of my 1972 Scribner's paperback edition). Here Niebuhr generalizes that Catholics engage in a "polemic against the modern world." Although I know that to be true in some conservative Catholic circles (think Hilaire Belloc and other fascist sympathizers), I also know it to be false in others (think Frederic Ozanam, Fr. Hans Reinhold, Fr. John A. Ryan, Dorothy Day, etc.)---others covered well in Jay Corrin's Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (Notre Dame, 2002). Back to Niebuhr, one instance does not of course create a curve. So I read over this early instance as Niebuhr challenging conservative Catholic thought.
There can be no doubt, furthermore, that Catholic intellectual life, as of the 1940s (Children was published in 1944) and 1950s, was not at a high point in American history.
This was documented by John Tracy Ellis (right) in his American Catholics and the Intellectual Life (1956). Here's a nice reflection on that book, its truths, and its reception.
As I kept reading Children, however, I found other examples of Niebuhr over-generalizing about Catholic thought. He wrote that Catholicism (not just conservative, undemocratic Catholics) are fearful "that questions of 'right and wrong' [in a democracy] may be subjected to the caprice of majority decisions. For [all of] Catholicism believes that the principles of natural law are fixed and immutable" (pp. 68-69). Niebuhr briefly gives the Catholic tradition respect for its insistence on "freedom of conscience beyond all laws and requirements of the human community" (p. 80). He returns, however, to big generalizations about Catholic thought or slanted points of view. On the latter, for instance, Niebuhr cites Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891) not for its defense of labor unions, but for its insistence on "property...as a necessity" (p. 92).
Suffice it to say, by the end of the second third of the book it's getting irritating. Niebuhr writes, apparently ignorant of the 1920s liberal American Catholics documented by Corrin, that "Catholics" (not just a corner, but all) are "fond of defining the Renaissance and Reformation as forces of decadence because they initiated the destruction of the unity of Christendom" (p. 121). This absolutist reduction of Catholic thought continues in Niebuhr's discussion of the "three primary approaches to the problem of religious and cultural diversity in the western world" (p. 126). Here Niebuhr generalizes that "Catholicism" (all of it) has only one approach: "overcome religious diversity and restore the original unity of culture. ...Catholicism frankly accepts religious diversity in a national community only under the compulsion of history. ...It insists on official status" (p. 126).
It may be true that a significant, vocal portion of Catholics (thinkers and otherwise) in the 1920s and 1930s voiced traditionalist positions; they could only look back at a civilization they felt was more amenable to Catholic theology. The mostly careful Niebuhr, however, chooses at this point to write of Catholicism as if it is homogeneous on this belief throughout time and space---admitting of no possibility of change, progress, or internal diversity.
Even as one sees those passages, however, you are impressed by the quotable, on-target Niebuhr. For instance, his useful pessimism is evident early in the text: "There is no level of human moral or social achievement in which there is not some corruption of inordinate self-love. This sober and true view of the human situation was neatly rejected by modern culture" (p. 17). And then there is Niebuhr pointing out the error of the "ideal of self-sufficiency" as being a "primal sin" in Christian thought (p. 55). He even writes, somewhat presciently, of "embodied rationality," saying that reason is "organically related to a particular center of vitality, individual and collective. ...Reason is never dissociated from the vitalities of life...[and therefore] cannot be a pure instrument of...justice" (pp. 66-67, 72-73). Great stuff. Rich.
What do others say about Niebuhr's relationship with Catholicism? It seems to be mostly praise. Citing Richard Fox's biography of Niebuhr and, interestingly, Kenneth Jackson's 1992 book, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, everyone's quick and dirty reference, Wikipedia, actually underscores Niebuhr's fight against anti-Catholicism in Detroit. Niebuhr could be seen as a hero for justice in the fight against anti-Catholicism---at least in Detroit in the 1920s.
However, in Alan Wolfe's review of John Patrick Diggins's last book, Why Niebuhr Now?, Wolfe dissents a bit. Here's the relevant passage (bolds mine):
Niebuhr has become so lionized that we often fail to recognize his faults. Diggins is aware of them, but pays them insufficient attention. Although Niebuhr warned against American exceptionalism, he was not above a bit of Protestant triumphalism. In his Gifford lectures, published as The Nature and Destiny of Man between 1941 and 1943, Niebuhr dismissed Catholicism (along with liberal Protestantism) as “semi-Pelagian,” meaning that it allowed too much space for free will. That position was, and is, inaccurate; try telling it to anyone reading Fr. Arnall’s hellfire and damnation sermon in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It was also slightly obtuse and offensive: the United States had more than its fair share of anti-Catholicism in the 1930s and 1940s, and while Niebuhr was no bigot, he was not especially ecumenical.
It is true, of course, that "Christian triumphalism" is not anti-Catholicism. It is also true that over-generalizing about Catholic theology and politics is not strictly anti-Catholicism. And perhaps Niebuhr was just in a bad mood in the 1940s. But if you put these circles together, they overlap enough to lessen those distinctions: there is a strain of anti-Catholicism in Niebuhr's 1940s writings.
Wolfe's review makes it clear that my expectation of theological ecumenism from Niebuhr was, well, unfounded---based on a perception of his reputation. If Niebuhr had been willing to look, it would not have been that hard, despite Ellis's tract, to find and cite Catholics who believed in democracy, in all its beauty and diversity. - TL
-----------------------------------
Update (2:15 pm CST, 9/29): Maybe one of the things I'm wanted to know, or to ferret out, with this post is whether by declaring Niebuhrian anti-Catholicism I'm being presentist? I feel that Wolfe's review absolves me of this somewhat, but Wolfe is a a political scientist and sociologist. In other words, I might be importing, or seconding, his presentism. - TL
At the end of the summer I finally picked up Reinhold Niebuhr's The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. I say finally because the book had been on my shelf for years. I am not 100 percent sure when I bought my copy (almost exactly like the one pictured to the right); I may have purchased it before moving to Chicago in 1997. The point is that I've been carrying it around for years---through five moves, a marriage, more than a few jobs, and three cities---based on the fact that it was written by a prominent, famous author. And I kept it even though I am Catholic and I knew the author was Protestant. I had suspected that Niebuhr had the potential to transcend sectarian differences---to be ecumenical. I bought the book even before I decided to study intellectual history, and was therefore not aware that David Hollinger and Charles Capper's The American Intellectual Tradition source book includes a selection from Children.Upon reading I learned, in short order, that the book is a treatise on Protestant Christian political philosophy. How I had missed the quintessentially Niebuhrian subtitle---"A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense"---after all these years is beyond me. Thanks to my dissertation work I had known, before scrutinizing the table of contents, that Niebuhr was involved, for a time, in the late 1940s effort called "The Committee to Frame a World Constitution" (which produced a book--a preliminary draft of a world constitution). Niebuhr had dropped out, however, due to philosophical differences. Even so, I was still surprised to see that Children would cover "The World Community" in its final chapter.
I'm not here, however, to simply relay to you my personal story of delay and surprise in relation to Niebuhr and the book's contents. I'm here, in fact, writing about the book because it raised my expectations, dramatically, after getting only ten pages or so into it. Niebuhr is deceptively easy reading; he slowly unfolds his philosophical points with a sense of caution and humility, as well as an acumen for the problematic areas of practice (i.e. he's always on the watch for how humans corrupt good things, especially reason). His one-hand/other-hand thinking appeals to minds who imagine counterpoints quickly after formulating an argument. Niebuhr's self-dialogue is paradoxically both intellectually comforting and disquieting; you feel like he's leaving no stone unturned.
I was disappointed, then, to perceive some not-so-latent anti-Catholicism in Children. Because I am Catholic, you might argue that I am predisposed to seeing anti-Catholicism, and there may be some truth to that. By reputation, however, I came into the book thinking of Niebuhr as one of the most important theologians of the twentieth-century English-speaking world; I had understood his Protestantism to be a lower-case. I expected ecumenism, and was surprised to find otherwise.
Indeed, the potential for anti-Catholic thought arose as early as page 8 (of my 1972 Scribner's paperback edition). Here Niebuhr generalizes that Catholics engage in a "polemic against the modern world." Although I know that to be true in some conservative Catholic circles (think Hilaire Belloc and other fascist sympathizers), I also know it to be false in others (think Frederic Ozanam, Fr. Hans Reinhold, Fr. John A. Ryan, Dorothy Day, etc.)---others covered well in Jay Corrin's Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (Notre Dame, 2002). Back to Niebuhr, one instance does not of course create a curve. So I read over this early instance as Niebuhr challenging conservative Catholic thought.There can be no doubt, furthermore, that Catholic intellectual life, as of the 1940s (Children was published in 1944) and 1950s, was not at a high point in American history.
This was documented by John Tracy Ellis (right) in his American Catholics and the Intellectual Life (1956). Here's a nice reflection on that book, its truths, and its reception.As I kept reading Children, however, I found other examples of Niebuhr over-generalizing about Catholic thought. He wrote that Catholicism (not just conservative, undemocratic Catholics) are fearful "that questions of 'right and wrong' [in a democracy] may be subjected to the caprice of majority decisions. For [all of] Catholicism believes that the principles of natural law are fixed and immutable" (pp. 68-69). Niebuhr briefly gives the Catholic tradition respect for its insistence on "freedom of conscience beyond all laws and requirements of the human community" (p. 80). He returns, however, to big generalizations about Catholic thought or slanted points of view. On the latter, for instance, Niebuhr cites Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891) not for its defense of labor unions, but for its insistence on "property...as a necessity" (p. 92).
Suffice it to say, by the end of the second third of the book it's getting irritating. Niebuhr writes, apparently ignorant of the 1920s liberal American Catholics documented by Corrin, that "Catholics" (not just a corner, but all) are "fond of defining the Renaissance and Reformation as forces of decadence because they initiated the destruction of the unity of Christendom" (p. 121). This absolutist reduction of Catholic thought continues in Niebuhr's discussion of the "three primary approaches to the problem of religious and cultural diversity in the western world" (p. 126). Here Niebuhr generalizes that "Catholicism" (all of it) has only one approach: "overcome religious diversity and restore the original unity of culture. ...Catholicism frankly accepts religious diversity in a national community only under the compulsion of history. ...It insists on official status" (p. 126).
It may be true that a significant, vocal portion of Catholics (thinkers and otherwise) in the 1920s and 1930s voiced traditionalist positions; they could only look back at a civilization they felt was more amenable to Catholic theology. The mostly careful Niebuhr, however, chooses at this point to write of Catholicism as if it is homogeneous on this belief throughout time and space---admitting of no possibility of change, progress, or internal diversity.
Even as one sees those passages, however, you are impressed by the quotable, on-target Niebuhr. For instance, his useful pessimism is evident early in the text: "There is no level of human moral or social achievement in which there is not some corruption of inordinate self-love. This sober and true view of the human situation was neatly rejected by modern culture" (p. 17). And then there is Niebuhr pointing out the error of the "ideal of self-sufficiency" as being a "primal sin" in Christian thought (p. 55). He even writes, somewhat presciently, of "embodied rationality," saying that reason is "organically related to a particular center of vitality, individual and collective. ...Reason is never dissociated from the vitalities of life...[and therefore] cannot be a pure instrument of...justice" (pp. 66-67, 72-73). Great stuff. Rich.
What do others say about Niebuhr's relationship with Catholicism? It seems to be mostly praise. Citing Richard Fox's biography of Niebuhr and, interestingly, Kenneth Jackson's 1992 book, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, everyone's quick and dirty reference, Wikipedia, actually underscores Niebuhr's fight against anti-Catholicism in Detroit. Niebuhr could be seen as a hero for justice in the fight against anti-Catholicism---at least in Detroit in the 1920s.
However, in Alan Wolfe's review of John Patrick Diggins's last book, Why Niebuhr Now?, Wolfe dissents a bit. Here's the relevant passage (bolds mine):
Niebuhr has become so lionized that we often fail to recognize his faults. Diggins is aware of them, but pays them insufficient attention. Although Niebuhr warned against American exceptionalism, he was not above a bit of Protestant triumphalism. In his Gifford lectures, published as The Nature and Destiny of Man between 1941 and 1943, Niebuhr dismissed Catholicism (along with liberal Protestantism) as “semi-Pelagian,” meaning that it allowed too much space for free will. That position was, and is, inaccurate; try telling it to anyone reading Fr. Arnall’s hellfire and damnation sermon in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It was also slightly obtuse and offensive: the United States had more than its fair share of anti-Catholicism in the 1930s and 1940s, and while Niebuhr was no bigot, he was not especially ecumenical.It is true, of course, that "Christian triumphalism" is not anti-Catholicism. It is also true that over-generalizing about Catholic theology and politics is not strictly anti-Catholicism. And perhaps Niebuhr was just in a bad mood in the 1940s. But if you put these circles together, they overlap enough to lessen those distinctions: there is a strain of anti-Catholicism in Niebuhr's 1940s writings.
Wolfe's review makes it clear that my expectation of theological ecumenism from Niebuhr was, well, unfounded---based on a perception of his reputation. If Niebuhr had been willing to look, it would not have been that hard, despite Ellis's tract, to find and cite Catholics who believed in democracy, in all its beauty and diversity. - TL
-----------------------------------
Update (2:15 pm CST, 9/29): Maybe one of the things I'm wanted to know, or to ferret out, with this post is whether by declaring Niebuhrian anti-Catholicism I'm being presentist? I feel that Wolfe's review absolves me of this somewhat, but Wolfe is a a political scientist and sociologist. In other words, I might be importing, or seconding, his presentism. - TL
Kamis, 24 Februari 2011
History as "Productive Confusion": Studies of America’s Moral Fiber, 1940-Present
[Warning: Long post. You may want to print. - TL]
----------------------------------------------------
Review of George Cotkin, Morality’s Muddy Waters: Ethical Quandaries in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). ISBN: 978-0-8122-4227-0. 262 pages.
Review by Tim Lacy
Monmouth College
History as "Productive Confusion": Studies of America’s Moral Fiber, 1940-Present
I.
The human soul possesses some kind of an essential imperative to remember moral axioms and lessons from the past. Institutionally, the clearest proof of this is in religion. Revered works in both the Eastern and Western traditions are commonly recited for their proverbs, tales of good and evil, and moral laws. Among individuals, the wise (as well as the pretentious) quote pithy laws and maxims from memory---the simpler, the better. Today's Evangelical Christians and faithful Muslims quote passages from their respective sacred texts, and intellectuals borrow quotes from literature or perhaps even a philosopher. There is a reason why John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations was filled with lines from the Bible and Shakespeare when first published in 1855.[1]
Related to the simple urge to have prescriptions on hand, there exists another, more complex means of thinking through morality and virtue in the Western tradition. Aristotle helped articulate this other approach. The key to this line of thinking is circumstance, no matter where on the timeline the action under consideration occurred. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle observed that "every state of soul has a nature relative to and concerned with the kinds of things by which it tends to be made worse or better." Continuing and rephrasing another aspect of Aristotle's passage centuries later, Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, wrote: "A virtuous man acts as he should, and when he should, and so on in respect of other circumstances." And Aquinas continued in two other passages:
"Human actions are good or evil according to circumstances. ...The fullness of [an action's] goodness does not consist wholly in its species, but also in certain additions which accrue to it by reason of certain accidents. And its due circumstances are of this character."
"The vicious man...acts when he should not, or where he should not, and so on with the other circumstances. [2]
If Aquinas and Aristotle are correct, and morality is always and everywhere linked to circumstance, and the study of history, furthermore is the study of circumstance (or context) par excellance, then it is clear that the study of history is absolutely crucial to understanding morality. Indeed, one might argue that by studying history, one is always engaged, at a minimum, in an indirect moral endeavor.
Of course some works of history are more and less specific about their moral goals. The moral message of a historical work depends on the historian's willingness to engage moral questions and problems. And if historians are cautious in the moral arena, their reluctance derives from mistakes of older works where moral judgments were not hard earned. While caution perhaps makes historians seem timid or amoral, it also serves as armor against foolishness and the hazards of subjectivity. One person's evil is often, with good reason, another's grey area.
II.
My first direct interaction with George Cotkin came via e-mail about three years ago. In an unsolicited note, he wrote simply to praise the U.S. Intellectual History weblog as a "wonderful idea." He promised to "spread the news" to his students and colleagues. I relay this because, though I generally refuse my first impressions on principle, the charitable kindness of that missive accurately conveyed something about Cotkin’s character. My next noteworthy interaction was indirect. On a prompt from Wilfred McClay, I read Cotkin's April 2008 article, “History’s Moral Turn,” in the Journal of the History of Ideas (Vol. 69, no. 2). The essay led a symposium, with responses from Neil Jumonville, Michael O’Brien, James Livingston, and Lewis Perry. Cotkin's final reply to his respondents came in the July 2008 issue of the journal.[3] Off and on for the rest of the year I contemplated how to continue that conversation at the weblog. In the end I did nothing, and regretted it.
My regret was rooted in the fact that I was impressed with Cotkin's call for historians to explicitly take up moral analysis. In the article he cited abundant evidence of a "moral turn" evident in American life---explicit at the time in America's public sphere, particularly in the actions and words of President George Bush (pp. 293-94). His piece resonated deeply with a sense, buttressed perhaps by my Catholicism and reading in theology and philosophy, that historical analysis must necessarily involve trafficking in morality, sometimes deeply. Admittedly, the historian’s moral sensibility is often tempered, and sometimes disguised (intentionally and unintentionally). The discredited legacy of providential history, tempered and corrected by the analytical turn of the late nineteenth century, explains historians' general reluctance to take up explicit moral analysis.
But Cotkin asserted that historians need to participate, and that they "can play an important role in deepening and directing" the moral conversation. He argued that historians have a positive role to play in moving the public "away from simplicity to complexity, from rhetorical heat to cool compassion." Indeed, other academic intellectuals, particularly moral philosophers, use history to discuss morals in their work. Cotkin chided them, however, for "conceptualizations that are deep, but...historical excavations [that] are commonly shallow." He then made the case for historians to pick up the baton:
Historians can, and are at present, beginning to benefit from acquaintance with how philosophers employ and problematize various concepts—intentionality, virtue, character, moral luck, action, and Just War. ...The moral turn is less about imposing our moral and political judgments on historical events and figures. It looks at historical agents and events to warn us that human motivation is complex and confusing, open and constrained. Morality becomes a process of thinking rather than a predigested set of answers. ...History’s moral turn may help create productive confusion, a willingness to recognize that behind all of our moral choices...lurks paradox, tragedy, and irony (p. 294).
Cotkin spoke generally to historians in his article, but it was clear to me that intellectual historians were specifically implicated. Few other subfields engage philosophy, but that was precisely the discipline he underscored.
I could quote endlessly from the Cotkin essay because it lays out the historiography of moral considerations in the history profession: opposition to, proponents of, always been there, impossible to escape, decayed sense of, secularity and morals, and books that specifically addressed moral inquiry and moral problems. I can stop here, however, because the rest of the article was a precis for another larger work due to appear in a few years.
III.
That work, titled Morality’s Muddy Waters: Ethical Quandaries in Modern America and published by Penn Press, made it to my desk last October. The book both exemplifies Cotkin's call to action and exhibits the assertion that history, written and analyzed by historians, is a superb vehicle for the study of morality. As a matter of classification, the book is what some could call a "study in U.S. intellectual history." In other words, it is not a straightforward narrative of intellectual-ethical-moral matters with seamless transitions between chapters and a recurring community of discourse. Cotkin proposes topics, presented chronologically, that underscore moral complexity, competing ethical imperatives, circumstances, the nature and effects of evil, empathy, responsibility, moral clarity, strictures, contingency, contradictions, and character. I was most fascinated by the emotional complexity of morality, both as cause and effect, of the events presented.
As is the case with any accessible history, Cotkin's overall argument appears in various forms throughout the text. One version arises, naturally, on the first page: MMW "rejects...easy certitude and argues that we need instead...a healthy dose of befuddlement, and even when we are assured that our ends are correct and moral...the means to achieve them may be deeply problematic" (p. 1-2). The problem at hand is moral absolutism, and the solution is complexity. Indeed, by way of conclusion, Cotkin presents a most intriguing paradox with his thesis: namely, that less moral certainty leads to more morality. Stated another way, "the best moral decision-making occurs only after internal struggle and the recognition of bewilderment concerning means and ends" (p. 5). But how does he arrive at this end? What evidence is presented?
The specific thesis of MMW, in relation to its historical material, is this: by "allowing moral moments to emerge in their full confusion" we "learn from historical situations...that we...wander through a fog-enshrouded landscape of perplexing issues" (p. 4). Cotkin adds that "the point of history is to muddy the waters of easy moral clarity rather than to confirm our own sense of moral righteousness or political persuasion" (p. 4). In other words, we do not see enough the moral confusion in history, and a "moral turn" in works like MMW will enrich the present by showing us that moral clarity is not a given. It is hard earned, and sometimes real understanding cannot happen until after the fact.
To enact his thesis in a way that is different from other historians who have fruitfully engaged morality (e.g. David Brion Davis, William Cronon, Harry Stout, Drew Gilpin Faust), Cotkin follows through on his exhortation from "The Moral Turn" by incorporating the work of moral philosophers, ethicists, and psychological theorists. This begins in chapter one with a long, fascinating look at Hannah Arendt and her critics. It continues in the next chapter on World War II bombing by exploring combatant/combatant line in theories of total war (e.g. Giulio Douhet) and just war (e.g. A.C. Grayling, Robert Nozick, and Michael Walzer, Avishai Margalit). Having paused on many occasions in the classroom to pose moral questions in relation to the use of atomic weapons, I appreciated Cotkin's interjection of philosophy in a section titled "Can Bombing of Civilians Be Justified?" (pp. 51-54). That section could be lifted, as is, and incorporated as either an in-class reading or an out-of-class reflection.
In successive chapters, Cotkin continues this invaluable task. In tackling My Lai he weaves in the work of psychologists Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, and Robert Jay Lifton, as well as the reflections of Reinhold Niebuhr and the work of Aristotle on the cultivation of character. John Howard Griffin and his famous work, Black Like Me, are examined in relation to the writings of Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, and a host of philosophers who have written on empathy. A key issue for Griffin was whether moral luck can be transformed, via empathy, into some kind of "universalist vision" (p. 120). When Cotkin moves to capital punishment in chapter five, the pro-death penalty thinking of Ernest van den Haag, Isaac Ehrlich, Hans Zeisel, and the Straussian Walter Berns makes an appearance. In opposition, Cotkin refers to the thinking of Karl Menninger, Hugo Adam Bedau, Philip Hallie, and the famous Sister Helen Prejean.
The last, and necessarily most tentative, full chapter focuses on terrorism and the Iraq War, post September 11. Philosophy makes its appearance in the form of a long discussion about "humanitarian intervention" (meaning, of course, the military variety). The theorists and philosophers of interest include Natan Sharansky, a Soviet refugee and neoconservative Zionist, and Ron Dermer. They co-authored a work The Case for Democracy (2004), the book Bush cited as inspirational for his international moral vision (i.e. democratic freedom must be spread at any price). Other intellectuals cited by Cotkin in this chapter, covering various degrees of interventionism versus outright opposition, include Kanan Makiya, Michael Ignatieff, Samantha Power, David Rieff, Christopher Hitchens, Peter Beinart, and Paul Berman---the last receiving extended treatment. Even though this topic still retains some heat, and it is clear that Cotkin did not support the war, his fairness in relaying the thought processes of the "war hawks" enables a civil tone to pervade the chapter. He only reproves in his final analysis of the characters.
Again, in relation to the aforementioned topics, Cotkin does not merely incorporate the insights of the abovementioned philosophers, ethicists, and psychologists. If he only did that, he would be reproducing the same works as other thinkers who utilize historical examples. Cotkin sets himself apart by following through on his promise to create "productive confusion" by adding more of the context, usually in terms of discussing decision-making and motivations of historical actors, but also by way of regret. He embraces "a tragic and ironic moral stance," and also avoids being judgmental (though the judgments, and regrets, of historical actors are given full play).[4]
IV.
This work engages that still-evolving subfield called the history of emotions---both in its historiography (i.e. approach) and topically in the narrative. Indeed, by invoking the messiness of war, murder, racism, hate, and capital punishment, one can hardly avoid terms like suffering, regret, revenge, morale, repulsion, honor, joy, shock, elation, unsavory, etc. One term, however, that both captured the emotional responses of several of Cotkin's historical eras and evoked an intellectual-religious-emotional response in this reader was "demonic." The word necessarily has fuzzy referential content, but nevertheless draws on our fears and repulsiveness. 'Demonic' captures something of the unreasonableness of radical evil, helping Cotkin articulate what I think is universal revulsion at mid-century's Holocaust and mass murders. It is not surprising, then, that 'demonic' arises primarily in chapter one on "The Problems of Evil," which focuses on Hannah Arendt. This, indeed, is the chapter that opens up the language, terms, and problems that haunt the rest of the book.
Cotkin's goal is to parse the depths of evil. To his credit, he does not pretend to have an answer, or answers, about why evil exists---the metaphysics of evil. Rather, through Arendt as a kind of avatar for his own views, Cotkin gets at the depths of evil achieved both within and outside of social and political structures. The primary structure of concern at mid-century is totalitarianism. Arendt starts with Kant's idea of "radical evil" in The Origins of Totalitarianism (pp. 17-19), intensifies it, and then clarifies further in Eichmann in Jerusalem by adding "the banality of evil" (pp. 23-24). To help Arendt and himself in grappling with people Hitler, Stalin, and Gary Gilmore later, as well as events like My Lai, Cotkin interjects the mysterious element of the 'demonic' into his studies (pp. 16, 79, 136). Here is a crucial passage (bolds mine):
Arendt...painted herself into a narrow corner. If the crimes of totalitarianism were as original and immense as she averred, then could they be anything other than demonic? She never hesitated to describe them throughout Origins...as "monstrous." But to use the term demonic would be to situate evil as mysterious, perhaps outside the realm of rational explanation and the march of worldly events. The demonic resisted laws of nature and the wills of men. Even strong structures of representative democracy and public debate, it seemed, were futile against a demonic entity. ...Arendt was onto something when she remarked on the mysterious nature of evil as something not "humanly understandable." ....Radical evil, despite her best attempts, seemed to slip through her interpretive structure. Arendt's frustrations grew just after publication of the book, when she admitted , "What radical evil is I don't know" (p. 22).
In other words, because totalitarianism demolished the principles of "freedom, contingency, and choice"---principles on which Kant's and Arendt's views of radical evil rested---other concepts had to be introduced in a world where "evil had assumed a new face." But Arendt left her version "grounded...in the institutions and ideology of totalitarianism" (p. 19). Her only revision was to introduce "banality" as an explanatory trope for Eichmann's "less than demonic" position as a "dedicated bureaucrat" lacking "independence of mind" (p. 24).
But the idea of the 'demonic' raises a host of other issues. From where does the idea arise? Is it a universal concept? How can one discuss the topic without an in-depth study of Western theology or metaphysics? Mortimer J. Adler once asserted that a philosopher could posit the existence of angels, meaning the possibility of spiritual intelligences, or "bodies without minds," without buying into Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. Adler argued that it was of a piece with general popular fascination about the idea of "superhuman intelligence," and suggested that fascination could be called "theology-fiction" or "philosophy-fiction" (instead of the old term, "angelology").[5] Adler buttressed his assertion by noting that many philosophers in Western history have speculated the possible role of angels in the universe, including Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Descartes, and others. Studying angels was about studying intelligences that were less than Divine (even if that divinity constituted only the necessary God of the philosophers) but greater than human. As for Satan and demons, however, Adler asserts that they are products of Western religious dogma, and shared by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (though Christianity has special assertions about Satan in relation to Jesus Christ).[6]
I relay this apparent digression because Cotkin does discuss religion, particularly Christianity, in Morality's Muddy Waters. Topics that arise on the latter include born agains, Catholicism, Dorothy Day, fundamentalism, Søren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Denis de Rougemont. For the most part, Cotkin limits his discussion of these figures and topics to the historical actors at hand: Arendt's views of Rougemont, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Christianity is broached, Dorothy Day's influence on John Howard Griffin, fundamentalists' views on capital punishment and retributive justice, and the religious backgrounds of My Lai soldiers. With the exception of Arendt's reaction to Rougement's 1944 book, The Devil's Snare, Cotkin does not spend much time delving into theology (p. 15-16).
This is either the great strength or great weakness in Cotkin's analysis. As a weakness, unlike his insertions from philosophers and psychologists throughout the book, the relative absence of theology diminishes the real contributions of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thinkers. If religion has something substantial to say to us about the human condition, as a great majority of the world believes it does, then it would behoove the intellectual historian dealing in morality to read some of that speculation into the text. In the case of MMW, where most of Cotkin's decision-makers are operating in something of a Judeo-Christian context, whether by violation of or perceived adherence to their faith, that means doing more with Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant theology. Perhaps theological speculation about demonic evil, given dispassionately, would at least help us understand something about the contexts in which these evil characters saw themselves? Would this also help us understand how the masses processed and received news of these atrocities of hatred, murder, mass murder, and international humanitarianism?
I fully recognize the dangers of a professional historian engaging in this kind of speculation. How would colleagues perceive the work? Would an academic press accept the book? What is the line between moral speculation and moralizing? How does one discuss the meaning of 'demonic' without getting past knee-jerk reactions? Cotkin's work is about "productive confusion." Does theological speculation move us into contentious, unproductive territory? And then, in relation to America's Judeo-Christian culture, how does one properly navigate the Protestant-Catholic-Jewish lines of division? Then again, if competing ethical imperatives are an important topic, what raises the bar on moral competition more than religious divisions?
It is not hard to see how avoiding in-depth theological speculation also strengthens the book. For one, it keeps Christianity from dominating MMW, making Cotkin's moral analysis accessible to a wider audience. His more secular study of the idea of evil in recent history results in an unpretentious exploration of the confusion of the moments at hand. By avoiding easy answers, especially those amenable to particular religious dogma, Cotkin maintains the humility, or "moral modesty," he sought to model in the book (p. 205). Indeed, early in the text he wrote:
Some readers may chafe at talk of evil as too tinged with religious overtones or weighted by heavy metaphysical baggage. It resists explanation and therefore obfuscates reality or explains away horror---all dangers, to be sure. (p. 7).
Cotkin listened to this inner warning, and stuck with philosophical and psychological contributions to understanding the events and topics he chose. Based on the fairness of the rest of the text, I believe Cotkin could have successfully navigated a few pages of theology in each chapter. Those few pages, however, would have constituted a tremendous amount of work, especially when exploring work outside one's faith tradition. Even so, in MMW as it is, there is nothing wrong with leading us to the brink. Perhaps by being led to the edge, the reader may be inspired to think through his or her own knowledge, or lack of knowledge, about radical evil in the world.
V.
When "The Moral Turn" appeared in 2008, I mentioned that it led a symposium with four interlocutors. It is worth revisiting some of the points made there now that Cotkin has provided a book-length example of his call. None of the respondents, of course, had access to Morality's Muddy Waters. Even so, all four respondents made solid points about the study of morality in history and asked poignant questions.
Neil Jumonville rightly reminded readers that many mid-century intellectual historians---Richard Hofstadter, David Potter, and Louis Hartz---were excellent models of "complexity, nuance, and contingency" on moral matters. Michael O'Brien asserted that "engagement with morality has been fairly constant in historical scholarship since almost any period one might care to name." He doubted "that the dialogue Cotkin wishes to encourage between historians and moral philosophers is capable of being sustained." O'Brien also warns against prescription and moralizing. In my view, Cotkin avoids those pitfalls. He also proves in the pages of MMW that an in-text dialogue between historians and moral philosophers can be sustained. Lewis Perry reminded Cotkin that yet another intellectual historian, John Higham, had also encouraged historians, in a 1962 essay, to develop a moral voice obtained from historical study. Titled "Beyond Consensus: The Historian as Moral Critic," Perry cited the Higham essay as taking a stand against false detachment and objectivity. The present sometimes demands historical moral reflection. I have not read the Higham essay, but it seems, to some extent, to have prefigured Cotkin's call.[7]
As I have discovered is often the case, James Livingston's response proved most provocative. He flat out denied that a "moral turn" in history was necessary because "the grammar of American history has always been determined by moral problems." Livingston went on to assert, thinking he had put Cotkin in some kind of a headlock, that the early modern, or Enlightenment, project of narrative construction necessarily consisted of agents, historians and otherwise, articulating their moral points. Livingston tightens his hold by pointing out the cultural pervasiveness, in history and the general public today, of moral considerations. I think this misses Cotkin's point. He did not dispute that moral considerations, simple and otherwise, abound. Rather, Cotkin called for an explicit, conscious engagement with moral complexity, or productive confusion, and moral philosophy in the text. In other words, if historians have been and always will be moral agents, they have not always engaged the subject with the complexity, fairness, depth, and explicit sense of purpose exhibited in MMW. [8] I think Livingston, in the end, would be happier with the product of Cotkin's book than he was with Cotkin's proposal in the Journal of the History of Ideas. Then again, he might not.
VI.
Though the presidential administration that haunts the end of Morality's Muddy Waters is gone, questions remain about the motivations, ideological and otherwise, for going to war in Iraq. Just this week an exclusive Guardian story revealed that a key source from Germany, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi and code-named "Curveball," lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to boost his personal prospects of success in civilian life. It was al-Janabi's testimony that floated to the top of America's intelligence system, to the point that it anchored Colin Powell's infamous U.N. testimony before the war's start.[9] Here is a CNN story that elaborates:
Even with this revelation, what is interesting to me is that Cotkin's analysis of the Iraqi War stands. Why? Because Cotkin aimed at the moral roots and simplistic black-and-white thinking, or good-versus-evil drama, that drove President Bush. The fact that the intelligence was fuzzy only proves that ideology drove the war. Furthermore, its same kind of thinking that inspires the Tea Party and other politically powerful conservatives.
Of course that wing of the political spectrum is not unopposed. President Barack Obama exhibits an understanding of moral complexity, and his name arises in a few spots in the text. Cotkin is heartened by President Obama's admiration of the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, particularly in relation to the latter's imperative that sin, pain, evil, unexpected consequences, and humility are necessary topics in relation to foreign and domestic policy (p. 201).
Even so, we cannot be reminded enough—whether by friends, relatives, ministers, teachers, colleagues, or otherwise—that moral progress will not be achieved without embracing complexity. Cotkin is not naive to the fact that we must eventually act, but he implores us to abhor anti-intellectualism and embrace circumspection. We must aspire to a full understanding of moral complications, potential and real. With that, Morality's Muddy Waters stands tall as a model of timely, professional engagement on a topic that concerns a wide variety of the populace. We need more historical works that convey the "productive confusion" Cotkin provides.
------------------------------
*A special thanks to Paul Murphy and David Veenstra for their comments on this review.
[1] Justin Kaplan, ed. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little Brown, 2002).
[2] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by W.D. Ross, in Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, ed., Vol. 8, Aristotle: II (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990), 350 (II-3); Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. by Father Laurence Shapcote, in Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, ed., Vol. 17, Aquinas: I (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990), 695-96 (II-I.18.3).
[3] The JHI symposium is located on pages 293-337. The full citation for Cotkin’s reply is as follows: “A Conversation About Morals and History,” JHI 69 (June 2008): 493-97.
[4] From Cotkin's reply to the Symposium, 496-97.
[5] Mortimer J. Adler, The Angels and Us (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1982), x, 3-4.
[6] Ibid., 83-85.
[7] Symposium, 320, 324-25, 334-35; Cotkin, "Conversation," 493-97.
[8] Symposium, Livingston, "The Return of the Self-Made Man: A Response to Cotkin," 327-31.
[9] Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd, "Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war," Guardian, February 15, 2011. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-lies-iraq-war. Accessed on February 21, 2011.
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Review of George Cotkin, Morality’s Muddy Waters: Ethical Quandaries in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). ISBN: 978-0-8122-4227-0. 262 pages.
Review by Tim Lacy
Monmouth College
History as "Productive Confusion": Studies of America’s Moral Fiber, 1940-Present
I.
The human soul possesses some kind of an essential imperative to remember moral axioms and lessons from the past. Institutionally, the clearest proof of this is in religion. Revered works in both the Eastern and Western traditions are commonly recited for their proverbs, tales of good and evil, and moral laws. Among individuals, the wise (as well as the pretentious) quote pithy laws and maxims from memory---the simpler, the better. Today's Evangelical Christians and faithful Muslims quote passages from their respective sacred texts, and intellectuals borrow quotes from literature or perhaps even a philosopher. There is a reason why John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations was filled with lines from the Bible and Shakespeare when first published in 1855.[1]
Related to the simple urge to have prescriptions on hand, there exists another, more complex means of thinking through morality and virtue in the Western tradition. Aristotle helped articulate this other approach. The key to this line of thinking is circumstance, no matter where on the timeline the action under consideration occurred. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle observed that "every state of soul has a nature relative to and concerned with the kinds of things by which it tends to be made worse or better." Continuing and rephrasing another aspect of Aristotle's passage centuries later, Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, wrote: "A virtuous man acts as he should, and when he should, and so on in respect of other circumstances." And Aquinas continued in two other passages:
"Human actions are good or evil according to circumstances. ...The fullness of [an action's] goodness does not consist wholly in its species, but also in certain additions which accrue to it by reason of certain accidents. And its due circumstances are of this character."
"The vicious man...acts when he should not, or where he should not, and so on with the other circumstances. [2]
If Aquinas and Aristotle are correct, and morality is always and everywhere linked to circumstance, and the study of history, furthermore is the study of circumstance (or context) par excellance, then it is clear that the study of history is absolutely crucial to understanding morality. Indeed, one might argue that by studying history, one is always engaged, at a minimum, in an indirect moral endeavor.
Of course some works of history are more and less specific about their moral goals. The moral message of a historical work depends on the historian's willingness to engage moral questions and problems. And if historians are cautious in the moral arena, their reluctance derives from mistakes of older works where moral judgments were not hard earned. While caution perhaps makes historians seem timid or amoral, it also serves as armor against foolishness and the hazards of subjectivity. One person's evil is often, with good reason, another's grey area.
II.
My first direct interaction with George Cotkin came via e-mail about three years ago. In an unsolicited note, he wrote simply to praise the U.S. Intellectual History weblog as a "wonderful idea." He promised to "spread the news" to his students and colleagues. I relay this because, though I generally refuse my first impressions on principle, the charitable kindness of that missive accurately conveyed something about Cotkin’s character. My next noteworthy interaction was indirect. On a prompt from Wilfred McClay, I read Cotkin's April 2008 article, “History’s Moral Turn,” in the Journal of the History of Ideas (Vol. 69, no. 2). The essay led a symposium, with responses from Neil Jumonville, Michael O’Brien, James Livingston, and Lewis Perry. Cotkin's final reply to his respondents came in the July 2008 issue of the journal.[3] Off and on for the rest of the year I contemplated how to continue that conversation at the weblog. In the end I did nothing, and regretted it.
My regret was rooted in the fact that I was impressed with Cotkin's call for historians to explicitly take up moral analysis. In the article he cited abundant evidence of a "moral turn" evident in American life---explicit at the time in America's public sphere, particularly in the actions and words of President George Bush (pp. 293-94). His piece resonated deeply with a sense, buttressed perhaps by my Catholicism and reading in theology and philosophy, that historical analysis must necessarily involve trafficking in morality, sometimes deeply. Admittedly, the historian’s moral sensibility is often tempered, and sometimes disguised (intentionally and unintentionally). The discredited legacy of providential history, tempered and corrected by the analytical turn of the late nineteenth century, explains historians' general reluctance to take up explicit moral analysis.
But Cotkin asserted that historians need to participate, and that they "can play an important role in deepening and directing" the moral conversation. He argued that historians have a positive role to play in moving the public "away from simplicity to complexity, from rhetorical heat to cool compassion." Indeed, other academic intellectuals, particularly moral philosophers, use history to discuss morals in their work. Cotkin chided them, however, for "conceptualizations that are deep, but...historical excavations [that] are commonly shallow." He then made the case for historians to pick up the baton:
Historians can, and are at present, beginning to benefit from acquaintance with how philosophers employ and problematize various concepts—intentionality, virtue, character, moral luck, action, and Just War. ...The moral turn is less about imposing our moral and political judgments on historical events and figures. It looks at historical agents and events to warn us that human motivation is complex and confusing, open and constrained. Morality becomes a process of thinking rather than a predigested set of answers. ...History’s moral turn may help create productive confusion, a willingness to recognize that behind all of our moral choices...lurks paradox, tragedy, and irony (p. 294).
Cotkin spoke generally to historians in his article, but it was clear to me that intellectual historians were specifically implicated. Few other subfields engage philosophy, but that was precisely the discipline he underscored.
I could quote endlessly from the Cotkin essay because it lays out the historiography of moral considerations in the history profession: opposition to, proponents of, always been there, impossible to escape, decayed sense of, secularity and morals, and books that specifically addressed moral inquiry and moral problems. I can stop here, however, because the rest of the article was a precis for another larger work due to appear in a few years.
III.
That work, titled Morality’s Muddy Waters: Ethical Quandaries in Modern America and published by Penn Press, made it to my desk last October. The book both exemplifies Cotkin's call to action and exhibits the assertion that history, written and analyzed by historians, is a superb vehicle for the study of morality. As a matter of classification, the book is what some could call a "study in U.S. intellectual history." In other words, it is not a straightforward narrative of intellectual-ethical-moral matters with seamless transitions between chapters and a recurring community of discourse. Cotkin proposes topics, presented chronologically, that underscore moral complexity, competing ethical imperatives, circumstances, the nature and effects of evil, empathy, responsibility, moral clarity, strictures, contingency, contradictions, and character. I was most fascinated by the emotional complexity of morality, both as cause and effect, of the events presented.
As is the case with any accessible history, Cotkin's overall argument appears in various forms throughout the text. One version arises, naturally, on the first page: MMW "rejects...easy certitude and argues that we need instead...a healthy dose of befuddlement, and even when we are assured that our ends are correct and moral...the means to achieve them may be deeply problematic" (p. 1-2). The problem at hand is moral absolutism, and the solution is complexity. Indeed, by way of conclusion, Cotkin presents a most intriguing paradox with his thesis: namely, that less moral certainty leads to more morality. Stated another way, "the best moral decision-making occurs only after internal struggle and the recognition of bewilderment concerning means and ends" (p. 5). But how does he arrive at this end? What evidence is presented?
The specific thesis of MMW, in relation to its historical material, is this: by "allowing moral moments to emerge in their full confusion" we "learn from historical situations...that we...wander through a fog-enshrouded landscape of perplexing issues" (p. 4). Cotkin adds that "the point of history is to muddy the waters of easy moral clarity rather than to confirm our own sense of moral righteousness or political persuasion" (p. 4). In other words, we do not see enough the moral confusion in history, and a "moral turn" in works like MMW will enrich the present by showing us that moral clarity is not a given. It is hard earned, and sometimes real understanding cannot happen until after the fact.
To enact his thesis in a way that is different from other historians who have fruitfully engaged morality (e.g. David Brion Davis, William Cronon, Harry Stout, Drew Gilpin Faust), Cotkin follows through on his exhortation from "The Moral Turn" by incorporating the work of moral philosophers, ethicists, and psychological theorists. This begins in chapter one with a long, fascinating look at Hannah Arendt and her critics. It continues in the next chapter on World War II bombing by exploring combatant/combatant line in theories of total war (e.g. Giulio Douhet) and just war (e.g. A.C. Grayling, Robert Nozick, and Michael Walzer, Avishai Margalit). Having paused on many occasions in the classroom to pose moral questions in relation to the use of atomic weapons, I appreciated Cotkin's interjection of philosophy in a section titled "Can Bombing of Civilians Be Justified?" (pp. 51-54). That section could be lifted, as is, and incorporated as either an in-class reading or an out-of-class reflection.
In successive chapters, Cotkin continues this invaluable task. In tackling My Lai he weaves in the work of psychologists Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, and Robert Jay Lifton, as well as the reflections of Reinhold Niebuhr and the work of Aristotle on the cultivation of character. John Howard Griffin and his famous work, Black Like Me, are examined in relation to the writings of Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, and a host of philosophers who have written on empathy. A key issue for Griffin was whether moral luck can be transformed, via empathy, into some kind of "universalist vision" (p. 120). When Cotkin moves to capital punishment in chapter five, the pro-death penalty thinking of Ernest van den Haag, Isaac Ehrlich, Hans Zeisel, and the Straussian Walter Berns makes an appearance. In opposition, Cotkin refers to the thinking of Karl Menninger, Hugo Adam Bedau, Philip Hallie, and the famous Sister Helen Prejean.
The last, and necessarily most tentative, full chapter focuses on terrorism and the Iraq War, post September 11. Philosophy makes its appearance in the form of a long discussion about "humanitarian intervention" (meaning, of course, the military variety). The theorists and philosophers of interest include Natan Sharansky, a Soviet refugee and neoconservative Zionist, and Ron Dermer. They co-authored a work The Case for Democracy (2004), the book Bush cited as inspirational for his international moral vision (i.e. democratic freedom must be spread at any price). Other intellectuals cited by Cotkin in this chapter, covering various degrees of interventionism versus outright opposition, include Kanan Makiya, Michael Ignatieff, Samantha Power, David Rieff, Christopher Hitchens, Peter Beinart, and Paul Berman---the last receiving extended treatment. Even though this topic still retains some heat, and it is clear that Cotkin did not support the war, his fairness in relaying the thought processes of the "war hawks" enables a civil tone to pervade the chapter. He only reproves in his final analysis of the characters.
Again, in relation to the aforementioned topics, Cotkin does not merely incorporate the insights of the abovementioned philosophers, ethicists, and psychologists. If he only did that, he would be reproducing the same works as other thinkers who utilize historical examples. Cotkin sets himself apart by following through on his promise to create "productive confusion" by adding more of the context, usually in terms of discussing decision-making and motivations of historical actors, but also by way of regret. He embraces "a tragic and ironic moral stance," and also avoids being judgmental (though the judgments, and regrets, of historical actors are given full play).[4]
IV.
This work engages that still-evolving subfield called the history of emotions---both in its historiography (i.e. approach) and topically in the narrative. Indeed, by invoking the messiness of war, murder, racism, hate, and capital punishment, one can hardly avoid terms like suffering, regret, revenge, morale, repulsion, honor, joy, shock, elation, unsavory, etc. One term, however, that both captured the emotional responses of several of Cotkin's historical eras and evoked an intellectual-religious-emotional response in this reader was "demonic." The word necessarily has fuzzy referential content, but nevertheless draws on our fears and repulsiveness. 'Demonic' captures something of the unreasonableness of radical evil, helping Cotkin articulate what I think is universal revulsion at mid-century's Holocaust and mass murders. It is not surprising, then, that 'demonic' arises primarily in chapter one on "The Problems of Evil," which focuses on Hannah Arendt. This, indeed, is the chapter that opens up the language, terms, and problems that haunt the rest of the book.
Cotkin's goal is to parse the depths of evil. To his credit, he does not pretend to have an answer, or answers, about why evil exists---the metaphysics of evil. Rather, through Arendt as a kind of avatar for his own views, Cotkin gets at the depths of evil achieved both within and outside of social and political structures. The primary structure of concern at mid-century is totalitarianism. Arendt starts with Kant's idea of "radical evil" in The Origins of Totalitarianism (pp. 17-19), intensifies it, and then clarifies further in Eichmann in Jerusalem by adding "the banality of evil" (pp. 23-24). To help Arendt and himself in grappling with people Hitler, Stalin, and Gary Gilmore later, as well as events like My Lai, Cotkin interjects the mysterious element of the 'demonic' into his studies (pp. 16, 79, 136). Here is a crucial passage (bolds mine):
Arendt...painted herself into a narrow corner. If the crimes of totalitarianism were as original and immense as she averred, then could they be anything other than demonic? She never hesitated to describe them throughout Origins...as "monstrous." But to use the term demonic would be to situate evil as mysterious, perhaps outside the realm of rational explanation and the march of worldly events. The demonic resisted laws of nature and the wills of men. Even strong structures of representative democracy and public debate, it seemed, were futile against a demonic entity. ...Arendt was onto something when she remarked on the mysterious nature of evil as something not "humanly understandable." ....Radical evil, despite her best attempts, seemed to slip through her interpretive structure. Arendt's frustrations grew just after publication of the book, when she admitted , "What radical evil is I don't know" (p. 22).
In other words, because totalitarianism demolished the principles of "freedom, contingency, and choice"---principles on which Kant's and Arendt's views of radical evil rested---other concepts had to be introduced in a world where "evil had assumed a new face." But Arendt left her version "grounded...in the institutions and ideology of totalitarianism" (p. 19). Her only revision was to introduce "banality" as an explanatory trope for Eichmann's "less than demonic" position as a "dedicated bureaucrat" lacking "independence of mind" (p. 24).
But the idea of the 'demonic' raises a host of other issues. From where does the idea arise? Is it a universal concept? How can one discuss the topic without an in-depth study of Western theology or metaphysics? Mortimer J. Adler once asserted that a philosopher could posit the existence of angels, meaning the possibility of spiritual intelligences, or "bodies without minds," without buying into Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. Adler argued that it was of a piece with general popular fascination about the idea of "superhuman intelligence," and suggested that fascination could be called "theology-fiction" or "philosophy-fiction" (instead of the old term, "angelology").[5] Adler buttressed his assertion by noting that many philosophers in Western history have speculated the possible role of angels in the universe, including Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Descartes, and others. Studying angels was about studying intelligences that were less than Divine (even if that divinity constituted only the necessary God of the philosophers) but greater than human. As for Satan and demons, however, Adler asserts that they are products of Western religious dogma, and shared by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (though Christianity has special assertions about Satan in relation to Jesus Christ).[6]
I relay this apparent digression because Cotkin does discuss religion, particularly Christianity, in Morality's Muddy Waters. Topics that arise on the latter include born agains, Catholicism, Dorothy Day, fundamentalism, Søren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Denis de Rougemont. For the most part, Cotkin limits his discussion of these figures and topics to the historical actors at hand: Arendt's views of Rougemont, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Christianity is broached, Dorothy Day's influence on John Howard Griffin, fundamentalists' views on capital punishment and retributive justice, and the religious backgrounds of My Lai soldiers. With the exception of Arendt's reaction to Rougement's 1944 book, The Devil's Snare, Cotkin does not spend much time delving into theology (p. 15-16).
This is either the great strength or great weakness in Cotkin's analysis. As a weakness, unlike his insertions from philosophers and psychologists throughout the book, the relative absence of theology diminishes the real contributions of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thinkers. If religion has something substantial to say to us about the human condition, as a great majority of the world believes it does, then it would behoove the intellectual historian dealing in morality to read some of that speculation into the text. In the case of MMW, where most of Cotkin's decision-makers are operating in something of a Judeo-Christian context, whether by violation of or perceived adherence to their faith, that means doing more with Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant theology. Perhaps theological speculation about demonic evil, given dispassionately, would at least help us understand something about the contexts in which these evil characters saw themselves? Would this also help us understand how the masses processed and received news of these atrocities of hatred, murder, mass murder, and international humanitarianism?
I fully recognize the dangers of a professional historian engaging in this kind of speculation. How would colleagues perceive the work? Would an academic press accept the book? What is the line between moral speculation and moralizing? How does one discuss the meaning of 'demonic' without getting past knee-jerk reactions? Cotkin's work is about "productive confusion." Does theological speculation move us into contentious, unproductive territory? And then, in relation to America's Judeo-Christian culture, how does one properly navigate the Protestant-Catholic-Jewish lines of division? Then again, if competing ethical imperatives are an important topic, what raises the bar on moral competition more than religious divisions?
It is not hard to see how avoiding in-depth theological speculation also strengthens the book. For one, it keeps Christianity from dominating MMW, making Cotkin's moral analysis accessible to a wider audience. His more secular study of the idea of evil in recent history results in an unpretentious exploration of the confusion of the moments at hand. By avoiding easy answers, especially those amenable to particular religious dogma, Cotkin maintains the humility, or "moral modesty," he sought to model in the book (p. 205). Indeed, early in the text he wrote:
Some readers may chafe at talk of evil as too tinged with religious overtones or weighted by heavy metaphysical baggage. It resists explanation and therefore obfuscates reality or explains away horror---all dangers, to be sure. (p. 7).
Cotkin listened to this inner warning, and stuck with philosophical and psychological contributions to understanding the events and topics he chose. Based on the fairness of the rest of the text, I believe Cotkin could have successfully navigated a few pages of theology in each chapter. Those few pages, however, would have constituted a tremendous amount of work, especially when exploring work outside one's faith tradition. Even so, in MMW as it is, there is nothing wrong with leading us to the brink. Perhaps by being led to the edge, the reader may be inspired to think through his or her own knowledge, or lack of knowledge, about radical evil in the world.
V.
When "The Moral Turn" appeared in 2008, I mentioned that it led a symposium with four interlocutors. It is worth revisiting some of the points made there now that Cotkin has provided a book-length example of his call. None of the respondents, of course, had access to Morality's Muddy Waters. Even so, all four respondents made solid points about the study of morality in history and asked poignant questions.
Neil Jumonville rightly reminded readers that many mid-century intellectual historians---Richard Hofstadter, David Potter, and Louis Hartz---were excellent models of "complexity, nuance, and contingency" on moral matters. Michael O'Brien asserted that "engagement with morality has been fairly constant in historical scholarship since almost any period one might care to name." He doubted "that the dialogue Cotkin wishes to encourage between historians and moral philosophers is capable of being sustained." O'Brien also warns against prescription and moralizing. In my view, Cotkin avoids those pitfalls. He also proves in the pages of MMW that an in-text dialogue between historians and moral philosophers can be sustained. Lewis Perry reminded Cotkin that yet another intellectual historian, John Higham, had also encouraged historians, in a 1962 essay, to develop a moral voice obtained from historical study. Titled "Beyond Consensus: The Historian as Moral Critic," Perry cited the Higham essay as taking a stand against false detachment and objectivity. The present sometimes demands historical moral reflection. I have not read the Higham essay, but it seems, to some extent, to have prefigured Cotkin's call.[7]
As I have discovered is often the case, James Livingston's response proved most provocative. He flat out denied that a "moral turn" in history was necessary because "the grammar of American history has always been determined by moral problems." Livingston went on to assert, thinking he had put Cotkin in some kind of a headlock, that the early modern, or Enlightenment, project of narrative construction necessarily consisted of agents, historians and otherwise, articulating their moral points. Livingston tightens his hold by pointing out the cultural pervasiveness, in history and the general public today, of moral considerations. I think this misses Cotkin's point. He did not dispute that moral considerations, simple and otherwise, abound. Rather, Cotkin called for an explicit, conscious engagement with moral complexity, or productive confusion, and moral philosophy in the text. In other words, if historians have been and always will be moral agents, they have not always engaged the subject with the complexity, fairness, depth, and explicit sense of purpose exhibited in MMW. [8] I think Livingston, in the end, would be happier with the product of Cotkin's book than he was with Cotkin's proposal in the Journal of the History of Ideas. Then again, he might not.
VI.
Though the presidential administration that haunts the end of Morality's Muddy Waters is gone, questions remain about the motivations, ideological and otherwise, for going to war in Iraq. Just this week an exclusive Guardian story revealed that a key source from Germany, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi and code-named "Curveball," lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to boost his personal prospects of success in civilian life. It was al-Janabi's testimony that floated to the top of America's intelligence system, to the point that it anchored Colin Powell's infamous U.N. testimony before the war's start.[9] Here is a CNN story that elaborates:
Even with this revelation, what is interesting to me is that Cotkin's analysis of the Iraqi War stands. Why? Because Cotkin aimed at the moral roots and simplistic black-and-white thinking, or good-versus-evil drama, that drove President Bush. The fact that the intelligence was fuzzy only proves that ideology drove the war. Furthermore, its same kind of thinking that inspires the Tea Party and other politically powerful conservatives.
Of course that wing of the political spectrum is not unopposed. President Barack Obama exhibits an understanding of moral complexity, and his name arises in a few spots in the text. Cotkin is heartened by President Obama's admiration of the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, particularly in relation to the latter's imperative that sin, pain, evil, unexpected consequences, and humility are necessary topics in relation to foreign and domestic policy (p. 201).
Even so, we cannot be reminded enough—whether by friends, relatives, ministers, teachers, colleagues, or otherwise—that moral progress will not be achieved without embracing complexity. Cotkin is not naive to the fact that we must eventually act, but he implores us to abhor anti-intellectualism and embrace circumspection. We must aspire to a full understanding of moral complications, potential and real. With that, Morality's Muddy Waters stands tall as a model of timely, professional engagement on a topic that concerns a wide variety of the populace. We need more historical works that convey the "productive confusion" Cotkin provides.
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*A special thanks to Paul Murphy and David Veenstra for their comments on this review.
[1] Justin Kaplan, ed. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little Brown, 2002).
[2] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by W.D. Ross, in Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, ed., Vol. 8, Aristotle: II (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990), 350 (II-3); Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. by Father Laurence Shapcote, in Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, ed., Vol. 17, Aquinas: I (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990), 695-96 (II-I.18.3).
[3] The JHI symposium is located on pages 293-337. The full citation for Cotkin’s reply is as follows: “A Conversation About Morals and History,” JHI 69 (June 2008): 493-97.
[4] From Cotkin's reply to the Symposium, 496-97.
[5] Mortimer J. Adler, The Angels and Us (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1982), x, 3-4.
[6] Ibid., 83-85.
[7] Symposium, 320, 324-25, 334-35; Cotkin, "Conversation," 493-97.
[8] Symposium, Livingston, "The Return of the Self-Made Man: A Response to Cotkin," 327-31.
[9] Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd, "Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war," Guardian, February 15, 2011. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-lies-iraq-war. Accessed on February 21, 2011.
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