Irony and Sin

The remains of the Twin Towers were still smoldering when Roger Rosenblatt's essay in Time appeared.  The aftermath of America's "worst" day since Pearl Harbor revealed the dawning of a new, profound era to Rosenblatt and other conservative observers.  "One good thing could come from this horror," he wrote, "it could spell the end of the age of irony."

Right...irony disappeared into a haze of violence and robo-patriotism.  More than a decade after the event that made our world "real" again, it seems pretty clear that without irony we are stuck wondering what the hell just happened.  I had a problem not merely with the impulse of many conservatives had to declare an end to irony--which meant to them an end to the culture wars--but with the reflexive way many conservatives and many liberals used Reinhold Niebuhr as their go-to guy for rationalizing the age that would follow the end of irony.

Niebuhr's famous essay, "Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist," was reworked into a clarion call for defeating evil in the age of terror.  The cold war caricature of Niebuhr was resurrected as the dark, brooding theologian of war.  His sense of irony reimagined as a the worse kind of engagement--America would be given a pass on evil acts as long as it claimed to defend (and spread) civilization.

Yet missing from this discourse was the foundation on which Niebuhr built his sense of irony--his understanding and acceptance of sin.  I write that word knowing that it might conjure images of Puritans, the devil...and the Church Lady.  I accept the slippage because the aspect that enraged me as the U.S. plowed across two countries was the willful lack of reflection.  I wrote about Susan Sontag's rage in this respect earlier, and reading the perceptive discussions on irony over the last week here made me think further about the link, as James Levy writes so evocatively about, between irony and engagement.

Niebuhr considered himself nothing if not an engaged religious intellectual.  He was a preacher more than a theologian, according to his autobiography, and had view of sin that differed markedly from versions of original sin in that he believed the fallen nature of man did not condemn humanity to existence of perpetual paralysis.  Rather he understood sin as essential to seeing or recognizing without qualifications the work that needed to be done.  In other words, humanity was in a collective of hope because it was in a collective of despair.  Irony described the state of affairs but not the state of humanity.

I admire the different discussions of irony we've had here.  And it seems to me that there are two broad ways to understand and perhaps use the term from those discussions.  Jim Livingston gives us the paring of William Appleman Williams with practicioners of irony in the first half of the cold war--Niebuhr, Burke, White.  Accordingly we are caught in a play on truth--recognition of that existence does not clarify our state but moves us from understanding our plight as tragedy to irony. And we have James Levy's philosophical discussion of irony as processed through the culture of audience.  In Levy's understanding, irony makes evident the culture of reproduction--its technocracy from top to bottom--and thus using the methods of play to create not a reproduction but a fractured mirror and therefore a critique of the culture we often can't see clearly enough to critique.

Both versions are products of modernity and as such, I think, suggest the existence of third, foundational understanding of irony. Chris Shannon in his review of cold war social science and in particular in his comments following the post, argues for a way beyond our modern use of irony--as a reminder of what the object of irony might be and therefore the point of engagement.  Shannon points out at the heart of the struggle to make sense of the world either violated or imagined by social science is the human person. Irony makes sense only if one accepted that the person was rooted in a perpetual, not a sociological, community.  By this I mean a community that was not waiting to be discovered or perfected or more fully realized by the advancements in science, technology or, even, theology.  It was a community that people lived within but had no real ability to fully understand.  And the distance between living and understanding allowed for two responses, a humility borne out of awe of ignorance and a confidence (and hubris) borne of out awe of accumulation.

Niebuhr practiced a theology of irony because he believed both positions were joined by the human condition of sin. Neither could recognize the their truths were not normative; and neither would allow that those of the other position were involved in the same struggle to preserve this perpetual community.  But accepting sin meant accepting something modernity was suppose to make obsolete--the irrational belief that, as Niebuhr wrote in 1925 as a young preacher in Detriot, the "cross is a symbol of ultimate reality."  But this ultimate reality was not to be theorized, measured, and cataloged.   Nor was it to be understood as exceptional, as a metaphysical club that gave members a pass on dealing with non-members.

This is why for Niebuhr the Christian church could not be pacifist.  Faced with the crimes of fascism and communism, Niebuhr went to war because he saw abominations against the perpetual community.  Both movements abandoned civilization in an attempt to produce a materialist definition of the person--that was tragic (and horrific).  What Niebuhr saw as ironic was the terrible prospect of responding to these abominations because whatever means would be used to counter fascism and communism would violate civilization as well.  But Niebuhr's use of sin could make him sound "churchy" and alienating.    

Yet, Niebuhr's irony, grounded as it was in sin, presaged a reality that allowed him to argue for a type of engagement that went beyond the tautology of truth that Jim Livingston points to and a world of engagement that James Levy's ironic brigades imagine for us.  As Chris Shannon notes, to make a perpetual community viable requires recognizing that there are limits on a society, and that this society also accepts a notion of perpetual community.  For Niebuhr, there was no other way to understand those two ideas than to recognize the relationship between our perpetual community and a kingdom of God.  That was the Christian life for Niebuhr and it was the source of his irony.  When many other post-9/11 conservatives rallied to return the United States to a pre-culture wars reality, claiming a return literally to God, they often used Niebuhr as a crutch.  What they utterly overlooked (or more likely willfully dismissed) was Niebuhr's radical notion of irony in calling any society back to God.  It's not that Niebuhr shared more in common with the critics of the war on terror than it's promoters acknowledged, but that his view of civilization shared little in common with a materialist notion often associated with civilization.  We often forget that Niebuhr shared Marx's visceral repulsion to the degradation of modern industrial society.  But Marx never went far enough for Niebuhr. (a view Zizek seems to share as well, correct?  Perhaps that is where Zizek is headed when he praises the Chinese cultural revolution for its ideological boldness in attempting to make community an ideology)  For Neibuhr irony described the contemporary situation, sin grounded that situation in history, and community existed as the reality that made the human person something more than a sociological study.

A house that Diggins helped build

It has been nearly two years since the prolific John Patrick Diggins died, thus leaving to a dozen intellectual historians the work that he used to do alone. Diggins played a role in fostering the US intellectual history conference, and the bar at which we will hold the celebration to inaugurate the S-USIH is the one that Diggins haunted with colleagues and students. We'll have to toast Jack Diggins Thursday night.

I am writing a review of a couple of recent books on Reinhold Niebuhr, including the book Diggins wrote just before his death, "Why Niebuhr Now?" That question doesn't really organize the book as much as acknowledge that Niebuhr's insight (even wisdom?) has not yet grown stale. Diggins makes that case better than anybody I have yet read on the topic. Perhaps that is because Diggins, like Niebuhr, found sustenance in the mixing of intellectual history and theology; a potent antidote (if handled correctly) to the American pathological tendency toward self-deception. There was no beating history; and thus there was considerable honor in being a historian.

Therefore I look forward to hearing papers and panels and plenaries (especially the one that closes the conference on American exceptionalism) that cut across topics that Diggins almost without fail addressed one way or another in his work.

Near the end of his book on Niebuhr, Diggins points to one passage in "The Irony of American History" that he called beautiful. It is a passage that many have found worthy of being prayed. Those who knew Diggins might be able to say something about his reaction to it.

'Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.' (The Irony of American History, 63)

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

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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

When Niebuhr Met Spelly (sort of)

As often happens around this blog (I wish we all shared an office), somebody prompts someone else to think about a post. Tim Lacy has helped me do this yet again. He asked me what I knew about Niebuhr and anti-Catholicism. What follows is one insight into that query.

In the summer of 1949, Reinhold Niebuhr had had enough of Catholic cries of “intolerance” and “bigotry.” His Democratic ally and fellow ADA member, Eleanor Roosevelt, had provoked a testy fight with New York City’s imperious Francis Cardinal Spellman over a bill before Congress that would extend federal funds to pupils in America’s public schools. Spellman denounced the bill as “anti-Catholic” for failing to give equal aid to children who attended parochial schools. Spellman contended that if the nation paid for school children to have a “bottle of milk” then all school children should get such aid, not merely those in public schools. On June 23, 1949, Eleanor Roosevelt shot back in her newspaper column “My Day”: “The controversy brought about by the request made by Cardinal Spellman that Catholic schools should share in federal aid funds forces upon the citizens of the country the kind of decision that is going to be very difficult to make.” Ominous words from the “First Citizen of the World.” And such a remark belied a whole set of assumptions that Roosevelt was apparently unable to detect. For his part, Niebuhr wrote in the August 8, 1949 issue of Christianity and Crisis: “If a Roman Catholic cardinal regards an honest difference of conviction between himself and Mrs. Roosevelt on provisions of the education bill as proof of ‘anti-Catholic prejudice’ on Mrs. Roosevelt’s part, it would appear that there is no possibility of proving oneself free of ‘prejudice’ except by agreeing with him.”

To say the least, Niebuhr shared with Roosevelt a “problem” with what they determined was Catholic pride. Daniel Rice explains in an essay from the terrific volume, Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited: Engagements with an American Original (2009), that Niebuhr “viewed the church’s identification with the kingdom of God as the essence of Catholic heresy…Given that the Catholic Church can brook no criticism, Niebuhr labeled Catholicism ‘an officially intolerant religion,’ confessing that it is ‘not easy to deal charitably’ with an institution making the kind of claims it makes.” (326) Revisiting this controversy, even briefly, helps me consider the centrality of competing moral authorities in American religion history—a theme developed in great detail in David Sehat’s book on American religious freedom. As my students and I work our way through a course on the Catholic Church in America, we run into these episodes in which both sides (though often represented most clearly by elite Protestants) assume that they are defending an American legal principle in the face of forces that threaten the sanctity of the separation of Church and State.

Ironically, Niebuhr emulates this pattern in a statement that I am pretty certain he meant as a debate-stopper in his piece on the Roosevelt-Spellman feud. “One further point must be considered in weighing the charge of ‘bigotry’ made by those who disagree with the Catholic position on any question,” Niebuhr lectured. “Have our Catholic friends ever thought how much patience is required when our own convictions are constantly challenged as obvious violations of the natural law, and as, therefore, in conflict with the expressed will of God?” Ouch!

No doubt Niebuhr believed toleration of Catholic schools and the instruction of children therein was a magnanimous feat. However, for a thinker so concerned with power and the dangerous pretentious of confidence in one’s righteousness, Niebuhr might have considered not whether his “Catholic friends” should be sensitive about how their dogmas had been received by others, but what options there were for those friends. Was there some other way to prove one’s fealty to American pragmatism than to agree with the liberal thinkers of the moment? To say that Spellman saw himself as God’s representative on earth is to take things a bit too far—he was the Church’s man in America and America was a nation that commanded a great deal of devotion. While Niebuhr questioned Catholic claims for natural law, there were a few Catholics who occasionally questioned the American (often Protestant-based) claims for the American Way of Life. This dispute over the mythological beast of Church-State separation in the summer of 1949 appears to illustrate this most fundamental clash.

Fundamental Tensions In U.S. History, Intellectual and Otherwise

I don't normally spend a lot time thinking about essential, or fundamental, tensions in American history. I think positing these tensions is a bit cheap---a reductionist way of sweeping a lot important details, or contingencies, under the rug. I suppose I should think more about these tensions, however, since they are useful. Many well-known historians resort to them. And many solid historians respect others who resort to these shorthands.



For a long time Hegel, for instance, was important---a force to be reckoned with---in terms of theorizing about history. In case you're forgotten (or are unfamiliar), Hegel discussed a dialectic, or a tension, around the idea of freedom in history. He saw a dialectic of transition, progress actually, in relation to our increased consciousness of freedom. Hegel forwarded the theory that the idea of freedom was coming into being by grades---that there was a teleology of the realization of human freedom in history. See his Philosophy of History for more, or read more about his thought here. I think this is a fair, shorthand way, of characterizing his thought. He saw a tension, and believed it should characterize accounts of Western history. It's whiggish, but past historians of the United States have applied it in their accounts.



But I'm not here to dwell on Hegel. My present thinking about fundamental tensions has arisen because of some side reading in Reinhold Niebuhr.* This past week I started reading Niebuhr's 1944 book, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. This is a work of political philosophy, infused with Christian theology, that covers democracy, fascism, cynicism, and optimism in relation to liberal Christian and secular thought. Ray Haberski referenced this work in an earlier UISH post. Ray used Niebuhr's Children in a discussion of the 1949 film noir classic, The Third Man, to analyze fascism's success in the context of the growth of democratic liberalism.



I'm intrigued by a fundamental tension Niebuhr attributes to Western societies in Children. He argues that you can view the history of Western political philosophy, and American politics by extension, through the lenses of excessive optimism and extreme cynicism. The former is linked to political liberals (particularly the twentieth-century American variety) through their sharp focus on general welfare. These are the naive "Children of Light." The latter, the "Children of Darkness," use our inherent self-interest to manipulate politics through cynicism---playing factions off each other.



This resonated with me. But I probably would've held Niebuhr's theory in tension had I not seen an immediate application this week in the classroom. I'm teaching "The History of American Education" this term, and our first applied reading---after a two-period discussion of the nature and philosophy of history---was in William J. Reese's America's Public Schools: From the Common School to "No Child Left Behind" (Johns Hopkins Press, 2001). The book is part of a series edited by Stanley I. Kutler called "The American Moment."



Normally I don't dwell on forewords from series editors in my readings with students; even in an academic press series, these are usually puffery---an academic's attempt at salesmanship. But I decided to have them look at this one. Kutler's foreword offered at least one intriguing point relating to "fundamental tensions" in American history:



"Schooling also reflects the eternal quest for the proper balance between individualism and community---both "values," deeply ingrained in the American character, with substantial merit and appeal. Americans, Reese notes [on p. 8], vacillate between the two, yet constantly search for a useful, meaningful reconciliation of any tension between them, favoring an education system that will promote and serve both values" (p. ix).



Just to be painfully explicit, I'm connecting individualism to self interest, and general welfare to community (or the common good).



Just before the crush of the term began, as I was attempting to finish my recent manuscript chapter on Mortimer J. Adler, the great books idea, and reactions to the Sixties, I was dwelling a lot on feelings of alienation in relation to the common good. I was thinking a great deal about how our institutions (public, private, and in-between) navigate the individual-community divide, and how they get off-track and require reform---or even revolution.



In other words, my reading, research, and teaching are coming together to underscore the notion that fundamental tensions, especially this one between self-interest and the general welfare, are not just cheap, reductionist shorthands that ignore contingencies. Indeed, some dialectics and dichotomies are representative of historical realities---the historical contingencies at hand are about these tensions. These tensions feel simple, but have an explanatory power that can't be denied. Maybe Niebuhr, Kutler, and Reese are right? And maybe I need to take Hegel more seriously than I have in the past?



What "fundamental tensions"---or dichotomies or dialectics---guide your thinking about intellectual history, or American culture generally? How do you work around the problems they present? How do you reckon with their explanatory power in relation to other valid tropes? - TL



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* Have you heard about the recent posthumous release of John Patrick Diggins' Why Niebuhr Now? (University of Chicago Press, 2011)? I'd be interested to hear any early scuttlebutt on the book's quality, contents, or potential for controversy. - TL

History as "Productive Confusion": Studies of America’s Moral Fiber, 1940-Present

[Warning: Long post. You may want to print. - TL]
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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.

------------------------------

*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.

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.

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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.