Religion & Philosophy

cial coexistence, but the price was high: Radi- suggests, have become so arrogant as to cal Reconstruction effectively scuttled Repub- raise doubts about whether they “really lican control of the South. A century later, it believe in the two-party system as a core was the Democrats who set out to fulfill the principle of politics.” promise of civil rights. The GOP opposed these Unfortunately, Gould mostly sidesteps the New Frontier and Great Society reforms, and fundraising dilemma of American politics. He thereby won back the loyalties of Southerners. discusses the post-Watergate regulations only Since splitting with Teddy Roosevelt’s briefly, by noting that “soft money” helped the Bull Moosers in 1912, Gould notes, Republicans because of their “greater access Republicans have generally opposed labor to corporate resources.” The true magnitude unions, welfare programs, and regulation of of the problem, for the political system as well business. He also pays some extended as for the GOP, and its defiance of workable recognition to such Republican presidents solutions go largely unmentioned. as William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge, Still, Gould is especially effective in charting Herbert Hoover, and Dwight Eisenhower, the shifts in the defining political issues of the whose accomplishments were scanted past 150 years. And he reminds us that the during more liberal periods. With Barry Republican positions on these issues haven’t Goldwater’s 1964 presidential candidacy, always been predictable: The party has repeat- Republicanism “shrunk and shifted right- edly “moved in directions that would have ward at the same time.” By the 1980s, the seemed improbable to its members only GOP “had detached itself” from most of decades earlier.” its own history. Current leaders, Gould —Herbert S. Parmet Religion & Philosophy EVIL IN MODERN THOUGHT: then the Christian deity’s “triangle of An Alternative History of Philosophy. perfection”—the linked divine qualities of By Susan Neiman. Princeton Univ. omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenev- Press. 358 pp. $29.95 olence—is challenged; at least one corner Susan Neiman’s “alternative history of phi- must give. If innocents suffer and die, then losophy” is no exercise in fashionable special God must be ignorant, weak, or malicious. pleading or canon reform but an attempt to The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, a shocking dev- show that Western philosophy has the wrong astation, prompted sharp criticism of the focus. Instead of the common but misleading theodicy, especially Gottfried Leibniz’s “best alliance of metaphysics (“What is real?”) and of all possible worlds” version, which was lam- analytic epistemology (“What can we know?”), pooned savagely by Voltaire. Neiman argues, philosophers ought to recognize Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum in that metaphysics is linked with ethics (“What Potsdam, asks: Are natural evils, such as the is right?”). The traditional questions of appear- Lisbon earthquake, and human evils, such as ance and reality, substance and change, reflect the Holocaust, versions of the same problem, a sustained struggle, often frustrated or futile, or are they distinct? If there is a distinction, with the problem of evil. This is not an what is it? We may abandon Christian belief, and unprecedented thesis—Aristotle, for one, had so ease the sting of a natural disaster (it’s no a version of it—but Neiman’s modern focus longer, except metaphorically, an “act of and the unhappy coincidence of recent events God”). But this will not help us when make the issue of evil at once more difficult human-made evils, genocide and torture and ter- and more pressing. rorism, have the very same effect of tearing Usually conceived as a strict theological asunder our idea of the world as a place where debate within Christian theodicy, the problem things make sense. of evil is based on the widespread perception that The book is ordered in four long chapters, bad things happen to good people. If this is so, working within self-imposed restrictions of nei- Autumn 2003 125 Current Books ther defining evil nor extending further back daughter, breaks free from the venerating than the “modern” era, set here as beginning in tradition and finds a much more personal 1697 with the publication of Pierre Bayle’s His- approach. torical and Critical Dictionary. Neiman’s first Now an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, two chapters survey rival responses to evil: Sifton experienced Niebuhr not only as “The one, from Rousseau to [Hannah] Arendt, thinker, activist, and writer but as parent. insists that morality demands that we make evil During a taxi ride to see Singin’ in the Rain intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Jean at Radio City Music Hall, the young girl Améry, insists that morality demands that we grew frantic that they were going to be late. don’t.” There follows a separate chapter on the “‘O God, please let the light turn green,’ I mixed, category-defying views of Nietzsche wailed from the jump seat. The rebuke was and Freud, and a final one of assessment and gentle but instantaneous. That’s not what account taking, including some nuanced prayer was for.” reflections on the rhetorical uses of the word evil In a doe-eyed manner, Sifton tells tales of in the days and weeks following September 11. the intellectual luminaries in the Niebuhr Neiman’s book is written with considerable circle. When Niebuhr and his Union Theo- flair, as many critics have already noted, but it logical Seminary friend Paul Tillich were possesses a far rarer and more valuable quality: suspected of communist tendencies in 1944, moral seriousness. Her argument builds a pow- FBI agents trailed them everywhere, even erful emotional force, a sense of deep inev- “lurking around the card catalog at the sem- itability. Both natural and moral evils exist, and inary library.” To young Sifton, Justice Felix both have the power to threaten the intelligibility Frankfurter was Uncle Felix, who invariably of the world as a whole. The unforestallable asked her opinions on the latest news. attacks on the World Trade Center and Penta- Though experienced by a girl, these gon were evil not because people died—far events are recounted by a woman who seems more people die every summer on American to have inherited her father’s general judi- highways—but because they tore our fragile ciousness—and occasional stridency. She tissue of meaning. writes of his dismay over anti-Semitism in Evil in Modern Thought is not merely a some Christian churches in the 1930s, and clever revision of traditional intellectual histo- adds: “A half century later, Jerry Falwell and ry; it is a demand that philosophers, indeed all Pat Robertson ...plumbed even deeper of us, acknowledge the deep responsibilities of reservoirs of vain inanity. High-decibel reli- being here, in a world where neither God nor giosity, with its excellent profit margins and nature—nor, sometimes, other people—cares growing political clout, is drowning out true what happens to us. It is not often that a work religion all over the country.” of such dark conclusions has felt so hopeful The memoir is three-quarters done before and brave. it focuses on Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer: —Mark Kingwell “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, THE SERENITY PRAYER: and the wisdom to distinguish the one from Faith and Politics in Times of the other.” According to Sifton, her father Peace and War. composed the prayer in 1943, first recited it By Elisabeth Sifton. Norton. later that year at Union Church in Heath, 353 pp. $24.95 Massachusetts, then allowed it to be includ- Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was the ed in a 1944 book of prayers for military most prominent theologian of his day—he chaplains. “This was its first publication in any even made the cover of Time in 1948—and form and in any language, and it’s because of biographies of him tend to shoulder such this little booklet that eventually it became colossal titles as Professor Reinhold Niebuhr: famous,” she writes. Soon after, Alcoholics A Mentor to the 20th Century and Reinhold Anonymous started using the prayer, slight- Niebuhr: Prophet from America. In this ly simplified and, in Sifton’s judgment, memoir, Elisabeth Sifton, Niebuhr’s only watered down. 126 Wilson Quarterly.

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