ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: REINHOLD NIEBUHR

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: REINHOLD NIEBUHR AND AN ETHIC OF POLITICAL HUMILITY IN DELIBERATIVE POLITICS Matthew Peter Spino, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor James Glass Department of Government and Politics The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the degree to which the political psychology of Reinhold Niebuhr contributes to a more capacious theory of deliberative politics and to what degree such a theory may permit individuals to express themselves with more workable forms of democratic practice. Considerations of Reinhold Niebuhr's understanding of impermanence, anxiety, self-reflection, and empathy borne of humility guide the framework of the argument in that they inform and augment individual political preferences. The author uses these ideas to develop a theory of deliberative politics built upon the empathetic tendencies found in the self-scrutinizing humility of Reinhold Niebuhr's politics. The author considers this theory in contradistinction to ascendant strains in political theory and theologies of public life, which at times may disavowal Niebuhr's understanding of natural theology, his correspondent political realism, or otherwise miscategorize Niebuhr's political claims. The degree to which Niebuhr's ethical framework can or should be separated from Christian considerations of ethics more broadly, especially from Christian eschatology, is a major topic of discussion. Contrasting Niebuhr with other Christian ethicists permits us to see in what manner Niebuhr's political psychology might retain political value beyond a particular religious community. This work also considers limits of Niebuhr's understanding of liberal politics, and whether an ethic of humility can be overly disempowering at times. Tension between individual and aggregate political perspectives frames that discussion. REINHOLD NIEBUHR AND AN ETHIC OF HUMILITY IN DELIBERATIVE POLITICS By Matthew Peter Spino Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Professor James Glass, Chair Professor Fred Alford Professor Karol Soltan Professor Ian Ward Professor Christopher Morris, Dean's Representative Copyright by Matthew Peter Spino 2014 Dedicated to my loving parents who made real the possibility of undergraduate and graduate studies for myself and for my sister. Thank you. ii Reinhold Niebuhr and An Ethic of Humility in Deliberative Politics Table of Contents: Chapter 1: A Niebuhrian Ethic of Humility in Public Discourse Chapter 2: Limited Creatures: Political Contingency, Anxiety, and Self-Delusion Chapter 3: Inclusive Communicative Action Self-Critical of Its Rationality Chapter 4: Contractarians, Thought Experiments, and the Problem of Sublimation Chapter 5: Communitarians, Tradition, and the Problem of Tribal Exceptionalism Chapter 6: Too Much Humility? Self-Limiting Capabilities and Political Outsiders Chapter 7: Alternative Augustinian Ethics of Citizenship and Other Critics Chapter 8: Affirming Our Experiences Regardless of Our Eschatology Chapter 9: Actualizing Political Expression from Humble Self-Reflection iii Chapter 1: A Niebuhrian Ethic of Humility in Public Discourse When we consider Reinhold Niebuhr as a writer who focuses on indeterminate history and psycho-social limitations in relational expressions of personal experience, we may instead have a cursory tendency to see him as a realist, an ironist, and a geostrategist who shaped just war theory, particularly with regard to the Cold War. Beyond this skewed perspective, Niebuhr wrote extensively about the relation of history to political order, the power of human creativity to reflect on personal motivations. In doing so, we can thereby relate our motivations to those of others within political communities, and quell the political problems that arise from the anxieties of human frailty. Niebuhr concerns himself with the limitations of social communication, but moreover with regard to human capacities for self-deception and self-aggrandizement as things that distort self and social perceptions. We often consider political failures in terms of epistemological errors rather than the human capacity for deceit as an ontological constraint, which limits our view of ourselves and of others. Self-deception and even willful malice toward others are therefore crucial things we must consider and seek to diminish when we want to talk about deliberative politics in a way that wants people to present arguments with lucidity and honesty. Reinhold Niebuhr's social ethics provide an important tool set toward that end. Much attention has been given to Reinhold Niebuhr on matters of foreign policy and strategic thought. His particular understanding of Christian realism has spurred much discussion and has influenced American politicians of contentious ideological backgrounds. Neoconservative viewpoints borrow Niebuhr's reluctant acceptance of 1 interventionism and utilize it as a categorical endorsement of warfare. Liberal readings of Niebuhr alternatively may discount his realism to make him more of political idealist. These attributes are usually argued with regard to foreign policy rather than with regard to how Niebuhr's understanding of human capabilities and shortcomings can contribute to our understanding of a healthy polity. Niebuhr's political psychology provides to us tools with which people can reflect consciously on the veracity of their individual preferences for public goods, sincerely express their viewpoints, and properly receive such viewpoints from other people. These capabilities are the essence of a robust deliberative democracy, and a Niebuhrian view of politics provides to us a unique and useful road- map for discerning how we can improve our democratic, relational experiences. I shall argue that even beyond deliberative democracy, Niebubhr provides us with a useful tool- set for understanding forms of political dissent outside of a democratic framework. Toward that end, the chief examples I have in mind for my Niebuhrian ethic of political humility are Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Adam Michnik, who factor significantly into my conclusion. More broadly then, beyond concerns of foreign policy, I believe Reinhold Niebuhr's understanding of social psychology is important, unique, and deserves consideration for its merits. Chief among these merits is the usefulness of self-reflection for a more self-conscious comprehension of individual participation in deliberative democratic discourse. Toward that end, this work considers and articulates a Niebuhrian ethic of humility that we can extrapolate from his social psychology toward the end of constructing a Niebuhrian expression of humility in deliberative democratic theory. 2 Understanding Niebuhr's political psychology also gives us insight as to why he has fallen out of favor in American seminaries that have adopted approaches to theology that put witness and community above certain kinds of personal reflection that Niebuhr would prefer. Much of my understanding of Niebuhr's social psychology cautions against that shift. The utility of Niebuhr's social psychology cannot be overstated for contemporary political debates. Whether discussing the political calculus of justifying particular acts of warfare since 2001, drone assassinations, NSA metadata programs, or any number of contemporary political problems, we face a question of balance. Each of these issues raises the cost of doing business in politics. We consider not which policies we prefer because we find them to be better ideals or more practically useful, but also because we can overzealously dole out or too cautiously withhold our level of trust toward other persons and institutions. Such feelings arise from a buoyant, hopeful idealism or inevitable, cautious disdain for specific political actors and practices, or more problematically, as an attitude toward social life more generally. Balancing preferences and attitudes in questions of political power, official corruption, and institutional trust therefore is not merely a matter of managing what federalism means for America, what it means to be conservative or progressive at any given point in time, but instead how we manage our attitudes toward idealism and realism. For a Niebuhrian ethic of politics, the former tends toward naivete as the latter tends toward cynicism. What Reinhold Niebuhr's social psychology provides to us is a method of considering political questions that seeks to qualify and understand how to 3 best contextualize the naivete of ideals and the cynicism of realism in situations where they may be unwarranted or reflect personal prejudices. Specifically, Niebuhr enables us to continuously scrutinize bounded, limited selves and the transience of our social ontology. In other words, Niebuhr's psychology permits us to intensely examine anticipated consequences of political thoughts and actions and utilize that reflection to augment or diminish our ethical intentions to make them ostensibly less imperfect and to increase our awareness of the imperfections of our creeds and ideologies. A Niebuhrian case is one that argues for the increase of relative justice, rather than in categorical absolutes. Toward that end, a major effort of this work is to provide us a means of considering political questions in this manner. We should care about this important contribution because heretofore few authors have considered

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