362
PARTISAN REVIEW
a necessary evil for the sake of a good-as, for example, preparing
for atomic warfare
in
order to prevent Communist world domination;
(3) the ironic, in which apparently fortuitous incongruities (in them–
selves merely comic) tum out to be neither fortuitous nor incongruous,
but profoundly connected-as when virtue becomes vice through a
defect hitherto unperceived in it, or wisdom becomes folly because it
knows not its own limits. Of all these categories, only the ironic func–
tions practically, whereas the others are of the contemplative order:
"The ironic situation is distinguished from a pathetic one by the fact
that the person involved in it bears some responsibility for it. It is
differentiated from tragedy by the fact that the responsibility is related
to an unconscious weakness rather than to a conscious resolution. While
a pathetic or a tragic situation is not dissolved when a person becomes
conscious of his involvement in it, an ironic situation must dissolve,
if men or nations are made aware of their complicity in it. . . . This
realization either must lead to an abatement of the pretension, which
means contrition, or it leads to a desperate accentuation of the vani–
ties to the point where irony turns into pure evil." Communism, by
presenting the corruption of its ideals as their fulfillment, transforms
historical irony into pure evil. American liberal culture is still in–
volved in irony; it sincerely pretends to the good but suffers frustration
and fathers evil; it is blithely unaware of the "ambiguity of human
virtue" and cannot imagine that a good deed may have bad effects;
in consequence, the United States is a proud and naive country on the
verge of irritable irresponsibility-but not beyond the lesson of humility
that Niebuhr would have it learn.
Niebuhr is casual and a bit offhand in his application of the pathe–
tic-tragic-ironic triad to the specific course of events, but even the
most cursory reference of such grand notions to problems of American
foreign and domestic policy is bound to be stimulating, rescuing
American politics as it does from the realm of small talk; it is pleasing
to witness the drab boundaries of conventional discourse stretched to
include further significances, however vague. Yet oddly enough, the
political outlook achieved by this elaborate exercise is pretty much that
of the Americans for Democratic Action, an organization not usually
regarded as embodying the principles of "Christian realism"; and
though there is definitely a superior charm in Niebuhr's recapitulation
of that program (an intellectual, not rhetorical charm), and even a
novelty of accent (as on humility, of which we can never have enough),
