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truth. The laws of logic are reason's guard against chaos in the
realm of truth. They eliminate contradictory assertions. But there
is no resource in logical rules to help us understand complex phe–
nomena, exhibiting characteristics which seem to require that they
be placed into contradictory categories of reason." Some readers may
appreciate what Niebuhr means when he adds that "loyalty to all
the facts may require a provisional defiance of logic, lest complexity
in the facts of experience be denied for the sake of a premature logical
consistency," but how long does he want us to wait? With such a
modest remark Niebuhr may disarm even some of the most logically
hardened of his readers, but he can't help making them wince when
he calls on Hegel's dialectic in his defense: ''Hegel's 'dialectic' is a
logic invented for the purpose of doing justice to the fact of 'becom–
ing' as a phenomenon which belongs into
[sic]
the category of neither
'being' nor 'non-being.' The Christian doctrine of original sin, with
its seemingly contradictory assertions about the inevitability of sin
and man's responsibility for sin, is a dialectical truth which does
justice to the fact that man's self-love and self-centredness is in–
evitable...." How easy it is for the extremes to meet and what
an irony of history it is that a follower of Kierkegaard-the great
enemy of Hegel-should have to appeal to Hegel to save himself at
the most vital point in his argument.
6.
Enter Lippmann and Locke.
In turning from the thought of
Niebuhr to the recent writing of Walter Lippmann we find a similar
preoccupation with human deficiency, selfishness, and ineptitude, only
this time the fault is said to lie not in power-mad leaders who plan
us into totalitarianism but rather with the people, the masses who
have secured so much power over government and turned statesmen
into lackeys. In one respect, therefore, Lippmann and Niebuhr appear
at opposite poles of the social thinking that has gained prominence
since the work of Dewey and Holmes went into eclipse. Lippmann
fears the masses and Niebuhr fears the leaders, so that while Niebuhr
has replaced Dewey as the hero of some liberals who have abandoned
socialism, Lippmann has come to replace Justice Holmes as the hero
of the more conservative young men. The Augustinian doctrine of
original sin in Niebuhr is neatly matched by the Thomistic concept
of natural law in Lippmann.
