Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
normative.”
35
The chief source of human “inhumanity” and “brutality”
is the “tribal limits” of our sense of obligation to others. This limitation
results in group boundaries separating “we” from “they”—usually on
the basis of class, race, religion, or language—and the denial of “an
obvious common humanity.”
36
Collective egotism is Niebuhr's designa-
tion of the “group pride” that achieves authority over individuals and
permits group loyalty to make unconditional demands on its members.
Inequality, mostly rooted in property ownership and economics, becomes
the basis of a class solidarity that is virtually impermeable to persuasions
of reason and conscience. To the contrary, the privileged classes ration-
alize their status by speciously arguing either that their advantages are
the reward of merit or that they work for the good of the whole. “Dis-
interestedness” as a purported motive for group behavior is ineffectual
if sincere, and otherwise a disguise for self-serving aims.
37
By identifying with a group that claims to advance transcendent and
universal ideals, or that simply pursues its own survival as the ultimate
aim, the individual can assert dominance over others to an extent that
would never be claimed on behalf of the self. While Niebuhr saw the
nation-state as a primary purveyor of collective egotism, political and
economic conditions at the beginning of the twenty-first century also
bear out the appropriateness of naming other collectivities, such as the
ethnic group and its history, the corporation and its shareholders, the
scientific community and its discoveries, and the disease constituency and
its needs. In Niebuhr's view, modern technology particularly plays into
greed as a form of the will to power, since it tempts “contemporary man”
to overestimate both the value and the possibility of overcoming the inse-
curity of nature.
38
On the other side, but in a complementary fashion, sensuality is a
demonic commitment to the finite goods and goals of life through which
we escape the human calling to exercise our freedom well. Niebuhr
himself tends to focus his discussion of sensuality on the individual
sinner, who seeks to avoid the anxiety of his or her real condition through
devotion to mutable goods. Like many traditional authors, he finds sex
to offer both the “most obvious” and the “most vivid” illustration of
the self's fall from God into sensuality.
39
Christian ethicist Robin Lovin,
however, comments that the individualization of sensuality trivializes it,
and diagnoses in social groups as well as individuals “a desire to measure
