Nature, Sin, and Society - Is Human Nature Obsolete? - page 358

up power unless forced. Therefore coercion, sometimes representing the
competing assertion of interest rather than a pure moral ideal, must
remain part of the picture of social ethics if societies are to be able to
move in any degree toward greater approximations of justice. 45 Race
relations in the United States provide a paradigm case. In the aptly titled
Moral Man and Immoral Society , Niebuhr calls it “sentimental and
romantic to assume that any education or any example will ever com-
pletely destroy the inclination of human nature to seek special advan-
tages at the expense of, or in indifference to, the needs and interests of
others.” 46 Disadvantaged groups must find ways to assert pressure
against the elites or oppressors; a balance of power and interests must
be maintained by rule of law and, when necessary, by corrective pres-
sures on the system if social justice is to be established or sustained.
Niebuhr is not completely pessimistic about this possibility, realistic
though he may be about the measures required to attain it. First of all,
as Lovin notes, Niebuhr's theory that all human persons and communi-
ties stand under the judgment of an objective moral order, and finally
under the law of love, engenders a critical attitude toward social arrange-
ments and creates a “pull of obligation” to realize the possibilities that
the moral imagination recognizes. 47 Further, in a retrospective work com-
posed in 1965, Niebuhr follows a discussion of tribalism and inhuman-
ity with an allusion to “common grace” and hope for social reform.
Human self-seeking, he says, is intricately related to self-giving—for
instance, in the fact that self-giving ultimately contributes to self-
realization. Self-giving is enabled, he believes, through natural human
experiences of community, paradigmatically the family, that support the
self's sense of security and enable generous relations to others. Such rela-
tionships are a vehicle of “common grace,” an experience of redemption
in or through the shared realities of human nature. Indeed, he applies
the term to “all forms of social security or responsibility or pressure
which prompt the self to bethink itself of its social essence and to realize
itself by not trying too desperately for self-realization.” 48 Although
Niebuhr would not agree with Pope John XXIII that moral appeals to
those of “good will” will be adequate to the task of realizing peace on
earth, he does come close to the Catholic tradition's critical concept of
the common good, and likewise understands an important function of
civil law to be the balancing of needs and interests. Although he would