Reinhold Niebuhr - Influence and Honors

Influence and Honors

The tragedy of man is that he can conceive self perfection but cannot achieve it.

Niebuhr exerted a significant influence upon mainline Protestant clergy in the years immediately following World War II, much of it in concord with the neo-orthodox and the related movements. That influence began to wane and then drop toward the end of his life.

The historian Arthur Schlesinger in the late twentieth century described the legacy of Niebuhr as being contested between American liberals and conservatives, both of whom wanted to claim him. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave credit to Niebuhr's influence. Foreign-policy conservatives point to Niebuhr's support of the containment doctrine during the Cold War as an instance of moral realism; progressives cite his later opposition to the Vietnam War.

In more recent years, Niebuhr has enjoyed something of a renaissance in contemporary thought, although usually not in liberal Protestant theological circles. Both major-party candidates in the 2008 presidential election cited Niebuhr as an influence: Senator John McCain, in his work Hard Call, "celebrated Niebuhr as a paragon of clarity about the costs of a good war". President Barack Obama said that Niebuhr was his "favorite philosopher" and "favorite theologian". Slate magazine columnist Fred Kaplan characterized Obama's 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech a "faithful reflection" of Niebuhr.

Kenneth Waltz's seminal work on international relations theory, Man, the State, and War, includes many references to Niebuhr's thought. Waltz emphasizes Niebuhr's contributions to political realism, especially "the impossibility of human perfection." Andrew Bacevich's book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism refers to Niebuhr 13 times. Bacevich emphasises Niebuhr's humility and his belief that Americans were in danger of becoming enamored of U.S. power.

Such leaders of American foreign policy since the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century as Jimmy Carter, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama, have acknowledged Niebuhr's importance to them.