The work of Karl Popper I have been reviewing is illuminating and important in combatting the misplaced single-mended idealisms of our time. This week, I have not had time to analyze an entire section of his work, but I do want to describe his fundamentally rational way of looking at social problems, a strategy that puts him at odds with those who from single-minded and unwise conviction in the correctness of their own opinions harm others. I am then presenting a rewritten version of prior thoughts on the Christian theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr that may illuminate the potential for a reasonable approach to the search for justice. Niebuhr is important as a figure who combines philosophical and theological analysis in his work.

Popper’s View of Political Reasonableness

At one point in critiquing those who felt they had discovered an inevitable future for human society either by reason or understanding socio-economic forces, Popper says:

We could then say that rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. It is fundamentally an attitude of admitting that ‘I may be wrong, and you may be right, and by and effort, we may get nearer to the truth.’ It is an attitude which does not lightly give up hope that by such means as argument and careful observation, people may reach some kind of agreement on many problems of importance; and that, even where their demands and their interest clash, it is often possible to argue about the various demands and proposals, and to reach – perhaps by arbitration – a compromise which, because of its equity is acceptable to most, if not to all. In short, the rationalist attitude, or, as I may perhaps, label it, the attitude of reasonableness, is very similar to the scientific attitude, to the belief that in the search for truth we need co-operation, and that, with the help of argument we can in time attain something like objectivity. [1]

This aspect of Popper’s thought embodies his fallibilism (the view that personal views on matters of social policy may be wrong), and the function of a reasonable and scientific approach to political problems offers the best hope for human flourishing in a sound and peaceful society. Popper opposes power politics, totalitarian ideals, and underhanded policy formulations. Instead, he believes that human reason, aided by dialogue, debate, discussion, and compromise, can bring a society to an objective and reasonable solution to social problems.

It is amazing to me that certain persons who claim an understanding of Popper and an allegiance to his ideas also support clearly violent and underhanded methods of seeking social change. Popper’s work is one extended argument against such an approach to human social problems. In Popper’s view, modern political thought influenced by Freud and Marx is actually a revolt against reason. It involves a kind of unreasonable prophetic view of social change that inevitably ends in suffering and social failure.

Reasonableness, Justice, and Love

The Christian theologian and philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr makes a distinction that is important for a reasonable,sophia-agapic, approach to the principle of justice. For Niebuhr, the term “nature” refers to the currently existing historical possibilities of justice in society, while “grace refers to an ideal possibility of perfect love potentially present in any society. [2] In every society, the search for justice is a process whereby a set of institutions are formed and a degree of justice is attained, but in which there remains an unfulfilled quality to the justice achieved, which is always further illumined by the inevitable operation of love.

The process might be described as follows:

State A: A society achieves a degree of justice in a particular historical situation (Phase 1).

State B: The agapistic principle at work in a society illumines the limitations of State A and new possibilities of justice (Phase 2).

State C: New ideas of justice and institutions of justice are created (New Historical State).

This communal process of seeking a more just society is never-ending within human history because historically bound and limited human institutions never achieve perfect justice and social harmony (shalom) at any given moment in human history. In this analysis, the sopia-agapistic principle (reason and love) is at work to achieve a continually expanding ideal within history through reason, the sophistic principle.

Human Nature and Justice

Unfortunately, human nature limits the realization of justice in any specific social context due to human finitude, self-centeredness, brokenness, and limitations of reason, theoretical and practical, within the boundaries of any human society. Human limitations restrict the human capacity to realize justice in society. [3] Nevertheless, the human capacity for self-transcendence in the search for ideals does create the potential for achieving relatively just social structures over time.

Because of what Niebuhr calls “the indeterminate character of human possibilities” (i.e. the human capacity to transcend nature and natural instincts, human societies are intrinsically dynamic and characterized by change, Laisse-faire Capitalism, Marxism, liberal democracy, and the various “isms” of the post-Enlightenment era view the trajectory of change as inevitably progressive, a view that this study challenges. To be on the “right side of history” is to act in accordance with these forces, be they visualized as economic or ideal. There is, however, no inevitable “right side of history” to which selfish and self-centered human beings will agree. There is only a slow process of seeking a greater unfolding of justice within human history’s constraints at a given point in time.

Law and the Principles of Justice

In discussing law and justice, Niebuhr helpfully distinguishes principles of justice from institutions of justice. Principles of justice are abstract ideals reflected in our theoretical notions of justice and law. Institutions of justice are concrete structures embodied in an existing human community. [4] In any given society, these institutions and the rules they administer are only approximations of a society’s ideals regarding justice.

Systems and principles of justice are the servants and instruments of the spirit of brotherhood in so far as they extend the sense of obligation towards the other, (a) from an immediately felt obligation, prompted by obvious need, to a continued obligation expressed in fixed principles of mutual support; (b) from a simple relation between a self and one “other” to the complex relations of the self and the “others”; and finally, from the obligations discerned by the individual self to the broader obligations which the community defines from its more impartial perspective. These communal obligations evolve slowly in custom and law. [5]

Niebuhr’s idea may be a bit difficult to grasp without an example. Let us take the modern Social Security and Medicare system as an example. In the beginning, an individual or individuals saw the predicament of elderly parents in an industrial society when they could no longer work. Over time, a fixed principle of justice, the notion that society should provide some minimum financial security for the aged, evolved. Over time, this ideal sense of justice became a communal obligation seen as such by most people. In the end, concrete laws were enacted that embodied a wider collective sense of responsibility. As a result, the Social Security Administration and Medicare were formed—concrete institutions that embodied the social ideal. Over time, these institutions have further involved bringing drug prescriptions and other items within the ambit of the initial architype intuited by society. In all this, the ideal of justice was gradually unfolding in American society.

Hope for Consensus

Beginning with a sense of mutual obligation (a form of social love), intuitions of society are gradually translated into ideals of justice and then into laws and institutions embodying the initial intuition. This social process is communal and supports the continuing stability of society. In one particularly illuminating passage, Niebuhr states:

The definitions of justice arrived at in a given community or the product of a social mind. Various perspectives upon common problems, have been merged and have achieved a result, different from that at which any individual, class or group in the community would have arrived. The fact that various conceptions of a just solution of a common problem can be fully synthesized into a common solution, disproves the idea that the approach of each individual or group is consistently egoistic. If it were, society would be an anarchy of rival interests until power from above subdued the anarchy. [6]

Here Niebuhr sets out a democratic ideal amid the struggles for a justice society in which people are involved in the West. The “social mind” differs from the individual minds that make it up, and cannot be reduced to something more fundamental. A society’s social mind evolves as debate, disagreement, dialogue, and further study merge to improve a concrete set of social problems and solutions that become “common” over time. The fact that Western democracies have achieved the degree of justice they have achieved is a testimony to the human potential for change and social progress. Niebuhr includes a final warning: If a society degenerates into egoistic self-seeking of individuals and groups, social anarchy and tyranny can and will result. Western democracies at the time of Niebuhr had shown themselves capable of reasoned practical adjustments required in a functional democracy. One can only hope that the same remains true in our day and time.

Conclusion

The dynamic, evolving, but never complete activity of love seeking justice in human society is an important idea to ponder. It is part of overcoming the misplaced moral fervor of our time and replacing it with a rational sense of justice as a process of which we are a part but cannot complete. What I have called “misplaced moral fervor” is not misplaced because the moral sentiments of people who seek a more just society are wrong in their motives and desire. It is misplaced because it ignores certain aspects of ethical behavior (often peaceableness and honesty) in service of a single moral ideal.

Michael Polanyi called this phenomenon “Moral Inversion,” a term I like but think is inadequate to the phenomenon and its danger to our society. The phenomenon Polanyi describes might better be called a misplaced and unwise “Single-minded Idealism.” In Russia, this misplaced idealism allowed for the killing of millions of people to serve the cause of an illusory perfect dictatorship of the proletariat—a dictatorship that turned out to be a dictatorship of thugs led by Stalin to the impoverishment of society as a whole and every individual within that society, the leadership included.  We see examples of the same phenomenon in our world today.

The works of Karl Popper and Niebuhr are important in combatting the misplaced single-mended idealisms of our time. Both these thinkers are realists who believe in the need for social change but also understand the dangers to human progress inherent in any view that claims an absolutely true understanding of human history and its unfolding in society. Both were early attracted to Marx but ultimately embraced a different approach to social change. We have reached a point where the certainties of political actors, left and right, prevent wise and loving social evolution guided by reason and concern for our neighbors, loved ones, and society. Only a slow, reasonable process of rebuilding community, making difficult decisions to achieve social harmony, and avoiding pride and Single-minded Idealism can allow America and Western society to move forward in freedom and relative prosperity.

Copyright 2023, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 431.

[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man Vol. 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1986),, at 246.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Id, at 248.

[6] Id, at 249.