Wednesday Philosophy

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was an American theologian who grappled with the meaning of modern life in the twentieth century. The following passage comes from his famous essay "Moral Man and Immoral Society" from 1932:

"Though human society has roots which lie deeper
in history than the beginning of human life, men
have made comparatively but little progress in
solving the problem of their aggregate existence.
Each century originates a new complexity and
each new generation faces a new vexation in it.
For all the centuries of experience, men have
not yet learned how to live together without
compounding their vices and covering each other
'with mud and with blood.' The society in which
each man lives is at once the basis for, and the
nemesis of, that fullness of life which each man
seeks. However much human ingenuity may
increase the treasures which nature provides
for the satisfaction of human needs, they can
never be sufficient to satisfy all human wants;
for man, unlike other creatures, is gifted and
cursed with an imagination which extends his
appetites beyond the requirements of subsistence.
Human society will never escape the problem of
the equitable distribution of the physical and
cultural goods which provide for the
preservation and fulfillment of human life."