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whitneyborup's review
4.0
His view of communism/Marxism seems a clear product of his time, but the comparison between 1950s communism and democracy/capitalism (what he calls bourgeois society) made sense. I still need to think about this...it reminded me of some of the arguments in Zizek's work, but I'm not ready to articulate why, yet. Just a disavowal of cynicism, I guess.
adammp's review against another edition
4.0
A classic for a reason, and yet also tragically limited by the narrow confines of its Cold War context. There are elements of this work that improve our understanding of the current American moment, but I fear its better understood now as clear and intuitive portrait of a particular moment in American and international history.
jramm's review against another edition
4.0
Niebuhr outlines the great ironies of American history, which are: the persistent sin of American Exceptionalism, the indecipherability of history, the false allure of simple solutions, and the failure to appreciate the limits of power (I stole that summary from the intro).
Although most of the book is a diatribe against Communism, Niebuhr does not glorify American democracy. His insights into American aggression in 1952 have been validated. More prophet than author at this point. I loved his stark realism and kept searching for a pen to underline the text.
There is a blurb on the back of the book by then-Senator Obama. I think Obama's presidential record reflects Niebuhr's positions.
Niebur chases both liberals and conservatives alike. He dispels their with frightening insight. Observing Niebuhr's America is like watching a parade where the tuba player keeps tripping on his shoe lace but refuses to tie it.
A quote to sum up: "The controversy between those who would 'plan' justice and order and those who trust in freedom to establish both is, therefore, an irresolvable one. Every healthy society will live in the tensions of that controversy until the end of history; and will prove its health by preventing either side from gaining complete victory."
(edited for clarity in 2014)
Although most of the book is a diatribe against Communism, Niebuhr does not glorify American democracy. His insights into American aggression in 1952 have been validated. More prophet than author at this point. I loved his stark realism and kept searching for a pen to underline the text.
There is a blurb on the back of the book by then-Senator Obama. I think Obama's presidential record reflects Niebuhr's positions.
Niebur chases both liberals and conservatives alike. He dispels their with frightening insight. Observing Niebuhr's America is like watching a parade where the tuba player keeps tripping on his shoe lace but refuses to tie it.
A quote to sum up: "The controversy between those who would 'plan' justice and order and those who trust in freedom to establish both is, therefore, an irresolvable one. Every healthy society will live in the tensions of that controversy until the end of history; and will prove its health by preventing either side from gaining complete victory."
(edited for clarity in 2014)
monk888's review against another edition
4.0
Insightful work on American idealism: its roots in Calvinism and Jeffersonian thought, its awkward treatment of America's rapid ascent to economic and political power, and its impact on contemporary foreign policy.
mtskora's review against another edition
4.0
By 1952, the Cold War bipartisan establishment firmly established itself in a global confrontation against the Soviet Union. An uncertain future dawned upon the United States, one with unparalleled potential and hazards. In The Irony of American History, American philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr advocates for a nation diligent against both evil and moral rashness. Unfortunately, the intellectual framing of his arguments simplifies a diverse world of ideas, peoples, and cultures into false dichotomies. This fault is most evident in the book’s sixth chapter, “The International Class Struggle” where Niebuhr characterizes the “East” as a variety of “sleep-waking” (120) countries with cultures almost entirely incapable of advancing individual dignity (124), in contrast with a dynamic West. Niebuhr essentializes these contrasts, subscribing to an antiquated “Orientalist” perspective of Asian countries. From this framework, he unintentionally opens his work to a moralizing interpretation of foreign affairs, which partially explains why War on Terror interventionalists claimed Niebuhr in the early 2000s, despite the philosopher’s stern opposition to the Vietnam War and other adventurous campaigns.
Niebuhr was simultaneously a product of the Cold War establishment and one of its strongest internal critics. He adamantly scoured the pretensions of communism and liberalism alike because engineering history, whether under the pretext of historical materialism or American exceptionalism, would always misconstrue the necesity of individual agency (84). This critique explains the “irony” within his book’s title: in spite of the United States’ ambitious founding principles, the espousal of American ideals repeatedly falls flat. To Niebuhr, tragedy indicates a conscious inevitability or a moral dilemma; irony is more contingent on human understanding and wisdom (167). This distinction between tragedy and irony drives the proactive power of The Irony of American History. In the introduction of the book’s 2008 edition, international relations historian Andre J. Bacevich wrote that irony “is differentiated from tragedy by the fact that the responsibility is related to an unconscious weakness rather than to a conscious resolution” (XXIV). The United States is therefore not condemned to oscillation between irresponsible isolationism and futile foreign crusades. Niebuhr instead affirms that a constant awareness of our national circumstances can responsibly incorporate our global duties. Although Niebuhr’s confidence in America’s “degree of justice” in contrast to Europe’s (90) overshadows the deplorable racism of Jim Crow and a lack of a social rights for the poor, he still provides a constructive framework that any American policymaker could consult. However, the broadness of Niebuhr’s thought operates as a double-edged sword. As the director of the documentary An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story, Martin Doblmeier recalled in a 2017 Harvard Divinity School panel, the various politicians and scholars he interviewed “all had their own Niebuhrs.” In particular, Niebuhrs depiction of “the Orient” (115) alienates rather than humanizes Eastern cultures for American readers. As numerous American foreign policy fumbles reveal, any serious engagement with another nation or people demands a more thorough cultural understanding, especially on intercultural differences and syncretism.
Nonetheless, criticisms of Niebuhr must be contextualized within his world. It is impossible to separate the scholar from his social conditions (Said 10). To Niebuhr’s defense, communism and its Asian variants appeared much more uniform in the early 1950s than in later decades. The Irony of American History was released only three years of the communist victory in China and in the third year of the Korean War. The book’s publication was also to early to witness the Western Marxist infighting following destalinization and the Hungarian Revolution, and over a decade before the ideological splitting between the Soviet Union and China. However, these historical circumstances do not entirely excuse Niebuhr’s monolithic portrayals of Western opponents: the Bolsheviks were one out of many leftist parties that emerged during the Russian Civil War, and Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia dissented against the Soviet Union and to fund communist rebels in the Greek Civil War (Service 266-68). A more intricate analysis of communism’s past from Niebuhr could have anticipated the potential emergence of communist faction divisions in Asia. Niebuhr similarly boils down the diverse histories of the East into reductive characteristics. In contrast to the invigorating ideologies and religions of the West, Niebuhr believes that Asian culture, from Confucianism to Hinduism, collectively lack a “historical dynamism” (118) that makes them uniquely vulnerable to communism (120).
Edward Said’s 1973 book, Orientalism, is particularly helpful in exposing the intellectual shortcuts that Niebuhr and other Westerners take when writing about the East. Although Orientalism focuses on depictions of the Middle East, Said’s framework is highly applicable to other regions historically exploited by Western imperial powers. Sinologists, in particular, use Orientalism to study outsider perceptions of China and reveal the historical origins of Western thought on Asian societies. 17th and 18th century European scholars such as J.G. Herder, Hegel, and Marx long characterized a stagnant and passive China in contrast with an evolutionary, progressing Europe (Martínez-Robles 10-11). Only toward the end of the 20th century had the historiographical assumption of a passive China subsided (12). So when Niebuhr claims that only the importation of a dynamic Western product (120) such as communism could inspire serious transformation in the East, he bases this assumption off of centuries of now largely obsolete scholarship. For example, Niebuhr accuses the prudential uniformity of China’s “dominant faith,” Confucianism, (125) as the principal explanation for Chinese stagnancy. Nonetheless, studies since the 1990s have observed centuries-long contested factions and diversity within Confucianism, especially among the intellectual administrative class (Martínez-Robles 12). However, most dangerously, Niebuhr suggests an incompatibility of Eastern and Western ideas. While liberal democracy and Christianity are rejected by Asia out of its association with imperialism (112), communism destroys the dormant traditionalism of Asian cultures (120). However, Niebuhr did not anticipate the syncretism of Western ideas within Eastern countries in the following decades. For example, the China of the 21st century embraces an economy simultaneously reliant on family-based entrepreneurship and state advancement of capital and economic opportunity (McNally 744). Meanwhile, the former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, constructed supposed “Asian” values of family and loyalty to build upon a capitalist economic system now competitive with Western markets (Dirlik 109). Niebuhr’s underestimation of foreign compatibility with Western ideas and systems indicates the fallibility of his dichotomous analysis.
Despite explicitly advocating for a pragmatic stance between idealism and realism, the intellectual encasement of Niebuhr’s arguments inherently simplifies the multiplicities of ideologies, nations, and cultures that the United States encounters abroad. It should therefore come to no surprise that neoconservatives like John McCain and interventionalist liberals such as Peter Beinart justified foreign interventions such as the 2003 Invasion of Iraq as an extension of Niebuhr’s opposition to a monochromatic communism (Elie). This extremely narrow treatment of Niebuhr’s work occurred in clear contradiction of his broader precaution against taking the course of history into one’s own hands (122. This unfortunate historical engagement with The Irony of American History is itself ironic. Regardless of Niebuhr’s calling for an ethical yet reserved United States, belligerent policymakers and pundits twisted his thoughts into unnecessary moral jingoism.
Although President Biden is not as fervent of a fan of Niebuhr as Obama, his entered national politics when the Cold War consensus still managed the country’s foreign affairs, the same bipartisanship as in 1952. Selective readings of Niebuhr’s words may have backed actions Niebuhr himself would have found reprehensible and embarrassing, but the full breadth of his passionate commentary in The Irony of America History still offers valuable advice to new administration. Similar to the opening of the Cold War, America is entering uncertain global circumstances. After the Trump’s administrations chaotic four years of undermining multilateral diplomacy, abandoning key allies, and fear-mongering confrontational states such as Venezuela and Iran, the world is likewise certain of America’s future. What is to say that in another four or eight years, the American people elect another far-right populist demagogue? Niebuhr offers a more trustworthy vision of diplomacy that recognizes American power but has the humility to not self-indulgently abuse it. Combined with a more complex understanding of the cultural, ideological, and societal affairs of foreign nations, this perspective would prevent a repeat of the Bush or Trump years, while also affirming foreign openness and reliability to diplomacy and negotiations.
Cornell West, clearly not a proponent of the Cold War consensus, said in the same 2017 panel that Niebuhr shows how to “be persons who are fundamentally committed to a decency, knowing, in fact, that we all have blind spots.” Niebuhr in The History of American Irony asks the United States itself to commit to that sense of decency with the open acknowledge of its past failures. However, it is just as important to recognize the limits of an author’s perspective. Niebuhr’s writing on foreign cultures and ideologies was constrained by his time. Biden instead must embrace a fully nuanced engagement with the global community.
Niebuhr was simultaneously a product of the Cold War establishment and one of its strongest internal critics. He adamantly scoured the pretensions of communism and liberalism alike because engineering history, whether under the pretext of historical materialism or American exceptionalism, would always misconstrue the necesity of individual agency (84). This critique explains the “irony” within his book’s title: in spite of the United States’ ambitious founding principles, the espousal of American ideals repeatedly falls flat. To Niebuhr, tragedy indicates a conscious inevitability or a moral dilemma; irony is more contingent on human understanding and wisdom (167). This distinction between tragedy and irony drives the proactive power of The Irony of American History. In the introduction of the book’s 2008 edition, international relations historian Andre J. Bacevich wrote that irony “is differentiated from tragedy by the fact that the responsibility is related to an unconscious weakness rather than to a conscious resolution” (XXIV). The United States is therefore not condemned to oscillation between irresponsible isolationism and futile foreign crusades. Niebuhr instead affirms that a constant awareness of our national circumstances can responsibly incorporate our global duties. Although Niebuhr’s confidence in America’s “degree of justice” in contrast to Europe’s (90) overshadows the deplorable racism of Jim Crow and a lack of a social rights for the poor, he still provides a constructive framework that any American policymaker could consult. However, the broadness of Niebuhr’s thought operates as a double-edged sword. As the director of the documentary An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story, Martin Doblmeier recalled in a 2017 Harvard Divinity School panel, the various politicians and scholars he interviewed “all had their own Niebuhrs.” In particular, Niebuhrs depiction of “the Orient” (115) alienates rather than humanizes Eastern cultures for American readers. As numerous American foreign policy fumbles reveal, any serious engagement with another nation or people demands a more thorough cultural understanding, especially on intercultural differences and syncretism.
Nonetheless, criticisms of Niebuhr must be contextualized within his world. It is impossible to separate the scholar from his social conditions (Said 10). To Niebuhr’s defense, communism and its Asian variants appeared much more uniform in the early 1950s than in later decades. The Irony of American History was released only three years of the communist victory in China and in the third year of the Korean War. The book’s publication was also to early to witness the Western Marxist infighting following destalinization and the Hungarian Revolution, and over a decade before the ideological splitting between the Soviet Union and China. However, these historical circumstances do not entirely excuse Niebuhr’s monolithic portrayals of Western opponents: the Bolsheviks were one out of many leftist parties that emerged during the Russian Civil War, and Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia dissented against the Soviet Union and to fund communist rebels in the Greek Civil War (Service 266-68). A more intricate analysis of communism’s past from Niebuhr could have anticipated the potential emergence of communist faction divisions in Asia. Niebuhr similarly boils down the diverse histories of the East into reductive characteristics. In contrast to the invigorating ideologies and religions of the West, Niebuhr believes that Asian culture, from Confucianism to Hinduism, collectively lack a “historical dynamism” (118) that makes them uniquely vulnerable to communism (120).
Edward Said’s 1973 book, Orientalism, is particularly helpful in exposing the intellectual shortcuts that Niebuhr and other Westerners take when writing about the East. Although Orientalism focuses on depictions of the Middle East, Said’s framework is highly applicable to other regions historically exploited by Western imperial powers. Sinologists, in particular, use Orientalism to study outsider perceptions of China and reveal the historical origins of Western thought on Asian societies. 17th and 18th century European scholars such as J.G. Herder, Hegel, and Marx long characterized a stagnant and passive China in contrast with an evolutionary, progressing Europe (Martínez-Robles 10-11). Only toward the end of the 20th century had the historiographical assumption of a passive China subsided (12). So when Niebuhr claims that only the importation of a dynamic Western product (120) such as communism could inspire serious transformation in the East, he bases this assumption off of centuries of now largely obsolete scholarship. For example, Niebuhr accuses the prudential uniformity of China’s “dominant faith,” Confucianism, (125) as the principal explanation for Chinese stagnancy. Nonetheless, studies since the 1990s have observed centuries-long contested factions and diversity within Confucianism, especially among the intellectual administrative class (Martínez-Robles 12). However, most dangerously, Niebuhr suggests an incompatibility of Eastern and Western ideas. While liberal democracy and Christianity are rejected by Asia out of its association with imperialism (112), communism destroys the dormant traditionalism of Asian cultures (120). However, Niebuhr did not anticipate the syncretism of Western ideas within Eastern countries in the following decades. For example, the China of the 21st century embraces an economy simultaneously reliant on family-based entrepreneurship and state advancement of capital and economic opportunity (McNally 744). Meanwhile, the former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, constructed supposed “Asian” values of family and loyalty to build upon a capitalist economic system now competitive with Western markets (Dirlik 109). Niebuhr’s underestimation of foreign compatibility with Western ideas and systems indicates the fallibility of his dichotomous analysis.
Despite explicitly advocating for a pragmatic stance between idealism and realism, the intellectual encasement of Niebuhr’s arguments inherently simplifies the multiplicities of ideologies, nations, and cultures that the United States encounters abroad. It should therefore come to no surprise that neoconservatives like John McCain and interventionalist liberals such as Peter Beinart justified foreign interventions such as the 2003 Invasion of Iraq as an extension of Niebuhr’s opposition to a monochromatic communism (Elie). This extremely narrow treatment of Niebuhr’s work occurred in clear contradiction of his broader precaution against taking the course of history into one’s own hands (122. This unfortunate historical engagement with The Irony of American History is itself ironic. Regardless of Niebuhr’s calling for an ethical yet reserved United States, belligerent policymakers and pundits twisted his thoughts into unnecessary moral jingoism.
Although President Biden is not as fervent of a fan of Niebuhr as Obama, his entered national politics when the Cold War consensus still managed the country’s foreign affairs, the same bipartisanship as in 1952. Selective readings of Niebuhr’s words may have backed actions Niebuhr himself would have found reprehensible and embarrassing, but the full breadth of his passionate commentary in The Irony of America History still offers valuable advice to new administration. Similar to the opening of the Cold War, America is entering uncertain global circumstances. After the Trump’s administrations chaotic four years of undermining multilateral diplomacy, abandoning key allies, and fear-mongering confrontational states such as Venezuela and Iran, the world is likewise certain of America’s future. What is to say that in another four or eight years, the American people elect another far-right populist demagogue? Niebuhr offers a more trustworthy vision of diplomacy that recognizes American power but has the humility to not self-indulgently abuse it. Combined with a more complex understanding of the cultural, ideological, and societal affairs of foreign nations, this perspective would prevent a repeat of the Bush or Trump years, while also affirming foreign openness and reliability to diplomacy and negotiations.
Cornell West, clearly not a proponent of the Cold War consensus, said in the same 2017 panel that Niebuhr shows how to “be persons who are fundamentally committed to a decency, knowing, in fact, that we all have blind spots.” Niebuhr in The History of American Irony asks the United States itself to commit to that sense of decency with the open acknowledge of its past failures. However, it is just as important to recognize the limits of an author’s perspective. Niebuhr’s writing on foreign cultures and ideologies was constrained by his time. Biden instead must embrace a fully nuanced engagement with the global community.
darwin8u's review
5.0
"Nothing in history is inevitable."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Sometimes the irony in our historic situation is derived from the extravagant emphasis in our culture upon the value and dignity of the individual and upon individual liberty as the final value of life."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
I read this on a plane ride from Malta back home to AZ. It was probably the only positive aspect of travel. Normally, I wouldn't consider a book of philosophy to be a travel book/beach read, but Niebuhr's prose was so clean and his ideas expressed so well that I could have read it anywhere and not been distracted. It is also a small enough book that it is easy to read in one long session (broken up three times with pretzels, diet Coke, and a warm towel). I'm also fairly fanatical about NOT inking up my books. I use Post It Tabs excessively while reading. However, this book was so quotable. Had so many lines and ideas that I broke down and just started underlining with a pen [GASP]. All of this preamble is meant to do is inform you, reader, of HOW much I enjoyed every page and every minute of this book.
The new edition is introduced by one of my favorite historians/military historians/Imperial theorists - Andrew Bacevich. He has written several books on American Empire and military policy ([b:The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism|3367918|The Limits of Power The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project)|Andrew J. Bacevich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441050587s/3367918.jpg|3407257], [b:Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War|7720138|Washington Rules America's Path to Permanent War|Andrew J. Bacevich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440361528s/7720138.jpg|10466953], [b:Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country|17286660|Breach of Trust How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country|Andrew J. Bacevich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1363435044s/17286660.jpg|24493432], and [b:America's War for the Greater Middle East|27272125|America's War for the Greater Middle East|Andrew J. Bacevich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1458494199s/27272125.jpg|47325698]) that are all built (more or less) using a very Niebuhrian framework. Between Bacevich and Obama loving Reinhold Niebuhr, my quiet clap seems hardly needed.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Sometimes the irony in our historic situation is derived from the extravagant emphasis in our culture upon the value and dignity of the individual and upon individual liberty as the final value of life."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
I read this on a plane ride from Malta back home to AZ. It was probably the only positive aspect of travel. Normally, I wouldn't consider a book of philosophy to be a travel book/beach read, but Niebuhr's prose was so clean and his ideas expressed so well that I could have read it anywhere and not been distracted. It is also a small enough book that it is easy to read in one long session (broken up three times with pretzels, diet Coke, and a warm towel). I'm also fairly fanatical about NOT inking up my books. I use Post It Tabs excessively while reading. However, this book was so quotable. Had so many lines and ideas that I broke down and just started underlining with a pen [GASP]. All of this preamble is meant to do is inform you, reader, of HOW much I enjoyed every page and every minute of this book.
The new edition is introduced by one of my favorite historians/military historians/Imperial theorists - Andrew Bacevich. He has written several books on American Empire and military policy ([b:The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism|3367918|The Limits of Power The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project)|Andrew J. Bacevich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441050587s/3367918.jpg|3407257], [b:Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War|7720138|Washington Rules America's Path to Permanent War|Andrew J. Bacevich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440361528s/7720138.jpg|10466953], [b:Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country|17286660|Breach of Trust How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country|Andrew J. Bacevich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1363435044s/17286660.jpg|24493432], and [b:America's War for the Greater Middle East|27272125|America's War for the Greater Middle East|Andrew J. Bacevich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1458494199s/27272125.jpg|47325698]) that are all built (more or less) using a very Niebuhrian framework. Between Bacevich and Obama loving Reinhold Niebuhr, my quiet clap seems hardly needed.
tedtschopp's review
5.0
A great book about politics and religion that has a lot to say about America in 2018. This book will require several readings in order to absorb completely as the author is quite good at packing in the details.
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