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, Reflections  Reflections on HR. Niebuhr's "Life is Worth Living"

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_ _1.1. There is an implicit faith given with life itself.(2) with respectto respect to conduct, Is there any right, or any wrong? and (3) with respect to belief,. Is there any cause or being finally worth living and dying for? 1.2. This faith underlies three main domains: knowledge,conduct, and belief. ' .

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. 1.4. Our implicit faith simply as hUIIian human beings, without which we cannot live, has always already answered these questions affmnativelyaffirmatively. So long as we engage in life, we must live by faith· in reality· and make distinctions between what is real ' and what is only apparent, what is true and what is false. Similarly, so long as we live and act, we must live by faith in right and distinguish between what is only apparently right and what is . really so, and between whatis what is right and what is wrong. And so; too, we cannot live at all without faith that life is finally worth living and withoutdistinguishing without distinguishing between causes or beings :that are fmally worth living and dying for and those that are not. .

1.5. Even sOso, our implicit faith may be deceived in many ways, in thatwhatwethat what we.. take to be real beyond our consciousness may be only appearance orfictionor fiction.;whafwe what we take to be right or wrong may be only apparently and not really so; and what we take to be finally worth living and dying for may not really but only apparently have such worth. 

1.6. And so it is that our explicit faith requires to be made critical and rational.. Although reason can never take the place offaithof faith, which can be given up only by giving up life itself, reason can and should criticize and improve faith. Progress,; in .other words, is not from faith to reason, but from an explicit faith that is inherited and uncritical to an explicit faith that is more rational because it is examined and critical.

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2.1. What Niebuhr calls "faith," in the sense ofthe of the basic faith implicitly given with life itselfand itself and without which we cannot live, seems to function in much the same way as what Maurice calls "reason" (allowing, in doing so, that  it may be called by some 

other name). Just as reason, in Maurice's sense, lays hold ofwhat of what is real, right, and worthy ofworshipof worship, so faith, in Niebuhr's sense, does the same, laying hold ofthe of the real, the right, and the finally trust-/loyalty-worthy.

2.2. When Niebuhr asks,,"What cause or being justifies all the pain and effort of living, the carrying on the work ofcivilizationof civilization, the continuance ofthe of the human species?" is he notaskingnot asking, in effect, what cause or being is genuinely ,worshipful, worship being understood as unreserved trust and unqualified loyalty? ,

2.3. IfNiebuhrIf Niebuhr is right that "mature faith" in matters of conduct can assert, "There is a right, even though all my standards \[ofrightof right\] are but poor and imperfect and unrighteous approximations of ofitsits content," then, presumably, "mature faith" in the two other matters ofknowledgeof knowledge and belief(in Niebuhr's sense)could.assert something similar. Thus in the matter ofknowledgeof knowledge, mature faith could assert, "There is a real, ,even though all my standards \[oftheof the ,real\] are but poor and imperfect and unrighteous , ." approximations ofitsof its content. " And in the matter of ofbeliefbelief, it could ass~rt,''There is a cause or being finally worth living and dying for, even though all tnymy.standards \[ofwhatof what, is finally finallyworthyillworthy in this sense Jare butpoorbut poor and imperfect and unrighteous ' approximations 01 its content." But, then, how yvouldwould such a "mature faith" in matters,of beliefdifferbelief differ, ifatif at all, from the belief ofwhichof which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes \~peaks, i.e., the belief of ofthosethose who "come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of oftheirowntheir own conduct that the theultim;1teultimate good desired is better reached by free trade injdeasin deas-that the,1;>est test of truth. is the power oftheof the thought{not,: as he ' misleadingly puts it, to get itself accepted, but to prove itself itselfworthyworthy of ofacceptanceacceptance\!\] in the competition oftheof the market, and. that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out"?

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