Page History

...

H. Richard Niebuhr is one theologian who argues very much as I do. Although his argument is expressed or implied in most ofhisof his major writings, one of the more impressive, as well as succinct, statements ofitof it is in a little essay, entitled "Life is Worth Living" (in _The lntercollegian and Far Horizons,_ _LVII, 1 \[October, 1939\]: 3-4, 22). _
\\

Niebuhr argues there that the three profound questions typically asked by youth prove, upon careful examination, to be such that "their very statement implies a faith given with life itself, without which the life which asks them would be impossible" (3). Thus, for example, the great skeptical question with respect to knowledge, "'How do I know that I am not living in a dream, that there is any reality outside my consciousness? ... contains an implicit confession of faith in the reality of the person to whom iJ: it is addressed or in the objects which are asked to give proof of their being" (3). The professed skeptic "affirms in his act what he denies with his words. When he eats, drinks, walks on the solid earth, picks up his pen, he confesses his belief in a real world about which his mind can be sceptical skeptical but in which his mouth, stomach, feet and hands, the whole living self, must have faith" (3). Of course, such faith may be deceived in many ways. "Some of the things in which men believe turn out to be 'such stuff as dreams are made of'; the experience of illusion and deceit throws the mind into uncertainty" (3). "But the luxury of complete doubt is possible only for the wholly contemplative mind; so long as man engages in life he must take up again his faith in an external world and undertake to make distinctions between illusion and reality, between lie and truth. Animal faith has been chastened and made critical but life cannot live without it. No reason can take the place of this faith, but the faith can be made rational. To give up the faith itself is to give up life" (3 f.). 

...

Niebuhr's argument strikes me as convincing, and his analysis of the basic faith by which we live into (1) "faith in reality"; (2) "faith it without asserting by implication that there is such a thing as worth, that some things ru;e worthy, that life ought to be full of value.... The faith that life is worth living is given with life itself; it lies deeper than any reason. Reason cannot question it because reason works on the basis ofits of its assumption" (4). in right"; and (3) "faith in meaning," while perhaps not exhaustive of"animal faith," provides important illustrations ofwhat of what I speak ofas of as the "basic beliefs" by which we live as human beings.