By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
There are two points at which Niebuhr's position strongly reminds me of Maurice's.
The first is his view that it is "[b]y the responsibilities which men have to their family and community and to many common enterprises [that] they are drawn out of themselves to become their true selves. The indeterminate character of human freedom makes it impossible to set any limits of intensity or extent to this social responsibility. . . . Family and nation have become the inner and outer confines of the community for most men; but . . . no bounds can be finally placed upon man's responsibilities to his fellows or upon his need of their help" (The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: 56).
The second is his view that "the will to live is finally transmuted into its opposite in the sense that only in self-giving can the self be fulfilled, for: 'He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (19).
7 June 1999
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