The Irony of Michael Novak: Niebuhr, Democratic Capitalism, and Climate Change
Abstract The late influential American intellectual Michael Novak was a self-declared devotee of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the foremost twentieth-century American theologian. Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982) was an attempt to fill the political-economic lacuna in Niebuhr’s thought...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2021
|
| In: |
Philosophia reformata
Year: 2021, Volume: 86, Issue: 1, Pages: 5-28 |
| Further subjects: | B
Climate Change
B Resources B Michael Novak B Irony B democratic capitalism B Reinhold Niebuhr |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Abstract The late influential American intellectual Michael Novak was a self-declared devotee of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the foremost twentieth-century American theologian. Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982) was an attempt to fill the political-economic lacuna in Niebuhr’s thought. The present article offers a Niebuhrian irony–focused response to Novak’s democratic capitalism in view of climate change as probably the greatest threat facing humanity. Novak quite successfully extended Niebuhrian ideas into a theology-based vision of democratic capitalism as the only political-economic system effective in widely lifting people out of poverty. Yet he failed to acknowledge human-induced climate change as beyond reasonable doubt and rooted in the predominantly American invention of a fossil energy–based capitalist political economy. This article’s thesis is that Novak’s democratic capitalism entails Niebuhrian irony: the virtue it displays about resources becomes a vice due to Novak’s irresponsible post– Spirit of Democratic Capitalism attempt to represent democratic capitalism as innocent of any dangerous climate-change implications. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2352-8230 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Philosophia reformata
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/23528230-bja10013 |