SEARCHING "FOR MEANING AND FULFILLMENT BEYOND THE AMBIGUOUS FULFILLMENTS AND FRUSTRATIONS OF HISTORY"

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense, with a new Introduction by Gary Dorrien (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1944, 2011) ("These profound questions about life from the perspective of the individual who is able to see the whole history of his nation (and of all nations for that matter) as a flux of time, imply eternity. Only a consciousness which transcends time can define and circumscribe the flux of time. The man who searches after both meaning and fulfillments beyond the ambiguous fulfillments and frustrations of history exists in a height of spirit which no historical process can completely contain. This height is not irrelevant to the life of the community, because new richness and a higher possibility of justice come to the community from this height of awareness. But the height is destroyed by any community which seeks prematurely to cut off this pinnacle of individuality in the interest of the community's peace and order. The problem of the individual and the community cannot be solved at all if the height is not achieved where the sovereign source and end of both individual and communal existence are discerned, and where the limits are set against the idolatrous self-worship of both individuals and communities." Id. at 84-85.).