Reinhold Niebuhr's 'economic' realism: A critical response to Austrian subjectivism in American Christian economic thought

The dissertation traces the rise of economic conservatism among American Christians and the increasing philosophical dependency of many Christian libertarians and neoconservatives on the theories and principles of Austrian economics, especially those of Friedrich Hayek. It is posited that attempts by some economically conservative Christians to harmonize Austrian liberalism and Christian tradition ignore serious contradictions between their respective moral systems. Moreover, to the degree that efforts to blend together elements of these two traditions are influential in the wider Christian community, they contribute to complacency among American Christians in the moral sustainability of capitalism. That complacency is founded upon certain structural analogies that many conservative Christians have detected between Austrian economic philosophy and Christian tradition, including a mutual exaltation of human liberty, a common opposition to state power, and a shared respect for the importance of religious and moral traditions to social order. However, this affinity for Austrian principles overlooks the absence of a transcendent core to Hayek's highly evolutionary moral system, which acknowledges the subjective individual as the singular source of value and, by extension, morality in human culture.; Evidence is offered to suggest that the intensely subjectivist form of American capitalism largely conforms to Hayek's principles respecting the means by which values are transformed in society. However, given the rise of certain technologies that infringe upon the very conception of the human person in Christian tradition, the question is posed whether this modern vindication of Hayek should comfort or concern Christian social theorists. The basis by which Christian and Austrian principles are synthesized in the thought of conservative Christians is explored, with special attention given to the economic ideas of Ronald Nash, Michael Novak, and Father Robert Sirico.; Reinhold Niebuhr's “economic” realism is then offered as a moderating influence to the intense subjectivism of modern culture. Although Niebuhr has been overlooked as an economic thinker, his social thought demonstrates unusual insight into economic phenomena for a theologian and keen awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of all forms of political economy. Moreover, a unique value theory for Christian realism is identified that properly relativizes all values emanating from human institutions such as the market and the central planning institutions of socialism. The dissertation concludes by identifying certain proposals for the reformation of American capitalism from a variety of social theorists that are suggested to conform to the economic principles of Christian realism.