Rheinhold Niebuhr's Analysis

I agree with Rheinhold Niebuhr that ethics will never be capable of solving the problem of human selfishness because morality and sympathy towards each other depends on personal contact and direct relationships between people. According to Niebuhr, almost every single moral theory contends on the goodness of benevolence, justice, kindness, and unselfishness, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is going to act upon these traits.
In the reading, Niebuhr examines the arguments of the rationalist and religious moralists, and his claim is that they are wrong about its effectiveness in inter-group relationships even though they are right about the role that rationality and religion can play in the support of morality. Niebuhr disagrees on the claim