Abstract

The ethical thought of Christian theologians Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr is rooted in the ontological perspective on the human being in society. Niebuhr's pragmatic political approach complements Tillich's broad existential analytic. Both thinkers view human history and conflict---within the self and in society---as historical manifestations of the ahistorical structure of reality. Part of this ahistorical reality is human estrangement from the source of its being, leaving it both utterly free and radically destined. The ethic is based on recognition of this human condition and the response of faith to the realization that one is finite. This response is to always strive to self-transcend, both as individual and as collective, to create a society governed by rules connected with human existence in all of its irrationalities and contingencies, rather than rules based on disconnected ideals. I raise the point that the global market, especially as dominated by the wealthy West, is based on an economic ideal that is divorced from the reality that it creates and governs. I focus specifically on the problems of so-called trade liberalization, export processing zones and sweatshop labor, to discuss how a free market represents individualist morals with no transcendent basis. For Tillich and Niebuhr, such a moral denies one the capacity to recognize the humanity of others---both near and distant---and the interdependence of human beings regardless of time or place. As a result both foreign sweatshop workers and those who consume the products they make are objectified and thus dehumanized