This dissertation constitutes two primary projects-one is to explore Reinhold Niebuhr's political thought and the other is to utilize it to diagnose the problem of Korean political culture. The author focuses on Niebuhr's anthropology as his epistemological filter, which helps acquire useful socio-political knowledge and realize "approximate justice." It is characterized as paradoxical due to the simultaneous and contradictory human nature of creativeness and destructiveness over the tension between natural necessity and transcendent spirit. In particular, the author highlights Niebuhr's notion of transcendence and presents it as the inevitable logical precondition for his pragmatic and political thought. Since the intellectual and emotional impulse of the human is always tempted to look and act beyond the necessity, perspectives of both liberal or orthodox Christians, based on mystical power of faith and modern rationalists, indulged in the supremacy of science are naturally refuted. Niebuhr believes that when the paradoxical nature of the human is duly recognized in both theological and political discourses, an approximate or tolerable justice can be achievable. Korean political culture is a practical case proving Niebuhr's politico-theological claim. The author argues that the primary factor of the backwardness of the political culture is the Koreans' peculiar collective consciousness, which always values human agents over institutions and policies. Most religious traditions have fostered an inordinately idealistic anthropology and utopian political view. While Confucianism and Buddhism have contributed to the notion of politics as moral arena, Shamanism and modern Christianity have fostered either an inordinately revolutionary view or an apolitical and ahistorical attitude. The author hypothetically characterizes the problem of Korean political culture as a corollary of moral perfectionism and the undue attachment to ideological immaculacy. It shows the antithetical elements to what Niebuhr believes are required for a stable political culture.