Morgenthau’s Existential Crisis

Abstract

Hans Morgenthau’s special attraction for those who wish to disturb the dichotomous nature of the text book framework of IR theory has been twofold.¹ First, as a ‘godfather’ of the American discipline, Morgenthau is a strategically important author. Second, Morgenthau appears to be ripe for just such reinterpretations owing to the ambiguous way in which his intellectual heritage and his own writings map onto the mutually exclusive nature of liberal and realist worldviews popularly presented in text books. Of special importance, in this respect, is the reconciliation of Morgenthau with a tragic tradition of political thought wherein the human condition is considered to be one of anti-perfection and human action is characterized by hubris (see Frost 2003; Lebow 2003). One must avoid crusades of good versus evil because one’s notion of the ‘good’ can never be universally applicable in thought nor perfectly realized in practice. Morgenthau can therefore be re-claimed as a critical and influential voice on the unbounded optimism of the American ‘applied enlightenment’ — the pursuit of a progressively tighter correspondence between knowledge and action.²