Morgenthau, Law and Realism

Abstract

Although he is widely regarded as the 'founding father' of realism in International Relations, this book argues that Hans J. Morgenthau's legal background has largely been neglected in discussions of his place in the 'canon' of IR theory. Morgenthau was a legal scholar of German-Jewish origins who arrived in the United States in 1938. He went on to become a distinguished professor of Political Science and a prominent commentator on international affairs. Rather than locate Morgenthau's intellectual heritage in the German tradition of 'Realpolitik', this book demonstrates how many of his central ideas and concepts stem from European and American legal debates of the 1920s and 1930s. This is an ambitious attempt to recast the debate on Morgenthau and will appeal to IR scholars interested in the history of realism as well as international lawyers engaged in debates regarding the relationship between law and politics, and the history of International Law.

Realism and Fear in International Relations

“…Thucydides 1972, 49, 103, emphasis added. Booth 2011Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993;Cozette 2008;Elman 2004;Frei 2001;Humphreys 2013;Jütersonke 2010;Keohane 1986a;Layne 2002;Pashakhanlou 2009;Pashakhanlou 2014;Schroeder 1994;Schweller 1996;Snyder 2002;Toft 2005;Tucker 1952;Valeriano 2009;Wendt 1992;Williams 2007. Machiavelli 1988, 59, emphasis added.…”

Embracing ontological doubt: The role of ‘reality’ in political realism

“…Emphasis is placed on classical realism's ethical commitments while scientific aspects are mostly neglected; preference is given to in-depth interpretations of past thinkers over engagement with contemporary theory and practice of international relations. The close attention paid to Hans Morgenthau over the last dozen years (Lebow, 2003;Williams, 2005Williams, , 2007Tjalve, 2008;Neacsu, 2009;Jütersonke, 2010;Scheuerman, 2013;Rösch, 2015) is not dissimilar to the attention seminal philosophers have received within critical IR. Like critical IR, the revival of classical realism highlights the problems of late modernity, especially ethical and political consequences of global value neutrality in the face of differentiated histories, of technological progress and environmental degradation.…”

The realist revival in political philosophy, or: Why new is not always improved

“…They conceived of realism as an overdue corrective to neo-Kantianism, similarly rejected the neo-Kantian division between 'is' and 'ought', and frequently expressed skepticism about idealized normative models which distorted the messy realities of real-life politics (Jütersonke, 2010;Scheuerman, 2012). The struggle for power was an irrepressible attribute of politics, and for them as recently for Geuss and Williams, politics was about history and contingency; recall the stunning historical richness of Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (1954) or Carr's Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939(1964.…”

“…In fact, early IR realism was initially defined by a parallel quest to challenge especially Hans Kelsen's neo-Kantian account of international law, which Morgenthau and others (most notably, John Herz and Georg Schwarzenberger) thought unduly neglected 'the sociological context of economic interests, social tensions, and aspirations for power', or what Morgenthau alternately described in a crucial 1940 article from the American Journal of International Law as 'the social sphere, comprehending the psychological, political, and economic fields' (1940, pp. 269, 283;Jütersonke, 2010;Scheuerman, 2012). In this early formulation, realism aimed at a 'sociological' corrective to Kelsen's pure theory of law, which envisioned law as a system of norms neatly separated from sociological (or social scientific) inquiry, on the one hand, and ethics, on the other.…”