Hans Morgenthau (February 17, 1904 - July 19, 1980) was one of the major figures of the 20th century in the study of international politics. His work belongs to the tradition of realism and he is usually ranked with George F. Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the three leading American realists of the post-World War II period. Hans Morgenthau made significant contributions to the theory of international relations and the study of law. His Politics Among the Nations, first published in 1948, went through five editions during his lifetime.
Morgenthau has also written extensively on US foreign policy and foreign diplomacy. This is especially evident in such general circulation publications as The New Leader, The Commentaries, World View, The New York Review of Books, and The New Republic. He knew and corresponded with many of the leading intellectuals and writers of his era, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, George F. Kennan, Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt.
At one point, early in the Cold War, Morgenthau was a consultantUS state department. Then Kennan headed his policy planning staff, and for the second time in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Until he was fired when he began to publicly criticize American policy in Vietnam. For most of his career, however, Morgenthau was seen as an academic interpreter of US foreign diplomacy.
European years and functional jurisprudence
Morgenthau completed his PhD in Germany in the late 1920s. It was published in 1929. His first book is "The International Office of Justice, Its Essence and Limits". The work was reviewed by Carl Schmitt, who was teaching as a lawyer at the University of Berlin at the time. In an autobiographical essay written towards the end of his life, Morgenthau related that although he looked forward to meeting Schmitt on a visit to Berlin, it did not go well. By the late 1920s, Schmitt had become the leading lawyer for the growing Nazi movement in Germany. Hans began to view their positions as irreconcilable.
After completing his doctoral dissertation, Morgenthau left Germany to complete his master's degree (university teaching license) in Geneva. It was published in French under the title "National legal regulation", "Fundamentals of norms and, in particular, the norms of international law: foundations of the theory of norms". The work has not been translated into English for a long time.
Jurist Hans Kelsen, who had just arrived in Geneva as a professor, was an advisorMorgenthau's dissertation. Kelsen was one of the strongest critics of Carl Schmitt. So he and Morgenthau became lifelong colleagues, even after they both emigrated from Europe. They did this in order to fill their respective academic positions in the United States.
In 1933, the author published a second book in French about the political relations between nations. Hans Morgenthau in it sought to formulate the difference between legal and political disputes. The investigation is based on the following questions:
- Who has legal authority over disputed items or issues?
- How can the holder of this power be changed or held accountable?
- How can a dispute be resolved with jurisdictional object?
- How will the defender of legitimate authority be protected during its exercise?
For the author, the ultimate goal of any legal system in this context is to ensure justice and peace.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Hans Morgenthau's realistic theory of international politics emerged. It was created to search for functional jurisprudence. He borrowed ideas from Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, Roscoe Pound, and others. In 1940, Morgenthau outlined the research program in the article "Positivism, Functionalism and International Law".
Francis Boyle wrote that post-war work may have contributed to the gap between general science and legal studies. However, Hans Morgenthau's Politics of Nations contains a chapter on international law. Authorremained active in this relationship theme for the rest of his career.
American years
Hans Morgenthau is considered one of the founding fathers of the realist school in the 20th century. This line of thought asserts that nation-states are the main actors in international relations, and that the study of power is considered to be the main concern in this area. Morgenthau stressed the importance of the national interest. And in Politics Between Nations, he wrote that the main sign that helps realism to break through the landscape of international politics is the concept of international law. Hans Morgenthau defined her in terms of power.
Realism and politics
The author's recent scientific assessments indicate that his intellectual trajectory was more complex than originally thought. The realism of Hans Morgenthau was imbued with moral considerations. And during the last part of his life, he advocated supranational control of nuclear weapons and was strongly opposed to the US role in the Vietnam War. His book The Science Man vs. Power Politics was against over-reliance on science and technology as a solution to political and social problems.
6 principles of Hans Morgenthau
Starting from the second edition of Politics Among Nations, the author has included this section in the first chapter. Hans Morgenthau's principles paraphrased:
- Political realism believes that society as a wholegoverned by objective laws. They have their roots in human nature.
- The main property is the concept of political realism by Hans Morgenthau. It is defined in terms of power, which affects the rational order in society. And thus makes possible a theoretical understanding of politics.
- Realism avoids problems with motives and ideology in the state.
- Politics does not enjoy rethinking reality.
- A good outside area minimizes risks and maximizes benefits.
- The defining type of interest varies depending on the state and cultural context in which foreign diplomacy is conducted, and should not be confused with international theory. It does not give an interest defined as power a meaning that is fixed once and for all.
6 Hans Morgenthau's principles of political realism recognize that political realism is aware of the moral significance of actions. It also creates tension between command and the demands of success. He argues that the universal moral principles of Hans Morgenthau's political realism must be filtered through the specific circumstances of time and place. Because they cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation.
Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the laws that govern the universe. It supports the autonomy of the diplomatic sphere. The statesman asks: "How does this diplomacy affect the power and interests of the nation?".
Political realism is based on a pluralistic conception of human nature. It should show where the interests of the nation differ from moralistic and legal views.
Disagreeing with the Vietnam War
Morgenthau was a consultant to the Kennedy administration from 1961 to 1963. He was also a strong supporter of Roosevelt and Truman. When the Eisenhower administration received the White House, Morgenthau directed his efforts to a large number of articles for magazines and the press in general. By the time Kennedy was elected, in 1960, he had become a consultant to his administration.
When Johnson became president, Morgenthau became much more vocal in his opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War. For which he was fired as a consultant to the Johnson administration in 1965. This debate with Morgenthau was published in a book about political advisers McGeorge Bundy and W alt Rostow. The author's disagreement with American involvement in Vietnam brought him considerable public and media attention.
In addition to describing politics between nations, Morgenthau continued a prolific writing career and published a collection of three volumes of essays in 1962. The first book de alt with the decline of democratic politics. Volume two is the dead end of the state. And the third book is Restoring American Politics. In addition to his interest in and expertise in writing about the political affairs of his time, Morgenthau also wrote about the philosophy of democratic theory when faced with situationscrisis or tension.
American years after 1965
Morgenthau's disagreement with Vietnam policy led the Johnson administration to fire him as an adviser and appoint McGeorge Bundy, who publicly opposed him in 1965.
Morgenthau's book Truth and Power, published in 1970, collects his essays from the previous tumultuous decade on both foreign policy, including Vietnam, and domestic. For example, the civil rights movement. Morgenthau dedicated the book to Hans Kelsen, who, by his example, taught to tell the truth to power. The last major book, Science: Servant or Master, was dedicated to his colleague Reinhold Niebuhr and published in 1972.
After 1965, Morgenthau became the leading authority and voice in the discussion of just war theory in the modern nuclear age. This work has been further developed in the texts of Paul Ramsey, Michael Walzer and other scholars.
In the summer of 1978, Morgenthau wrote his last essay en titled "The Roots of Narcissism" with Ethel Person of Columbia University. This essay was a continuation of an earlier work exploring the subject, the 1962 work Public Relations: Love and Power. In it, Morgenthau touched on some of the topics that Niebuhr and the theologian Paul Tillich considered. The author was captivated by his encounter with Tillich's Love, Power and Justice and wrote a second essay related to themes in this direction.
Morgenthau was a tireless book reviewer during several decades of his career as a scholar inUnited States. The number of reviews he wrote approached almost a hundred. They included nearly three dozen thoughts for The New York Review of Books alone. The last two reviews of Morgenthau's books were not written for the New York Review, but for the work "Prospects for the USSR in International Relations."
Criticism
The acceptance of Morgenthau's work can be divided into three stages. The first occurred during his lifetime and up until his death in 1980. The second period of discussion of his writings and contributions to the study of international politics and law was between 1980 and the centenary of his birth, which took place in 2004. The third period of his writings is between the centenary and the present, indicating a lively discussion of his continuing influence.
Criticism in European years
In the 1920s, a review of Carl Schmitt's book from Morgenthau's dissertation had a lasting and negative effect on the author. Schmitt became the leading legal voice for the growing National Socialist movement in Germany. Morgenthau began to consider their positions incommensurable.
Within five years of this, the author met Hans Kelsen in Geneva as a student. Kelsen's appeal to the works of Morgenthau left a positive impression. Kelsen became Schmitt's most thorough critic in the 1920s and earned a reputation as the leading international author of the National Socialist movement in Germany. Which corresponded to their own negativeMorgenthau's opinion of Nazism.
Criticism in the American years
Relations Between Nations has had a major impact on a generation of scholars in global politics and international law. Within the realist theory of Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth W altz called for more attention to be paid to the purely structural elements of the system, especially the distribution of opportunities between states. W altz's neorealism was more conscious than Morgenthau's scientific version.
Hans' concerns about nuclear weapons and the arms race led to discussions and debates with Henry Kissinger and others. Morgenthau viewed many aspects of the nuclear arms race as a form of irrational madness that required the attention of responsible diplomats, statesmen and scientists.
The author remained an active participant in the discussion of US foreign policy throughout the Cold War. In this regard, he wrote about Kissinger and his role in the Nixon administration. Morgenthau also wrote a short "Foreword" in 1977 on the topic of terrorism that arose in the 1970s.
Morgenthau, like Hannah Arendt, devoted time and effort to supporting the State of Israel after World War II. Both Hans and Arendt made annual trips to Israel to lend their established academic voices to a still young and growing community during its first decades as a new nation. Morgenthau's interest in Israel also extended to the Middle East more broadly, including oil politics.
Criticism of heritage
The intellectual biography, published in English translation in 2001, was one of the first significant publications about the author. Christoph Rohde published a biography of Hans Morgenthau in 2004, only available in German. Also in 2004, commemorative volumes were written on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Hans.
John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago examined the relationship of Morgenthau's political realism to the neoconservatism that prevailed during the Sr. Bush administration in the context of the 2003 Iraq War. For the author, the ethical and moral component was in general and, in contrast to the positions of defensive neorealism, an integral part of the process of thinking of a statesman and an essential content of responsible science in relations. Scholars continue to study various aspects of Hans Morgenthau's concept of international law.
