ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I described the striking similarity between realist and critical legal (CLS) critiques of liberalism’s moral blindness. They share another characteristic as well: their epistemologies, which are crucial to their critiques, also undermine their ability to develop a philosophically viable synthesis of ethics and power. I also argued that there remains a sense of optimism among many CLS thinkers, one that I believe reflects either a lack of awareness or a lack of concern regarding the implications of their epistemological attachments. That is not the case among the realists I examine in this chapter. They are quite aware of the consequences of the epistemological changes that have occurred in the post-Enlightenment period. I focus specifically upon the relationship between Kantian epistemology and the ethical positions Nietzsche drew from it. Whereas liberalism covered over this relationship, realist theory self-consciously incorporated it. Though liberal policy can becomes coercive, realism finds itself unable to assert an ethical position that can transcend its own tragic vision. Where liberalism is morally blind, realism is rendered helpless.
