ABSTRACT

Hans Morgenthau has been considered, by students of international relations, the most forceful and incisive spokesman of the "realist" school. Morgenthau recognized that reality could be given a meaning only if had "a rational outline, a map." But the map he gave was of little help. It is true that "statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power," but only at a level of generality that is fatuous. Morgenthau's conviction that a realistic policy was also a moral one—that his map served as a normative as well as empirical theory—was particularly troublesome. There was, in Morgenthau's work, a constant tension between his awareness of the diversity of politics—he was at his best as a subtle analyst of concrete situations—and his desire to reduce politics to a single type he deemed politically prudent and ethically wise; but this desire made of him an idealist in disguise, a somewhat conservative liberal in revolt against other, imprudent liberals.