“In the Beginning was the Deed”: Nicholas Onuf and the New Realisms

In the mid-2000s two books by major philosophers were widely read as foundational for a new “turn” in political theory; Raymond Geuss’s Philosophy and Real Politics and Bernard Williams’s posthumous collection In the Beginning was the Deed set the scene for the “new political realism”. In the key essay of the collection, “Realism and Moralism in Political Theory”, Williams critiques two accounts of the relationship between politics and ethics. The “new political realism” of Williams and Geuss is focused on the implications of their critique for domestic politics. In any event, a short exploration of the relationship between Nicholas Onuf and political realism may be a valuable exercise. The “Liberalism of fear” is deeply conscious of the propensity of the powerful to ignore the voices of the weak, and the main thrust of Williams’s work is to promote the protection and interests of the weak.