A Post-Modern Morgenthau?

Abstract

It takes no huge mental leap to jump from the word Morgenthau to realism. Add a third word, conservatism, and then things get tricky. Most of us implicitly think realism and conservatism overlap, and they frequently do, but often imperfectly and sometimes even uncomfortably. Hans J. Morgenthau, the immigrant intellectual and godfather of mid-century American realism, is a classic example of the imperfect and uncomfortable overlap. A transplant from Weimar Germany and an international lawyer turned theorist, Morgenthau was also a committed anti-Wilsonian and a realist, but that does necessarily make for a self-identified conservative. Professional and amateur Morgenthau watchers usually have a choice. The unsympathetic among them can argue Morgenthau mixed judicious elements of opportunism with an unfortunate strain of intellectual confusion. The more sympathetic observer could acknowledge tensions and the inevitable compromises while admitting that this made Hans Morgenthau a keen social critic armed, as the cliche goes, to “speak truth to power.” Indiana University Political Science Professor William E. Scheuerman is of the latter camp. Scheuerman’s complex, challenging, evolving Morgenthau first emerged from the Weimar intellectual left and then joined the realist critique. Indeed, Scheuerman meticulously portrays Morgenthau as nuanced and enigmatic and, in some instances, puzzling—all virtues of an intellectual pushing against the boundaries of restrictive categories. The book’s premise is that Morgenthau, on the surface a realist’s realist, had nonetheless transcended the intellectual limitations of realism. As such, retracing the critical chapters of the early and late Morgenthau helps us to construct something infinitely more nuanced and perhaps more humane than the tired incantations of power politics so often associated with realism. This is the premise of Morgenthau.