The Disenchantment of Politics, and Morgenthau’s Leadership Theory

Abstract

By 1964, Hans Morgenthau regarded the opportunities offered by the social and political order more optimistically. When asked about the disillusions expressed earlier, he replied: ‘I’m through with being disillusioned, as it were. I try now to come to terms with the positive values which human nature and human life, social and political life, contain and more particularly potentialities which human life and the social and the political order contain’ (‘The Sum and Substance’ interview, Morgenthau Papers, Box 172, p. 5). At that time, Morgenthau was trying to raise his contemporaries’ awareness of the ‘death of God’, and the perils of meaninglessness and technological advancement. At the same time however, his earlier criticism of the perceived disenchantment of the world, including here the disenchantment of the political world, was tempered by the belief that mankind could use ‘the new potentialities’ provided by modern technology to its advantage, instead of its destruction (see Fifth Lecture at the Oriental Institute, 7 April 1950, Morgenthau Papers, Box 169, p. 23). The present interpretation maintains that despite the aforementioned coming-to-terms with life’s positive values, the foundational assumptions embedded in Morgenthau’s theory — the ‘death of God’, the subsequent advent of nihilism and disenchantment, and the fight over power interpreted as meaning imposition — will endure in his account until the very end.