Modern jurisprudence has typically been presented as a debate between legal positivism and natural law. Though the demise of legal positivism has been touted despite its pre-eminence in past decades, it is clear that there remains a vigorous debate surrounding this theory. It is noteworthy that Hans J. Morgenthau’s legal thought and critique of legal positivism have remained unexplored in the context of this debate. Largely forgotten, his legal thought answers questions that lie at the heart of the natural law (...) and legal positivist debate. It showcases his deeply nuanced understanding of legal and political theory and contains a powerful and insightful commentary on the fundamental problems faced by international law. Building on existing literature, this paper unearths Morgenthau’s critique of legal positivism. It does this by re-examining his works, which address the question of whether moral considerations are relevant to determining the content of the law in force. It brings his legal thought to light, which highlights the artificiality of the division between law and morality and offers a nuanced analysis of problems inherent in international law. Ultimately, the paper challenges the claim that the law can be determined without resorting to moral judgement and shows how Morgenthau’s insights remain relevant to legal positivism and natural law debates today. (shrink)

Buultjens examines the utility of history as a paradigm on which to build a prognosis of the future.

In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but (...) groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances. (shrink)

Does the ‘Zeitenwende’ herald the beginning of a new and as yet undefined open society realism? The present essay argues this question requires critical discussion of nature and value of realist political theory, particularly at a time where international society is accelerating to somewhere which is itself as yet unclear. Adding to revisionist research on political realism in International Relations (IR) theory I sketch how a political vision I call open society realism may be developed out of Classical realism, in (...) sharp distinction to academic IR neorealism for methodological and political reasons. To strip foreign policy realism from Continental philosophy, law, and history risks that we become what political liberalism ought to avoid: a closed society with a good conscience retreating from world politics, hiding behind the ‘national’ interest as if strategic great power management is a methodic function of structure rather than the politics of an ethically conscious diplomacy. (shrink)

The article unveils the intellectual indebtedness of Hans J. Morgenthau's realist theory of international power politics to Freudian meta- and group psychology. It examines an unpublished Morgenthau essay about Freudian anthropology written in 1930, placing this work within the context of Morgenthau's magna opera, the 1946 Scientific Man vs. Power Politics and the 1948 Politics among Nations. The article concludes that Morgenthau's international theory is ultimately based on the early instinct theory of Sigmund Freud. Freud is thus to be seen (...) as one of Morgenthau's intellectual fathers. A second main argument refers to the theoretical tradition that Morgenthau has founded within International Relations (IR), namely: political realism. By investigating its core principles, it is argued that realism also may be rooted in Freudian thought. Throughout, the article calls upon IR, Morgenthau scholarship, and international-political theory to take Freud seriously. (shrink)

Classical realism and Morgenthau in particular have recently experienced a revived interest in International Relations (IR). The evolving debate has helped to contextualise and reconstruct Morgenthau's thought which until now had been misrepresented in structural realist and early poststructuralist interpretations. However, despite all of its achievements, we have yet to draw more attention to Morgenthau's contribution to contemporary IR theory. To contribute to the closing of this research gap this article considers a set of questions which Morgenthau himself asked at (...) the beginning of his career as its conceptual framework. It is argued that Morgenthau was particularly concerned with the dehumanisation of socio-political life in modern democracies evoked through processes of ideologisation, technologisation, and scientification, which he countered by focusing on a re-introduction of the human factor to politics. This demonstrates that Morgenthau's work is a rich source for IR theory because his intellectual agenda was driven by concerns similar to what we find in poststructuralism. (shrink)

World War I was an epochal event that permanently redefined international politics. Yet, there is no consensus about what kind of international system it erected. This article argues that since 191...

The analysis focuses on the centrality of the mind and the mental, and their relationship with the notion of discourse in International Relations theorizing. While many forms of discourse theory ar...

Analyzing Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations, Myers provides a point-by-point discussion of his theory, concluding that the relevance of realism will be seen particularly in the search for a new balance of power in the post-Cold War world.

This article explores one of the key themes of Hans J. Morgenthau's moral theory, the concept of the lesser evil. Morgenthau developed this concept by reference to classical political theory, especially the articulation of the lesser evil found in Aristotle and Epicurus. The article begins by differentiating Morgenthau's work from that of E. H. Carr, whom he regards as engaged in a Quixotic quest to provide Machiavellism with greater ethical purpose. The article also contrasts the ethics of the lesser evil (...) with Kantian ethics. Morgenthau places the lesser evil in the context of a modernity that has lost the capacity to think about the relationship between politics and morality and stresses the importance of coming to grips with the existential demands of love and power. Finally, the article argues that despite the ubiquity of evil, the existence of the lesser evil gives rise to the development of specifically political virtues such as prudence and moderation which raise the possibility of moral politics beyond mere expedience. (shrink)

Political realism is frequently criticised as a theoretical tradition that amounts to little more than a rationalisation of the status quo and an apology for power. This paper responds to this criticism by defending three connected claims. First, it acknowledges the moral seriousness of rationalisation, but argues that the problem is hardly particular to political realists. Second, it argues that classical International Relations realists like EH Carr and Hans Morgenthau have a profound awareness of the corrupting effects of rationalisation and (...) see realism as an antidote to this problem. Third, it proposes that Carr and Morgenthau can help us to recognise the particular ways in which realist arguments may nonetheless rationalise existing power relations and affirm the status quo by default, if not by design. (shrink)

There is nothing new or even faintly original in the neoconservative foreign policy vision. It simply recycles the old national security ideology for a post-Cold War era. Consistent with this ideological agenda, conservatives have also been advancing the case for the strong executive who operates above the law. In championing the principle of the strong executive, they are seeking to re-define the meaning of modern republicanism around this principle. During the 1960s Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau developed a broad critique (...) of the national security state and its ideology in their opposition to the Vietnam War. This essay examines their critique, and the alternative conception of republicanism they developed as part of this critique. (shrink)

This article explores the uses of tragedy as a mode of analysis in international relations. In tragic analyses, actors are portrayed as acting ethically, but through their deeds they bring about consequences that are contrary to the values in the name of which the deeds were undertaken. The good deeds bring about ethically obnoxious consequences. The article demonstrates how tragic analyses can be made of the actions of collective actors such as states and nations. Examples from Rhodesia, South Africa and (...) the Balkans are used to demonstrate this. Tragic stories elicit sympathy for the protagonists. Such accounts are compared with rival accounts of the same acts, in terms of `just war theory', for example, which accounts do not generate sympathy but call forth emotions of outrage and condemnation. Finally, a case is made for the use of the tragic form of analysis in international affairs. Such analyses highlight the tensions and contradictions between rival social practices and point the way towards political transformations that will make a repetition of those cases of tragedy less likely in future. (shrink)

The possibility of morally enhancing the behavior of individuals by means of drugs and genetic engineering has been the object of intense philosophical discussion over the last few years. However; although moral enhancement may turn out to be useful to promote cooperation in some areas of human interaction; it will not promote cooperation in the domain of international relations in those areas that are critical to state security. Unlike some moral enhancement theorists; I argue that; because of the structure of (...) the system of states; moral enhancement cannot be used to avert such major threats to humankind as terrorism and nuclear conflict. My analysis of the political implications of moral enhancement is pursued through a critical discussion of two different versions of political realism; namely human nature realism and structural realism. I conclude that; as far as major threats to the survival of humankind are concerned; moral enhancement can at most be used as a means to change the present structure of the system of states. (shrink)