Hans Morgenthau

German-American political scientist
External Websites
Also known as: Hans Joachim Morgenthau
Quick Facts
In full:
Hans Joachim Morgenthau
Born:
February 17, 1904, Coburg, Germany
Died:
July 19, 1980, New York, New York, U.S. (aged 76)
Notable Works:
“Politics Among Nations”

Hans Morgenthau (born February 17, 1904, Coburg, Germany—died July 19, 1980, New York, New York, U.S.) was a German-born American political scientist and historian noted as a leading analyst of the role of power in international politics.

Educated first in Germany at the Universities of Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich, Morgenthau did postgraduate work at the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva. He was admitted to the bar in 1927 and served as acting president of the Labour Law Court in Frankfurt. In 1932 he went to Geneva to teach public law for a year, but because of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, he stayed on until 1935. In 1935–36 he taught in Madrid, and in 1937 he took up residence in the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1943. He served on the faculties of Brooklyn (New York) College (1937–39), the University of Missouri–Kansas City (1939–43), the University of Chicago (1943–71), the City College of the City University of New York (1968–74), and the New School for Social Research (1974–80).

In 1948 Morgenthau published Politics Among Nations, a highly regarded study that presented what became commonly known as the classical realist approach to international politics. In this work, Morgenthau maintained that politics is governed by distinct immutable laws of nature and that states could deduce rational and objectively correct actions from an understanding of these laws. Central to Morgenthau’s theory was the concept of power as the dominant goal in international politics and the definition of national interest in terms of power. His state-centred approach, which refused to identify the moral aspirations of a state with the objective moral laws that govern the universe, maintained that all state actions seek to keep, demonstrate, or increase power. He called for recognition of the nature and limits of power and for the use of traditional methods of diplomacy, including compromise.

A contributor to numerous scholarly periodicals and journals of opinion, Morgenthau was also the author of Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946), In Defense of the National Interest (1951), Dilemmas of Politics (1958), The Purpose of American Politics (1960), Politics in the Twentieth Century (1962), and Truth and Power (1970).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Related Topics:
international relations

realism, set of related theories of international relations that emphasizes the role of the state, national interest, and power in world politics.

Realism has dominated the academic study of international relations since the end of World War II. Realists claim to offer both the most accurate explanation of state behaviour and a set of policy prescriptions (notably the balance of power between states) for ameliorating the inherent destabilizing elements of international affairs. Realism (including neorealism) focuses on abiding patterns of interaction in an international system lacking a centralized political authority. That condition of anarchy means that the logic of international politics often differs from that of domestic politics, which is regulated by a sovereign power. Realists are generally pessimistic about the possibility of radical systemic reform. Realism is a broad tradition of thought that comprises a variety of different strands, the most distinctive of which are classical realism and neorealism.

Classical realism in international relations

Realists frequently claim to draw on an ancient tradition of political thought. Among classic authors often cited by realists are Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Max Weber. Realism as a self-conscious movement in the study of international relations emerged during the mid-20th century and was inspired by the British political scientist and historian E.H. Carr. Carr attacked what he perceived as the dangerous and deluded “idealism” of liberal internationalists and, in particular, their belief in the possibility of progress through the construction of international institutions such as the League of Nations. He focused instead on the perennial role of power and self-interest in determining state behaviour. The outbreak of World War II converted many scholars to that pessimistic vision. Thereafter, realism became established in American political science departments, its fortunes boosted by a number of émigré European scholars, most notably the German-born political scientist and historian Hans Morgenthau. It is the realism of Carr, Morgenthau, and their followers that is known as classical.

Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations (1948) helped to meet the need for a general theoretical framework for realism. Not only did it become one of the most extensively used textbooks in the United States and Britain—it continued to be republished in new editions over the next half century—it also was an essential exposition of the realist theory of international relations. Numerous other contributors to realist theory emerged in the decade or so after World War II, including Arnold Wolfers, George F. Kennan, Robert Strausz-Hupé, Henry Kissinger, and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

According to realism, states exist within an anarchic international system in which they are ultimately dependent on their own capabilities, or power, to further their national interests. The most important national interest is the survival of the state, including its people, political system, and territorial integrity. Other major interests for realists include the preservation of a nation’s culture and economy. Realists contend that, as long as the world is divided into nation-states in an anarchic setting, national interest will remain the essence of international politics.

Classical realism was not a coherent school of thought. It drew from a wide variety of sources and offered competing visions of the self, the state, and the world. Whereas Carr was influenced by Marxism, Morgenthau drew on Friedrich Nietzsche, Weber, Carl Schmitt, and American civic republicanism. Classical realists were united mainly by that which they opposed. Critical of the optimism and explanatory ambition of liberal internationalists, classical realists instead stressed the various barriers to progress and reform that allegedly inhered in human nature, in political institutions, or in the structure of the international system. The fortunes of classical realism, grounded as it was in a combination of history, philosophy, and theology, waned during the era of social-scientific behaviourism in the 1960s. Its fortunes were revived by the emergence of neorealism during the 1970s.