Hans J. Morgenthau, a founding proponent of political realism, remains the central figure in international relations scholarship of the twentieth century. His book Politics among Nations literally defined the field in 1948 as it heralded the post--World War II paradigm shift in American thinking about diplomacy. Yet when Morgenthau died in 1980 at the age of seventy-six, no one present at his funeral had an inkling about the first half of his life -- his education, his early productive career in Europe and America, or the roots of his political philosophy. In the first and only volume devoted to the intellectual formation of Morgenthau, Christoph Frei draws upon an overwhelming abundance of resources -- including a lengthy paper trail of previously unseen diaries, correspondence, notes, and manuscripts -- to disclose the compelling story of a great mind in the making. Frei identifies the bases of Morgenthau's ideas and clarifies many misconceptions, including Morgenthau's link with Augustinian thought, his relationship with Reinhold Niebuhr, and the impact of major thinkers such as Max Weber, Hans Kelsen, and Carl Schmitt on the scholar. He offers incontrovertible evidence of Friedrich Nietzsche's predominant influence on Morgenthau. Resoundingly praised in the original German, Hans J. Morgenthau is a brilliant life study that presents the first coherent picture of the European intellectual building blocks Morgenthau brought with him to America.

This book provides an innovative interpretation of Hans J. Morgenthau's contribution to international relations, and argues that the concepts of meaning, power as meaning imposition, disenchantment and re-enchantment are central to Morgenthau's theory.

A growing interest in the oeuvre of Hans J. Morgenthau and in re-readings of 'classical realism' increases the significance of his European, pre-emigration writings in order to understand the work of one of the founding figures of IR. This book is the first English translation of Morgenthau's French monograph La notion du politique from 1933 (translated by Maeva Vidal).

Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations is a classic of political science, built on the firm foundation of Morgenthau’s watertight reasoning skills. The central aim of reasoning is to construct a logical and persuasive argument that carefully organizes and supports its conclusions – often around a central concept or scheme of argumentation. Morgenthau’s subject was international relations – the way in which the world’s nations interact, and come into conflict or peace – a topic which was of vital importance during the unstable wake of the Second World War. To the complex problem of understanding the ways in which the post-war nations were jostling for power, Morgenthau brought a comprehensive schema: the concept of “realism” – or, in other words, the idea that every nation will act so as to maximise its own interests. From this basis, Morgenthau builds a systematic argument for a pragmatic approach to international relations in which nations seeking consensus should aim for a balance of power, grounding relations between states in understandings of how the interests of individual nations can be maximized. Though seismic shifts in international politics after the Cold War undeniably altered the landscape of international relations, Morgenthau’s dispassionate reasoning about the nature of our world remains influential to this day.

This edited volume covers the development of the thought of the political realist Hans J. Morgenthau from the time of his arrival in America from Nazi-dominated Europe through to his emphatic denunciation of American policy in the Vietnam War. Critical to the development of thinking about American foreign policy in the post-war period, he laid out the idea of a national interest defined in terms of power, the precarious uncertainty of the international balance of power, the weakness of international morality, the decentralized character of international law, the deceptiveness of ideologies, and the requirements of a peace-preserving diplomacy. This volume is required reading for students of American foreign policy, and for anyone who wishes to understand the single most important source of the ideas underpinning American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War.

Featuring a new fifty-page interview with Hans J. Morgenthau by Bernard Johnson, this volume on the renowed scholar and philosopher demonstrates how pervasive is his mark on the study of international relations and political philosophy. The interview illuminates Morgenthau's intellectual development in Europe between the world wars and in the United States. It is in recognition of his unsurpassed contribution to the field of international relations and political philosophy that this collection of contributions from distinguished scholars has been assembled. The continuation and refinement of his work in this book prove the lasting value of his philosophical truths in the understanding of human nature, the role of power at all levels of society, and his concept of national interest.

Realism remains the most important and controversial vision of international politics. But what does it mean to be a realist? This collection addresses this key question by returning to the thinking of perhaps the most influential realist of modern times: Hans J. Morgenthau. In analyses of issues ranging from political philosophy, to international law, to the impact of nuclear weapons and the challenges of American foreign policy, the authors demonstrate that Morgenthau's thinking exemplifies a rich realist tradition that is often lacking in contemporary analyses of international relations and foreign policy. At a time when realism is once again at the centre of both scholarly and political debates, this book shows that the legacy of classical realism can enrich our understanding of world politics and contribute to its future direction.

Although Morgenthau, primarily known for his works on international relations such as Politics Among Nations (1948) and In Defense of the National Interest (1951), has been seen as a one-dimensional advocate of pure Realpolitik, Mollov (political science, Bar-Ilan U., Israel) argues that themes of transcendence are very important to his work and seeks to explore those aspects of his political thought that have been influenced by his background as a German Jewish emigre from Nazi Germany. After identifying the Jewish aspect of Morgenthau's work, Mollov uses these elements to attempt to define a Jewish approach to international politics, presumably of primary relevance for the state of Israel. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR