Crisis, Values, and the Purpose of Science: Hans Morgenthau in Europe

Abstract

Shortly after finishing his Habilitation at the University of Geneva in 1934, Hans Morgenthau typed a lengthy manuscript entitled Über den Sinn der Wissenschaft in dieser Zeit und über die Bestimmung des Menschen (On the Purpose of Science in These Times and on Human Destiny). Underappreciated and little known in the ever-growing literature on Morgenthau and classical realism at large, this manuscript provided the foundation for a series of publications throughout his life in which he ferociously and even polemically defended a normative role for “science” (Wissenschaft) in modern societies against the backdrop of the rise of behavioralism. Most famous among them is certainly Morgenthau's first book in the United States, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (see Hartmut Behr in this forum). Indeed, forty years after Morgenthau had penned this manuscript in Geneva, he based the first part of Science: Servant or Master on it, indicating that he “never went much beyond what he had basically said and formulated” during his time in Europe.

The realist science of politics: the art of understanding political practice

“…The object of Realist science is the art of politics because Realism understands science as the systematic study of political practice, to create knowledge prior to theorizing practice or the knowledge of it (Morgenthau, 1972a; Rösch, 2016). Realism’s science of the “art of politics” takes two fundamental dimensions of human life into consideration: power and morality.…”