Morgenthau in Context: German Backwardness, German Intellectuals and the Rise and Fall of a Liberal Project

By what criteria might the human condition be considered `tragic'? In this article I argue that historically contextualizing the criteria by which Morgenthau judged the human condition to be tragic requires a sensitivity to what might be called the `international dimension' of knowledge production. Specifically, I argue that Morgenthau's tragic sense of the relation between liberal ethics and the reality of politics was constructed as a reaction to a preceding set of intellectual engagements — exemplified by the political philosophies of Georg Hegel and Max Weber — with the perceived `backward' nature of the `liberal' project in Germany in comparison to that of republican France and capitalist Britain. Through this investigation I argue that inter-societal difference is not simply an object of political theory, but at a deeper level generative in the historical construction of that thought itself. This argument has implications for Morgenthau's recent resurrection as a critical voice on the separation of ethics and politics in International Relations theory.