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Science, Technology, and Death in the Nuclear Age: Hans J. Morgenthau on Nuclear Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Greg Russell
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Abstract

Russell probes Morgenthau's realist ethics and the underpinnings of the nuclear threat in a technologically evolving modern world with increasingly obsolescent national boundaries. In the classic political question of a ‘just war,’ Russell argues that Morgenthau was concerned with dilemmas created by the very successes of science and the resulting decay of traditional Western thinking, where scientific reason was prevailing over social reason. Morgenthau's gloomy emphasis on “man's uncertain moral destiny in the nuclear era”-and, particularly, on the uniquely individualistic perceptions of scientific advancements at a time when nations seek collective security against the nuclear threat-highlights his confidence in the strong intellectual, moral and spiritual power of man. He is skeptical in the endurance of the morally disintegrating “scientific man.” Morgenthau analyzes man's new understanding of “life” and “death” and examines the new scientist, who creates “a new nature out of his knowledge of the forces of nature,” and the new statesman, who creates “a new society out of his knowledge of the nature of man.” Morgenthau sees politics as an art, not a science, and “what is required for its mastery is not the rationality of the engineer but the wisdom and moral strength of the statesman.”

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 5 , March 1991 , pp. 115 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1991

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References

1 Raymond Aron, “Political Action in the Shadow of Atomic Apocalypse,” in Harold D. Lasswell and Harlan Cleveland, eds., The Ethic of Power: The Interplay of Religion, Philosophy, and Politics (New York: Harper Brothers, 1962), pp. 445–57.

2 The Basel-Rheinfelden conference of 1960, organized by Raymond Aron, brought together eminent theoreticians and specialists to reflect upon the values of industrial society and the future of mankind. Although the moral consequences of nuclear policy were largely the concern of Oppenheimer and George F. Kennan, the brief exchanges among participants remain illuminating for ongoing debate about the meaning and role of political ethics in the external behavior of nations. Papers and roundtable discussions were published in Raymond Aron, ed., World Technology and Human Destiny (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963).

3 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empires (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), pp. 267–68.

4 See Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Joseph Nye, Nuclear Ethics (New York: Free Press, 1986); Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977); Virginia Held, et al., eds., Philosophy, Morality, and International Affairs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974); Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1983); William Stanmeyer, “Toward a Moral Nuclear Strategy,”Policy Review, Vol. 21 (Summer 1982); Douglas Lackey, “Missiles and Morals: A Utilitarian Look at Nuclear Deterrence,”Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 11 (Summer 1982); and Robert J. Myers, ed., International Politics in the Nuclear Age (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987).

5 Sidney Hook, H. Stuart Hughes, Hans J. Morgenthau, and C.P. Snow, “Western Values and Total War, Commentary, Vol. 32 (October 1961), pp. 280, 285.

6 “The Platonic attitude of withdrawal from ‘sick politics,’ in the Thucydidean sense of the term, is a personal possibility, but does not eliminate the public necessity of taking on the sickness as long as it lasts.” For Voegelin's comments, see Aron, ed., World Technology and Human Destiny, pp. 214–15.

7 Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Fallacy of Thinking Conventionally About Nuclear Weapons,” in David Carlton and Carlo Schaerf, eds., Arms Control and Technological Innovation (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976), pp. 255–64.

8 Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), p 11.

9 Leo Strauss, “Political Philosophy and the Crisis of Our Time,” in George J. Graham and George W. Carey, eds., The Post-Behavioral Era, Perspectives on Political Science (New York: David McKay, 1972), pp. 271–42.

10 Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, pp. 1–10.

11 Hans J. Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master? (New York: New American Library, 1972), pp. 1–2,4.

12 Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 5.

13 Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Works), Vol. 5 (Leipzig and Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1925), p. 349.

14 Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 982b.

15 Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master?, pp. 6–7; Eric Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, Vol. III of Order and History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), pp. 305–307.

16 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925), p. 83.

17 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Book I, Aphorism 81.

18 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925), p. 83.

19 Quoted in John Hallowell, Main Currents in Modern Political Thought (New York: Henry Holt, 1950), pp. 50–51.

20 Immanuel Kant, “Was ist Aufklarung?” in werke, Vol. 4, ed. E. Cassirer (Berlin, 1922), p. 169; “Was Heisst: sich im Denken orientieren?” in Werke, Vol. 4. pp. 349ff.

21 Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932), pp. 50–51.

22 Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Roots of Narcissism,” unpublished essay in the Morgenthau Papers, 10643:109, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, pp. 4–6.

23 Hans J. Morgenthau, Truth and Power (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 61.

24 Plato, Symposium, 202a.

25 Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master?, pp. 9–10.

26 Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man's Workshop,” in Mysticism and Logic (New York: W.W. Norton, 1929).

27 Morgenthau, Truth and Power, p. 17; Science: Servant or Master?, pp. 13–14, 23–24.

28 Pierre Joseph Proudhon, “Idée générale de la révolution au dix-neuvieme siecle,” in Oeuvres Completes, Vol. 9 (Paris: E. Dentu, 1868), p. 300.

28 Quoted in Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, p. 91.

30 For details see Charles Dupuis, Le Principe d'equilibre et le Concert European (Paris: Perrin et Cie, 1909), pp. 38ff., 60ff.

31 Lord Allen of Hartwood, “Pacifism: Its Meaning and Its Task,” in G.P. Gooch, ed., In Pursuit of Peace (London: Methuen, 1933), pp. 22–23.

32 Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, pp. 93–94.

33 Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master?, pp. 3–4.

34 Edward Gibbon, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Modern Library Edition, 1900), Vol. 2, pp. 93–95; Francois Fenelon, Oeuvres (Paris, 1870), Vol. 3, pp. 349–50; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres Completes (Brussels: Th.Lejeune, 1827), Vol. 10, pp. 172, 179; Emericde Vattel, The Law of Nations (Philadelphia, 1829), Book III, Chapter III, pp. 377–78; Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 6th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1985), pp. 258, 270–73.

35 Linus Pauling, No More War (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1958), pp. 203,211. See also Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empires, pp. 275–76.

36 Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 46, 53; Edward Teller and Allen Brown, The Legacy of Hiroshima (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1962), p. 253.

37 Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master?, pp. 125–26.

38 That Kahn missed the point about the simultaneous occurrence of these threats is even acknowledged during the course of his argument: “But perhaps what is most important of all, we did not look at the interaction among effects we did study.” Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, p. 91. See also Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable (New York: Horizon Press, 1962), p. 86f., 122; Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master?, pp. 126–29.

39 Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master?, p. 149.

40 Ibid., pp. 126–29, 141, 144–47, 149–51; Morgenthau, et al., “Western Values and Total War,” pp. 284–85.

41 Karl Jaspers, The Future of Mankind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. vii-viii, 24–25.

42 Morgenthau, Science: Servant or Master? p. 153; Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, pp. 26–27.

43 Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, pp. 10–11; Science: Servant or Master? p. 153.

44 Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, pp. 236–40.

45 Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, pp. 220–23.