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Realism and Idealism in International Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Quincy Wright
Quincy Wright
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Extract

“Realism” and “idealism” are both terms which have been used in differing, sometimes opposite, senses in the history of philosophy. They must therefore be employed with great caution. Dr. John H. Herz, in his recent study of the application of these terms to politics, seeks to define the sense in which he uses them. He writes in his preface that the book was in the main finished when the last war was ended and that little which had happened since required modification of his conclusions. To the reviewer it seems that further thought on the concepts employed in a perspective more removed from the disturbing influences of the war period would have been desirable.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , October 1952 , pp. 116 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

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References

1 Bertrand Russell has made the interesting comment that authoritarian political systems such as those of Catholicism, Nazism, and Communism emerged from idealistic philosophies like those of Aquinas and Hegel, while liberal and democratic political systems developed from empirical philosophies like that of Locke (Unpopular Essays, New York, 1950, p. 2).

2 Herz, , op.cit., p. 18.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 3.

4 Ibid., p. 18.

5 Ibid., p. 7.

6 Simmel, Georg, “The Sociology of Conflict,” American Journal of Sociology, IX (January 1903), pp. 490ff.Google Scholar; Park, R. E. and Burgess, E. W., Introduction to the Science of Sociology, Chicago, 1924, p. 583Google Scholar; Ogburn, W. F. and Nimkoff, M. F., Sociology, Boston, 1940, pp. 344ff.Google Scholar; Wright, Quincy, A Study of War, Chicago, 1942, p. 957Google Scholar; idem, “The Nature of Conflict,” Western Political Quarterly, rv (June 1951), pp. 199ff.

7 Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, Chap. 5, sec. 2; Herz, , op.cit., p. 129.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., pp. 121ff.

9 Tucker, Robert W., “Professor Morgenthau's Theory of Political Realism,” American Political Science Review, XLVI (March 1952), pp. 214ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 it was also associated with empiricism. Both mathematicians and experimentalists have been called “realists” in modern times.

11 Wolfers, Arnold, “The Pole of Power and the Pole of Indifference,” World Politics, IV (October 1951), p. 40.Google Scholar

12 Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations, New York, 1948, pp. 21ff.Google Scholar

13 Morgenthau states that politics is not amenable to rational or scientific treatment but is an art to be judged only historically by its success (Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, Chicago, 1936, p. 10). To say that politics is an art which to succeed must employ tools other than reason and that the assumptions of politics are relative is not to say that scientific generalization about political behavior is impossible. See Wright, Quincy, “Political Science and World Stabilization,” American Political Science Review, XLIV (March 1950), pp. 1ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Grotius, Hugo, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Prolegomena, sec. 18, Carnegie ed., p. 16.Google Scholar Modern psychologists emphasize the value of law for self-control even more than for control of others (West, Ranyard, Conscience and Society, New York, 1945, p. 166Google Scholar). Grotius hinted at the same thought. “Even if no advantage were to be contemplated from the keeping of the law, it would be a mark of wisdom, not of folly, to allow ourselves to be drawn toward that to which we feel that our nature leads” (loccit.).

15 United Nations Charter, Preamble.

16 Morgenthau suggests that politics is necessarily evil and inconsistent with ethical norms (Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, pp. 195ft.).

17 See my articles, “International Law and the Balance of Power,” American Journal of International Law, XXXVII (January 1943), pp. 97ff., reprinted in Compass of the World (H. W. Weigert and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, eds.), New York, 1944, pp. 538., and “Accomplishments and Expectations of World Organization,” Yale Law Journal, LV (August 1946), p. 871, which attempt to evaluate “realistic” balance of power policies and “idealistic” international organization policies.

18 Pascal, Pensées; Plutarch, Solon, par. 15; Grotius, op.cit., Proleg., sec. 19, p. 16.