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The godfathers of ‘truth’: Max Weber and Carl Schmitt in Morgenthau’s theory of power politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 1998

HANS-KARL PICHLER
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Abstract

The article uncovers the intellectual link between Morgenthau’s theory of power politics and the German thinkers Max Weber and Carl Schmitt. Through this it sheds light on the forceful claims to objectivity contained in Morgenthau’s theory of power politics. The author reveals how, by combining Schmitt’s ideas of ‘the Political’ with Weber’s ideas on the objectivity of social science, Morgenthau finds an elegant way to overcome the value-determinacy of social science. This enables him to assert the objectivity of (international) political science. The same arguments allow Morgenthau also to formulate a moral defence of the state.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 1998 , pp. 185 - 200
Copyright
© 1997 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Professor Fred Halliday for introducing Carl Schmitt's ideas to me and encouraging me to write this article. Many thanks also to Dr Christopher Coker and Henrik Thune for many fruitful discussions, and my parents, Karen Lüdtke, Elena Jurado and Anna Bertmar for their help.