Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T14:13:59.889Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.