Realism as a Theory of (Cosmopolitan) Democracy?
Community, Transcendence and Dissent in the Political Thought of
Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans J. Morgenthau
Paper presented at workshop on
“Tragedy, Power and Justice: Realism and Global Political Theory”
June 10-11, Cambridge
Vibeke Schou Tjalve
Institute of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
[email protected]
THIS IS A VERY PRELIMINARY DRAFT
PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION
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Introduction: Realist Thought as a Theory of (Cosmopolitan) Democracy?
“The task of building a world community is man’s final necessity and possibility, but also his final impossibility.
It is a necessity and possibility because history is a process which extends the freedom of man over natural
process to the point where universality is reached. It is an impossibility because man is, despite his increasing
freedom, a finite creature, wedded to time and place and incapable of building any structure of culture or
civilization which does not have its foundations in a particular and dated locus. The world community, standing
thus as the final possibility and impossibility of human life, will in actuality be the perpetual problem as well as
the constant fulfillment of human hopes.”1
This paper is an attempt to suggest that the realism put forward by American theologian Reinhold
Niebuhr (1892-1971) and Jewish-American refugee Hans J. Morgenthau (1904-1980) may usefully be
read as a theory of the links between democratic pluralism and foreign policy prudence. In more
empirical terms, it is an analysis of Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s realism as a strategic response to
countering dangerous moves in American Cold War policies and a suggestion that we make such
strategy relevant for purposes of the present as well. This suggestion springs from a belief that the
realist mode of thinking about democratic mobilization and political justice has something relevant to
offer, absent from the various alternatives displayed within contemporary (global) political theory.
Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s distinct form of realism does embrace ideas of narrative and community
also dear to communitarian modes of thought, as well as notions of democracy as agonistic,
deconstructive struggle not unlike those aired by post-structural writings. But it arguably also offers a
more complex and strategic approach to democratic politics than any of these contemporary political
theories do. This would potentially enable us to move beyond a number of current dichotomies: the
tendency to juxtapose community and individuality, the inclination to view as opposite the forces of
religion and pluralism, and finally, the overarching tendency to think of national and international
loyalties as competing if not mutually exclusive. Seeking both to re-enchant the idea of the nation and
to re-imbue political life with resources of religiosity and transcendence, Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s
project was neither a traditionally communitarian one of freedom as belonging, nor a deconstructive
one of emancipation as autonomy or – in Zygmunt Baumann’s fitting phrase – “self-dismantling.”2
Instead, they offered a strategy of how to make belonging a means of subversion, community a vehicle
of difference, and transcendent narrative a source of difference highly relevant to the needs of 21st
Century challenges.
1
Reinhold Niebuhr (1945): The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. London: Nisbet & Co. Ltd. p. 127.
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Developing that claim, the paper will approach the issue of religious impulses in realism and their
relevance for contemporary thought from a somewhat different angle than usual. As has been
impressively demonstrated in a number of recent publications, realist thought is deeply embedded in
the insights and vocabularies of classical Christianity and frames its critique of modern politics on the
assumption that modernity has lost contact with religious modes of treating dilemma, tragedy and
finitude as integral elements of human existence. In the present study Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s
project of democratic recovery will be treated as one of cultivating restraint, viewing hesitance and
humility as pivotal and drawing deeply ethical lessons from realist thought.3 Yet it is a different aspect
of the functions which Niebuhr and Morgenthau believed true religiosity to fulfill that I am interested
in here: its role not only as a source of restraint, but also of inspiration and thus of change. While the
themes of faith and freedom – religion and politics - in Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s thought have both
been extensively examined, the dynamics between the two, i.e. the mobilizing, pluralizing and politicizing
role which both believed transcendent ideals to play, remain largely undiscovered.4 This is too bad, not
only because it leaves disciplinary history with a blind spot, but also – and above all – because this may
very well be the most important insight in an era marred by the rise of religious argument in the service
of conflict and closure. Hence Niebuhr, who gave perhaps the most explicit and sophisticated reasons
for faith by positing transcendence as a source of democratic pluralization, argued that the recovery of
real religiosity was not only necessary to counter certainty and crusadism: it was also of utmost
importance to battle nihilism and withdrawal, stimulating the vitality needed to nerve political struggle.
“Man’s vitality” as he put it “is an expression of his quest for meaning which negates the ‘secularism’ of
modern democratic idealism and refutes the erroneous belief that man would be more creative in
Zygmunt Bauman (1993): Postmodern Ethics. Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell. p. 2.
Roger Epp (1991): The “Augustinian Moment,” in International Affairs: Niebuhr, Butterfield, Wight and the Reclaiming of a Tradition.
Aberystwyth: Department of International Politics, University of Wales; Ned Lebow (2003): The Tragic Vision of Politics:
Ethics, Interests and Orders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Michael Loriaux (1992): “The Realists and Saint
Augustine: Skepticism, Psychology, and Moral Action in International Relations Thought,” in International Studies Quarterly
36:4; Alastair Murray (1997): Reconstructing Realism: Between Power Politics and Cosmopolitan Ethics. Edinburgh: Keele University
Press; Thompson, Kenneth W. (1980): Masters of International Thought. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
4 Outside IR, a few works on Niebuhr must be noted as exceptions. Though none of them treat the issue very explicitly or
systematically, the following works do have interesting points on Niebuhr’s notion of religion as a mobilizing factor in
democratic politics: June Bingham (1972): Courage to Change: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr. New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Mary Doak (2002): “Hope, Eschatology, and Public Life: The Contributions of
Rauschenbusch, Mathews, and Niebuhr to Reopening the American Imagination,” in American Journal of Theology & Philosophy
May, 23:2; Martin E. Marty (1974): “Reinhold Niebuhr: Public Theology and the American Experience,” in The Journal of
Religion 54:4; Roger L. Shinn (1974): “Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology in Reinhold Niebuhr: A Reassessment,” in The
Journal of Religion 54:4. Linking Niebuhr’s existentialist theology to republican themes in American intellectual history, John
Patrick Diggins is also aware of the mobilizing functions which Niebuhr trusted true religiosity to perform. See John Patrick
Diggins (1994): The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and The Crisis of Modernity. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press. p. ##-##;
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society and history if he would confine himself within its limits”.5 Unpacking the implications of that
claim, the paper ultimately seeks to portray realism as strategy which, against its reputation to the
opposite, may teach us how to make faith in transcendent justice a potential ally not only in the repoliticization of democracy, but even more ambitiously, in the quest for that impossible possibility of a
cosmopolitan global order.6
The paper goes about that task in three interrelated sections. In a first section, it presents a brief
sketch of Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s most central strategies of making plural and politicized democracy
an instrument of prudence and empathy in (foreign) policy: one of re-enchanting communal
imaginaries or narratives of purpose, one of strengthening the role of political leadership and one of
recovering patriotism as a practice of dissent. Against conventional depictions of their realism as
“conservative through and through, with deep suspicion against public opinion and control of foreign
policy”7, the section argues that the embrace of leadership in the cultivation of political prudence
should be viewed as a means to empower and pluralize the public sphere - not to control or overrule
this. Both thinkers, the section seeks to validate, believed prudence to be a product of vibrant contest –
of rival views keeping each other checked and balanced – as well as believing that empathy flows from
a genuinely spiritual sense of finitude, and it was as a vehicle to mobilize and cultivate these two
qualitiesthat their realism endorsed leadership and narrative. The second section moves on to
compare this strategy to contemporary thought. Responding to Stefano Guzzini’s recent suggestion
that realism be subsumed under the banners of more recent academic labels – most obviously those of
communitarian, constructivist or post-structural thought – the section seeks to validate why the realist
strategy of democracy not only is but also should remain distinct from the various schools of
contemporary global political theory. In a third and final section, the paper draws out parallels
between Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s attempt to make vibrant democracy a cure for Cold War
assertiveness and the dynamics between domestic political culture and foreign policy attitudes in post
9/11 US. Putting recognition of finitude to a positive use, the paper concludes, the realism put forward
by the two may assist in the formulation of responsible alternatives to current US foreign policy,
stipulating ways in which national belonging and transcendent narrative can aid more cosmopolitan
modes of identification and inclusion.
Niebuhr (1945): p. 39-40.
For a typical account of realism as an “effort to eradicate normative imperatives” see Andrew Linklater (1998): The
Transformation of Political Community. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 15. See also Steve Smith (1995): “The Self-Images of a
Discipline,” in Ken Booth and Steve Smith International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge: Polity Press.
7 Marrtti Koskenniemi (2001): The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. p. 440.
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I
Strategies of Democratic Pluralization: Narrative, Leadership and Patriotism
That Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s project was one of defending democracy, informed by political
motivations and philosophical assumptions deeply involved with the dilemmas of modern democratic
theory, is by now a well-known story. Likewise, it is a well-established fact that their criticisms of
American foreign policy was to a large extent criticisms of American democracy and hence, that both
assumed fundamental ties between the workings of a nations domestic political culture and the
prudence, responsibility, and empathy displayed in its foreign policies.8 What is perhaps less well
covered, are the strategies by which Niebuhr and Morgenthau sought to recover democratic politics,
and their shared conviction that all attempts at improving foreign policy prudence and, in the longer
run, of achieving more cosmopolitan forms of global coexistence, must start from the inside of existing
communities, mobilizing domestic political dialogue and imagination.9 Those strategies rarely came in
the form of abstract theorizing, but were developed as integral parts of empirical, political analysis. In
order to ‘pull out’ the advice which the following sections will advocate that Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s
realism contains, it is thus necessary to delve into their analysis of, and parallel cures for, American
democracy.
The basic framework of that analysis was an attempt to counter what both saw as the inflexibility,
crusadism, and violence of modern politics in general and perhaps, of American politics in particular. In
the service of this quest, Niebuhr and Morgenthau stipulated three inter-related strategies. Most
importantly, they called for a renewal of what Niebuhr labeled communal imaginaries and Morgenthau,
in a more specific analysis, termed the ‘the American sense of purpose’. Due to its inherent openness
and its mobilizing resources, both believed this to contain uniquely democratic potential. Secondly, the
two of them sought to break the culture of consensus by recovering a clear division of labor between
See for instance William E. Scheuerman (1999): “Another Hidden Dialogue: Carl Schmitt and Hans Morgenthau,” in Carl
Schmitt: the End of Law. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc; Williams, Michael C. (2005): The Realist Tradition and
the Limits of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Williams (2005). In the words of Ned Lebow “the
decline of American democracy was at its core a problem of ethics”. Lebow (2003): p. 242.
9 Obviously, extensive differences in the nature of their analysis and argument may be identified: in terms of the sources
they each held responsible for America’s absolutism, and in terms of how they formulated its cure. In terms of sources,
Morgenthau’s main target was the scientification and technification of American society at large, hence the secularization of
its political culture. Niebuhr, on the other hand, found that it was rationalist developments within American Protestantism
that had caused an increased self-certainty and resulting apathy in American society. Roughly put, Morgenthau found the
lack of critical or dissenting voices in 20th century American political culture to stem from the loss of religious attitudes,
whereas Niebuhr claimed that religion had been transformed. Their diagnosis of the ailments of American society
consequently took place on different stages and in collision with quite different actors: Morgenthau primarily battling
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government and citizenry. The function of government, they purported, is to exert power in the
perceived interest of the community, and the function of the community to constantly question and
challenge this: to “speak truth to power.” The idolatry of the status quo had arguably blurred this
distinction, and the second realist strategy of democratic recovery was therefore to restore a concept of
patriotism as active dissent rather than passive consent. The third and final measure in Niebuhr and
Morgenthau’s recipe for revitalizing the dynamics of democracy was subsequently the restoration of
clear and vivid government. Paradoxically, they – and particularly Morgenthau - claimed, the
implications of greater profile in leadership need not be further uniformity or control, but might, in a
system that accepts the right – indeed, duty – of its citizens to dissent, serve as an inspiration of
renewed debate and participation.
Re-Enchanting Communal Narrative to Nerve Political Imigination
At it most basic level, the cure which Morgenthau and Niebuhr recommended for the stagnation of the
American politics was re-enchantment: inscribing the ideals of democratic politics with a renewed sense
of truly transcendent purpose. This recommendation was tightly knit to an analysis of the American
past and present. In its original form, both believed that “America” as a political community had been
tied together by a shared worship of the empty signifier “equality in freedom:” joined by the procedural
struggle over how to define and achieve the content of these distant ideals. Process rather than
substance, in other words, had served as the integrative force of social cohesion. In Cold War America,
on the other hand, the purpose was to their mind thought of rather as full and final achievement: a
destination as opposed to a journey. “In the prevailing view,” Morgenthau bluntly put it, “nothing
precedes and transcends society”10 and as a result, conformity had replaced plural vitality: robbed of the
ideals which inspire ambition, American political culture had rejected the pursuit of future goals for the
idolatry of present achievements. Thereby, bureaucratic rivalry had come to replace political struggle:
“Under these conditions…politics itself loses its vital force. The prices of power still
appear worth having to those who run for office. The people at large participate in and
follow the political contests from habit, a sense of duty, mild self-interest, and in the spirit
of a sporting contest, betting on and identifying themselves with one or the other team. In
opponents from the juridical and political science parts of academia; Niebuhr finding both his adversaries and kindred
spirits in a much broader humanistic and theological field.
10 Hans J. Morgenthau (1982 [1960]): The Purpose of American Politics. Washington: University Press of America. p. 223.
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their consciousness the vital nexus between their individual lives and the ways the
commonwealth is being governed has been loosened if not severed, altogether.”11
As a direct response to such conformity, Niebuhr and Morgenthau turned to recover what they saw as
the original, transcendent nature of the American notion of collective ideals or ‘purpose’. Albeit by
different routes, both arrived at the conclusion that democracy depends upon a religious, or better,
spiritual dimension: that it relies on the existence of values believed to escape human reach or
realization.12 Only if society believes in ideals beyond its present realization or reach, does it contain
resources to stimulate ambition, reminding it of the distance between vision and fact.
Particularly in the work of Morgenthau is the original American vocabulary of a national purpose
developed. The original spirit of American politics, Morgenthau put forward, made up an ideal version
of collective purpose, both rich and empty enough to serve as a stimulus of plural, democratic
imagination. In relation to this, the core concepts by which the American community is constituted
were to Morgenthau’s mind originally conceived of as “incomplete and formal concepts,” which “point
to a relation to other concepts” and “receive their full meaning only from that relationship.”13 Hence,
Morgenthau believed, the American purpose was “peculiarly intangible, shapeless, and procedural,”
consisting “not in a specific substantive ideal and achievement, but in a peculiar way of thinking and
acting in the social sphere, in a peculiar conception of the relations between the individual and
society.”14 In that sense, it met both the demands that the realists posed to social imaginaries. It
displayed a transcendent quality that by definition escapes perfect human reach or realization and hence
serves to constantly rededicate the citizenry to vibrant struggle and ambition. Yet despite such
elusiveness, it simultaneously contained narrative resources rich enough to command respect and
attract attention. As such, the American purpose was able to pluralize, while simultaneously integrating
community, making the process of dissenting debate rather than the substance of static consensus a
tool of cohesion: “the very essence of the American purpose,” as Morgenthau summed up:
Ibid. p. 200.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1951): “Religious Politics.” Originally printed in Christianity and Crisis, 16. Reprinted in Charles C.
Brown (1992): A Niebuhr Reader: Selected Essays, Articles, and Book Reviews. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International.
13 Morgenthau (1982 [1960]): p. 20.
14 Ibid. pp. 21-22.
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“is that it is uniform in procedure and pluralist in substance; as a national purpose, it exists
only as a particular mode of procedure. Give it a uniform substance as well…and you have
destroyed its very essence, its very vitality, its very existence.”15
If the inflexibility and aggression of American policies were to be countered, and the dangerous logics
of certainty and consensus broken, Niebuhr and Morgenthau both agreed, this narrative structure had
to be recovered in the American imagination. Only in a polity whose members acknowledged
transcendent ideals beyond themselves, and accepted finitude before these, could the virtues of prudent
restraint and imaginative aspiration be acquired. To construe such a situation, it was necessary to keep
ideas and interests loose and shifting. For this purpose, their joint strategy played two – apparently
contradictory – instruments: strengthening the public and strengthening government.16
Recovering Patriotism as a Practice of Dissent
In terms of strengthening the public, Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s project was clear: to recover a notion
of diverse political debate as a sign of democratic health. Again, the cure was intimately linked with a
bleak diagnosis. With the transformation of the American purpose from transcendent ideal to
purportedly realized reality, both contended, the American concept of patriotism had transformed too.
Once more though, it is Morgenthau who delivers the most explicit argumentation.
According to this, the atrophy of transcendent vision had not simply had a negative impact on the will
of the public to debate and participate. Much more detrimentally, political opposition or dissent had
become illegitimate. This silencing of critique, he believed, was a natural result of a society which,
rejecting the existence of ideals beyond its own reach, regarded itself as perfect. In such a society, he
explained:
“controversy is no longer regarded primarily as a contest about who and what is right, but
as an attack upon conformity – that is, upon society itself. Dissent is not to be refuted or
confirmed on objective grounds inherent in the subject matter of the controversy; rather,
as a threat to society, it is to be eliminated through ostracism, absorption, or indifference.
15
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Ibid. p. 298.
Ibid. p. 66.
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The contest over what is right then, transforms itself into a struggle of society to survive as
it is against those who appear to endanger it by their dissent.”17
In Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s analysis, this de-legitimization of political criticism assumed the
expression of a crude majority rule, acting as “the tyrant of the body politic” and “stifling in that body
the vital questioning and initiative and evoking instead the submissiveness of conformity.”18To repair it
they believed, a challenge not of institutional reform, but much more profoundly of transforming
American mentalities had to be taken on.
For that purpose, they turned to what they saw as a republican vein in the American intellectual
heritage. This was not optimistic in the sense that it demonstrated faith in absolute answers or
solutions; however, it was not pessimistic either. Instead, it reflected a third option, unique in their view
to American political culture: against the alternatives of responding to challenge or crisis by “retreating
into utopianism or pessimism,” a possibility of “attacking in the pragmatic spirit of social reform the
internal conditions upon which the threat appeared to feed” existed as well.19 As Morgenthau saw it,
this marginalized though originally robust American approach did not fool itself that political strategies,
governmental reforms or spiritual realignments could ever “exercise the fact of power from society.”
Like the Founding Fathers who were familiar with the wisdom of “Calvin and Hobbes,” it was well
aware that human efforts can only ever “minimize the relations of power and mitigate their burden.”20
Instead of responding to threats of crisis with a defense of the status quo as definite truth, or
responding to difference with defense of conformity as primordial ‘harmony’, this “last alternative”
thus “brought into being attempts at social reform which continued the American revolution by
attacking within American society deviations from the American purpose.”21 It brought into being, in
other words, the idea that equality in freedom was neither realizable in the sense imagined by the
optimists, nor unattainable as the pessimists held. Instead, it depended on the skepticist yet hopeful
pragmatism of eternal trial and error; proposal and counter-proposal. Through the route of a skepticist
yet utopian American tradition, in short, it became possible to arrive at the conclusion that “a
dissenting minority performs a vital function for the political and moral welfare of the Republic.”22
Ibid. p. 227.
Hans J. Morgenthau (1957b): “Freedom” in Hans J. Morgenthau (1962): Politics in the Twentieth Century III. Chicago:
Chicago University Press p. 77.
19 Morgenthau (1982 [1960]): p. 65.
20 Ibid. p. 66.
21 Ibid. p. 65. My italics.
22 Hans J. Morgenthau (1970): Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade 1960-70. New York, Washington, London: Praeger
Publishers. p. 44. My italics.
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Against the notion of patriotism as loyalty towards the status quo then, Niebuhr and Morgenthau
sought to erect informed political criticism as a potential virtue. Obviously, a willingness to
compromise and connect in spite of differences was a necessary and even virtuous political capacity.
But “bipartisanship,” as Morgenthau explained, “never did imply that the opposition should not
oppose when opposition appeared justified…Nor did it imply that the opposition should forego what
is not only its privilege but also its mission, whose fulfillment is indispensable for the proper
functioning of the democratic process: to submit alternative policies for the administration to adopt or
else for the people to support by changing the administration. An opposition that does not perform
these two functions deprives the people in yet another way of that choice of policies essential to
democracy.”23 If, as argued above, America as a nation represented a political idea rather than a physical
entity in the traditional European sense, then civic loyalty to that idea and not to its temporal political
interpreters ought to be the core of American patriotism. Furthermore, such loyalty, in so far as the
American idea was considered transcendent – believed to evade human comprehension or attainment –
could not exclusively deal with the positive attempt at re-interpreting it. It also had to counter those
who denied the transcendence of American principles, i.e. those claiming to have somehow finally
achieved or accomplished them. To the realist then, it followed that an American government which
denied its citizenry a right to perpetually renew the search for the ideal could make no claim to
allegiance:
“The United States was founded upon loyalty, not to a king or piece of territory, but to an
ideal of political justice. We pledge allegiance to a flag which is a symbol of ‘liberty and
justice for all’. Loyalty which attaches to a man or a territory may not be affected by
injustice perpetrated by that man or within that territory. A nation which is build on a
common belief in certain principles of justice, whose citizens have come voluntarily come
together from all over the world to share in the practice of those principles, which owes its
very existence to a revolt against injustice – such a nation stands and falls, as a nation, with
its loyalty to those principles. The loyalty of its citizens presupposes the loyalty of its
government, not as a matter of verbalization but of policy, to those principles of justice.
The government of such a nation cannot help committing injustices by sacrificing some
freedom and interests of individuals to a higher good. The government of such a nation
23 Hans J. Morgenthau (1956): “The Decline of the Democratic Process” in Hans J. Morgenthau (1962): Politics in the
Twentieth Century I. Chicago: Chicago University Press. p. 382.
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will be forgiven sporadic injustices not justified by the achievement of such a higher good.
The government of such a nation will embark upon a deliberate policy of injustice only at
the risk of weakening the very foundations of loyalty which supports its voluntary
acceptance by its people.”24
With this however, we come full circle and arrive back at the place where we started: with the need for
a recovery of the American purpose as a transcendent ideal and not as an actual fact incarnated in the
status quo of American politics. But if keeping the purpose transcendent and open rely on the
perpetual contests of democratic debate, and democratic debate – that is, the exercise of patriotism as
dissent – rely on the perpetual transcendence and openness of the purpose, then what will keep the
dynamic between the two alive? It is here that Niebuhr and Morgenthau turn to the role of leadership.
Strengthening Leadership as a Stimulus of Public Participation
To reawaken the purpose as ideal, and recover patriotism as loyalty toward that ideal and not its
temporal interpreters, Niebuhr and Morgenthau both believed that a strengthening of government was
imperative. This may sound odd, as both continued to regard totalitarianism the biggest danger to
modern democracy. Yet, their argument went, real and sound democratic government was in fact an
inspiration of public dissent, without which the logics of consensus and homogeneity had free play.
Admittedly, this concern with leadership and fascination with the “statesman” who must “cross the
Rubicon alone” was to some extent – and particularly in Morgenthau’s work – a strange residue of
continental backgrounds, reminiscent of Weber’s awe for the charismatic and prudent leader. There is
no denying that the realists were taken by, and persistently idolized, the loneliness of the political
decision-maker. One can hardly find anything in modern literature that compares to the pathos with
which the final pages of Scientific Man vs. Power Politics indulge in the solitary but heroic struggle of the
far-sighted statesman. Yet however archaic this aspect of their thought, the political and democratic
functions which they trusted leadership to fulfil are equally important. Ultimately, both regarded
leadership a democratic tool - a politicizing, pluralizing and hence democratizing instrument – arguing
that it was the “subservience to public opinion” which had “impaired the democratic process.”25
This accusation was tightly knit to the realist perception of representative government. In Niebuhr and
Morgenthau’s view, the idea of government as mere mirroring was really a perverted form of
Hans J. Morgenthau (1955a): “The Corruption of Patriotism.” Originally published in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist.
Republished in Hans J. Morgenthau (1962): Politics in the Twentieth Century I. Chicago: Chicago University Press. p. 407.
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democracy: making government a product of crude majority rule, both believed, treating its views as
full and final truth was tantamount to tyranny. Public opinion was “not a static thing, to be ascertained
and quantified by polls as legal precedents are by the science of law,” but rather, “a dynamic thing to be
created and continuously recreated by…political leadership.”26 This by no means implied that
leadership was about manipulating public opinion – only in “non-democratic societies” was
“consent…created by the government’s monopolistic manipulation of the mass media of
communication.”27 Instead, the purpose of leadership was to provoke the kind of debate which would
cause “free interplay of plural opinions and interests” and hence the multitude “out of which the
consensus of the majority” could legitimately emerge: ideally, as argued above, there ought not to be
one stable majority at all, but loose and shifting correlations of interest and outlook.28 The real purpose
of leadership, then, was not to impose opinion, but to spur the formulation of views and counter-views.
Instead, government ought to be an initiator and stirrer of opinion: “What we have in mind,” as
Morgenthau explained the point, “is a subtle quality which is vital to democratic government: its quality
as a teacher and leader.”29
Ironically, the realist thus found the most important tool to countering conformity – the worship of the
President as a representative of a “union sacrée” – to rest with a strengthening of the Presidency itself.
“The government,” they argued, “must free itself from the feudalism of its bureaucracies by…restoring
to the President, the will to govern,” recovering “the substantive functions of the President as initiator
and architect of politics.”30 Only such reinforcement, they believed, would separate man from office,
making clear that the Presidency is a political institution that offers subjective interpretations of
communal values and partial readings of how to achieve them. Having re-politicized government, public
dissent might be provoked or inspired and a new form of communication between the elected and
electorate can take place:
“the reassertion of the President’s leadership will reopen the dialogue between the
government and the people, thereby restoring to the democratic process at least a measure
of vitality…the restoration of the government’s leadership and responsibility will assist in
Morgenthau (1982 [1960]): 318.
Hans J. Morgenthau (1955b): “The Subversion of Foreign Policy.” Originally printed in Yearbook of World Affairs.
Reprinted in Hans J. Morgenthau (1962): Politics in the Twentieth Century I. Chicago: Chicago University Press. p. 418.
27 Morgenthau (1957b): p. 98.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Morgenthau (1982 [1960]): p. 313.
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the restoration of not only of the governments ability to govern the people, but also of the
people’s ability to control the government.”31
Further stretched, Morgenthau’s notion of leadership as a dynamic rather than stifling or silencing force
in society may be viewed as an heir to the Puritan and republican ideas of government as a process
through which to constitute and sustain certain forms of subjectivity: constructing citizens driven by a
quest for improvement and a constant desire to challenge the existing status quo. The original
republican attempt at chastening the political struggle was echoed in Morgenthau’s call for a
construction of citizens untamed, individualistic and sufficiently engaged to want to pursue political
ends, but simultaneously disciplined, constrained and socialized enough to do so within the boundaries
of a collective set of ideals. This was no easy feat: the mainstream of technological and material
developments posed severe challenges to the project of mobilizing and sustaining particularity and
individuality in modern culture, while more immediate – but no less pressing – logics of political
competition imposed restrictions on the extent to which leadership could afford originality in a
representative democracy. Yet Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s strategy was clear: to recover vitality in
democracy, and hence to attain the pluralism needed both for exercising freedom within the domestic
community and for pursuing balance, tolerance and justice in foreign policy, a re-enchantment of
communal narratives of vision and purpose were needed. While such strategy seemed to contain a
number of paradoxical tasks – strengthening community for the purpose of vitality and pluralization,
recovering forms of faith to counter certainty and fundamentalist religion, or enhancing leadership to
empower the people – it was, in their view, the only means of saving American political relations,
national as well as international.
II
Relevant or Just Rich? Realism and Current Democratic Theory
On that note, we arrive at a question recently posed by readers sympathetic to, but not convinced by,
the superior wisdom of realist thought: is realism relevant or just rich? Is the classical realism advanced
in this paper really an intellectually superior philosophy for meeting the political problems of the 21st
century? Or, merely, an entertaining and seductive aesthetics from a bygone era, fun to toy with, but of
joint or far surpassed by more recent efforts. Probably, critics of this sort admit, classical realism needs
31
Ibid.
14
to recognized as more akin to contextualist, existentialist or even emancipatory impulses than usually
assumed. But, they also inquire, does rewriting the purposes and perspectives of realisms in the
disciplines past automatically make it more relevant for our political present? In that vein, Stefano
Guzzini even captures the reach for enduring realist wisdoms as a reach for “enduring dilemmas”,
better solved or handled by contemporary liberal, constructivist or critical theory.32 I shall not deal with
those dilemmas here, but try to address what seems to me a real and relevant question in Guzzini’s
polemical claim: does the kind of democratic strategy put forward as central to Niebuhr and
Morgenthau’s realism above provide insights not only kindred with, but also superior to, those
contemporary voices of post-structural, deconstructive and communitarian with which the above
aligned them? Though lineages to both communitarian and post-structural ideas are clearly present in
the realist argument, Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s notions of belonging, transcendence and emancipation
differ markedly – and importantly - from any contemporary political theory. To argue why, this section
will attempt to unravel how the realist strategy of pluralizing and expanding democracy by reenchanting narratives of transcendence ‘from within’ arguably moves beyond that set of dichotomies
which the introductory pages claimed as defining of most current political thought: the relationship
between the national and the international, between the individual and the communal, utopianism and
pluralism, and, above all, religion and politics.
In terms of the relationship between the national and the international contemporary thought
appears to have arrived at an impasse. Whether they embrace the local or the global component of the
equation, most current voices somehow seem to assume that national and international ties come at the
expense of one another. Obviously, this perception is based on perfectly good reasons. Undeniably,
most contemporary aspirations to strengthen national or more broadly “local” identities are
accompanied by strong overtones of animosity towards internationalist ambitions. Niebuhr and
Morgenthau were highly attuned to such resentment and to the ways in which national identity in
modern politics often obstruct or complicate the development of cosmopolitan forms of government
and citizenship. Nevertheless, both maintained, the opposition between local and global forms of
political orientation is hardly necessary: it is possible to construe forms of local community that serve
to cultivate global tolerance as well as to widen and deepen moral duties beyond the nation. Indeed,
they put forward, such forms of community are a prerequisite for the expansion of human loyalties and
imagination. Arguably, their stipulation of this type of national identity and its particular attitudes,
32 Stefano Guzzini (2004): ‘The Enduring Dilemmas of Realism in International Relations’ in European Journal of International
Relations, 10:4.
15
institutions and dynamics may contribute to current debate, constituting a bridge between the kind of
cosmopolitanism which primarily views local forms of belonging to be a residue of reactionary
nationalism and the kind of communitarianism which regards cosmopolitan forms of politics as an
opponent to the thriving of local narrative and identity.
Ironically, it may provide just such a bridge by contributing to a theoretical field which has constituted
itself in explicit and deliberate opposition to realist thought: the Democratic Peace literature. The
overriding assumption behind this approach – that democracies do not go to war on one another –
would appear to have proceeded beyond dichotomizing the national and the international; however, it
is arguably but a variant of the cosmopolitan suspicion towards particularist forms of narrative, for
while it embraces certain forms of domestic government as conducive to international peace, that
which qualifies them as “benign” is the very fact that they reject a politics based on particularistic
belonging and embrace one of universal reason or objective interest. Based on rationalist notions of
universal reason, in other words, Democratic Peace theorists assume that national politics may be
moved beyond particularistic emotion and sentiment. Far from escaping the dichotomy between
particularism and universalism, the theory of Democratic Peace simply asserts local politics as a
possible reflection of universal absolutes.
Though affirming the assumption that certain forms of domestic rule may be more conducive to
international cooperation than others, Niebuhr and Morgenthau deliver an altogether different
argument. They argue that cultivating (certain forms of) local narratives that embrace the mobilizing
aspects of (particular types of) national or sub-cultural belonging may serve to stimulate deepened
international understanding and widened cosmopolitan sentiment. Clearly, this is a controversial claim.
According to David Miller, realism is “the idea that neither political communities nor their individual
members have moral obligations to outsiders, and that morality stops at the borders of the nationstate.”33 Likewise, Chris Brown takes realism to cover “the belief that morals have no part in
international (or perhaps any) politics,” because “morals stem from the community,” and hence cannot
be applied outside its boundaries.34 This characterization aptly captures how most tend to view the
nature of realist thought: as a form of communitarianism rejecting the liberal idea of moral progress
outside of limited communities, refusing the notion of a link between domestic and foreign policy, and,
above all, denying the possibility of discriminating between different forms of domestic rule. This
David Miller (1999): “Bounded Citizenship,” in Kimberly Hutchings & Roland Dannreuther (1999): Cosmopolitan
Citizenship. London: MacMillan Press Ltd. p. 60.
33
16
image is common, even among sympathetic readers. Hence, Michael Loriaux argues that realists (by
which he only refers to the classical proponents of this perspective) express a “certain hesitation to
discriminate between political societies according to the supposed merits of their domestic
constitutional structures and values.”35 While stressing the fact that most classical realists displayed
“attachment to democratic values,” Loriaux maintains the widespread view that they did not “look to
realism to provide a doctrine of political virtue that might allow their patriotism and their political
philosophy to spring from a common source and nurture one another.”36 On the one hand, of course,
Loriaux is right: Niebuhr and Morgenthau both found the idea that democratic policies are by necessity
morally virtuous to be both hypocritical and dangerous. Yet that very suspicion towards notions of
moral superiority led both to prefer a particular type democracy – plural, dissenting and humble – over
others: arguably, both claimed, political systems with built-in mechanisms for recognizing their own
lack of virtue and liability to error were more likely to show tolerance and forgiveness in their foreign
policy attitudes. They did not believe that democracy as such provided any guarantee of such tolerance;
however, they forwarded an argument concerning republican forms of government that might arguably
contribute to current debates on a possible Democratic Peace. Against Bruce Russet’s claim that “the
theoretical edifice of realism will collapse if attributes of states political systems are shown to have a
major influence on which states do or do not fight each other,” it may thus be argued that it is exactly
such an influence which Niebuhr and Morgenthau may be used to propose.37
Admittedly, a few observers have noticed this linking of national and international politics in their
work. Thus, Elisabeth Stifton notes on her father that she “learned from him that a bankrupt foreign
policy is all but inevitable when there is such a paucity of courage and resourcefulness on the domestic
front…It’s a Republican [Party] thing, we thought, to separate international issues from domestic
priorities too stringently, to sever these vital links. By which my father meant that the Republican Party
for much of the twentieth century had been indifferent to true democracy.”38 Niebuhr and
Morgenthau’s writings only require cursory examination to confirm this observation and discover
evidence of their sworn opposition to all attempts at legitimating nationalist egotism on the grounds of
moral relativism. Hence, Morgenthau perpetually lamented his inability to communicate internationalist
ambitions, arguing, “I must have expressed myself consistently with extreme imprecision if…my basic
view…seems to be that all moralities are purely national; they cannot be subjected to judgment in terms
Chris Brown (1992): International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. p. 24.
Loriaux (1992): p. 407.
36 Ibid.
37 Bruce Russett (1995): “And Yet it Moves,” in International Security 19:4, p. 164.
34
35
17
of universal principles…I have tried to express the exactly opposite view for more than fifteen years. I
have particularly pointed to ‘national moralities’ as political ideologies which endeavor to invest the
interests of a particular nation with the sanction of universal moral principles.”39 Likewise, Niebuhr
consistently maintained that moral duties do not stop at national borders. “No bounds can be finally
placed upon man’s responsibility to his fellows or upon his need of their help,” he argued, because the
“indeterminate character of human freedom makes it impossible to set any limits of intensity or extent
to this social responsibility.”40 Furthermore, both accepted the liberal premise that economic, cultural
and technical developments made the institutionalization of such widened responsibilities necessary.
“Every specialization of unique gifts in the life of the individual, every elaboration of special skills,
means that a larger community is required to support the individual,” Niebuhr explained, but also
induced patience and prudence as “the political skills which order the life of the larger community
always lag behind the technical skills which create the potential society in which a greater order is
required.”41
When this attachment to visions of greater cosmopolitan coexistence and to the role of national
political systems in the pursuit of the same have not been recognized, it is mainly due to the fact that
both critiqued that particular – liberal, rationalist and conformist – mode of cosmopolitanism which
they considered to define Western policies. On terms not dissimilar to current post-structural criticisms,
both found that the form of international community envisaged by most liberals was not truly
universalist at all, instead reflecting little but the hegemonization of one particular interpretation of
political life.42 Sharing post-structural concerns with the relativity and contingency of all political
perspectives, Niebuhr and Morgenthau realized that “a genuine universalism must seek to establish
harmony without destroying the richness and variety of life,” and that one “of the greatest problems of
democratic civilization is how to integrate the life of its various subordinate – ethnic, religious and
Stifton (1993): p. 87.
Morgenthau (1960): p. 18.
40 Niebuhr (1945): p. 44. Elsewhere, Niebuhr even distanced himself from a “pure realistic approach to the problem of
world community,” arguing that this “offers as little hope as a purely idealistic one…Pure idealists under-estimate the
perennial power of particular and parochial loyalties, operating as a counter force against the achievement of a wider
community. But the realists are usually so impressed by the power of the perennial forces that they fail to recognize the
novel and unique elements in a revolutionary world situation. The idealists erroneously imagine that a new situation
automatically generates the solution for its problem. The realists erroneously discount the creative, as well as the destructive,
power of a revolutionary situation. A view more sober than that of either idealists or realists must persuade us that ‘if hopes
are dupes, fears may be liars’.” Ibid. p. 120.
41 Ibid. p. 43.
42 Western aspirations of world government, as Niebuhr put it, was “in danger of destroying itself as a moral” politics, as it
would “face the ‘imperial’ problem of using power in global terms but from one particular centre of authority, so
preponderant and unchallenged that its world rule would almost certainly violate basic standards of justice.” Niebuhr (1952):
p. 2.
38
39
18
economic – groups in the community in such a way that the richness and harmony of the whole
community will be enhanced and not destroyed by them.”43 For this purpose, both embraced critical
practices of dissent and subversion much akin to post-structural strategies of deconstruction in the
pursuit of truly escaping temporal and spatial boundaries. In terms of how to mobilize such practices,
however, Niebuhr and Morgenthau notably part company with deconstructive thought, arguing instead
that critique must take place from the inside: must work with the forces of political reality. National
community is such a force. Rather than rejecting it, the realists attempt to make it a vehicle of the
change they seek.
To explain what this means, and hence to highlight the dissimilarities between post-structural and
realist strategies of politicization, another common juxtaposition of the particular and the universal is
touched upon: the relationship between individual and community. Above all, what Niebuhr and
Morgenthau may have to say to contemporary debates on radical democracy lies in their appreciation of
what we may term “connected criticism” or “embedded deconstruction.” Post-structural ethics, it has
been noted throughout, do not sufficiently consider the question of strategy. This is not to say that they
have no concern for the methods through which they hope to attain the desired condition of perpetual
subversion and dissent. They do: deconstruction is such a method. What post-structuralism lacks is
consideration regarding how to bring the practice of deconstruction into play. How to mobilize the
“nomads” of a post-national, post-humanist and post-cultural politics to political action? Deprived of
all notions of a shared human condition, of common values or common bonds, what will move pilgrim
subjectivities to dissent? And, in the absence of these notions, on behalf of whom and against what
center of authority should the pilgrims direct their protest? Post-structural ethics hold, in the words of
Rob Walker, that “there is no point…imagining cosmopolitan alternatives to our supposedly
particularistic present without also pushing at the account of modern subjectivity, which has been
produced by, and is productive of those limits.”44 According to this account, genuine emancipatory
efforts cannot be content to constantly diversify and pluralize politics from within current vocabularies;
instead, they must strive to move beyond restraining notions of citizenship, subjectivity or site.45 Simon
Critchley, in an attempt at stipulating what he takes to be a Derridean, deconstructive notion of radical,
cosmopolitan democracy, puts this point particularly well:
Niebuhr (1945): p. 87.
Rob Walker (1999): “Citizenship after the Modern Subject,” in Kimberly Hutchings & Roland Dannreuther (1999):
Cosmopolitan Citizenship. London: MacMillan Press. Ltd.
45 Ibid.
43
44
19
“no political form can or should attempt to embody justice, and the undecideability of
justice must always lie outside the public realm, guiding, criticizing and deconstructing that
realm, but never being instantiated within it.”
In terms of its transcendent perception of justice – as an ideal which, if claimed immanent, dissolves
itself – and the related understanding of democracy as a “promise” rather than fact, post-structural
ethics come close to the position wrested from Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s skepticist realism here. But
while the two may have shared the conviction that what Critchley, quoting Jean-Luc Nancy, calls
“immanentism” is the “greatest danger in politics,” they arguably part company with post-structuralists
on the question of whether this danger is best avoided by fighting all fixation as such or by allowing
some fixation to serve in the struggle against others.46 Without allowing any definitions of a “we” or a
“there,” the realists ask, what will constitute the public realm of which Critchley speaks or spur those
efforts of “guiding, criticizing and deconstructing,” which he hopes for? They ask, as Kimberly
Hutchings has recently done, what guarantees we have that “citizen-pilgrims” do not lose out to
“atavistic tribalisms,” or how we can ensure that “in the absence of an overarching juridical or political
authority, ideological commitments [will] emerge from or [be] conditioned by actual, lived experience
and solidarity with others.”47
To Niebuhr and Morgenthau, human beings are likely only to take on the task of constantly debating
and critiquing central political ideals if they feel embedded in a polity believed to care for such ideals or
in institutions which, though by no means perfect, are trusted to reflect at least a minimum of moral
achievement. While they absolutely agreed with current post-structuralists that democracy dies out once
we think we have achieved it and that suspicion against, and subversion of, people and places in power
is thus always necessary, they were also convinced that democracy relied on sentiments of pride and
brotherhood which most post-structuralists would probably reject as expressions of “immanence.” For
the individual to bother keeping democratic ideals transcendent and alive, Niebuhr and Morgenthau put
forward, he must be able to sense at least a measure of achievement when looking at his particular
political community. If you do not think that your political framework has done any better than Hitler
Germany in reaching justice, why struggle to improve it? Rather than rejecting national, cultural or
religious forms of community per se, Niebuhr and Morgenthau endorsed specific – reflexive, critical
46 Simon Critchley (1996): “Deconstruction and Pragmatism: Is Derrida a Private Ironist or Public Liberal,” in Chantall
Mouffe (1996): Deconstruction & Pragmatism. London: Routledge. p. 36.
47 Kimberly Hutchings (2003): Subjects, Citizens or Pilgrims? Citizenship and Civil Society in a Global Context. Paper presented at
PSA Conference, Leicester. pp. 23-24.
20
and politicizing – versions of the same as vital means by which to mobilize the critique and diversity
from which individuality may stem.
It is important to recognize the profound differences between this position on community and more
communitarian views. First, Niebuhr and Morgenthau flat-out rejected all attempts to either return to
or try to reconstruct the homogenous, tranquil society:
“It is no more possible for a mature and highly elaborated community to return to the
unity of its tribal simplicity than it is for a mature man to escape the perils of maturity by a
return to childhood. The fact that primitivism results in perversity, and that coerced unity
produces sadistic cruelties in place of the uncoerced unities of genuinely primitive life, is a
tremendously valuable lesson for our civilization. It ought to teach us that we must go
forward, and cannot go backward, in solving the problems with which higher forms of
communal maturity present us.”48
More importantly though, none of them believed, as communitarian thinkers tend to do, that human
happiness is dependent upon a sense of belonging to or identification with community. They did not
purport, as a contemporary communitarian such as David Miller does, that communal consensus
constitutes “an ideal condition” of democracy, nor that “political debate ought to be conducted with
agreement as a regulative ideal.”49 Rather, Niebuhr and Morgenthau put forward almost the exact
opposite argument, arguing that human beings must express vitality and difference to achieve a sense of
identity and subjectivity by defining themselves against others. To them, community is imperative to
provide the plural and vibrant debate within which differentiation becomes possible. For plural and
vibrant debate to exist, they asserted, a minimal measure of shared ideals must be in place: without
shared ideals to spur debate and cultivate dissent, then dull and apathetic indifference – instead of
vibrant and creative difference – will be the condition against which human beings are left to define
identity or formulate dissent.
The notion of “utopia” thereby acquires a different tone than is currently the case within radical
democratic thought. In Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s view, utopianism and pluralism are intimately
connected. For political ideals to be kept open, both asserted, they must be cultivated as utopias, i.e. as
48
49
Niebuhr (1945): p. 87.
Miller (1999): p. 63.
21
metaphysical principles to be pursued but never fully achieved. This had particular relevance in relation
to the question of constructing a truly diverse and dynamic cosmopolitanism: only if pursued as an
unrealizable ideal was the vision of cosmopolis likely to produce inclusion, tolerance and plurality rather
than mainstreaming and hegemony.
At first glance, this insistence on the democratizing role of utopian imagination has affinities with the
kind of pragmatism forwarded by Richard Rorty. In his critique of deconstructive ethics, Rorty
continually emphasizes the need for democracy to mobilize participation by emulating evocative
narratives, and part of his argument doubtlessly has extensive parallels to the strategic embrace of
rhetoric endorsed by Niebuhr and Morgenthau.50 Like them, Rorty insists that the positive construction
of utopias is absolutely pivotal if democracy is to avoid lapsing into pure subversion, or even worse,
resigned withdrawal. On his pragmatist grounds, however, Rorty is incapable of granting utopia a truly
utopian status: he cannot accept that we talk about truth, beauty, democracy or cosmopolis as
transcendent ideals, insisting instead that we hold them to be no more than passing ideas. He thus
claims the very kind of relativism that Niebuhr and Morgenthau insistence on the democratic need for
transcendent narrative reject. Both insisted that while an epistemological skepticism denies human
beings access to the meaning of truth, beauty, democracy or cosmopolis, it does not – and should not –
deny their existence. To be a radical democrat then, is not to reject the metaphysical, but in fact to
insist on it: to maintain that certain ideas are of meta-physical nature and hence escape human reach or
realization. While the latter ensures that we retain a bulwark against perverted forms of utopianism, the
former is only likely to muster self-aggrandizement or disillusion. If absolute devotion to relative
political ends poses a threat to communal peace, only utopias held to be truly beyond human reach will
work to counter those who “falsely regard them as realizable rather than as transcendent principles.”51
Or, as Niebuhr put it on the introductory pages of the paper: only if we have “a true sense of
transcendence can we find the resource to convict every historical achievement of incompleteness and
to prevent the sanctification of the relative values of any age or any era.”52
Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s emphasis on utopian thought as conducive to democratic dissent and
diversity would thereby appear to hold more in common with the aforementioned post-structural
Likewise, Molly Cochran, within the IR context, has used Rortian pragmatism to advocate “moral imagination” as a
means “to facilitate moral inclusion.” Molly Cochran (1999): Normative Theory in International Relations: A Pragmatic Approach.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 248.
51Reinhold Niebuhr (1943a): The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation II. London: Nisbet & Co.
Ltd. p. 264.
52 Niebuhr (1940): p. 15-16.
50
22
notion of democracy as a “promise.”53 To Derrida, undecideability is not merely an epistemological
fact, it is also an ethical ideal: to keep the meaning of concepts such as freedom, democracy or justice
undecided is thus to enact democracy. Ultimately, this means treating freedom, democracy or justice as
transcendent rather than immanent categories of thought. But – and there are several “buts” –
Derridean post-structuralism seems to hesitate on a number of accounts as to what Niebuhr and
Morgenthau take to be necessary implications of, and dilemmas within, the strategies of utopian
politics. As already argued in relation to the issue of individuality and community, post-structural
authors tend to respond to concrete utopias with suspicion: while desirable in theory, the actual
expressions of utopia are too literal and too immanent to the deconstructive mind. Again, Niebuhr and
Morgenthau would argue that compromising transcendence is unavoidable and serves as a means to an
end: that for utopian imaginaries to gain shape, attract attention, or inspire action, they must be
engrafted into actual, existing political vocabularies. This means that concessions to the ideal of pure
transcendence must be made. Indeed, both insisted, the ideals of political struggle remain too abstract
to mobilize dedication and too empty to stipulate priorities or preferences of action without such
concessions.
Secondly, and even more importantly, post-structural invocations of a transcendent “promise” and the
realist use of utopia serve somewhat different purposes. Post-structuralists only want to pluralize – to
emancipate, and subvert. The realism purported by Niebuhr and Morgenthau also sought to limit and
found – not for the purpose of restraining freedom, but to secure it. If a democratic politics was to
function, both men asserted, it must produce conditions of possibility that make embed dissent and
critique within certain boundaries of loyalty and cohesion. This means constituting or objectifying
certain premises as indisputable. In this sense, Niebuhr and Morgenthau wanted utopia to pluralize
politics, but simultaneously to restrain it. Knowing that freedom rests in some measure on order, they
consciously and deliberately pursued the very appearance of immanence which deconstructivism seeks
to counter. Only thus, both believed, would the kind of vitalist yet tolerant subjectivities that constitute
a viable democracy be attained. Surely, both Niebuhr and Morgenthau recognized, the task of
establishing a responsible balance between subversion and stability is perpetually open to error and
abuse. But there is, they argued, no way around this danger. “While an unwillingness to move beyond a
deconstructive ethic of responsibility to otherness for fear that an essentialist stance is the only (or most
likely) alternative expresses a legitimate concern,” Michael Williams explains as concerns the realist
53
Critchley (1996): p. 36.
23
stance, “it should not license a retreat from such questions or their practical demands.”54 Refusing to
get such dirt on their hands, post-structuralists really refuse to deal with a central human experience of
the tragedy of choice, risking not only to prove politically irresponsible, but also spiritually irrelevant.
We thereby arrive at the final and most abstract implication of Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s project for
contemporary thought: their recasting of the relationship between religion and politics.
Contemporary thought overwhelmingly tends to depict religion as an obstacle to plural politics,
dichotomizing religious and democratic modes of being. Occasionally, dissenters against this
mainstream view argue that democracy itself is a form of religion or that excluding religious modes of
thought is in actuality a non-democratic practice. Nonetheless, these objections do not radically alter
the assumption that religion and politics somehow come at the expense of one another – that religion is
a homogenizing and disciplining force, while politics is about pluralism and critique. This is the claim
which Niebuhr and Morgenthau fundamentally challenge. Surely, both agreed that modern religion
deserves its bad reputation. But they described religiosity in the more existential sense as a prerequisite
for democratic practices to unfold.55 As noted above, they did so partly because of the restraining or
“humbling” effects which a real sense of finitude entails: to create a sense of democratic tolerance, in
the words of Niebuhr, “awareness of the complete transcendence of God’s law” is necessary, as this
“has the double effect of reinforcing both the finite nature of our knowledge, power, and virtue, and
the sinful pretensions to deny this partiality.”56 If they believed faith in ideals which transcend ourselves
useful “to limit the often fanatical ambitions of man and to foster a sense of compromise and
conciliation” however, they also embraced the religious understanding of life as an inspirational source,
rejecting interpretations of finitude or contingency which led to passive or resigned forms of
existence.57 Surely, a religious sense of finitude was necessary to induce “charity and forgiveness even in
the stoutest championship of the proximate ends of justice,” and hence to provide men with the
capacity to rise above conflict.58 But “a mere emphasis upon religious humility,” they simultaneously
Williams (2005): pp. 166-167.
This line of argument is most explicit in Niebuhr’s work, but also present i Morgenthau’s. Thus, Morgenthau stated at
some point, “it can well be argued that most of the failures of the modern age…stem from one single source: the lack of
religiosity. Modern man has become a self-sufficient entity who knows what he sees and can do what he wills.” Hans J.
Morgenthau (1955c): “The Rediscovery of Imagination: Arnold Toynbee.” Originally printed in Encounter. Reprinted in Hans
J. Morgenthau (1962): Politics in the Twentieth Century III. Chicago: Chicago University Press. p. 60.
56 In this understanding of the restraining function of religion, Niebuhr parallels his brother, Richard Niebuhr, who was also
an influential theologian. In a review essay on Paul Tillish, Richard defined “essential religion” as “the recognition of the
transcendent and unconditioned, and its use as a point of reference for a criticism of the finite and conditioned. The essence
of irreligion is therefore the sense of self-sufficient finitude.” Richard Niebuhr quoted in Brown (2002): p. 51.
57 Mark L. Haas (1999): “Reinhold Niebuhr’s ‘Christian Pragmatism’: A Principled Alternative to Consequentialism,” in The
Review of Politics fall, 61:4, p. 612.
58 Niebuhr (1951): p. 50.
54
55
24
warned, may empty the political struggle of seriousness by persuading men that all causes are equally
true or false.”59 While religion in the realist make up is thus a basis for softening politics, easing political
conflicts, it is also a source of courage and commitment. In this corrective function – as a mode of
thought “concerned to preserve the value of the individual along with the significance of historical
achievements and to maintain an eschatological proviso so that no human project is of absolute value”
– religious sentiment and democratic tolerance work, in the realist approach, to sustain rather than
oppose one another.60
To sum up then, the kind of advice which Morgenthau and Niebuhr’s realism put forward was indeed
distinct from that of most other theoretical schools around – even from the (de)constructivist camps
with which many of its current redeemers compare it. Guzzini’s objections against the distinctiveness
of realism are thus (partly) mistaken: while it is clearly true, as he puts it, that to “re-appropriate more
classical (and eclectic) insights” is to incur “the risk of also including non-specifically realist items too”,
the fact that classical realism may be shown to deal with issues central to deconstructivist, constructivist
or communitarian thought today (interest as a historical construct, identity as a contextual
phenomenon, language as contingent and open-ended process and above all, of power as a derivative
of discourse) does not imply that they do so in a manner similar to or indistinct from this.61 They don’t.
Rather, the effort made in this paper has been to show why the realist conception of community and
emancipation – collective narrative and individual difference and critique – equals neither the
democratic theory of current communitarian or radical deconstructive thought. To insist that realism be
kept alive and apart from the language of both these theoretical vocabularies is thus moved by a faith
that only thus will it yield the novel and timely insights it potentially contains – not, as Guzzini seems to
suggest, by an obsessive wish to “defend the integrity of realism at any prize”.62
Niebuhr (1952): p. 48.
Mary Doak (2002): p. 125.
61 Guzzini (2004): p. 537.
62 Ibid. p. 558. My objection against fusing the epistemological skepticism and existential ethics of realist thought with
various modes of deconstructive, constructivist or communitarian theory runs parallel to Ole Wæver hesitance to annex the
philosophical scepticism of the English School under the banners of middle ground constructivist sociology. Wæver, Ole
(2003): ‘Does the English School’s Via Media equal the Contemporary Constructivist Middle Ground? Or: the difference
between philosophical scepticism and sociological theory’. Paper presented at…
59
60
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III
Conclusion: Re-Enchantment in an Age of Religion
“Religion…is a vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of things,
something which is real and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility and yet the
greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes and yet eludes apprehension; something
whose possession is the final good and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal and yet the
hopeless quest.”63
This paper has tried to substantiate the somewhat counterintuitive suggestion that recovering particular
forms of faith in transcendence may be the most poignant weapon against the contemporary rise of
religiously informed crusadism and conflict. Partly, it has done so by joining those who view sentiments
of restraint and humility as core aspects of the realist embrace of an existential approach to politics.
Realist endorsements of a religious or more broadly existential interpretation of life as relevant to the
attainment of political prudence, it has been argued, are informed by a belief that religiosity breeds
awareness of finitude, and hence, an aspect of critical self-restraint or self-reflection in politics: “only in
a religion where there is a true sense of transcendence”, as Niebuhr put it, “can we find the resource to
convict every historical achievement of incompleteness and to prevent the sanctification of the relative
values of any age or any era”.64 Yet, it has also been put forward, the humbling effects of religiosity
combine in the realist analysis with more constructive and mobilizing ones. More specifically, it has
been argued that a theory of how to employ narratives of transcendence for purposes of democratic
imagination emerges through combining of the work of Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans J. Morgenthau.
Examining the various strategies behind that theory cast the realist quest for prudence and justice in
politics as one which invested its faith rather in the dynamics of democratic contest and collective
capacities for empathy and inclusion than in archaic notions of heroic leadership.
C. N. Whitehead quoted from Niebuhr …tjek.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1940): “Optimism, Pessimism, and Religious Faith.” Originally published in Christianity and Power
Politics. Reprinted in Robert McAfee Brown (1986): The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press. pp. 15-16. Ironically, in other words, while generally known as critics of utopia, Niebuhr
and Morgenthau are more accurately described as utopians themselves. What both rejected in contemporary couplings of
democracy and perfection was not the struggle for moral elevation as such; rather, they rejected the claim to have already
made the jump. Modern utopianism, both purported, was hardly utopian at all; rather, its claim to perfectly comprehend and
incarnate perfection reflected the very opposite of utopian vision: only polities that construct narratives of truly
transcendent utopias – of virtue and visions held to escape human attainment – are able to maintain politics as an open and
contested field.
63
64
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What is the relevance of such a strategy today? Indeed, one may ask, in an age of rising religious,
nationalist and ethnic fundamentalisms, is not the realist call for re-enchantment all too likely to
become part of the problem and not the solution? The question is no innocent one and deserves to be
taken seriously. Writing in era marred by perverted forms of mass manipulation, Niebuhr and
Morgenthau both knew the importance of balancing enchantment and critique, well aware of the
dangers involved in a strategy of mobilization.65 Indeed, as we have seen, part of what they criticized in
contemporary American politics was its recourse to populist and demagogic strategies and the
exploitation of nationalist or religious vocabularies in the service of assertive warmongering. The
realists recognized the perils of such mobilizing rhetoric, and the extent to which it made - in the words
of Ned Lebow - “policy the prisoner of passions it had aroused”.66 In a post 9/11 age, heavily
influenced by the politics of emergency such worries do not seem less relevant. In line with arguments
developed above though, I will contend that even if not without peril, the forms of re-enchant which
Niebuhr and Morgenthau had in mind seem more likely to do battle with the vocabularies of
fundamentalist thought than those political strategies which refuse to engage with the formulation of
transcendence. “Political languages,” as Maurizio Viroli argues, “cannot be assessed in absolute terms;”
instead, they must “be evaluated for what they can do against other languages that sustain different or
alternative political projects.”67 In so far as the task is to counter “nationalistic and communitarian
languages that give priority to the quest for cultural purity and distinctiveness,” the alternative offered,
however aspiring to open critique, must remain meaty enough to forge other kinds of meaningfulness.68
Also, I want to suggest, the form of religiosity endorsed by Niebuhr and Morgenthau – that is, the kind
of spiritual apprehension of finitude but also of power to transcend which both describe as the human
condition – does seem a useful platform for stimulating the kind of imagination necessary if our
particularist identities are to move towards greater inclusion. While the rush to make God an ally is
indeed an imminent threat to contemporary democracy, I find it plausible that it is the languages which
attempt to offer existential and not merely - as most deconstructive or post-structural approaches
Eye-witness and victim to the fascist exploitation of a disenchanted Europe, Morgenthau was always aware that collective
imaginaries may easily be misused for purposes of homogenization. Originally Niebuhr was less prudent, suggesting that the
quest for justice should seek to inspire by way of demagogy, “a sublime madness in the soul” to “do battle with malignant
power.” Niebuhr (1932): p. 277. Ibid. A few years after this rather headless encouragement to manipulative political
agitation though, Niebuhr took heed of the fascist lesson publicly regretting the passage. “The suggestion was probably the
greatest mistake in my book,” he lamented, continuing, “it is true that these illusions are serviceable but…it would have
been better to close on a warning against their danger.” Niebuhr quoted in Charles C. Brown (2002): Niebuhr and His Age:
Reinhold Niebuhr’s Prophetic Role and Legacy. Harrisburg, Pensylvania: Trinity Press International. p. 49.
66 Lebow (2003): 242.
67 Maurizio Viroli (1995): For Love of Country. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 14-15.
68 Ibid.
65
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endorse - epistemological interpretations of the human condition which will prove its most powerful
shield.
This is not merely the case in terms of defending the status quo of democracy – achievements already
accomplished – but also in terms of its extension. That an existential recognition of limits ought not
merely to inform restraint and limitation in politics, but may also be used as the platform for
developing more expansive, inclusive or even cosmopolitan ties arguably makes realism a more
constructive and responsible resource from which to formulate criticism of current international
politics than the purely deconstructive ones of post-structural or constructivist thought. The
existentialist interpretation of life put forward by realism defines a platform – however minimal – for
drawing up general notions of human justice and thus allows us to act responsibly in spite of
contingency. For that reason, Niebuhr and Morgenthau’s criticisms of American and more broadly
Western delusions of virtue were not pleas for inaction or relativism. Regardless of all its pretensions,
both believed, the ideals of plural democracy – even if the West was itself incapable of realizing these –
offered a temporal approximation of justice. Thus, their critique of an expansive foreign policy
suggested a spiritual change of mind – not a nihilist withdrawal or disillusioned resignation:
“The democratic tradition of the Anglo-Saxon world is actually the potential basis of a just
world order. But the historical achievements of this world are full of violations and
contradictions of these principles…a contrite recognition of our own sins destroys the
illusion of eminence through virtue and lays the foundation for the apprehension of ‘grace’
in our national life. We know that we have the position that we hold in the world today
partly by reason of factors and forces in the complex pattern of history that we did not
create and from which we do not deserve to benefit. If we apprehend this religiously, the
sense of destiny ceases to be a vehicle of pride but becomes the occasion for a new sense
of responsibility.”69
Though more than half a century away, the advice inherent to Niebuhr’s comment may just as well be
applied today. What he and Morgenthau suggested was, paradoxically, that the resources for more
cosmopolitan forms of global existence be found within particular heritages – that local, communal, or
national narratives be used to spur the kind of engagement which creates pluralism and perspective in
28
national politics and hence informs foreign policy with both greater restraint, but also empathy and
responsibility. Obviously, they recognized the dilemmas and contradictions of that strategy: “we
cannot”, as Niebuhr put it, “expect even the wisest of nations to escape every peril of moral and
spiritual complacency; for nations have always been constitutionally self-righteous.”70 But, they also
insisted, “it will make a difference whether the culture in which the policies of nations are formed is
only as deep and as high as the nation’s highest ideals; or whether there is a dimension to the culture
from the standpoint of which the element of vanity in all human ambitions and achievements is
discerned.”71 That difference, I will contend, is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago.
Yet how to bring it about? Can sentiments of humility, tolerance, tragedy, or doubt be “taught?” Or
must they not be learned, i.e. experienced? In a review on the British historian Arnold Toynbee’s
attempt to redeem religion as a force in modern democracy, Morgenthau rhetorically and with notable
sadness posed this very question, asking that “even if it were true that the return to religious faith can
save Western civilization, can a civilization recover its religious faith by an act of will?”72 The answer
given by Morgenthau invoked, as he put it, “the very spirit of religion against its more learned
advocate”73 arguing, that while it “requires nothing but an act of will to join a church and perform its
rituals,” true religiosity “is the fruit of experience, more particularly of suffering, transformed into
intellectual and moral awareness by mind and conscience.”74 While academic writing or political
agitation may thus seek to “illuminate a mysterious, tragic, and sinful experience common to all men in
terms of a religiosity likewise common to all men,” 75 for such experience to make contact, it must grow
out of lived life. In some sense then, to endorse a realist theory of how to re-politicize democracy, is,
paradoxically, also to know the limits of theory: that “neither a teacher nor a whole civilization can
create [sentiments of religiosity] out of the fragments of religions, whose decline has made the
restoration of religiosity necessary in the first place. What religions will grow from this new religiosity
man must leave to faith. He must be content to be ready, and to make others ready, to see the signs and
to read them aright when they appear.”76 If realism cannot deliver the actual narratives needed to reenchant politics however, it can give some idea of what elements such narratives must entail as well as
Reinhold Niebuhr (1943b): “Anglo-Saxon Destiny and Responsibility.” Originally printed in Christianity and Crisis.
Reprinted in D.B. Robertson (1957): Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press. p. 187.
70 Reinhold Niebuhr (1952): The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. p. 150.
71 Ibid.
72 Morgenthau (1955c): p. 61.
73 Ibid. pp. 61-62.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
69
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offer advice on how to employ and emulate these. Insisting that we work our way towards more
peaceful ways of coexistence from the inside of national and religious vocabularies – that we use
narrative resources of existing, particular communities to fuel the political processes needed both to
counter current aggressions and expand future imagination - realism’s advice is unconventional but
timely: to fight the kind of religious or nationalist fundamentalism which currently mobilizes against
Western capitalist democracy, and above all, to counter those forms of certainty and blind crusadism
which grow within this. The answer is not only to deconstruct communal narrative, but also to use this
as a positive force of pluralization, imagination and critique. As it proceeds upwards, a global
community – as any other body politic – stands in the words of Comte de Mirabeau “as much in need
of heaven as of earth”.77 What I have tried to argue here is that, to be effective, imaginaries of that
heaven must be mustered from within the particular political bodies which we presently inhabit.
76
77
Ibid.
Honore Gabirel, Comte de Mirabeau (1832)…tjek
30
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