Abstract

This work is an inquiry into the political philosophy of Hans J. Morgenthau. The main question underlying this project is the following: was Morgenthau more than a power-political theorist? I consider this question not only in light of Morgenthau's more common reputation and popular publications, but I also take into account his early, late, and unpublished writings. ;For some informed readers of the Morgenthau corpus such a query may seem puzzling, for, as Professor Kenneth W. Thompson noted in his review of this manuscript, is not the fact that Morgenthau was more than just a political realist already well established? The Morgenthau loyalists notwithstanding, my research suggests that Morgenthau was almost exclusively known as a Realpolitiker, and, consequently, that he was nearly universally disassociated from those political traditions which were considered more normative. Thus this work takes as its working premise the informed assumption that the reader more readily associates Morgenthau with power politics rather than with any contrary political philosophy. ;My findings lead to the provocative contention that Morgenthau went significantly beyond power politics. According to his early writings, Morgenthau ought to be more correctly associated with the more normative tradition of legal positivism than with Realpolitik. The nature of his late writings--in that he strongly espoused the need for a world state--offers evidence that he was also intellectually associated with the heavily normative tradition of cosmopolitanism. ;Lest Morgenthau be considered an inconsistent or even a contradictory thinker, in my analysis I do offer an account for his various ventures outside power politics proper. In so doing however, Morgenthau's political philosophy takes on an uncanny likeness to the complex and sophisticated tradition of Kantian realism