Freedom under tragedy: Hans J. Morgenthau’s Machiavellian heritage

Like Niccolò Machiavelli, Hans J. Morgenthau has long been disputed as a “teacher of evil” for anchoring international politics on immoral human nature. Nevertheless, the revisionist historiography of realism and recent studies on Machiavelli have challenged the similar critique faced by these two figures via re-interpreting them as moral thinkers. Furthering this challenge, this article explores the influence of Machiavelli’s ethics on Morgenthau’s political realism by establishing a Gadamerian dialogue between the two thinkers regarding the moral purpose of political life.

This article finds that Morgenthau’s political realism is indebted to Machiavelli’s view of politics as a quest for freedom in the face of tragedy. Both thinkers view our political existence as tragic: our nature drives us to impose our conceptions of virtue and vice on this world; yet, our fortune constantly conflicts with and confounds such animus dominandi. For them, politics should aim to retain our freedom to make moral choices in the tragic realm of politics through prudence, which is the Machiavellian virtù signifying the ability to finesse tragedy by choosing the lesser evil in response to our volatile fortune. This article hopes to further audiences’ understanding of the moral purpose amidst our tragic international existence by rethinking political realism through Machiavellian ethics.