Overview of Morgenthau’s Oeuvre and Worldview

Abstract

The German-American political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau (1904–1980) is widely considered to be the doyen of International Relations (Hoffmann, 1977, p. 44; Kissinger, 1980, p. 14; Fromkin, 1993, p. 81; Kindermann, 2004, p. 85). Due to the enormous success of his textbook Politics Among Nations, which was first published in 1948, and to being considered to be one of the leading figures of the realist school of thought, Morgenthau’s name was already in his lifetime added to the canon of International Relations and his thought is now of recurrent concern in the sociology of knowledge of the discipline of International Relations and in international political theory. Politics Among Nations eventually became the most widely used textbook in International Relations curricula in higher education institutions in the United States and is now in its ninth edition.