Realism and the Kantian Tradition: A Revisionist Account
| Date | 01 December 2012 |
| Author | William E. Scheuerman |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117812445449 |
| Published date | 01 December 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Relations
26(4) 453 –477
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117812445449
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Realism and the Kantian
Tradition: A Revisionist
Account
William E. Scheuerman
Indiana University, USA
Abstract
In contemporary international political theory, ‘Cosmopolitanism’ is typically juxtaposed to
‘Realism’, with many varieties of the former building on Kantian moral and political ideals, and the
latter presumably rejecting Kant and his aspiration for far-reaching global reform. In agreement
with a growing body of scholarship that seeks to challenge conventional views of Realism, this
essay attends to the surprisingly complex views of the Kantian legacy (including Hans Kelsen,
perhaps the most important neo-Kantian international thinker in the last century) within its ranks.
Not all Realists have been unambiguously critical of Kant, and when in fact they have criticized
him, they have done so for many different reasons. First-generation Realists (e.g. E. H. Carr, John
Herz, Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, Frederick Schuman and Georg Schwarzenberger)
offered an ambivalent reading of Kantianism consistent with their endorsement of the ultimate
desirability of major alterations to the global status quo, whereas second-generation Realists
(i.e. Henry Kissinger and Kenneth Waltz) tended to read Kant so as to transform him into a
forerunner of their own anti-reformist and institutionally conservative versions of Realism. An
examination of Realism’s rendezvous with Kantianism not only helps draw a more differentiated
portrayal of Realism than is still found in much scholarship, but it also helps us understand how
Realism dramatically changed within a relatively short space of time during the immediate postwar
decades. It also points to some important potential starting points for a more fruitful exchange
between Cosmopolitans and Realists.
Keywords
cosmopolitanism, Hans Kelsen, Immanuel Kant, Hans Morgenthau, Realism, world state
Conventional scholarly wisdom dramatically juxtaposes ‘Realism’ to ‘Cosmopolitanism’,
with the former presumed to entail an amoral, anti-reformist, and historically static
endorsement of realpolitik, and the latter a robust moral and political universalism in
Corresponding author:
William E Scheuerman, Indiana University, Woodburn Hall 358, Bloomington, IN 47401, USA
Email: wscheuer@indiana.edu
Article
454 International Relations 26(4)
union with a muscular defense of a new and more unified global political and legal
order.1 Like its now discredited bugbear from an earlier period (i.e. ‘Realism vs.
Idealism’), this binary opposition tends to segregate thinking into diametrically opposed
camps, while occluding potentially illuminating as well as productive points of overlap.
Cosmopolitans tend to caricature Realism, while Realists typically ignore the myriad
attempts in recent years by their rivals to develop far-reaching models of global justice
and cosmopolitan democracy. The most immediate result is that a potentially beneficial
conversation between Realists and Cosmopolitans never even takes place.
Some recent scholarship has pointed to the high costs of this trend. The rough-and-
ready general category of ‘Realism’ not only downplays the theoretical complexity of
prominent international theorists (e.g. E. H. Carr, John Herz, Hans Morgenthau and
Reinhold Niebuhr) generally grouped under it, but it also obscures some surprising com-
monalities between some self-described Realists and contemporary Cosmopolitans.2
Like contemporary Cosmopolitans, Morgenthau and Niebuhr, for example, embraced a
rigorous moral cosmopolitanism congruent with what the present-day Cosmopolitan
Thomas Pogge characterizes as the demand to ‘respect one another’s status as ultimate
units of moral concern’.3 Morgenthau favored a political ethics according to which moral
action demands fundamental respect for other human beings as ends in themselves, while
Niebuhr advocated what he forthrightly described as ‘moral universalism’, defending it
– in some contrast to Morgenthau − on theological grounds.4 More surprisingly perhaps,
prominent mid-century Realists also subscribed to what Cosmopolitans now describe as
legal (and political) cosmopolitanism, defined by Pogge as a ‘commitment to a concrete
political ideal of a global order under which all persons have equivalent legal and duties
– are fellow citizens of a universal republic’.5 Herz, Morgenthau, Niebuhr and others
ultimately sympathized with proposals for global political reform, and even sometimes
envisioned world statehood as a desirable long-term goal, seeing global institutional
change as essential to peace and security in a world haunted by the specter of nuclear
warfare. Though opposed to some popular mid-century models of international reform −
including premature efforts to establish world government − they endorsed the supposedly
‘idealistic’ ultimate goal of an alternative postnational political and legal order.6
What follows is an admittedly modest attempt to buttress ongoing efforts to initiate a
more productive exchange between Realists and Cosmopolitans. Cosmopolitanism
comes in many different shapes and sizes. However, there is no question that it generally
draws heavily on the complicated and multifaceted moral and political theories of the
great Immanuel Kant.7 Not surprisingly, perhaps, Realism is now widely depicted as
fundamentally anti-Kantian. In fact, many contemporary Realists vehemently oppose the
neo-Kantian idea of a ‘democratic peace’.8 They resist neo-Kantian aspirations for a
strengthened system of global human rights and governance.9 Even according to its most
sympathetic commentators, Realists offer a consequentialist political ethics in tension
with orthodox Kantian moral theory.10 So, at first glance, the tendency to see
Cosmopolitanism as joined at the hip to Kantianism, and Realism as representing an
updated Machiavellianism or Hobbesianism, carries substantial weight.
Yet, as the cliché goes, ‘the devil is in the details’. When we look more closely, the
story turns out to be both more complicated and more interesting. Twentieth-century
Realists engaged extensively with both Kant and the last century’s most influential
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