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Hans Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations (1948) is considered one of the most influential books in the study of international relations. John Vasquez, in The Power of Power Politics (1998), showed how Morgenthau provided a Kuhnian exemplar for IR following World War II. This claim roughly equates Morgenthau's contributions to the field of IR with the contributions Newton made to physics and Lavoisier made to chemistry--two of the more famous Kuhnian exemplars. Given this iconic position in IR, it is surprising that Morgenthau frequently objected to how his ideas were misunderstood. In the preface to the second edition of Politics Among Nations, he echoed Montesquieu's plea made to readers of The Spirit of the Laws. Morgenthau asked his readers not to judge "the labor of twenty years" with "a few hours of reading." In Hans Morgenthau: Realism and Beyond, William Scheuerman heeds this advice and presents a rich and insightful analysis of Morgenthau's extensive works.
Scheuerman offers convincing evidence that Morgenthau has indeed been misunderstood. Most readers, according to Scheuerman (p. 4), "overlook the richness and nuances of his highly idiosyncratic international theory." Driven in part by "ambitious normative aspirations," Scheuerman casts Morgenthau as an "uneasy realist" (pp. 5-6). To make his case, he traces Morgenthau's thought from his early days practicing law in Frankfurt. His experiences in Weimar were informed by two very different figures. The first was Morgenthau's mentor Hugo Sinzheimer, a former member of the Reichstag as well as the law faculty at the University of Frankfurt, who was "one of the major voices in left-wing Weimar jurisprudence" (p. 12). Morgenthau's three years with Sinzheimer left him with a keen appreciation for how law both reflects and shapes society. A second influence in Morgenthau's early years was Carl Schmitt. While Morgenthau found Schmitt's discussions of power vital to any understanding of...