2016/01/01 by Felix Rösch
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Critical Theory and Philosophy #German Social Sciences and History #Philosophy, Science, and History
paper · doi:10.1017/s089267941500057x
openalex publication_date 2016/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/09
Shortly after finishing his Habilitation at the University of Geneva in 1934, Hans Morgenthau typed a lengthy manuscript entitled Über den Sinn der Wissenschaft in dieser Zeit und über die Bestimmung des Menschen ( On the Purpose of Science in These Times and on Human Destiny ). Underappreciated and little known in the ever-growing literature on Morgenthau and classical realism at large, this manuscript provided the foundation for a series of publications throughout his life in which he ferociously and even polemically defended a normative role for “science” ( Wissenschaft ) in modern societies against the backdrop of the rise of behavioralism. Most famous among them is certainly Morgenthau's first book in the United States, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (see Hartmut Behr in this forum). Indeed, forty years after Morgenthau had penned this manuscript in Geneva, he based the first part of Science: Servant or Master on it, indicating that he “never went much beyond what he had basically said and formulated” during his time in Europe.