Description
My paper examines the epistemology of Hans J. Morgenthau and claims that, as a member of the Humean-Nietzschean tradition, he is an empiricist and naturalist scholar. The papers draws on Brain Leiter's ideas on soft methodological naturalism and Susan Haack's concept of aposteriorist reformist naturalism. I argue that Morgenthau’s epistemology was not inconsistent, that Morgenthau should not be read as a forerunner of either IR as a "proper science" or of post-modern, critical IR theory, and that the debate between positivist and post-positivist images of Morgenthau which dominates the existing literature, is unfruitful. Both camps can easily find ample evidence from the oeuvre of Morgenthau and blame each other for doing selective reading. I also challenge scholars who take into consideration the arguments from both perspectives and believe that the distinct philosophical traditions of European and American academic circles caused a shift in Morgenthau's epistemic claims. I argue that Morgenthau’s epistemology remains consistent and that he was a particular kind of naturalist, neither hard core positivist, nor post-positivist.
