In Memoriam: Hans J. Morgenthau
KOREY, WILLIAM & THOMPSON, KENNETH W.
IN MEMORIAM Hans J. Morgenthau Hans J. Morgenthau, a long-time contributor to these pages, died in New York City on Saturday, July 19. Here we present two eulogies delivered at his funeral service...
...The self-consciousness was mine, not his...
...Rationalism, as the handmaiden of science, looked to reason and technical knowledge to produce easy harmonies of interest...
...Had he not borrowed that provocative phrase, speaking "truth to power" from the Hebrew Prophets with whom he felt a sense of identity and community...
...My list of questions is long, but not long enough...
...Would the distinguished scholar, clearly immune to sectarian interests, be willing to accept the chairmanship of an action committee whose purpose is to promote the right of 3 million Soviet Jews to live as Jews, whether in the USSR or, through emigration, in Israel or elsewhere...
...From the viewpoint of practiced wisdom, the rationally right, the ethically good and the politically possible could not be readily equated...
...The cause of Soviet Jewry was central to his very person...
...Having reflected on Morgenthau as scholar and thinker, what remains is to consider the man...
...As nostrums followed panaceas in rapid succession in the postwar pursuit of peace, he was the first to measure them against political experience...
...However unnoticed his beginnings, within a decade he had carved out a niche for himself at the pinnacle of international studies...
...In his earliest writings he challenged not individuals (something he resisted) but popular trends and movements of thought that exalted illusions, such as the belief that science and technology could save us...
...Here we present two eulogies delivered at his funeral service on July 22...
...Kenneth W. Thompson For Hans J. Morgenthau, life was an unending search for truth about man, politics, human destiny...
...Although he remained outside the corridors of power, he spoke more truth about selfish pride and the ambiguities of power than multitudes of practicing politicians in governments and universities who pursued raw power with unacknowledged self-deceit...
...Thanks to his inspiration and leadership, the Academic Committee became an organization embracing some 10,000professors and lecturers on nearly 200 campuses, and a public force capable of stirring the conscience of pocrisy...
...A personal sense of doubt and uncertainty enveloped my mission...
...It was his postulate that the harsh realities of the body politic, like fatal diseases which ravage the human body, yield only to tough-minded analysis and clearcut diagnosis...
...Against men who touted new international organizations as substitutes for traditional diplomacy, he maintained that the struggle for power was an enduring aspect of international politics, not a mere passing phase of state relationships...
...And to the Kremlin itself, both from platforms of the international Jewish community and in direct communications to Soviet leaders...
...Interest and power were his roadmaps, not fanciful notions about political man early transcending himself through reason, virtue or reform...
...The signs of having suffered and known pain...
...To say a political action has no moral purpose is absurd," Morgen-thau wrote, "for political action can be defined as an attempt to realize moral values through the medium of politics, that is power...
...Was he not the grandson of a rabbi whose lineage sparkled with spiritual Judaic leadership...
...Their freedom today testifies to Hans' special concern...
...Yet politics was the realm of contingency and incongruity, of the best under the circumstances...
...In 1937, he came to a country that offered him the promise of its national purpose, equality in freedom, without enjoying initial personal advantage or professional favor...
...The statesman shapes society not by "appeals to reason pure and simple" but by "that intricate combination of moral and material pressures which his art creates and maintains...
...His vision was the "searching mind, conscious of itself and of the world, seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking and speaking," seeking for light until the end...
...The courage to change...
...A presence that became commanding as he lectured without notes...
...During the past decade, over a quarter of a million Jews have found freedom in Israel or in America...
...An abruptness that never quite veiled his underlying compassion...
...But his critics and some of his followers misunderstood him: His preoccupation was with power in its broadest dimensions and its interconnections with purpose, as reflected in the subtitle of his classic text, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace...
...Yet for those of us who were students, friends and admirers, his heritage is more profoundly personal than philosophical or intellectual...
...Beyond the general movement, there were individual hardship cases on which he lavished personal effort: the distinguished Soviet Academician and physicist, Veni-amin Levich, and the brilliant ballet dancer, Valery Panov...
...What was the source of his personal magnetism...
...Easy friendships with young people despite his eminence...
...But the next month the cage was opened...
...He took no comfort from oracles or any of the world's grand simplifiers...
...As he had migrated from Coburg in Central Germany to the University of Frankfurt and fled to Geneva and Madrid, he crossed his adopted country from Brooklyn to Kansas City to the University of Chicago, returning in his later years to New York and the City University and the New School...
...we cannot comprehend what we know we felt...
...A character untainted by hyIt was a decade ago that, at the request of the Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry, I requested a meeting with Hans J. Morgenthau, a man whom I knew but slightly...
...The ability to hold fast...
...It was the medium through which he would speak "truth to power" to Senators and Congressmen and Administration officials in Washington...
...By prodigious labors, he left a vast heritage of principles that we have only begun to fathom and not yet made integral to American foreign policy...
...After everything has been said, there is still an element of mystery about his greatness...
...What galvanized loyalty and guaranteed respect...
...If Morgenthau's legacy had been no more than a coherent framework for relating morality and politics and rethinking foreign policy, his contribution would have been enormous...
...It was initially communicated in a memorable address in February 1971, at the first world conference of Jewish communities on Soviet Jewry held in Brussels...
...A stream became a current, then a flood...
...William Korey, Director of International Policy Research for B'nai B'rith, worked closely with Morgenthau on matters involving Soviet Jewish emigration...
...Hans' response was quick and strong: He would be honored to serve the cause of his oppressed brethren...
...Had he not known from personal experience the scourge of anti-Semitism...
...As a teacher, he never rested in the demands he laid on us to try, as our British friends would say, to get things right...
...Kenneth W. Thompson, currently Director of the White Burkett Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, began his long association with Morgenthau while a graduate student at the University of Chicago...
...You are the most moral thinker I know...
...He grappled with the most intractable of problems: the dilemmas of politics and of conflict...
...With Reinhold Nie-buhr, he believed that "Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises...
...He never let me forget that...
...Steady resolve and determination...
...Was it the wry smile and quick wit...
...The message was pointed and sharp: "Let my people go...
...He joined Meinecke in affirming that "moral life cannot be regulated like clockwork and...
...When he trudged up the long steps of Columbia University's Low Library, he discovered that the one scholar who might have helped him had died less than a year before...
...His goal, as he defined it, was discovering "ultimate reality beyond illusion...
...The core of that legacy can be found in rigorous criticism of prevailing national moods which Morgenthau insisted crippled the nation's ability to cope with its most urgent problems...
...Until that time, only a handful of Jews had been permitted to leave the USSR...
...even the purest strivings for good can be forced into the most painful choices...
...At the close of a conference in the 1960s, Walter Lippmann turned to Hans Morgenthau and said: "How curious you are misunderstood...
...Prescription depends on the statesman-physician's understanding of human nature and of the inescapable rivalries among men and nations...
...As a friend he was more steadfast in hard times and adversity than others were in good times and success...
...but I think the superior man is one who knows that he must find his way in a maze of principles...
...For Hans Morgenthau took pride in being a son of the Jewish people...
...For unlike many refugee intellectuals, he arrived upon American soil without a sponsor...
...Yes, and forever the example of a courageous and compassionate friend...
...A few years later Morgenthau challenged those who blindly heralded a brave new world...
...Hans seized upon his new responsibilities with a total dedication and commitment...
...mankind...
...By moral example, he taught those he inspired to live with uncertainty, contradictions and tragedy, remembering the text: "For He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust...
...An undisguised shyness that gave strength to others who feared rejection...
...As moral philosopher, he rejected moralism-making one value supreme-And recognized the wisdom of Justice Holmes: "People are always extolling the man of principles...
...The miracle of this Exodus owes something to Hans Morgenthau, who was obsessed with the rescue effort...
...A lifelong habit of shielding others from needless embarrassment...
...A mind storing and retrieving vast treasures from the broad sweep of culture...
...How often the retort, "a good speech but you misquoted Cromwell...
...He set out alone in a hostile social environment moving across uncharted ground...
Vol. 63 • August 1980 • No. 15
