Dilemmas of Politics

The collection spans twenty years of Morgenthau's writing, from scholarly reviews to policy commentary, yet reviewers noted its remarkable coherence. As one contemporary observed, 'in a field not noted for its intellectual consistency, twenty years of Morgenthau writings need little revision to make them conform to his basic ideas' . Whether reviewing Toynbee, attacking the Eisenhower administration, or examining the discipline of political science, Morgenthau consistently applies his realist framework: politics is a distinct sphere defined by the struggle for power, and the national interest—not universal morality—must guide statecraft .

Dilemmas of Politics (1958) appeared a decade after Politics Among Nations (1948) and served as a companion volume rather than a sequel. While the earlier book systematized realist theory, Dilemmas collects the fugitive essays in which Morgenthau worked out that theory's implications across diverse topics . The collection includes his sharp critiques of political science's turn toward quantification and description, arguing that 'much of political science today has become a pretentious collection of trivialities' . Together, the two books represent Morgenthau's dual project: theoretical system-building and applied realist criticism.

Morgenthau reserved some of his harshest strictures for his own field. He argued that the empirical study of politics requires a philosophic framework, and that the absence of viable theory—combined with devotion to quantification and description—had emptied political science of substance . As one reviewer summarized, Morgenthau would have political scientists 'analyze power relations in the contemporary world, stripping away the facades of ideologies and providing society with a critical portrait of itself' . This was not merely a methodological preference but a moral demand: the scholar must remind society of its departures from objective standards of truth and virtue.

Martin Wight's 1958 review, later published with correspondence, noted that 'the most interesting thing about this book is that it does not mention Morgenthau's colleague at Chicago, Leo Strauss' . Wight suggested both shared a concern about political science's retreat into triviality but were divided by the gulf of natural law. Morgenthau objected to Wight's characterization, insisting he had not endorsed Hobbes's dictum that the state creates morality; rather, he believed moral principles are universal and not state-created . The exchange illuminates Morgenthau's nuanced position: realism did not entail moral skepticism.

The book was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1958 at 389 pages and priced at $7.50 . It received substantial scholarly attention, with reviews appearing in Foreign Affairs, the American Political Science Review, and the Washington University Law Review . Foreign Affairs called it 'selected essays by a leading student of political science and international relations' with 'a definite consistency of perspective and approach' . It was later absorbed into the three-volume Politics in the Twentieth Century (1962), which the publisher noted contained parts previously published under the Dilemmas title .

As an essay collection rather than a systematic treatise, Dilemmas never achieved the canonical status of Politics Among Nations or the polemical force of Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. It is difficult to assign in courses because it lacks a single sustained argument, and its topical essays—many responding to 1950s policy debates—have dated more visibly than Morgenthau's theoretical work. Yet for scholars tracing the development of classical realism, the collection is valuable precisely because it shows Morgenthau applying his framework across two decades, revealing both the consistency and the range of his political thought .