Morgenthau’s Twofold Concept of Power

The final aspect of Morgenthau’s thought, which we want to discuss in this introduction, is his concept of power. Power has always been of major cognitive interest in the pursuit of analyzing Morgenthau’s contribution to International Relations (e.g., Wasserman, 1959; Nobel, 1995; Williams, 2004; Molloy, 2004; Hacke, 2005; Neacsu, 2010). Given the vastness of interpretations, we might rightfully ask what can a translation of La notion du politique significantly contribute to the understanding of Morgenthau’s concept of power. To give a bold answer: it is essential because a close study of this important concept of Morgenthau’s thought and its genealogical development demonstrates that he meticulously distinguished between two concepts of power — an empirical and a normative concept — in his European works while ignoring this most important distinction in his English writings.