Political Necessity and Moral Principle in the Thought of Friedrich Meinecke

Extract

The publication of an English translation of Friedrich Meinecke's Die Idee der Staatsraeson has stimulated a renewal of interest in the political ideas of Germany's most eminent twentieth-century historian. Particularly in the United States, newly emerged from isolation and suddenly finding itself at the centre of world power and world conflict, thinking people have been seeking a more satisfying approach to the intellectual and moral dilemmas posed by the possession of great power and great responsibility. The old confidence in an inevitable progress and in an uncomplicated harmony between reason, power, and morality has vanished with the elimination of the geographic and strategic barriers which once insulated America from the harsher realities of world politics.

In such a situation, the reflections of a scholar who probed more deeply than any of his contemporaries into the ethical problems of foreign policy are peculiarly appropriate. Meinecke's sense of the tragic conflict between political necessity and moral principle can now find an understanding response in a country which has borne the terrible responsibility of making the crucial decisions in the long series of crises since 1945–Hiroshima, Berlin, Korea, Hungary, Suez, and again Berlin. Each of these crises has harboured complex ethical as well as expediential challenges. All have demonstrated the ambiguity of both moral and political standards of conduct. It was precisely this ambiguity of standards to which Meinecke addressed his thought. His reflections have, if anything, more significance today than when they first found expression.