Six_Principles_of_Political_Realism

Six Principles of Political Realism SIX PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL REALISM 1.Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure. Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion-between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking. Human nature, in which the laws of politics have their roots, has not changed since the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavored to discover these laws. Hence, novelty is not necessarily a virtue in political theory, nor is old age a defect. The fact that a theory of politics, if there be such a theory, has politics, theory, foreign, rational, political, policy, motives, laws, facts, statesmen, must, terms, international, interest, defined, reason, power, concept, between, acts, understanding, understand, under, true, through, statesman, society, realism, present, preferences, order, might, meaning, give, consequences, circumstances