Ethics in a World of Power: The Political Ideas of Friedrich Meinecke by Richard W.

Sterling
Review by: David Braybrooke
Ethics, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Jul., 1959), pp. 292-294
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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292
that reason controls (or fails to control) the
passions. He compares the political model,
according to which the human psyche is a sort
of organization in which reason and passion
stand to one another in the relation of different
parts of a state, with the "para-mechanical"
model on which conflict and control are con-
strued as a function of the relative power of
opposing "forces." To the Humean question
of how it happens that a "calm" passion can
"defeat" a "violent" passion, Mayo offers an
answer that depends on the distinction between
occurrent passions-anger, sadness, fear-and
dispositions and dispositional virtues such as
diligence, patience, fidelity, etc. He observes
correctly that the question how reason can con-
trol (or fail to control) the passions becomes
more tractable if it is restated in a way that
avoids the assumptions both of the political
and of the mechanical model. If we adopt an
Aristotelian or Deweyan idiom and ask how it
is possible for people to acquire character dispo-
sitions like patience, resoluteness, and so forth,
then the question escapes the logical impasse
and points the way to an empirical investigation
of learning and character formation. Mayo's
treatment is admittedly sketchy, but there is no
demerit in raising more questions than one
answers if the questions are interesting and
answerable.
The two chapters on "Conscienceand Author-
ity" contain the author's most original con-
tributions. The question is how in the words
of St. Paul a man can be "a law unto himself."
Butler conceived conscience as an authority
functioning within the "constitution" of human
nature. Kant spoke of "sovereignty" within a
"kingdom of ends." Mayo takes the concept of
an organizationas central and works out in con-
siderable detail the conditions under which it is
proper to speak of "an organization."His con-
tention is that the simplest possible organization
consists of a pair of individuals, A and B, such
that B's activities are controlled through com-
mands by A. It must further be supposed that
A has the authority to issue commands and that
B obeys by virtue of his recognition of A's
authority. Beginning with this conceptual frame-
work, Mayo goes on to develop in a most
ingenious way an analysis of moral principles,
self-commands, and finally the supremacy of
conscience and the authority of the moral law.
The concept of morality which emerges is
explicitly deontological in character. Moreover
Mayo avows openly what earlier philosophers
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ETHICS
of duty have been reluctant to admit, namely,
that morality, since its function is to control
inclination, must be essentially negative and
prohibitive in character. In a brief final section
the author considers the various ways in which
an ethics based on the concepts of goal and
standard could be accommodated within his
system. There are some extremely interesting,
though somewhat tangential observations about
the connection between personal and moral re-
lations and about the theoretical relevance of
Existentialist ethics for a Kantian morality.
The book as a whole strikes one as a kind of
blueprint; this has certain advantages. There is
(with the exception of the first chapter) no
padding; we are not dragged through the ritual
of discovering the errors of intuitionism and
then the errors of naturalism and then the errors
of emotivism. Books about ethics would be
even thinner than they are if their authors
would forego the pleasure of rehearsing the
mistakes of their predecessors. The disadvan-
tage of so abbreviated an analysis is that Mayo's
own thesis, which is interesting and in many
ways original, suffers from the incomplete and
fragmentary character of many of his argu-
ments.
MARY MOTHERSILL
University of Chicago
ETHICS IN A WORLD OF POWER: THE POLITICAL
IDEAS OF FRIEDRICH MEINECKE. By Richard
W. Sterling. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1958. Pp. xi+318. $6.00.
Meinecke was a historian with a philosophical
imagination for whom the essential content of
modern history consisted in the dramatic dis-
closure and development of great ideas. Cutting
his general reflections about politics loose from
the detailed historical learning with which they
intertwine and flourish in his own works risks
doing them an injustice; it exposes them to a
sort of judgment which they were not prepared
for, a judgment that treats the recurrentmotifs
of his narrative as if they were propositional
elements of a systematic political theory.
Mr. Sterling has braved the risks and suc-
ceeded in keeping them within limits. He takes
care throughout his book to indicate the his-
torical data in which Meinecke's various gen-
eralizations were rooted. Most of his chief
points are drawn from the two earliest of
Meinecke's three most famous general works-
 BOOKREVIEWS
from Weltbfirgertumund Nationalstaat (1908)
and Die Idee der Staatsrdson (1924) rather
than Die Entstehung des Historismus (1936).
But Sterling richly supplements these sources
by drawingupon Meinecke's many other works,
including his host of topical writings.
The result is a book that requires patient
reading. Throughout his long lifetime, which
began before Bismarck had finished creating
Imperial Germany and ended some years after
the demise of the Thousand-Year Reich,
Meinecke's thinking about politics turned again
and again to the same few themes. These
changed very little from one appearance to the
next. Sterling has to deal, not with dramatic
conversions and bold departures, but with
gradual shifts in attitudes, which become visible
only after working underground for a while.
The method of his book is to illustrate these
shifts by a sequence of judiciously selected quo-
tations and paraphrases accompanied by a run-
ning critical commentary. It is an apt method,
given the subject, and Sterling practices it
effectively.
"If one had to sum up Meinecke's political
thought in a phrase," Sterling declares, "it might
be said that he sought to preserve the state
contract by every means except an irremedial
loss of personal integrity." Summing up his
thought (as it is represented in Sterling's book)
in a couple of paragraphs,it might be said that
Meinecke was in the habit of meditating on cer-
tain "polarities" of ideas of which the most
important were "nationalism" as opposed to
"cosmopolitanism," "the state" vs. "the in-
dividual," and "power"vs. "spirit." Though (as
Sterling makes a point of showing) Meinecke
always thought that statesmen should heed both
terms of these polarities in their actions, he did,
before the first World War showed what ex-
cesses nationalism was capable of, value the first
terms more. He attacked "cosmopolitanism"be-
cause in practice, he thought, it led to imperial-
ism and obliteration of national opportunities
for cultural achievement. He consideredthat the
necessities of foreign policy took precedence
over domestic liberties. By promoting enthusi-
asm for sharing and participating in a national
culture rather than by extending the political
power of the masses, he sought to reconcile the
cultural freedom required by creative individu-
als with the unity and authority required by a
strong state.
According to Sterling, he found "the key both
to personal liberty and to community" in na-
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293
tionalism, "the modern answer to the old ques-
tion of the sources of state authority." The uni-
versal idea of moral community was to be
respected, as was the integrity of other national
cultures, but not so much as to inhibit the "free
evolution" of great states. "The universal idea
in the life of states belongs to those spiritual
elements that can be the source of blessings
only when they remain intangible aspirations."
World War I destroyed Meinecke's optimism.
Evidently (as the German experience showed)
elites could hardly be trusted to behave more
responsibly than masses; and nationalism, far
from encouraging mutual self-respect among
nations, aggravatedpolitical conflicts by intensi-
fying cultural hostility. Meinecke's doubts
about cosmopolitanism persisted, along with his
affection for the state; but he was now ready
to acknowledge that the values of the polarities
could not be harmoniously maximized by a
plurality of nation-states each acting for itself.
Tragic choices between these values are inevi-
table. Statesmen are bound to be guilty, what-
ever they do, and "the state must sin.... This
is the terrible and shattering fact of world his-
tory: it cannot consummate the civilization of
the very human community which encompasses,
protects and promotes all the other communi-
ties, which thus comprises the richest and most
variegated cultural content and which there-
fore should properly set an example for the
other communities by the purity of its own
being."
As Sterling contends, Meinecke, immersed as
he was in Germanhistory, may have appreciated
better than English-speaking political theorists
that the unavoidable insecurities of foreign
policy and the continual necessity in the past
of resorting to violence to cope with them. Few
authors, furthermore,can have been so sensitive
to the ambiguities of political action. Meinecke
imagined that nationalism might go either way:
it might prove creative and tolerant and re-
sourceful enough to develop into a pluralistic
world-community; on the other hand, it might
prove to be "a blind alley from which the
spirit of creation could neither advance nor
retreat" (sterling's paraphase). He saw that
power could be the occasion for moral achieve-
ment as well as an obstacle to it. Religious
tolerance, and other liberal reforms, had been
brought about because they increased the
strength of the state. Moreover, power, once
attained, encouraged prudence and responsibil-
ity. "Once power is gained over a people . . .
294
it must be organized. As power is organized it
becomes an autonomous entity, a super-individ-
ual thing which one must . . . tend and serve.
And he who has sought and striven for it is first
in line of service. The ruler is transformed into
the servant of his own power. The objectives of
power begin to restrict personal caprice, and
the hour of raison d'etat has struck."
These are suggestive ideas; but they are not
theory. They do not offer any systematic method
for assessing the conditions of achieving the
values that Meinecke recognizes. Meinecke's
political reflections exhibit rampant confusion
between explaining and valuing: "The objects
of historical observation, the individual states,
can be understood only if they are granted the
unconditional right to act solely in accordance
with their own nature and profit." He illustrates,
and even champions, another familiar miscon-
ception, the idea that appreciating the individ-
uality of historical and political phenomena is
incompatible with elaborating general laws
about them. He condemns absolutist "either/
or" thinking on moral questions for the rigidity
and hypocrisy that it leads to; but, as his pre-
occupation with polarities shows, he never
sufficiently liberated himself from either/or
thinking to obtain the advantages of a theoreti-
cal description of political reality. He failed to
see that there are manifold institutional solu-
tions for the problems raised by his polarities.
Instead, he was led by his determination to be
realistic and unsentimental, to share the unim-
aginative conception of political possibilities
that typifies "practical" statesmen.
How many of the moral tragedies which
Meinecke supposes entrap statesmen are genu-
ine ones? May statesmen ever be excused for
choosing national security at the cost of aban-
doning, even temporarily, all efforts to create
a world community? They should not be let off
so easily. Surely it is always both correct and
practical to prescribe that they should steadily
work for world community without failing to
take, temporary precautions for national secu-
rity; this is in effect quite different from allow-
ing that they may sometimes choose national
security exclusively, or devote only gestures
and odd hours to advancing peace. The choice
is never either/or; it is always a matter of ad-
justing short-run and long-run considerations
while budgeting for a number of goals simul-
taneously.
If statesmen are sometimes forced to act out-
side conventional morality, that is not because
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ETHICS
what they do is or must be or ought to be a
matter of moral indifference,but because inter-
national moral conventions have not yet ob-
tained the institutional guarantees that exist
within nations. Extension of such institutions to
the world as a whole will not come about (as
Meinecke saw) merely by wishing for them;
it will come about only by a great effort of
invention and experiment (which Meinecke dis-
counted in advance). Before Meinecke turned
into a reluctant supporter of the League of Na-
tions, and even afterward, he did not sufficiently
recognize that the "realistic" view of national
interests-raison d'e'tat-was inhibiting the de-
velopment of practical internationalinstitutions.
It still is.
DAVID BRAYBROOKE
Yale University
By
CRITIQUE OF RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
Walter Kaufmann. New York: Harper &
Bros., 1958. Pp. xvii+325. $5.00.
Professor Kaufmann's Critique is a witty,
learned, sometimes exasperating book. Almost
no one will be entirely pleased with it, since
hardly a school or party in current philosophy
and theology escapes reproof. Existentialism,
analytical philosophy, neo-Thomism, crisis the-
ology, Unitarianism, Freud, Fromm, Bultmann,
Carnap, and Ryle, to give only a partial list,
are viewed, examined (or at least mentioned),
and found wanting. In view of Kaufmann's
numerous and varied targets, readers are sure
to disagree as to which one he strikes most
successfully.
The opening three parts, which largely con-
cern philosophy, seem on the whole less care-
fully developed than the more searching and
skilful critique of theology that follows. Kauf-
mann attacks Existentialism for' its Schwdr-
merei, while granting that it possesses at least
one of the characteristics of all great philosophy,
"an invitation to a different way of life." In
contrast to Existentialism, Kaufmann finds
another "timeless tendency" in what he calls
positivism. He rebukes positivists for being in-
sensitive to profound experience, and he notes
"messianic overtones" in both positivism and
Existentialism. Of the two "types of positivism"
on the current scene, the type whose exponents
use symbolic logic is quickly dismissed. Kauf-
mann accuses this group of being unconcerned
with traditional philosophy and the problem of