Morgenthau’s insights into diplomatic practice and his invocation of the Aristotelian idea of phronesis might help us to see the difficulties of diplomatic life today.
Like other forms of prudence, maxims are tools at hand that can help political actors feel their way through the thickets of international relations and point to constructive ways of being in world politics.
Realist accounts of phronesis are misguided. Phronesis is not just prudence in the sense of a reasoned recognition of the limits of what can be done, but also an ethical virtue that involves reflection on means and ends.
Phronēsis is not of the academy, but of the political world. The key question, is not how IR scholars can “produce” phronēsis but how we can—alongside other international political knowledge producers—help foster it.
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