Salutary Fear? Hans Morgenthau and Nuclear Catastrophe. Alison McQueen Department of Political Science Stanford University

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1 Salutary Fear? Hans Morgenthau and Nuclear Catastrophe Alison McQueen Department of Political Science Stanford University

2 Ambivalence to Apocalypse : Morgenthau s nuclear ambivalence Nuclear novelty: the possibility of total war Nuclear conventionalization: the latest stage in the mechanization of warfare Tone: strategic and often militaristic

3 Ambivalence to Apocalypse : Morgenthau s nuclear ambivalence Nuclear novelty: the possibility of total war Nuclear conventionalization: the latest stage in the mechanization of warfare Tone: strategic and often militaristic 1961: Nuclear death and apocalyptic fear Radical nuclear novelty: a qualitative transformation in the meaning of our existence. Tone: lyrical and apocalyptic

4 Ambivalence to Apocalypse Two questions 1. What might have made this new rhetorical strategy seem like an appropriate one, given Morgenthau s principled worries about the politics of fear? 2. Where did Morgenthau find the language and imaginative resources to effect this rhetorical shift?

5 Ambivalence to Apocalypse Two claims 1. Political context: Morgenthau s resort to an apocalyptic politics of fear may have seemed like an appropriate strategy in response to (a) the representational and motivational difficulties that attend prospective catastrophes like nuclear annihilation and (b) nuclear denial and political inertia. 2. While there is good reason to think that Morgenthau found the language with which to imagine nuclear catastrophe in the work of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, his approach is best understood as an Hobbesian one focused on cultivating a salutary fear.

6 Ambivalence to Apocalypse Two claims 1. Political context. 2. Intellectual context: While there is good reason to think that Morgenthau found the language with which to imagine nuclear catastrophe in the work of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, his approach is best understood as an Hobbesian one focused on cultivating a salutary fear.

7 Prospective Catastrophes and the Temptations of Denial Prospective catastrophe: a disaster that, given existing patterns of human activity, we have reason to think can or will arise in the future and have radical and often devastating effects across multiple domains.

8 Prospective Catastrophes and the Temptations of Denial Prospective catastrophe Motivational challenges Scope-agency gap Thinking about it is a choice

9 Prospective Catastrophes and the Temptations of Denial Prospective catastrophe Motivational challenges Scope-agency gap Thinking about it is a choice Representational challenges Imaginative gap: no ready analogs Thinking about the unthinkable

10 Prospective Catastrophes and the Temptations of Denial Three strategies of nuclear denial: 1. Conventionalization

11 Prospective Catastrophes and the Temptations of Denial Three strategies of nuclear denial: 1. Conventionalization 2. Complacent optimism

12 Prospective Catastrophes and the Temptations of Denial Three strategies of nuclear denial: 1. Conventionalization 2. Complacent optimism 3. Narratives of redemption

13 Prospective Catastrophes and the Temptations of Denial The extremity of human disaster might become the opportunity for resolute survivors. It is a brave thing, admittedly, to brace ourselves against the threat of annihilation. It is another, and better, thing to nerve ourselves to make the very best of the very worst. At this historic crossroads we would begin with knowledge and we would end with wisdom. Thus to take counsel with one another, to the very town meeting grass roots, would be to draw inspiration from our forefathers and to point our children to the sources which make all American generations one and which raise hope for a new dynamics for the human race. It is a vision, indeed, but where visions flourish nations endure ( Human Effects of Nuclear Weapons Development Report, 1956).

14 Prospective Catastrophes and the Temptations of Denial

15 Salutary Fear

16 Salutary Fear Three ways to transcend death: 1. Religious faith in immortality 2. Mastery of death through suicide or heroic sacrifice 3. Worldly immortality through deeds and works

17 Salutary Fear Three ways to transcend death: 1. Religious faith in immortality (impossible) 2. Mastery of death through suicide or heroic sacrifice 3. Worldly immortality through deeds and works

18 Salutary Fear Three ways to transcend death: 1. Religious faith in immortality (now impossible) 2. Mastery of death through suicide or heroic sacrifice (absurd) 3. Worldly immortality through deeds and works

19 Salutary Fear There is meaning in Leonidas falling at Thermopylae, in Socrates drinking the cup of hemlock, in Jesus nailed to the cross. There can be no meaning in the slaughter of the innocent, the murder of six million Jews, the prospective nuclear destruction of, say fifty million Americans and an equal number of Russians. There is, then, a radical difference in meaning between a man risking death by an act of will and fifty million people simultaneously reduced by somebody switching a key thousands of miles away to radioactive ashes, indistinguishable from the ashes of their houses, books, and animals (Morgenthau, 1961).

20 Salutary Fear Three ways to transcend death: 1. Religious faith in immortality (now impossible) 2. Mastery of death through suicide or heroic sacrifice (absurd) 3. Worldly immortality through deeds and works (absurd)

21 Salutary Fear Nuclear destruction is mass destruction, both of persons and of things. It signifies the simultaneous destruction of tens of millions of people, of whole families, generations, and societies, of all things that they have inherited and created. It signifies total destruction of whole societies by killing their members, destroying their visible achievements, and therefore reducing the survivors to barbarism. Thus nuclear destruction destroys the meaning of death by depriving it of its individuality. It destroys the meaning of immortality by making both society and history impossible. It destroys the meaning of life by throwing life back upon itself (Morgenthau, 1961).

22 Salutary Fear Why apocalyptic fear?

23 Salutary Fear Why apocalyptic fear? Two plausible answers 1. The Hobbesian strategy: salutary fear and political order

24 Salutary Fear Why apocalyptic fear? Two plausible answers 1. The Hobbesian strategy: salutary fear and political order 2. The Andersian strategy: a new kind of fear

25 Tentative Conclusions Morgenthau s Hobbesian strategy is a tempting response to prospective catastrophe

26 Tentative Conclusions Morgenthau s Hobbesian strategy is a tempting response to prospective catastrophe Normative worries about a politics of fear should be more, not less, pronounced in cases of prospective catastrophe Everyday politics as a petty or banal concern, finite pool of worry

27 Tentative Conclusions Morgenthau s Hobbesian strategy is a tempting response to prospective catastrophe Normative worries about a politics of fear should be more, not less, pronounced in cases of prospective catastrophe Everyday politics as a petty or banal concern, finite pool of worry Foreclosure of deliberative possibilities, debilitating fatalism

28 Tentative Conclusions Morgenthau s Hobbesian strategy is a tempting response to prospective catastrophe Normative worries about a politics of fear should be more, not less, pronounced in cases of prospective catastrophe If there are reasons to salvage a politics of fear, we would do better to put aside the Hobbesian strategy and to think about its possible alternatives