‘Ultimate optimism’: the twin critical visions of E.H. Carr and Reinhold Niebuhr

Abstract

This essay elucidates the deep affinity between the political theories of E.H. Carr and Reinhold Niebuhr. Central to this affinity was their shared advocacy of an ongoing dialectic between vision and critique, or (in their words) utopianism and realism. The immediate justification for this essay is the surprising dearth of extended comparisons of Carr and Niebuhr, even though Carr in The Twenty Years’ Crisis acknowledges a particular debt to Niebuhr and cites Niebuhr seven times in that work. Comparing Carr and Niebuhr also reveals the Marxist roots of their dialectical approach and highlights their adamant refusal to proclaim themselves ‘realists’. The essay thus encourages the discipline of international relations to seek its genealogy in the tradition of radical political thought and to reassess the common assumption that Carr and Niebuhr are founders of the modern realist approach. In the author’s view, the ‘ultimate optimism’ of Carr and Niebuhr, though widely underappreciated, is compelling.