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Idealism and realism: beyond the great debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Kenneth W. Thompson
Kenneth W. Thompson
Affiliation:
Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia
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Extract

The tendency of all debates is to exaggerate and to overkill, to claim and condemn too much. Then when the smoke has lifted and guns have been silenced, those who remain discover that the world is more complex and answers less certain than the debaters had led them to believe. It is as though worthy causes could not advance unless carried on the backs of overstatements. Think back in your lifetime to the progress which has been made toward desired ends: minority rights, women's liberation, the rights of the working man. Whenever movement has occurred, it has come in response to politics, propaganda and pressures. It has come because someone with a credible, sometimes noble cause planned and organized, but in their action almost always overdid at the price of generating reaction and counterattack. It may be stretching a point to compare thinking and political movements with wars and yet there is action and reaction, attack and counterattack in all three areas reminding us of Sir Herbert Butterfield's words:

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , July 1977 , pp. 199 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1977

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References

page 199 note 1. New York Times, 3 Jan. 1973, p. 34Google Scholar.

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page 200 note 2. Ibid.

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