SESSION 5: A Little Too Perfect?

E.H.Carr wrote his book, The Twenty Years' Crisis shortly before the outbreak of the World War II. This is often dubbed a realist text, which begins with Carr analyzing the buoyant situation that followed the World War I as incarnated by the League of Nations and other treaties that were signed. This is followed by the harsh criticism on Utopianism.

Utopianism refers to schemes developed on idealized conditions for social or political reforms. E.H.Carr, in his text, has defined utopia in two different ways. The first is pertaining to the opposition of reality and the other is that to realism.  The author is unclear to distinguish between what is false and what is ideal. His approach to discover the interplay between realism and utopianism blurred the lines of dissimilarity between the two schools of thought.

Being a realist, he has mainly focused on the idea of 'moral nihilism' as termed by Norman Angell. He stresses the dominance of politics over ethics and how application of morality may or may not be rational. Realist critique amounts to man's lack of progress in moral sense. Thus, Carr refuses to admit that institutions have the potential to mould individuals to play the game according to the rules of a particular norm for the betterment of future. His realist critique on moral considerations is under attack on empirical and theoretical basis.

The strength of realism lies in exposing the weakness of utopian thought. The realist critique of utopianism is believable as long as the analysis of the former is not isolated entirely from the latter. Mere realism on its own is not adequate enough to elucidate the density of the real-world phenomenon, and, after all, Carr is a utopian realist.