What Is Political Realism?

Abstract

We need to find a vantage point for the treatment of the subject usually denoted as “political realism” in political thought. In the study of human matters, it is hard or even impossible to detect such a vantage point. It would amount to the invention of zero in arithmetic. Zero is one of the most relevant inventions of the human intellect. The history of zero is not only exciting from the Indian roots through the Arab mathematicians down to Fibonacci and Descartes but also points toward the meaning of zero: it represents the power of human understanding and creativity, namely, something can be made out of nothing, and an absolute vantage point is needed to create anything new. Without zero our understanding of the world would be different.