What is Political Realism and its Philosophical Origins

Political realism is a theory of political philosophy that attends to explain, model, and prescribe political relations and it takes as its assumption that power is the primary end of political action. Thought of political realism in essence criticises to the political-ethical principles that might is right and represents a theory against the idealist political theories. Political realism has a long history, being evident in Thucydides’s Pelopennesian War and it was expanded on Machiavelli, and others such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and some Marxist theoreticians followed. The beginning of political realism is Machiavelli when taken into account that considering politics by put political realities in the center, denying the utopian thoughts, to distinguish between moral ideals and political virtues, and to give more autonomy to distinctively political thought independent from moral and religion. Machiavellli brings forward that politics break away from its the all manner of relations with moral, religious and speculative and discusses it purely in the secular platform with reference to historical-empirical reality. Additionally, when considered that Machivaelli’s realist approach to politics and to endeavour to give autonomy to political thought, it could be said that he wants to take politics out from the field of values. Briefly, Machiavelli wants to move beyond the medieval culture that politics is influenced by religion, not secular and tries to understand and explain the cummunity with reference to non-religious and secular principles, and thus, aims to cut off the determined bonds of politics from the religious and the moral.

Keywords

Political Realism, Utopianism, Political Moralism, Machiavelli