L’ideale realizzabile. John H. Herz e il liberalismo realista

This article reconstructs the intellectual trajectory of John H. Herz by taking his notion of “realist liberalism” as the key to the unity of his political thought. It argues that this concept was not merely a transitional formulation in Herz’s work around 1950, but the persistent framework through which he sought to reconcile political realism with liberal ethical commitments. Starting from Herz’s early legal idealism, his exile from Nazi Germany, and his encounter with the failure of interwar internationalism, the article examines the emergence of the security dilemma as a structural condition of social and international life. It then analyses Herz’s critique of utopian idealism and cynical realism, his attempt to define a “realizable ideal,” and his later reflections on the nuclear age, the decline of the territorial state, deterrence, and survival. The central claim is that Herz’s thought progressively moves from realist liberalism toward universalism and an ethics of survival, without abandoning its original concern: how to build an order capable of preserving both human freedom and collective survival under conditions of insecurity, technological vulnerability, and global interdependence.