| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Ernst Haas Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 5 of 5
At the beginning of this interview you explained to us why you loved and gravitated toward the ivory tower. And here I want to ask you an age-old question in the social sciences and in political science on the relation between theory and practice. I guess I'm left with the conclusion that you found a unique handle on that problem in the sense of your focus on the role of science and scientific thinking on political life. Is that fair?
Yes. That's fair.
Would you like to comment on that proposition?
Let me comment by offering a word of caution. I would be very foolish to project my evolutionary penchant. If I said, "It is all but assured that this mode of thinking is going to spread out by invisible but nevertheless real ripples to take in the whole world."
The scientific mode of thinking?
The scientific mode. I'm not sure that's true. I can imagine and I can see evidence of contrary trends. And I think it will be quite foolish to go out on a limb and say it the way Fukuyama did it, for example -- "This way of doing things has triumphed, period."
There is a continuing tension in the body of your work, which one of your students focused on, Jack Donnelly, in the recent conference; namely, your search for the ideal mixed with a pragmatic sense of what can actually be accomplished ...
That's very fair. I guess that's what I was trying to say in this peroration I just wished on you.
So how would you suggest that students prepare for the future? What should they study?
Computer science.
In that world will everything be automated, so therefore, you will have to deal less with the frailty of man?
Both you and I don't believe that, right?
Right.
Neither of us does. All right. What should students study? I don't have any words of wisdom to offer on that.
Okay.
Students should study whatever turns them on.
Okay. Then let's try another one. You identify liberalism, democracy, and human dignity with progress. But I detect in your writing a sense of the limits of action and the complexity of broad historical processes. So how does the individual make a difference in the realization of values that move us beyond the nation state?
Let me creep up on that one by telling you some stories about what's been happening in Western Europe in the last forty years on a rather massive scale. Until World War II, it was quite common, if you asked a German, "Who do you despise most?" after saying, "Jews," they would say, "Russians," and after Russians they would say, "Our hereditary enemy is France. Because we've always fought the French. Until we get rid of them, we'll never have peace." You ask the same question of a Frenchman, he would give exactly the same answer in reverse.
You ask that question today, nobody's going to give that answer. Germans take the French for granted. French take the Germans for granted. They study each other's language. More Frenchmen now study German than -- not as many as study English, but right after English, which they never used to do before. They trade with each other at an unprecedented rate. They invest in each other's companies at an unprecedented rate. They take each other for granted as never again fighting a war against each other. I mean, the notion that another war between France and German is conceivable? It is not conceivable any longer. It's gone.
How did this happen? It happened, one, because the Germans were taught a lesson in 1945, which is that to wage aggressive war is to commit suicide. They came pretty damn close to that. The French technically won that war, but they didn't really win, right? We rescued them. And they learned that lesson. In other words, the lesson that World War II taught those broad populations -- I'm not talking about intellectuals -- is that they have to learn to live with each other. And they did.
So the individual then matters as part of these kinds of global processes?
Well, I didn't tell you the second part of the story. Add to this a second factor.
Then came along the political project of creating a united Europe, which had the result of creating a myriad of institutions in which very, very many people participated. As business people, as labor leaders, as consumers, as tourists across the border. These institutions developed a permanence through which both French and German -- and you can escalate this to other Europeans, I just use French and Germans as my example here -- learned to do routine business with each other every day. A problem which they experienced was a common problem.
Take these two countries as an example: first comes the traumatic lesson, then comes the institution for learning to deal with each other. The very things, if you like, that have not happened in the Middle East.
So there is hope, if one's perspective is a long-term one?
Yes.
Ernie, on that note, I want to thank you very much for being with us today, sharing with us the story of your life and the ideas that have really mattered to you.
Thank you, Harry.
Thank you. And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation With History.
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