Morton A. Kaplan (May 9, 1921 – September 26, 2017) was Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. He was also President of the Professors World Peace Academy International; and Editor of the World&I magazine, published by the Washington Times Corporation, from its founding in 1986 until 2004. He attended

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...

and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, and received his Ph.D. from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1951. He has held fellowships from the Center of International Studies at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

and from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He was also a Carnegie Traveling Fellow. Kaplan has published extensively in the areas international relations and international politics. His many books include ''Science, Language and the Human Condition'', ''Law in a Democratic Society'', and ''System and Process in International Politics'' (1957), a seminal work in the scientific study of international relations. He was a critic of

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

and of the policies of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. In 1979 he edited ''The Many Faces of Communism''. Kaplan introduced a new analytical tool to the study of international relations, systems analysis.Review of Morton Kaplan’s ''Justice, Human Nature, and Political Obligation''
Vincent Luizzi, ''The American Journal of Jurisprudence'', Vol. 22, 1977, pp. 202-208. His view contrasts with that of John Rawls - that it might be possible to isolate some basic social and political rules; rather Kaplan's alternative theory of justice is his ''test in principle'', a kind of decision procedure for evaluating social, political, and moral choices, which attempts to circumvent the limitations of an egocentric or culturally narrow perspective while providing sufficient context to make a judgment. Kaplan used systems analysis to differentiate among the various types of international state systems: the "balance of power" system, the loose bipolar system, the tight bipolar system, the universal international system, the hierarchical international system, and the Unit Veto International System.Robert H. Jackson & Georg Sørensen (2007), ''Introduction to international relations'', Oxford University Press.

Kenneth E. Boulding Kenneth Ewart Boulding (; January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an English-born American economist, educator, peace activist, and interdisciplinary philosopher.David LatzkoKenneth E. Boulding Commentsat personal.psu.edu. Accessed 24 April 200 ...

and Charles Kindleberger gave Kaplan's ''System and Process in International Politics'' negative reviews. Kindleberger argued that the book was a "must" read and that the primary contribution of the book was Kaplan's discussion of the international system and balance of power, but he argued that Kaplan's work did not lend itself to empirical testing, and that the application of game theory to politics and conflict was problematic.

References

External links

PWPA bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaplan, Morton 1921 births 2017 deaths University of Chicago faculty Columbia University alumni Unification Church and Judaism Temple University alumni Stanford University alumni