国际政治学一直面临这样的窘境：“国家利益”常被作为具有客观性的概念使用，但使用者却不知其客观性的基础。本文认为，“国家利益”具有观念和概念两个层面的含义。国家利益概念产生于政策领域的需求，并只适用于政策领域。作者同时提出关于国家利益概念的两种参考界定，即系统论的观点和大战略的观点。为了对这两种界定的有效性进行检查，本文还讨论了与国家利益概念相关的问题领域，即国家利益与国家的关系、国家利益与国际利益的关系 International political science has always been faced with the dilemma: “national interest” is often used as an objective concept, but users do not know the basis of its objectivity. This paper argues that “national interest” has the concept and concept of two levels of meaning. The concept of national interest stems from the needs of policy areas and applies only to policy areas. At the same time, the author puts forward two kinds of reference definitions about the concept of national interest, namely, the viewpoint of system theory and the viewpoint of grand strategy. In order to examine the validity of these two definitions, this paper also discusses the problem areas related to the concept of national interest, namely, the relationship between national interest and the state, the relationship between the national interest and the international interest