Richard Ned Lebow: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, History, Political Philosophy and Psychology

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory

The liberal-communitarian debate in contemporary political philosophy and its significance for international relations

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID MORRICE
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
World Government ◽  
Moral Reality ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law

This article examines the debate between liberalism and communitarianism in contemporary political philosophy and considers its significance for international relations. The debate tends to pose a false dichotomy between liberalism and communitarianism, and neither position alone can provide an adequate basis for international relations theory. It is necessary to go beyond the liberal-communitarian divide in order to reconcile the valuable insights that may be rescued from both positions. There is a community which is a moral reality, which includes all individuals and maintains their moral integrity, and which can accommodate all legitimate, smaller communities. This is the community of humanity, which is recognized in traditional theories of natural law and the law of nations. The article concludes by considering whether the universal community of humanity requires and justifies world government.

Politics and Law as Latourian Modes of Existence

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Harman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
Modes Of Existence ◽  
Circle Drawing

This chapter presents Graham Harman’s assessment of a vital, highly disputed, frequently perplexing contrast, namely that of the trajectories of political and legal enunciation. With an air of clinical detachment, Harman patiently disentangles the mesh of legal obligations and places this strange, non-referential chain into proximity with the political Circle, drawing on the dichotomy of Power Politics and Truth Politics offered in his recent study of Latour’s political philosophy. According to Harman, politics must precede law because it is the charge of politics to collect groups, which may in turn develop a legal order. Similarly, law relies more or less directly on the existence of political authorities – without politics, in other words, law is mere empty, unenforceable, unreliable words. Concluding with an enticing set of questions about the implications of this arrangement for a Latourian international relations theory, Harman’s chapter skilfully demonstrates the promise and the peril of a comprehensive scheme of modes of existence.

Kantians and Cosmopolitanism: O'Neill and Cosmopolitan Universalism

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 98-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Sutch
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
History Of

The history of what we now term international relations theory is as rich and as complex as any area in the history of political thought. Yet in the last few decades one particular type of political philosophy has come to be almost unambiguously associated with liberal international relations theory. The dominance of Kantian cosmopolitanism in contemporary liberal international relations theory is quite remarkable. Its position is challenged, within liberalism, only by the utilitarian cosmopolitanism of thinkers such as Peter Singer and, from outside the liberal tradition, by communitarians such as Michael Walzer or Alasdair MacIntyre. At least, this is how the debate is portrayed in the current literature. In this article I want to suggest that the biggest challenge to Kantian cosmopolitanism comes from within the neo-Kantian tradition.

British Idealist International Theory

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. 73-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Supranational Institutions ◽  
The Way

International relations theorists have long complained about the paucity of rigorous political philosophy in their discipline, and especially bemoan the lack of classic texts to guide them. It is suggested that with the exception of Thucydides, there is little exclusively concerned with International Relations, and nothing that international relations theorists have constructed to resemble the received canon comparable with its sister subject of political theory. Yet all of the major political theorists accommodate international relations in some way, and are invoked by contemporary international relations theorists as having something important to say. Contemporary international relations theory, however, is immersed in its own sense of self-importance, seeing the value of everything in utilitarian or practical terms. The desire to change the world, and not merely to understand it, predisposes the discipline to scale the obligatory heights of Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, Hegel and Marx in order to pillage what is useful, and to ignore the attempts of philosophers more immediately at the root of modern international relations theory who addressed many of the questions currently thought important and which pointed the way to some of the contemporary answers. Hegel's ill-deserved, but not wholly unfounded, reputation as a brutal realist, and the association of Bosanquet and the rest of the British Idealists with German or Prussian philosophy during and between the two world wars in popular and learned journals, newspapers, and the publications of leading philosophers, including Hobhouse, Hobson, Dewey, Santayana, Laski, Delise Burns, Cole and Joad, have served to bury almost without trace a wealth of literature that applied what are now fashionably called communitarian principles to international questions. Even Chris Brown, who relates Hegel, Green and Bosanquet to the communitarian approach to international relations, ignores the fact that British idealists addressed the key issues of the possibility of extending the community to the international sphere and the establishment of supranational institutions.

A REFUNDAÇÃO DA TEORIA DAS RELAÇÕES INTERNACIONAIS: ORIGENS DO PENSAMENTO REFLEXIVISTAINTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY REBUILDING: ORIGINS OF REFLEXIVISTA THOUGTH

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato Somberg Pfeffer (IBMEC/MG)
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory

Desde a década de 1980, o campo teórico das Relações Internacionais tem passado por uma crise profunda. Na nova sociedade da informação marcada pela globalização, o conceito fundamental das teorias tradicionais – a soberania do Estado – é desafiado. Em diálogo com outras áreas das Ciências Sociais e da Filosofia, a teoria das Relações Internacionais busca, então, refundar sua identidade. Essa refundação tem passado por uma reflexão crítica acerca de sua história e uma reavaliação de seus pressupostos. A defesa da emancipação humana passa a ser o mote orientador dessa nova tendência entre os críticos reflexivistas. Esse artigo busca resgatar algumas influências de outros campos do saber que estão na origem ao pensamento reflexivista.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Nuclear Policy ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
As If

This chapter provides a summary introduction to the book. It explains the central question the book addresses and why it is important. Namely, it asks why academic nuclear deterrence theory maintains that nuclear superiority does not matter, but policymakers often behave as if it does. It then provides a brief explanation of the answer to this question: the superiority-brinkmanship synthesis theory. It discusses the implications of the argument for international relations theory and for US nuclear policy. In contrast to previous scholarship, the argument of this book provides the first coherent explanation for why nuclear superiority matters even if both sides possess a secure, second-strike capability. In so doing, it helps to resolve what may be the longest-standing, intractable, and important puzzle in the scholarly study of nuclear strategy. It concludes with a description of the plan for the rest of the book.

Between Specters of War and Visions of Peace

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald M. Mara
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Democracies

This book examines how ideas of war and peace have functioned as organizing frames of reference within the history of political theory. It interprets ten widely read figures in that history within five thematically focused chapters that pair (in order) Schmitt and Derrida, Aquinas and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, and Thucydides and Plato. The book’s substantive argument is that attempts to establish either war or peace as dominant intellectual perspectives obscure too much of political life. The book argues for a style of political theory committed more to questioning than to closure. It challenges two powerful currents in contemporary political philosophy: the verdict that premodern or metaphysical texts cannot speak to modern and postmodern societies, and the insistence that all forms of political theory be some form of democratic theory. What is offered instead is a nontraditional defense of the tradition and a democratic justification for moving beyond democratic theory. Though the book avoids any attempt to show the immediate relevance of these interpretations to current politics, its impetus stems very much from the current political circumstances. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century , a series of wars has eroded confidence in the progressively peaceful character of international relations; citizens of the Western democracies are being warned repeatedly about the threats posed within a dangerous world. In this turbulent context, democratic citizens must think more critically about the actions their governments undertake. The texts interpreted here are valuable resources for such critical thinking.

Hobbes among International Relations Thinkers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Civil Condition ◽  
The Individual

Among philosophers and historians of political thought Hobbes has little or nothing to say about relations among states. For modern realists and representatives of the English School in contemporary international relations theory, however, caricatures of Hobbes abound. There is a tendency to take him too literally, referring to what is called the unmodified philosophical state of nature, ignoring what he has to say about both the modified state of nature and the historical pre-civil condition. They extrapolate from the predicament of the individual conclusions claimed to be pertinent to international relations, and on the whole find his conclusions unconvincing. It is demonstrated that there is a much more restrained and cautious Hobbes, consistent with his timid nature, in which he gives carefully weighed views on a variety of international issues, recommending moderation consistent with the duties of sovereignty.

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