‘The battle is all there is’: philosophy and history in International Relations theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Devetak
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Alternative Mode ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Shed Light

There is an expectation today that International Relations (IR) theory ought to engage with philosophy as a meta-knowledge capable of grounding and legitimizing knowledge claims in the discipline. Two assumptions seem to lie behind this expectation: first, that only philosophy can supply the necessary meta-theoretical grounding needed; second, that theory is inherently a philosophical register of knowledge. This article treats these assumptions with scepticism. While not denying philosophy’s contribution to IR theory, the article makes the case for contextual intellectual history as an alternative mode of political and international theory. It seeks to shed light on the ‘philosophization of IR’ by depicting the broad contours of the historical and continuing rivalry between philosophy and history in the humanities and social sciences and, by reference to Machiavelli and Renaissance humanism, reminding the discipline of IR of the value of studying politics and international relations in a historical mode.

The history of international thought and International Relations theory: from context to interpretation

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hall
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In ◽  
International Thought

Over the past two decades, historians of international thought have markedly improved our understanding of the disciplinary history of International Relations (IR) and its wider intellectual history. During that period, ‘contextualism’ has become a leading approach in the field, as it has been for half a century in the history of political thought. This article argues that while the application of contextualism in IR has improved our understanding of its disciplinary history, its assumptions about the proper relationship between historians and theorists threaten to marginalise the history of international thought within IR. It argues that unless the inherent weaknesses in contextualism are recognised, the progress made in the field will go unrecognised by a discipline that sees little reason to engage with its history. It suggests that historians of international thought adopt an extensively modified version of contextualism that would allow them to rebuild bridges back into IR, especially IR theory.

Critical International Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Devetak
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Civil Government

Whether inspired by the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the impact of critical theory on the study of international relations has grown considerably since its advent in the early 1980s. This book offers the first intellectual history of critical international theory. Richard Devetak approaches this history by locating its emergence in the rising prestige of theory and the theoretical persona. As theory’s prestige rose in the discipline of international relations it opened the way for normative and metatheoretical reconsiderations of the discipline and the world. The book traces the lines of intellectual inheritance through the Frankfurt School to the Enlightenment, German idealism, and historical materialism, to reveal the construction of a particular kind of intellectual persona: the critical international theorist who has mastered reflexive, dialectical forms of social philosophy. In addition to the extensive treatment of critical theory’s reception and development in international relations, the book recovers a rival form of theory that originates outside the usual inheritance of critical international theory in Renaissance humanism and the civil Enlightenment. This historical mode of theorising was intended to combat metaphysical encroachments on politics and international relations and to prioritise the mundane demands of civil government over the self-reflective demands of dialectical social philosophies. By proposing contextualist intellectual history as a form of critical theory, Critical International Theory: An Intellectual History defends a mode of historical critique that refuses the normative temptations to project present conceptions onto an alien past, and to abstract from the offices of civil government.

Relations, Human and Non-human

2020 ◽  
pp. 106-135
Author(s):  
Milja Kurki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Social

This chapter argues for an extension of how we think relationally via relational cosmology. It places relational cosmology in a conversation with varied relational perspectives in critical social theory and argues that specific kinds of extensions and dialogues emerge from this perspective. In particular, a conversation on how to think relationality without fixing its meaning is advanced. This chapter also discusses in detail how to extend beyond discussion of ‘human’ relationalities towards comprehending the wider ‘mesh’ of relations that matter but are hard to capture for situated knowers in the social sciences and IR. This key chapter seeks to provide the basis for a translation between relational cosmology, critical social theory, critical humanism and International Relations theory.

Integrating anxiety into international relations theory: Hobbes, existentialism, and ontological security

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahar Rumelili
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Existentialist Philosophy

This article draws on Hobbes and existentialist philosophy to contend that anxiety needs to be integrated into international relations (IR) theory as a constitutive condition, and proposes theoretical avenues for doing so. While IR scholars routinely base their assumptions regarding the centrality of fear and self-help behavior on the Hobbesian state of nature, they overlook the Hobbesian emphasis on anxiety as the human condition that gives rise to the state of nature. The first section of the article turns to existentialist philosophy to explicate anxiety's relation to fear, multiple forms, and link to agency. The second section draws on some recent interpretations to outline the role that anxiety plays in Hobbesian thought. Finally, I argue that an ontological security (OS) perspective that is enriched by insights from existentialism provides the most appropriate theoretical venue for integrating anxiety into IR theory and discuss the contributions of this approach to OS studies and IR theory.

Introduction: Diversity and Disciplinarity in International Relations Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Steve Smith
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World

This text argues that theory is central to explaining International Relations (IR) and that the discipline of IR is much more relevant to the world of international relations than it has been at any point in its history. Some chapters cover distinct IR theories ranging from realism/structural realism to liberalism/neoliberalism, the English school, constructivism, Marxism, critical theory, feminism, poststructuralism, green theory, and postcolonialism. Oher chapters explore International Relations theory and its relationship to social science, normative theory, globalization, and the discipline’s identity. This introduction explains why this edition has chosen to cover these theories, reflects on international theory and its relationship to the world, and considers the kind of assumptions about theory that underlie each of the approaches.

Foregrounding ontology: dualism, monism, and IR theory

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICK THADDEUS JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Knowledge Claims

AbstractWhile the recent proliferation in philosophical discussions in International Relations indicates a welcome increase in the discipline’s conceptual sophistication, a central issue has gone relatively unremarked: the question of how to understand the relationship between scholarly observers and their observed objects. This classical philosophical problem has a number of implications for the conduct of inquiry in the discipline, and raises particular challenges for the status of knowledge-claims advanced by constructivists. I clarify these issues and challenges by distinguishing between ‘dualist’ and ‘monist’ ontological standpoints, in the hope of provoking a more focused philosophical discussion.

A response: why epistemology matters in international theory

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Hollis ◽  
Steve Smith
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Relationship

In their rejoinder to our recent article, Vivienne Jabri and Stephen Chan argue that we have privileged epistemology at the expense of ontology. We welcome this engagement with our continuing discussion of the relationship between epistemology and ontology in international relations theory, and will confine our response to three main points: their interpretation of our argument, their use of the work of Giddens, and their arguments about the nature of epistemology in International Relations.

Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory

2006 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
MILJA KURKI
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Causal Analysis ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Constitutive Theory ◽  
Ir Theory

During the last decades ‘causation’ has been a deeply divisive concept in International Relations (IR) theory. While the positivist mainstream has extolled the virtues of causal analysis, many post-positivist theorists have rejected the aims and methods of causal explanation in favour of ‘constitutive’ theorising. It is argued here that the debates on causation in IR have been misleading in that they have been premised on, and have helped to reify, a rather narrow empiricist understanding of causal analysis. It is suggested that in order to move IR theorising forward we need to deepen and broaden our understandings of the concept of cause. Thereby, we can radically reinterpret the causal-constitutive theory divide in IR, as well as redirect the study of world politics towards more constructive multi-causal and complexity-sensitive analyses.

International theory: new directions?

1981 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 173-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brown
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
International Theory ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Potential Sources ◽  
The 1960S

The last ‘great debate’ in international relations theory occurred in the 1960s, was concerned primarily with matters of method rather than substance, and eventually was called off due to lack of interest. The battle between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘scientists’ was short-lived. The so-called ‘post-behavioural’ revolution in political science conceded some part of the traditionalist case, but the more significant factor in the conclusion of the debate was the prevalence of an attitude of live and let live. Tolerance over method is a virtue in a relatively underdeveloped discipline, for who can predict the shape of future knowledge or the potential sources of insight? Unfortunately, a by-product of tolerance over methodological issues has been the development of such differences over matters of substance that the existence of a coherent discipline is called into question. Perhaps a new ‘great debate’ is called for, this time on matters of substance.

International Relations Theory, International Law, and the Regime Governing Atrocities in Internal Conflicts

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Abbott
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Over the last ten years, international relations (IR) theory, a branch of political science, has animated some of the most exciting scholarship in international law.1 If a true joint discipline has not yet emerged,2 scholars in both fields have clearly established the value of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. Yet IR—like international law—comprises several distinct theoretical approaches or “methods.” While this complexity makes interactions between the disciplines especially rich, it also makes them difficult to explore concisely. This essay thus constitutes something of a minisymposium in itself: it summarizes the four principal schools of IR theory—conventionally identified as “realist,” “institutionalist,” “liberal” and “constructivist”—and then applies them to the norms and institutions governing serious violations of human dignity during internal conflicts (the “atrocities regime”).

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