Introduction

Notes Introduction 1. The study of ontological patterns of universalism and particularism from Greek and Roman antiquity to twentieth-century IR shall find that this general typ- ology has to be subdivided according to historically varying modes of thinking. The main subtypology differentiates between ‘universal’ and ‘universalistic’, both opposed to ‘particularistic’ (and, as will be seen towards the end of this study, as also opposed to ‘universalized’ thinking as a stream of particularism). The distinc- tion between ‘universal’ and ‘universalistic’ applies to a transformation which can be identified between (universal) political thought in the Greek and Roman antiquity and Christian political philosophy and (universalistic) political thought from the sixteenth to the end of eighteenth century. Although both share the idea of some metaphysical superstructure which applies to all politics and integrates political communities into a common framework of humanity, they differ, however, in that universal thinking relates to the notion of some principles which exist for all men and societies in their own right in and for themselves while universalistic thinking proposes that the existence and realization of those principles goes back to human agency. See more on this in Chapter V.1. 2. The same argument with regard to the historic development of international political thought is made by Nicholas G. Onuf (1998) who argues that it would be ‘anachronistic to speak of international thought – that is, ways that are spe- cific to the world of states – before there was such a world. In republican times, there could be no international thought. Because republicanism took a world of pol itics, not states, as its frame of reference ... We say ... that republicanism came to an end ... more or less at the end of the eighteenth century’ (1998, pp. 3, 10) when, as Onuf further argues, liberalism (and nationalism) became dominant in both domestic and international theory. I do not engage with Onuf’s conceptualizations of ‘republicanism’ and ‘liberalism’ here. I fundamentally share, however, his view about a legacy (which he calls republican) in political thought and theory from antiquity to Kant whose referential framework is constituted by an ontology which focuses on the ‘common good’ of politics undivided in a domestic and an international sphere but instead construed as one res republica of people and peoples in which all mankind participates. 3. It is because of the historical dimension of this debate that the term international as well as subordinated concepts such as sovereignty, foreign policy, and inter national law – in short, all imaginaries which suggest some form of ‘inside’/’outside’- divide – are indeed inappropriate and appear to create historically insensitive and false anachronisms because they refer to, and depend upon, the existence of ‘nations’, nation-states, and subcategorized conceptualizations. Obviously, not all political units in history, however, have been ‘nations’, or nation-states. The modern mind in and of IR, academically and politically, is, however, strongly inclined to these terms, categories, and related scripts, and possible alternatives (like ‘inter-poleis’ or ‘inter-imperii’) sound foreign. Therefore, the term international and subordinated concepts will be used here also with historical reference 247 248 Notes to pre-nineteenth-century authors and ideas even if historiographical cor- rectness would require new terminologies. When referring to authors and texts from the nineteenth century and onwards, however, I will use the term in a slightly different form, namely, as ‘inter-national’ with a hyphen. In case the term is used in an unspecific way as well as in relation to the discipline, it shall be spelled out as international (without hyphen). 4. I use the terms International Politics and International Relations synonymously here; differences will be addressed in Chapters III.2 and IV. 5. This grouping can be observed in most writings on international political thought and IR; see, for example Russell, 1936; Wolfers, 1956; Forsyth et al., 1970; Knutsen, 1992; Pangle and Ahrensdorf, 1999. 6. For this argument, see also Ruggie, 1993. The concept of genealogy is borrowed from Michel Foucault (especially 1972) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1990). A com- prehensive genealogy would here also include a sociology-of-knowledge perspective as well as a historical approach studying the influence of social and political history on the development of international political thought. A sociology of knowledge-perspective will be methodologically elaborated later trying to explain ‘misreadings’ in IR (see Chapter IV.2). 7. See in this regard especially Hegel’s sections on ‘International Law’ in his Philosophy of Right and the opening citation in the beginning; more on this in Chapter III.1.1. 8. The pattern of ‘universalism’ and ‘particularism’ is also emphasized as an important feature of international political thought by Chris Brown, Terry Nardin, and Nicholas Rengger (2002; also Brown, 1997). Whereas they suggest a categorization of certain authors across history which could be identified as representing either universal or particularistic concepts of international/international politics and do not further inquire in this pattern, I will suggest a gene- alogical perspective. 9. See, for example, R. B. J. Walker, Andrew Linklater, Graham Evans, Edward Keenes, Miles Kahler, William Scheuerman, and Michael C. Williams. 10. The argument about a main historical shift of the ontology of international political thought from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century is not ignorant of another, huge divide between modern (Newtonian) and ancient/medieval science about their crucial metaphysical differences with which this argument would be fundamentally at odds. Although the epistemological categories of science indeed changed around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (see most instructively Burtt, 1954), they nevertheless shared their ontological interest in looking at the world as one universal whole with ancient and medieval philoso- phies. This ontology – and this seems to be particularly relevant for international politics – only changed at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. We should hence differentiate between an epistemological and an ontological modernity. 11. A similar understanding of the term ontology of international politics can be found in Heikki Patomaeki’s and Colin Wight’s article on ‘After Postpositivism?’ (2000), which, apart from that useful conception, largely reiterates (however, important) philosophical trivialities of social sciences (such as the ontological and methodo- logical difference of social and natural sciences and the self-perception of societies as the analytical focus of political science) which have been discussed much more clearly by, for example, Eric Voegelin and Alfred Schütz. 12. A comparison between the nineteenth-century ‘standards of civilization’ and, for example, Thomas Aquinas’s approach to ‘inter-religious’ and intercultural Notes 249 dialogue (according to his Summa contra Gentiles) – the former based on univer- salizations of one’s own political and cultural standards, the latter based on a notion of universal human reason and natural law – makes this difference very clear. Another example to illustrate this difference between universalism and particularism – which, at the same time, provides an argument against the view that also in Greek antiquity, for instance, particularistic concepts appear divid- ing mankind into different groups of peoples created in ‘inside’-‘outside’-dualism (such as the division between ‘Greeks’ and ‘barbarians’ by Aristotle, Herodotus, and others) – relates to the epistemological grounding of such divisions. Whereas the division between Greeks and barbarians – as paradoxical as this might appear at first glance – rests on a common and universal anthropology which assigns a subordinate status of barbarians ‘only’ due to social and political criteria, nineteenth-century views of peoples’ differences (such as foreshadowed by Johann Gottfried Herder in the middle of the eighteenth century and later on solidified in biological theories of nationalism and residentialism) are grounded in (con- structed) ontological and substantial differences and posit a ‘natural’ character and particularity of single peoples. For more on this, see Chapters III; see also Fink-Eitel, 1994; Marx, 1977, 1982; Behr, 1998, 2005; Kleinschmidt, 2004. 13. References here are, for example, Waltz, 1954, 1979; Keohane, 1983, 1986; Gilpin, 1984; Kaplan, 1966, 1979. 14. This construction can be seen in, and seems to start with, Kenneth Waltz’s Man, the State and War (1954) and his interpretation of Jean Jacques Rousseau; and it continues with Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979) and his article ‘Realist Thought and Neo-realist Theory’ (1990). This construction is also present in the ‘English School’; see more on this in Chapters III.2 and IV. 15. For this term, see Richard Rorty, 1984, p. 56, in his reflections about different approaches to the historiography of philosophy. 16. Another critical view of this construction comes from Michael C. Williams who notes: ‘(Claims) about the Realist tradition function as forms of legitimization, conforming the continuing validity of “Realist” principles throughout history, and appropriating the authority of classical figures in political theory in their support. Indeed, the claim that there

Load more