Political Theory and the Functions of Intellectual History: a Response to Emmanuel Navon

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Political Theory and the Functions of Intellectual History: a Response to Emmanuel Navon Review of International Studies (2003), 29, 151–160 Copyright © British International Studies Association DOI: 10.1017/S026021050300010X Political theory and the functions of intellectual history: a response to Emmanuel Navon DUNCAN S. A. BELL* Words may, through the devotion, the skill, the passion, and the luck of writers prove to be the most powerful thing in the world.1 Introduction In his recent article Emmanuel Navon offers a scathing critique of the so-called ‘Third Debate’ in International Relations (IR). In short, he argues that the issues that he considers to have infused and shaped the ‘first debate’ (clashing visions of human nature) and the ‘second debate’ (clashing visions of knowledge) remain pertinent, indeed central to IR theory. He thus seeks to challenge the ‘very relevance’ of the ‘third debate’, claiming that it is chimerical, composed of hollow post- modernist rhetoric and the re-hashed ideas of constructivism.2 In this brief reply I challenge these assertions, and in so doing offer a broad defence of an alternative mode of historical interpretation. Firstly, I argue that Navon employs a problematic approach to intellectual history and that consequently he misconceives the evolutionary trajectory of the discipline, and the nature of the purported ‘debates’. The critique is then widened into a general defence of inter- pretative contextualism: this hermeneutic method is of great utility in furthering IR’s disciplinary self-understanding, and, perhaps more importantly, it can help to further enrich contemporary theoretical discourse. In the final section I criticise briefly Navon’s inaccurate view of recent IR and in particular his cavalier caricatures of constructivism and postmodernism. * I would like to thank the following (in no particular order) for reading earlier drafts of this essay and/or for discussing the issues raised in it: Istvan Hont, Quentin Skinner, John Dunn, Marc Stears, Casper Sylvest, Ian Hall, Charles Jones, Mike Boyle, Maria Neophytou and the editors of the Review. All the usual disclaimers apply. 1 William Golding, Nobel Lecture, http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1983/golding-lecture.html 2 Emmanuel Navon, ‘The “Third Debate” revisited’, Review of International Studies, 27 (2001), pp. 611–27; quotation at p. 611. 151 152 Duncan S. A. Bell Before proceeding, I would stress my agreement with Navon on a number of points. Foremost amongst them is the need for IR to engage more systematically with history, and in particular the history of political thought (hereafter HPT).3 We cannot understand where we are today without a comprehensive appreciation of how we got here, of the ideas, practices and institutions that have shaped the world and our relationship to it.4 Indeed, it can be argued that IR is currently witnessing the dawn of a ‘historiographical turn’, albeit faint and partially obscured from main- stream view.5 Furthermore, IR theorists should be deeply concerned with philo- sophical questions pertaining to rationality, knowledge and ‘human nature’. Finally, Navon is correct to argue that the critique of rationalism does not necessarily imply the rejection of political realism6 (or indeed an endorsement of constructivism or postmodernism). Great debates? Before moving to the specific question of the ‘debates’, it is first necessary to challenge Navon’s problematic approach to intellectual history. His rudimentary survey of the history of philosophy serves to conceal more than it exposes; and the schematic, disembodied method he utilises is today widely regarded as obsolete.7 In place of the ‘perennial questions’ approach to philosophy, supposedly elucidated in the sacred canon of Western thought, a far more plausible hermeneutic method to adopt is a form of linguistic contextualism. Here it is necessary to exercise some caution, as there is a danger that such a method could be misunderstood (or read too narrowly).8 The best-known exponent of contextualism is Quentin Skinner, who argues that in order to grasp the meaning of an utterance it is necessary first to situate it in the linguistic context(s) in which it was fashioned originally.9 Skinner’s own methodology is derived from a complex and sometimes unstable mixture of analytic philosophy of language, R. G. Collingwood’s Hegelian-inspired idealism, 3 For the sake of concision I refer throughout to HPT, although the arguments apply to any form of intellectual history. 4 I examine some of these issues in Duncan S. A. Bell, ‘Language, Legitimacy, and the Project of Critique’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 27 (2002). 5 As explored in Duncan S. A. Bell, ‘International Relations: The Dawn of a Historiographical Turn?’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 3 (2001), pp. 115–26. 6 It is debateable, however, whether many people would make this claim (except in relation to über- rationalist neorealism). See Alistair Murray, Reconstructing Realism: Between Power Politics and Cosmopolitan Ethics (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1997) and Roger Spegele, Political Realism in International Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 7 David Runciman, ‘History of Political Thought: State of the Discipline’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 3 (2001), pp. 84–104. 8 Gerald Holden has recently provided a useful summary of IR misinterpretations of Quentin Skinner’s contextualism, and argued that employing his ideas could be useful for IR’s disciplinary history; however, it is noticeable that Holden does not engage other related modes of contextualism. Holden, ‘Who Contextualises the Contextualisers? Disciplinary History and the Discourse about IR Discourse’, Review of International Studies, 28 (2002), pp. 253–79. 9 Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See also Skinner, ‘From Hume’s Intentions to Deconstruction and Back’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 4 (1996), pp. 142–54; and James Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Oxford: Polity, 1987). A response to Emmanuel Navon 153 and (late) Wittgensteinian insights.10 However, although he has provided the most systematic articulation of the contextualist creed (as well as the most cogent critique of previous forms of HPT interpretation), not all contextualists are Skinnerian.11 What binds contextualists together, if anything, is the general distrust of older modes of historical interpretation (for example, Namierite or Straussian) rather than one strict methodology for transcending them. While not all contextualists would agree therefore with Skinner’s specific philosophical stance, the general thrust of his project – which is to say the historicisation of political thought and the attempt to locate texts within their original terms of reference – is central to contextualism as a broad approach. For contextualists, it is dangerous to strip texts from their multiple idea-environ- ments, for in so doing their meaning can be lost, or distorted beyond recognition. With Hobbes, for example: Unless we are prepared to ask what Hobbes is doing in Leviathan, and to seek the answers by relating his work to the prevailing conventions of political argument at the time, we can never hope to elucidate the precise character of his counter-revolutionary theory of political obligation, nor can we hope to understand the precise role of his epistemology in relation to his political thought.12 In placing Hobbes in context(s), the simplistic interpretation of him as a realist avatar – so common in the IR literature – is disrupted by a more nuanced, rounded understanding of his thought.13 Instead of contextualism, Navon deploys what we may call a ‘textualist’ methodology. The textualist approaches canonical works in order to uncover ageless wisdom presented in answer to eternal questions, whether they concern the nature of the state, justice, or human behaviour. In order to answer the prelapsarian question ‘what way is best to live?’ the textualist would dutifully produce her well-thumbed copy of the Republic,ofLeviathan and of A Theory of Justice in order to compare and contrast the respective answers therein. This is the resolutely non-historical method that Navon utilises, with one anomalous exception (on which see the fourth Section below). 10 Methodological criticisms of Skinner usually orbit around (1) his conception of ‘intention’, (2) the ontological status – and potential scope of – a linguistic context, and (3) analytic speech act theory. Samples can be found in Tully, Meaning and Context and Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Cf. Skinner, ‘A Reply to My Critics’, in Tully, Meaning and Context, pp. 231–59, and Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. 1. 11 Other related forms of contextualism are explored in Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Introduction: the State of the Art’, in his Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); John Dunn, ‘The History of Political Theory,’ in Dunn, The History of Political Theory and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk (eds.), The History of Political Thought in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and John Burrow, Stefan Collini, and Donald Winch, That Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge:
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