A History of International Political Theory: Ontologies of the International

A History of International Political Theory

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A History of International Political Theory Ontologies of the International

Hartmut Behr Professor of International Politics, Newcastle University, UK

© Hartmut Behr 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–52486–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Mathias

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Contents Preface

ix

Acknowledgements

xi

Introduction The problematic and research questions Implications Conceptual remarks The structure of the book

1 1 5 11 17

Part I I.1

I.2

Universalism in Greek and Roman Antiquity and Christian Political Philosophy

Greek and Roman Antiquity 1. Thucydides 2. Cicero Christian Political Pragmatism and Ethical Universalism – Aurelius Augustine and Thomas Aquinas 1. Prolegomena 2. Political pragmatism in Augustine and Aquinas 3. Transcendental universalism and the intelligibility of order: Peace and justice

23 23 35 50 50 53 60

Part II Universalistic Thinking from Early Modern Times to Enlightenment II.1

II.2

Universalistic Thinking in Christian Legal Philosophy – Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria 1. Prolegomena 2. Universalistic human rights and their extension beyond Europe 3. Jurisdiction as landmark and guarantor for universal human rights and just war Universalistic Frameworks in Early Modern Political Theory 1. Niccolo Machiavelli 2. Thomas Hobbes 3. Immanuel Kant

vii

75 75 80 88 100 100 115 130

viii

Contents

Part III The Emergence of Particularism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries III.1

III.2

Philosophies of ‘National Interest’ 1. Hegel on ‘international law’ 2. National monumental historiography 3. Geopolitical thought Manufacturing Inter-National Cooperation – The English School 1. Hegelian legacies and the ‘international system’ 2. From Hegel to international cooperation?

141 141 152 161 177 177 186

Part IV The Triumph of Particularism in Twentieth-Century International Relations Theory IV.1

IV.2

Neo-Realism and the ‘Scientification’ of International Political Theory 1. Solipsistic ontology and epistemology 2. The inevitability of conflict ‘Misreadings’ in IR: Reassessing Morgenthau, Ideology Critique, and the Reification Problem 1. The ‘realism’ – neo-realism ‘unity’ 2. Explaining misreadings: Ideology critique and the reification of ‘the’ political Part V

V.1 V.2

197 198 207 210 211 219

Instead of A Conclusion – Towards Renewed Ontology(ies)

Universal, Universalistic – Universalized A Loss of Ethics, or the Reinvention of Universal Thinking in Global Politics? 1. Outline of an ethics of humanity in the international/world/global 2. Questions towards discourses on/of global politics

229 238 241 245

Notes

247

Bibliography

272

Name Index

293

Subject Index

297

Preface This book is motivated and informed by several concerns and approaches, and each can serve as an avenue to its themes and arguments. The further my writing progressed, the more and more perspectives and themes of this study came to mind, sometimes to a point which scared me and where I was wondering whether, and how, I could resist the temptation to pack too much into a single piece. The reason for this fear and wondering lies in the many miracles, surprises, and astonishments about the discipline of International Relations, experienced by someone who has not been trained in an US or British department/school of International Relations, but who, though sniffing the air of such places, has been educated in continental European academia as a student of political philosophy, history, and sociology. From such a (valuable) outsider’s position, some synoptic views might have arisen and may come to bear in this study which were otherwise eventually obstructed; and I dare to say that one sees many such miracles, surprises, and astonishments in and about IR, especially with regard to how the discipline invents and invented, defends and defended itself, particularly its US and UK artifacts. Such strategies of invention and defense always depend on myths, stories, and historiographies about the world (of international politics) and the discipline’s (and its representatives’) location in, and position towards, this world. And these myths, stories, and historiographies are the ‘material’ of miracles, surprises, and astonishments. To be more concrete – and the following are avenues to, and side arguments of, the core problematic of this study – my perspective was and still is wondering about the invention of a ‘realist tradition’ in international political thought and IR, which ostensibly started in Greek antiquity and culminated in the twentieth century. I was and I still am astonished by the prevalence and sustainability of this myth as well as by the methods and scholarly attitudes which stand behind those who tell the myth as well as those who believe this story. I was and I still am surprised about the historical and historiographical consciousness, inquiries, and beliefs which float around in IR about ‘structures’, ‘systems’, and ‘societies’ of international politics, their seeming realities, and thereby conditioned perceptions (and legitimizations) of power, war, and violence. I was and I still am astounded about the absence of ontological, epistemological, and ethical self-awareness of the discipline’s mainstream(s), the consequences of this absence, and the widespread domination of methodology and ideology over theory. And last but not least, I trust that the core argument of this study may be well connected with these miracles, surprises, and astonishments, and vice versa.

ix

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Preface

This core argument consists in the observation of two fundamental ontological and epistemological shifts in the history of international political thought and International Relations Theory – from universal to universalistic and, even more decisive, from universalistic to particularistic thinking. These shifts concern nothing less than the manner and concepts of how we as individuals, academics, and politicians alike think about mankind and humanity, war and peace, the relations among political organizations, and the recognition of differences. The imaginations and concepts, which ‘we’ envision with regard to those questions, finally determine ‘our’ locus and positioning in and towards these themes, that is, whether ‘we’ think in universal or particularistic ontologies and epistemologies and with which consequences for mankind and humanity, war and peace, the relations among political organizations, and the recognition of differences; and which forms of agency ‘we’ can think of as academics and politicians to act upon such enduring problems. One might well understand – and I hope the reader will – the difficulty and the apprehension I experienced while I tried to cope with all these concerns in one book, which, however, arose and manifested as intellectual responses to the miracles, surprises and astonishments mentioned above. What I feel I can deliver is to throw some light on distracted but serious problems of which I think they are important for the discipline of IR and its self-awareness. If this book succeeds in delivering such a contribution, I shall be relieved, particularly because my considerations of the last years might then not only have helped me to see more clearly, but they might also inform other students of international politics about further perspectives on and problems of the academic field called IR. Blacksburg, VA, April 2009

Acknowledgements Drafting, conceptualizing, and finally writing a book depend on academic discourses, written and oral, as well as on eventual retreats in egocentrisms and loneliness. Both are embedded in social interaction inasmuch as discourses, on the one hand, need colleagues and academic friends who show themselves interested in one’s own work, topics, and arguments; and retreats, on the other hand, need to be accepted and even eventually encouraged by one’s social environment. Therefore, the end product of academic work is always indebted to colleagues, friends, and family for providing both forms of social interaction, and I am in the lucky position to have found both. I wish to express my gratitude to David B. Bobrow for his encouragement to proceed and investigate my initial questions and arguments; to Helmut Hubel and Manuel Froehlich for their invitation to the Guest Lecture Series of the Department of Political Science, University of Jena; to Harald Kleinschmidt and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JSPS for their invitation to and funding of a visiting professorship at the University of Tsukuba in 2004/2005 while I had a chance to do intensive readings and to learn from many discussions with Harald; to Thom Brooks, Peter Jones, and Ian O’Flynn for their comments on written chapters and many discussions; to Felix Rösch and Joseph Turner for hints on literature and their interest in single arguments and chapters; to Mustapha Kamal Pasha for his invitation to the Sixth Century Politics Lecture Series at the University of Aberdeen, which provided an excellent forum for discussing a final version of my arguments; to Dietrich Jung and the Danish Institute of International Studies for their invitation to present my research and their delivery of an instructive forum for debate; to Michael C. Williams for his intellectual support, discussions of some of my main arguments, and his comments on the manuscript; to Rob Walker for his comments and engagement with my arguments throughout the manuscript; to Gemma d’Arcy Hughes, Alexandra Webster, and Renée Takken from Palgrave Macmillan for their support of this project and their professional guidance through the publication process; to the students of my classes on International Political Thought and International Relations Theory at Newcastle University for their lively participation in inspirational debates on single authors and concepts; to Ioannis Stivachtis, Bettina Koch, and Timothy Luke, Department of Political Science at the Virginia Institute of Technology, for providing collegial support and a great atmosphere while I was finishing the manuscript during my stay as visiting professor in Spring 2009 and their comments on single chapters and

xi

xii Acknowledgements

the whole manuscript; to the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University for granting me an extended research leave, which gave me the necessary time to finish the manuscript; as always and ever, Louisa; and last, but certainly not least, to my wife Manija for her great support of my work and her love.

Introduction

Act so that thou canst will that thy maxim shall become a universal Law whatever may be its end. (Immanuel Kant, On Perpetual Peace, Appendix) The substantive weal of the state is its weal as a particular state in its definite interests and condition ... Thus the government is a particular wisdom and not a universal providence ... in relation to other states, the principle justifying its wars and treaties, is not a general thought ... but the actually wronged or threatened weal in its definite particularity. (G. F. W. Hegel, Philosophy of Rights, §337)

The problematic and research questions The two quotes, which may serve as the starting point for my considerations, indicate a difference in thinking about international/inter-national politics that could hardly be more profound. Whereas the first statement, by Immanuel Kant, suggests universal law as the point of reference for individual action and politics, the second statement, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, claims that the particular well-being and interests of the state provide such referential framework. The question which immediately arises from this juxtaposition is whether these two statements, more or less arbitrarily, stand for just two different positions, such as there are endlessly many on a variety of topics in the history of political thought; or is there more substance to discover with regard to their distinctive difference about universalism and particularism? This study suggests that they represent indeed much more than just a juxtaposition of two individual standpoints, but rather a substantial historical shift in political thought when particularistic conceptualizations of inter-national politics started to prevail over universal and universalistic frameworks. 1

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A History of International Political Theory

At first glance, the profound difference between these two frameworks, of which Kant and Hegel are just two representatives, lies in their diverse, and altered, ontology: while universal and universalistic ontologies have notions such as ‘humanity’, ‘humankind’, and ‘men’ in general as their final referential focus, particularistic ontologies of inter-national politics are ultimately focused on the individual nation-state, its welfare and power. The two different frameworks of universal/universalistic and particularistic thinking not only focus on different images of the world – one divided into individual, solipsistic units, the other constituted as a common assembly of peoples and political communities – but also are informed by different intellectual backgrounds. On the one side, we can observe a cosmos of universal anthropological, divine, legal, political, and ethical concepts which allow to establish a likewise universal focus on humanity, humankind, and men; on the other side, we find particularistic conceptions of a national self, ‘national interest’, national sovereignty, and, over all, national moralities which establish an ontology which is referentially focused on self-contained entities. This study will discuss the shift from universal and universalistic to particularistic ontologies and finally emphasize the emergence of national, particularistic moralities which are part of this shift and which contribute to a loss of ethics in inter-national political thought and theory in the twentieth century. This shift becomes obvious when we look at ideas on war and peace. The shift when particularistic notions began to dominate inter-national political thought and replace universal and universalistic frameworks involves, in addition to an ontological dimension, a transformation of epistemologies from holistic philosophies of order to structuralism and determinism. With the emergence and solidification of particularistic ontology, epistemological dogmas have become popular, which created dualisms between the own nation (‘the self’) and the other nation(s) out there; dualisms which rested on the precondition that such entities are constructed as anchoring ontological fixed points of inter-national politics in the first place. New epistemologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed incisively in the existence of external realities and their permanent structures, which provide the conditions and determinants for inter-national politics and foreign policy strategies of single nation-states. Paradoxically, however, such external realities and structures are constituted by nothing but by nation-states themselves. Here, in the nineteenth century, the (irresolvable, because epistemologically and ontologically grounded) quandary of the primacy between structure (anarchy) and agent (states’ agency), which not only typifies twentieth century ‘neo-realism’, but also largely influenced the theoretical discussions of the whole discipline, has been given birth. Finally, and as a consequence of particularistic ontology and epistemology, a distinct positivist methodology evolved throughout the nineteenth century and influenced the inter-national political theory to come, which, in contrast to

Introduction 3

traditional hermeneutic, interpretative, and speculative metaphysics, considered ‘external realities’, and thus structures of inter-national politics in general, as objective and objectifiable, measurable, and quantifiable. Particularistic ontology, epistemology, and methodology represent the legacies in which the establishment of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline, especially its neo-realist mainstream, is embedded. These legacies are very different from the myth about a perennial ‘realist’ tradition, which would trace throughout the history of political thought and would date back to Greek antiquity, a myth which was constructed by IR mainstream as a consequence of the particularistic paradigm and its ideologization. This paradigm is liable for selective (mis)readings of political thought and contemporary ‘dissident voices’ – which were and are, even though well positioned within the discipline, critical towards the mainstream (as, for example, Hans J. Morgenthau in the early decades of the discipline) – , ignoring and neglecting their universal and anti-particularistic frameworks. In the light of this development, this study will discuss authors and schools of political thought from Greek and Roman antiquity, the early and late Middle Ages, the early modern times, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and finally from the discipline of IR, and contextualize them in the spectrum between universal, universalistic, and particularistic thinking.1 Throughout this discussion, the argument will be developed that particularistic ontology and epistemology are phenomena of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and that the discipline of IR is a child of these particularistic intellectual legacies as they primarily emerged through, and manifested in, Hegelian philosophy, national historiography, and geopolitical tenets; whereas until the end of the eighteenth century, we witness the dominance of modes of political thought which, with obviously different degrees and varying styles of universal and universalistic conceptualizations, retrieved their ontologies and epistemologies from visions of political order which transcend political communities and hence integrate them with reference to some general ‘common good’.2 Meanwhile, while the twentieth century has come to an end, a body of literature emerged in IR which is critical to our discipline’s theoretical and methodological development, asking for and claiming new approaches in an era of global politics. However, neither nationalism nor particularistic ontology appears to be outdated, neither in the discipline, nor in foreign policy conduct. The ontological, epistemological, and methodological shortfalls of particularistic, dualistic, and structuralist theorizing became nevertheless more and more obvious to the discipline. What does this mean for the problematique of universal and particularistic thinking? What are the ontological and epistemological frameworks of (post-positivist) theories of global politics, global society, and global justice? Do they, and do they want at all, revitalize and retrieve universal notions of politics? Or do they dispose over alternative frameworks, outside historical patterns of universalism and/or

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A History of International Political Theory

particularism? These are questions, which arise and pressure for answers since those new theories look explicitly beyond the nation-state at global politics and society. What, so has to be asked finally with regard to the problematique of this study, are the practical implications and consequences of universal and/or particularistic ontologies and epistemologies in theorizing relations among ‘states’? This question touches upon one of the big themes in international political thought and IR: that of war and peace. How is peace thinkable, how can peace be theorized, and what are the political implications for peaceable politics in a world divided into monadic entities, which are perceived (and which perceive themselves) in structural opposition to other, likewise organized units? And is war a normal condition, a continuation of politics with different means (Clausewitz), in a world of, and under the ontological conditions of, dualistically constructed national interests? Is the jus ad bellum of sovereign nation-states a logical consequence of actors who seek – and who need to seek because of the ontological and epistemological architecture of dualistic conceptualizations of oppositional ‘self’ and ‘other’ – for permanent affirmation of their identity and power? What are the answers of authors who advocate universal and universalistic ontologies to the problem of war and peace among political communities? And how far do they differ from particularistic outlooks? These are the kind of questions around which this study and its discussions centre. An interesting coincidence is that the authors who shall be studied here to investigate patterns of universalism and particularism raise those questions themselves by thematizing war and peace, providing very different answers and considerations according to their fundamental ontological outlooks. Nevertheless, the discussion of thoughts on war and peace serves as an authentic foil which reflects the problematique of universal and particularistic theorizing, and vice versa. Debating different conceptualizations of war and peace, and related questions, throughout the history of international political thought and in IR should not preclude, however, any balanced assessment of the positives and negatives of both universal/universalistic and particularistic patterns. However, the argument made above about the emergence of particularistic thinking in the nineteenth century and its legacies in twentieth-century IR and a subsequent loss of universal ethics is inclined to conclude that a genuine conflict pattern exists of a world divided into national units and entities and to criticize its theoretical, and practical, affirmation by an intellectual climate of related ontologies and epistemologies. Saying this does not imply uncritical praise of universal and universalistic thinking or a naïve assumption that international political thought and practice based on, and informed by, these respective frameworks would be, or would have been, genuinely more peaceable. Nor does my argument imply that there would be some kind of linear, evident, or easy way

Introduction 5

from particularistic to universal/universalistic politics, or the other way around. I am also aware of the undesirable tendencies of both universalism/ universality and particularism, respectively, to develop either into political imperii or solipsism and nationalisms. There is, however, one theoretical consideration which leans towards the presumption that universal/universalistic notions are more conducive to international sociability and community among political bodies than particularistic ones: and that is with regard to the crucial question of How can we create international order which is common, sociable, and peaceable to all its members? What are the ontological and epistemological principles of such creation and construction? And can such creation succeed from the starting point of units construed as substantially singular, divided, and solipsistic? Here, universal and universalistic approaches have at least a heuristic advantage over particularistic concepts, and they yet seem epistemologically necessary to be principally able to create, open up, and mutually debate options for commonalities, common goods, and common order – according to the metaphor implied in the narration of Henry David Thoreau, a nineteenth-century American dissident in a culture of nationalism, about his conversation with an Indian, named Polis: ‘I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary. I am not sure but all that would tempt me to teach the Indian my religion would be his promise to teach me his’ (quoted by Connolly, 1996, p. 149). Or, to quote R. B. J. Walker: ‘The most pressing questions of the age call not only for concrete policy options to be offered to existing elites and institutions but also, and more crucially, for a serious rethinking of the ways in which it is possible for human beings to live together’ (Walker, 1993, p. 7; italics mine) and hence to negotiate and renegotiate the current ontological and epistemological conditions under which such political ways and possibilities can be found. Implications What frameworks exist for theorizing and finally acting upon the problem of commonality and sociability among political bodies? Is it common interests, such as in security, development, environment, and so on? Is it shared political goals and common goods? Is it cultural heritage and values? Is it common ethics? Is it the similarity of domestic political systems which generate common agendas and goals in foreign politics? Is it their association with common legal standards? Is it shared economic interests? Is it international/inter-national law? Or are political bodies genuinely egocentric actors who link with others only because of temporary individual advantages and selfish interests? When we consult international/inter-national political thought, both historically and as it manifests in twentieth- and twenty-first-century IR Theory, we find a wide spectrum of very different answers. At the same time, the historical background of those answers is made up by a wide spectrum of different forms of ‘international’ order constituted by political

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A History of International Political Theory

bodies as divergent as poleis and city states, empires, states and nationstates, and global polities. Regardless of their embedment in different historic epochs and sociopolitical contexts, however, there is a lasting debate in political thought and modern IR about the question of what grounds international co- operation and sociability.3 A historical perspective reminds us that political order can have very different shapes and can be constituted upon a multitude of principles; we also learn that what underpins the dominant paradigms of nineteenth-century inter-national political thought and twentieth-century International Politics/Relations,4 namely, the assumption that political bodies are organized as nation-states and are functionally similar (as the predominant neo-realist paradigm teaches), is far from being a historical truth or ‘structure’. There is no naturally or structurally set international/inter-national order and subsequently no evident answer to the questions mentioned above. The question of what constitutes international cooperation and sociability has been discussed by philosophers and politicians throughout human history, regardless of their social, political, and cultural differences. For students of political thought and IR, the question arises how to categorize those answers. Many categorizations have been made: the most prominent one is presumably Martin Wight’s differentiation of ‘rationalist’, ‘realist’, and ‘revolutionist’ approaches (Wight and Butterfield, 1967); others talk of patterns of international political theory such as ‘empirical realism’, ‘universal moral order’, and ‘historical reasoning’ (as Boucher, 1998). All such categorizations appear to operate along the basic differentiation and assume the existence of two basic trajectories in international political thought called ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ (or ‘moralism’ and ‘normativism’) and assign authors across history into one or the other camp. Instead of grouping authors into an ‘idealist’ and ‘realist’ dichotomy or to identify common intellectual frameworks across history into which they can be pigeonholed, I agree with Edward Keene who criticizes the notion ‘that theories can be grouped into schools of thought or intellectual traditions’, an effort which had ‘occupied an extremely prominent place in the history of international political thought’ (Keene, 2005, p. 35) and who argues that ‘more attention needs to be paid to methods which help us to appreciate the importance of change and discontinuity in the field’ (of international political thought and IR theory; Keene, 2005, p. 5). In contrast to Keene, however, who puts emphasis on ‘the immediate historical context within which ideas about international politics have been developed’ and who is concerned ‘with identifying and explaining the fundamental ideas and concepts that thinkers have used to make sense of their international political environments’ (2005, p. 5), I shall suggest a different focus on genealogical shifts in the theorizing of international/international politics.6 Such a genealogy suggests two major shifts. First, we can observe a transformation which occurs at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the rise of nationalist thought and the

Introduction 7

nation-state as the prevailing pattern of political order. This transformation is characterized by the decline of universal thinking. Whereas international political thought prior to the nineteenth century showed strong tendencies to envision and to found unifying principles between political bodies, which created some form of communalities, connectedness, and ‘in-between’, inter-national thought arising at the beginning of the nineteenth century started increasingly to view political bodies as nationally self- contained and solipsistic political entities. Paradoxically, each of these units is being construed as an entity superior to other such entities. Such entities, as becomes most obvious in, and was set out by, the German philosopher Hegel, were thought of as being interested above anything else in their individual well-being.7 According to this particularistic ontology, cooperation and common politics shall only be initiated when, and as long as, they correspond with the particular interest of the individual state. This outlook means a fundamental break in constructing and thinking about international politics since political thought prior to this shift was informed by political, economic, legal, cultural, noetic, and, last but not least, ethical principles which apply, or should apply, universally to all political bodies and would thus create some form of universal unity among them.8 This first part of my categorization suggests a view on international political thought which is at odds with two mainstream assumptions widely popular in the discipline of IR. It shares, however, common views with an emerging body of critical literature in our field.9 This view is critical to the construction of a historically long-standing ‘realist’ tradition in international politics which is construed as dating back to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and as comprising authors like Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. Contrary to this construction, it will be argued here that a realist understanding of international politics can be explicitly found in, however not before, Hegel while from Hegelian philosophy there is a direct line leading to the IR school of thought of neo-realism. What authors from such different times and political settings as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes – but also other pre-nineteenth-century authors as, for example, Bartolomé de las Casas, Francisco de Vitoria, and Immanuel Kant – have in common, and what at the same time differentiates their outlook from the way of viewing inter-national politics, which became predominant in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (with some exceptions), is their ontology of connecting and unifying principles which are said to exist among political units and which refer to universal/universalistic doctrines. There is another important consequence of this interpretation, which affects our understanding of international politics and the construction of its history: It appears to be a popular assumption in, and reading of, international politics that different political principles operate ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ a political body. This assumption holds that there would be ‘order’ inside and ‘chaos’ and ‘anarchy’ outside, and that those principles ordering

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A History of International Political Theory

a political body domestically would be repealed outside in the inter-national sphere. We will see, however, that this understanding is quite modern and emerged only because of the abandonment of premodern concepts of universal unity among states and of universal principles of political order which would operate both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. In contrast, the modern outlook posits a plethora of atomistic sovereign states and thus replaced the belief in the existence of unifying, universal principles which are held to be valid for all politics. ‘When the modern state system arrived’, Jens Bartelson notes, ‘this distinction [between the domestic and the international; HB] has been integral to international political theory by marking it off from theories of domestic politics ... If the domestic “inside” gradually has become associated with the presence of unity, order, and peaceful progress, so the international “outside” has simultaneously been characterized by the absence of these conditions. It is the realm of plurality, anarchy, and war’ (Bartelson, 1995, p. 255; also Walker, 1993; Onuf, 1998). The modern ‘inside’-‘outside’ dichotomy and its solidification in international political thought throughout the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century is not only a contingent phenomenon due to the loss and abandonment of universal international thought, but it also ignores the politicohistorical reality of international politics, which throughout history was, aside from wars, also one of cooperation, treaty systems, and mutual cultural influences between communities. In addition to this, this dichotomy is ignorant of the reality of domestic politics which is, not less than international politics, characterized by violent struggles about the ‘right’ order (and problematizations of political legitimacy, resistance, social contracts, and common goods). Domestic politics is far from being ‘naturally’ ordered and peaceful. Thus, the ‘inside’-‘outside’ dichotomy is not only a narrowing and constricting intellectual feature in and of international politics, but also a misleading pattern to model political reality in general – not, however, for understanding the ontology and epistemology of modern IR. The subsequent question is now when this gradual association, which Bartelson observes, took place. The answer to this question can be given by repeating and reformulating the central argument of this study, namely, that this development and the respective divide between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ was foreign to political thought prior to the nineteenth century and is a result of particularistic ontology. Contrary to popular tenets in modern IR, which teach that Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes – to pick out three thinkers who are represented as paradigmatic founding fathers of realist thought – would represent such an ‘inside’-‘outside’ divide, this study aspires to demonstrate that all three ‘heroic figures’ developed principles of political order which operate both in domestic and international politics. These principles are thus of a general ordering character and transcend possible divides between an ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. There is no ‘inside’-‘outside’

Introduction 9

distinction in Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, and the absence of such an ontology is much more the case in other pre-nineteenth-century philosophers, such as Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, las Casas, and Kant (as will be discussed here).10 There is, as stated above, a second shift in the genealogy of international/ inter-national political thought – a shift of which we are contemporarily witnesses and which can be traced back to the early 1990s. This shift finds its roots in ‘post-cold war’ and ‘new world order’ discussions. In a theoretical perspective, this shift is characterized by an emerging body of literature which draws mainstream assumptions of our discipline into question and critically reinterprets traditions of thought and individual thinkers. A primary focus of this critical debate is on ontological, and subsequently epistemological and methodological, questions of international political thought and IR. It has to be asked, in relation to the main questions of this study, whether this second shift is also about reestablishing universal political thought. Can we identify current efforts to (re)found and (re)intervene universal approaches in the study of global politics whose ontological focus is explicitly on phenomena beyond the nation-state and concentrates, for example, on global civil society and global justice? Did globalizations of politics bring universal thought back in, since there is increased cooperation among states and private actors across borders as well as an awareness of global problems which encourage, and even force, us to think beyond the political unit of nation-states and their self-interest? There might be two major objections to the argument of this study: First, it could be argued that there are also universal and universalistic approaches in the nineteenth and twentieth century; for example, the nineteenth century ‘standards of civilization’ (according to Fisch, 2005), Woodrow Wilson’s approach of inter-national democratization and the establishment of the League of Nations (very instructive here Ninkovich, 1994), or finally the building of the United Nations on explicitly universal standards of human rights and states’ equality. This objection might hold that the argument made in this study fails, and hence has to be taken very seriously. At first glance, this objection sounds reasonable. However, it is philosophically superficial because it equates metaphysical perceptions and conceptualizations of universal political order, as they were typical for pre-nineteenth century political thought, with an artificial universalization of political principles. To be more precise: Whereas the metaphysical perception of universalism and holistic concepts of political order are grounded in universal and universalistic ontologies, the proclamation of general standards in nineteenth-century international political thought and twentieth-century IR is based on individual political beliefs, particularistic ontology, and the assumption of their universalize-ability. They lack a universal backing which grounds in perceptions of transcendental principles of order.

10 A History of International Political Theory

I do not immediately sympathize here with one or the other mode – universal, universalistic, or particularistic – however, it seems important to elaborate their ontological differences as well as their respective epistemological consequences. It is especially with regard to those consequences that these differences become crucial because they dramatically influence the way of our thinking about and conceptualizing political order among states as well as dealing with current world problems. I will develop the argument that, whereas universal and universalistic thinking, even if it might be controversial with regard to distinct tenets, founds the possibility for international and intercultural dialogue and for agency across political bodies, particularistic thinking operates as a solipsistic discourse with which one can associate, or not. Particularistic ontology, on which universalizations regardless of their intentions are based, creates, in its epistemological consequence, dualistic worldviews. Whereas the ontological unit (in the sense of what is the basic unit and reference of focus for theorizing the international11) in pre-nineteenth-century thought emerged from some ordering principle beyond the individuality and particularity of the nation (such as universal ethics, eternal legal principles, divine laws, and so on) and thus has been universal in its own right, the ontological unit in post-nineteenth-century inter-national thought became the particular nation-state. Thus, if a particularistic unit represents the ontological foundation and reference, interconnectedness among political units can hardly be thought of on a universal basis, but either can be declined (in a nationalistic sense) or be drafted at best as a mosaic of single individual units which come together only on the basis of standards universalized by one or the other party (as in twentieth- century internationalisms). These standards, however, are not debatable on common grounds, but are only acceptable or not. Since politics and the creation of political order are – and this not only contemporarily in the twenty-first century but in principle – in need of cross-cultural and cross-national dialogue and agency in order to find ways of ‘living together’ in a common world, scholarly attempts to rethink and eventually to (re)invent universal approaches seem most relevant. Thus, without judging whether universalism or universalizations and particularism will finally make a ‘better’ world, it has to be acknowledged at least that principles based on universal ontologies enable a dialogue to debate over principles of common political order: there is a potential for discovering compatibility, commonalities, and joint socialization, whereas particularistic ontology creates exclusion, or at best forced assimilation.12 In the sense of Andrew Linklater, the challenging question for current international political theory is not whether to replace historic patterns of universal thought or to refer to hegemonic universalizations, but how to bridge national and cultural pluralisms in a globalized world and how to balance between pluralist identities and necessary universalisms (Linklater, 2000).

Introduction 11

This question can only be answered normatively and, I would argue, by a genealogical study of international/inter-national political thought and modern IR, investigating their ontologies with a special emphasis on universalism and particularism. I am aware that there might also be critique of my argument and approach from within the discipline of IR, mainly from its neo-realist mainstream. The major critique will presumably lie in the circumstance that, according to their reading,13 there is a well-established ‘realist’ tradition and realist agenda in international political thought on which current IR can draw and which comprises authors like Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes; a claim which here is declared to be invalid and a misreading (see also Behr/Heath, 2009). The argument about misreading shall claim that ideological interests of IR scholars, interests which emerged in the 1940s and 1950s and prevailed the discipline at least throughout the Cold War, can be declared responsible for constructing a ‘realist’ legacy by selective reading and idiosyncratic interpretation (more on that in the following section, ‘Conceptual remarks’). Therefore, neo-realism has to be understood as an ideological enterprise itself which constructed its narratives about its own past and its historical determination; and it can be further asked how far the establishment of IR as an academic discipline is the result of the particularizing and nationalizing of intellectual frameworks and ontologies in the nineteenth century. This study shares this suspicion with a few representatives of our discipline who would admit that IR scholarship, primarily in the United States, has entertained ‘kitchens of power’ designing and legitimizing US power strategies (as Stanley Hoffmann critically diagnosed IR in 1977 and as Miles Kahler reviewed our discipline 20 years later; Kahler, 1997).14 Conceptual remarks This book is an interpretative study which aims at elaborating a genealogy of the ontological unit of international/inter-national political thought and IR. Some of the authors discussed are unusual to the study of international politics, such as Cicero, Aurelius Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Francisco de Vitoria; others, such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes, who belong to the historical canon of International Politics/IR, will be presented in a new light. The interpretations of this study will use thoughts on war and peace as they can be found in each of the interpreted authors as an empirical mirror to illustrate the genealogical developments and shifts from universal and universalistic to particularistic thinking. It is evident that approaches to war and peace, including questions of the legitimization of war and ‘just war’ as well as of the possibilities for peace, differ widely throughout history due to divergent sociopolitical and intellectual contexts of specific authors; also universalism and particularism are not present in all of them to the same degree. Furthermore, grouping

12

A History of International Political Theory

them together in three hugely time-spanning blocks (roughly stated, Greek and Roman antiquity and [European] Middle Ages, [European] early modern times, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) may show ignorance of the different cultural contexts of the authors and their writings as well as of individual voices resistant to prevailing mainstream patterns. It may also be inevitable that interpretations focusing on such huge compartments will be unfair to some parts of it. Nevertheless, it appears that the differentiation between universalism and particularism does apply as a category for understanding developments of international/inter-national political thought and modern IR. In a comparative methodological perspective, the analysis is a comparison of most divergent cases, which is usually deemed to be the heuristically most fruitful method of inquiry. Taking the variety of political orders throughout the targeted centuries (constituted by poleis, empires, city states, nation-states, and global polities) into consideration, it is particularly interesting to realize that, regardless of this variety, premodern authors seemed to share notions of ontological universalism and epistemological ‘meta-vocabulary’, whereas authors who wrote under the influence of the emerging and then consolidating political order of the nation state lost that notion and adhered to particularistic (national) ones. The discussions of single authors are sometimes based on comprehensive quotations from their original writings. I perceive this to be necessary because some authors will be re-interpreted in contrast to mainstream notions which often read selectively and ignore paragraphs which are here, however, seen as important. In order to illustrate the nature of their writings and statements according to the presented (re)interpretations, I think that eventual full quotations of distinct arguments are instructive and sometimes indispensable. It is hoped that the reader will thereby experience and encounter ‘another’ Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and so on, compared to image he or she might be familiar with. The interpretations in Parts I and II will discuss individual authors; Parts III and IV will focus on schools of thought (apart from Hegel in Part III). These changing perspectives can be explained by the historical development of inter-national political thought itself. The nineteenth and even more the twentieth century, when International Politics/IR became established as an academic discipline, witnessed an increase in both the amount and scope of scholarly work in the realm of humanities and social sciences. This increase was accompanied by a differentiation and systematization of the intellectual field. In contrast to earlier centuries when the writings of single philosophers appear – or are narrated to appear according to historical perceptions and constructions of subsequent posterities – as exclusively more outstanding, social sciences and humanities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries developed into academic schools of thought. Saying this does not deny that individual figures are (deemed as) more representative and sometimes more important than others due to their writings and

Introduction 13

activities to initiate or even found specific epistemologies and methodologies. The discussions of schools of thought in this study shall hence draw upon and emphasize certain authors more than others. I am aware that I will not be able to avoid some form of canonization and consequently may do injustice to some authors discussed here, but the amount of authors who could be discussed to represent inter-national political thought in the nineteenth century and IR in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is simply too huge to proceed with the same methodology of discussing single authors as in Parts I and II. The very selection of authors and schools does, of course, not claim to be comprehensive, and one might argue that important authors are missing and that those would be more relevant to the argument of this book than the authors actually discussed – so why de Vitoria and not Francisco Suárez; why las Casas and not Hugo Grotius; why Hobbes and not Justus Lipsius; why Halford Mackinder and not Friedrich Ratzel? Two rationales determined the selection of authors in this study. The first rationale is the assumption of their individual significance and their school’s general significance to stand for universal and/or particularistic ontologies. This rationale was enhanced by the idea that the authors also represent an interdisciplinary cross section, including traditions which contributed to the development of international/inter-national political thought in their own right or which directly influenced the ontology and epistemology of twentieth century IR, such as Roman universal-imperial thought (Cicero), Christian views of just war (Augustine and Aquinas), and international legal philosophy (las Casas, de Vitoria) in the first instance, and national historiography (represented here mainly by Heinrich von Treitschke, Jules Michelet, and Thomas B. Macaulay) and geopolitical thought (represented here primarily by Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman) in the second. The second rationale has to do with a conclusion of this study and its interpretation of the development of international/inter-national political thought and its intercourse with the discipline of IR in the twentieth century. This conclusion relates to my earlier observation about misreadings of authors of political thought in combination with the paradigmatic IR-ontology of ‘national interest’ and its inclination to construct and posit a consecutive and perennial history of ‘realist’ thought which is said to augment in neorealist theory. The main authors which were sacrificed on behalf of this interest were Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. Thus, they not only belong to the canonized knowledge of IR, but also immediately appear in the focus of this study because they have been seized under the paradigm of particularistic ontology. The argument about misreadings does not claim to present a/the one and rightful or ‘authentic’ interpretation of the authors discussed. This claim would not only be presumptuous, but also unredeemable facing several hundreds of meters of bookshelves filled with interpretations on these authors from very different disciplines. What I rather intend to demonstrate is that

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A History of International Political Theory

Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes can not be read as realists (or what ‘realism’ was assumed to be under the particularistic paradigm) because their thoughts are either clearly opposed to ‘realist’ tenets by sharing universal/ universalistic ontologies and by advocating ethical, normative principles. At least they are much more ambivalent in their claims about international politics than IR mainstream narratives want us to believe and thus cannot be used for the construction of a ‘realist’ tradition in international political thought. In methodological terms, the interpretations put forward here do not claim to reveal some authentic meaning of classical and modern texts, but rather to rule out certain IR interpretations due to their hermeneutic inexactness, biases, and ‘Whiggish’ accounts.15 What raised my initial suspicion of the construction of a realist legacy and the neo-realist and neoliberal misreadings and manipulation of a history of international thought16 can be explained by the following three examples (which will be discussed in greater detail in Parts I and II). First, when the mainstream of our discipline interprets Thucydides, scholars consequently neglect his reference to universal legal and ethical standards explaining and condemning the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Instead, they only refer to the pattern of Athenian hegemonic power growth which scared the Peloponnesian peoples so that they allied against Athens. This is, at best, a misunderstood interpretation which, however, fits perfectly, or has been made to fit, into neo-realist terms; at worst, this is an intentionally misread interpretation because the Athenian power growth is, according to Thucydides, just one reason for the Peloponnesian War. The other reason could be found in the break of legal commitments and ‘international law’ between Athens and Sparta – a point which is emphasized by classical philosophical studies, which would have destroyed, however, a ‘realist’ interpretation of Thucydides. Second, when IR mainstream scholars interpret (interpreted) Machiavelli, they primarily refer to The Prince, picturing Machiavelli as an all-out power politician; only a few pieces also refer to Machiavelli’s main work, The Discourses. This is not only a text selection, which only tells half of the story, but it also ignores a good part of widely established Machiavelliinterpretations which we know from political philosophy and political thought. These interpretations approach Machiavelli as a political sociologist who was interested in revealing the mechanisms of power as they operate both in principalities and republics. Thus, a sharp line is drawn between The Prince and The Discourses, each dealing with a different type of political order. This understanding is last, but not least, suggested by Machiavelli himself. Third, when mainstream IR/International Politics interprets (interpreted) Thomas Hobbes, the main question seems to be whether or not the ‘state of nature’ between individuals can be applied to relations among states. Although it has to be admitted that Hobbes makes statements according to

Introduction 15

which such an application may appear possible and international politics performs as a ‘war of every man against every man’, there are good reasons to doubt that this question is really central to interpreting Hobbesian international politics. I share this doubt, together with some critical reinterpretations in our discipline, because we find in Hobbes’s political philosophy – apart from the question whether the state of nature applies to states, and states can be treated analogous to individuals – an explicit mechanism among sovereignty, legitimacy, and security which operates between domestic and international politics – even if Hobbes addresses international politics only sporadically. As far as I can see, there are two publications which have their basic problematique in common with this study. These are Bartelson’s discussion of ‘internationalism’ (1995) and Linklater’s Critical Theory and World Politics (2007). Bartelson sees a ‘threat of the total fragmentation of the international system’ into atomistic nation-states – a complaint (and warning) which I share – and criticizes the ‘absence of any shared metavocabulary’ to overcome this fragmentation (Bartelson, 1995, p. 261). However, it appears that he does not see that such a ‘meta-vocabulary’ did indeed exist prior to the nineteenth century. Consequently, Bartelson shares the view of an anarchical structure of international politics, historic and present-day, and, missing a ‘meta-vocabulary’, he searches for compatible and interconnecting approaches of ‘internationalism’. In order to do so, he sees a profitable approach in Kant, although does not realize that Kant himself is part of a tradition of universal thinking, and that investigating this tradition would provide him with answers and insights conducive to his search for meta-vocabularies. Linklater explains his interest as investigating the ties that bind together the members of political communities and simultaneously separate them from the remainder of the human race ... [an investigation which is] linked by a specific interest in the relationship between the duties that individuals have to one another as citizens of separate states and the obligations they have to all other persons as members of humanity’; and he further declares ‘the relationship between >>community<< and >>cosmopolis<< is one of the central ethical and political questions of the time’. (Linklater, 2007, p. 1) Linklater views the pressing need to investigate this problematique as caused by increased transnational and global interconnectednesses between societies, cultures, and political communities why they would have ‘come under increased pressure to reflect on whether there are universal moral and political principles that can enable them to live together peacefully’ (ibid., p. 2). Thus, he asks the question of universalism and particularism in international politics. As valuable as his focus on this

16

A History of International Political Theory

problem and his undertaking to retrieve intellectual possibilities to think the relation between particularistic communities and ‘the’ cosmopolis are as well as his observation is to be endorsed that ‘during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, major theorists of the sovereign state and international law did not make a sharp distinction between “internal” and “external” spheres of inquiry’ (ibid., p. 3), I have the feeling that his endeavour remains ambivalent or even limited by his reproduction of the narrative of an enlightened Western modernity according to which there is a consecutive intellectual history of ‘universalistic moral dispositions that have been inherited from the medieval world’ while the concern with the relationship between citizenship and humanity would be ‘at the heart of international political theory ever since’ (ibid., p. 2/3; emphasis mine). Although acknowledging traditions of universalistic thought and of respective holistic perspectives, this account ignores the fact that these universalistic and holistic traditions broke away with the beginning of particularistic theorizing, its solidifications throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the martial and violent manifestations of the modern nation-state. Therefore, it seems that his idea of a Western modernity remains a narrative and now, in the twenty-first century, the conditions of universal/universalistic theorizing in and about international politics and respective ethics have to be thoroughly reinvented, retrieved, or reformulated. I think, however, it is not possible, as I understand that Linklater does think, that the reflection on the dynamic between particularism and universalism can connect to (continuous) legacies lasting from the seventeenth or eighteenth century into our present days, or could simply replace universal or universalistic ontologies, epistemologies, and ethics; they might be lost and may have to be fundamentally reintroduced. I enthusiastically share with both Bartelson and Linklater their sense of the problem of universalism and particularism, their articulated need for normativity as well as for meta-vocabulary, and their request for universal/ universalistic dispositions in international political theory, including the conviction that many contemporary problems of international politics – such as climate change, sustainable development, global culture and civilization, and finally peace and war – require some kind of common references to humanity and general common goods in order to, if not find solutions to these problems, at least start some form of cross-cultural dialogue and find a shared language and vision of the world we live in. However, I choose the different way of a genealogy of international political thought and IR theory which emphasizes shifts and modifications rather than continuities, with the hope of contributing to the clarification of some of the conditions of the possibility for reintroducing notions of universal thinking and ethics in international political theory and IR. In doing so, I identify a major shift from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century through which international

Introduction 17

theory experienced fundamentally modified intellectual pillars explaining why narratives about a Western modernity from the seventeenth century or so into the twenty-first century are misguided. This problem persists whether the narratives are recounted from a neo-realist or neo-liberal perspective in the sense of celebrating sovereignty, progress, ‘the state’, state autonomy, and freedom (which was seldom a freedom for the people ‘within’ and even more seldom a freedom for ‘others’, such as neighbours); or criticized and deconstructed from a poststructuralist perspective while, although rightfully identifying and criticizing their endangerments of humanity, ignoring the fact that this narrative does not hold and is based on misreadings of international political and intellectual history for genealogical reasons in the first place. International political theory and IR have to comprehensively reorganize the acknowledgement, awareness, and criticism of their own legacies. I feel it may be worthwhile to provide two further explanations for the assortment of themes and fields in this study with regard to the omission of literature and debates on and of political economy/international political economy (IPE) as well as with regard to the time frame investigating the formation of ontologies in IR theory. Both aspects are interrelated in that they concern the selection of authors and literature discussed here (or not) and their treatment. To the second aspect first: ontological formations of and in IR theory according to which IR appears as the object of ontological scrutinization will be investigated mainly until the 1990s, roughly speaking. This investigation will be connecting to, and working with, the then increasingly emerging body of critical literature, however, will not expose this literature to the same scrutinizing process as the IR mainstream as it existed and dominated until the 1990s (and still seems to dominate mainly the US and UK disciplines until present day). Thus, the (hi)story told in this study could and should go on, just as every (hi) story told has a closing perspective and closing words. The same consideration applies to the first aspect, the taking into account of discourses on political economy and in IPE, both as objects of the scrutinization of the ontological formation of the international/inter-national and as commentators on such formation in international political thought and IR. Also here, there is not a substantial argument, but an architectural one with regard to the framing angles of this study and its arguments and approaches.

The structure of the book The book consists of five parts. During the course of the book a genealogy of international/inter-national political thought and IR from Greek and Roman antiquity up to the present day will be elaborated alongside the intellectual feature of universal, universalistic, and particularistic

18 A History of International Political Theory

thinking. Parts I and II are devoted to the study of universal and universalistic thinking from antiquity to the end of the eighteenth century; Part III, beginning with the discussion of Hegel, marks the historical shift from universal and universalistic thinking to particularism. This discussion leads into the twentieth century and then to Part IV, which problematizes the triumph of particularism in the twentieth century. In Part V, I summarize and further explain the differentiation between the universal, universalistic, and universalized and engage with two questions: does the historical decline of notions of universalities in international political thought and IR Theory involve and signify a loss of ethics in modern and present-day IR/International Politics? Since this question and its wording are based on the assumption that ethics (as it does in its traditional modes) would relate to anthropological, political, noetic, and legal universalities, the engagement with this question shall also include considerations of the possibility of an international political ethics which overcomes particularistic fragmentation(s) and is not grounded on universal, universalistic, and universalizing assumptions about the/a world or a/the other. Second, the concluding remarks will introduce the question whether theories on global society and global justice – since their focus aims explicitly beyond the particularity of the nation-state on ‘the’ global – revitalize universal frameworks; or can we observe new, alternative ontological frameworks beyond universalism and particularism? All parts are divided into two chapters. While in Parts I and II the chapters focus on single authors – I.1 on Thucydides and Cicero, I.2 on Aurelius Augustine and Thomas Aquinas; II.1 on Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria, and II.2 on Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Immanuel Kant – the chapters in Parts III and IV focus, for the reasons discussed above, on schools of thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the problematization of their ontological frameworks – III.1 on the Hegelian philosophy of ‘national interest’, national monumental historiography, and geopolitical thought; III.2 on the English School; IV.1 on neo-realism and the scientification of International Political Theory; and IV.2 on misreadings in IR. Part V is divided as follows – V.1 on the differentiation between universal, universalistic, and universalized and V.2 on the loss of ethics and the question of a reinvention of universal thinking in global politics. I would like to make one final remark with regard to the reading of this book. Obviously, every author exposes his or her writing to some kind of publicity and thereby hands over his or her thoughts to criticism, review, and debate. There is no control over interpretative trajectories books may take. Although each author remains responsible for the text, he or she is not accountable for what may happen to the text. This is part of the nature of authorship, and even more so in our times of endless reproducibility of ‘texts’, which we have to accept. Nevertheless, I would like to

Introduction 19

ask the reader to give this book careful perusal by especially regarding the (sometimes extensive) endnotes as an important compendium and accompanying body of text to the main text. There are also comprehensive indexes, including the endnotes, which may help the reader to better access this study.

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Part I Universalism in Greek and Roman Antiquity and Christian Political Philosophy

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I.1 Greek and Roman Antiquity

1. Thucydides It is one of the popular, although ill-conceived, interpretations in IR to celebrate the Greek historian Thucydides as the first realist in international political thought. Neo-realists and neo-liberals in particular seem keen to promote this picture.17 Their narration goes as follows: Thucydides shares three common assumptions with twentieth century realism and neorealism: first, states are the key units in international politics; second, they seek power, either as an end in itself or as a means to other ends; and third, they behave in ways that are rational, and therefore comprehensible to outsiders in rational terms (see, for instance, Keohane, 1986, p. 7).18 With these views in common, so the narration continues, the neo-realist/neo-liberal paradigms of self-help and of the functional similarity of states could be located in a tradition of international political thought which traces back through the centuries to Greek Antiquity. Whatever might be the reason for this narration and for the keenness to construct historical legacies of realist thinking (for further discussion, see Part IV), a careful study of Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War suggests four obstacles to this mainstream interpretation. As Laurie M. Johnson Bagby demonstrates, Thucydides ‘departs from the realist position in both outlook and method by his methodology of (1) emphasizing the importance of what we might call “national character”, (2) highlighting the influence of the moral and intellectual character of individual leaders, (3) showing the importance of political rhetoric for action ... , and (4) showing that for him, moral judgements form an integral part of political analysis’ (Bagby, 1994, p. 133). Bagby’s fourth observation is especially relevant for analyzing Thucydides from a universalism-particularism perspective; and another relevant aspect must be added, which is not part of Bagby’s critique, but nevertheless represents an important objection against the neorealist misreading of Thucydides. Against Thucydides’s widely quoted reason why the Peloponnesian War 23

24 A History of International Political Theory

broke out, namely, because of the tremendous increase of Athenian power, its search for a hegemonic power position, and Sparta’s desire for security (all suit neo-realist reasons why states as particular and autonomous units wage war against each other), another motive seems to achieve a prominent status: Thucydides tells us that a treaty was broken between the Athenians and the Spartans and that was why they became hostile. There are convincing reasons to regard the violation of a treaty as the very reason for the Peloponnesian War, since the Spartans only reluctantly decided upon war and since they reacted only lackadaisically towards Athens’s power accumulation during the years before the war finally broke out. Hence, there must have been some decisive spark, which fuelled their decision to go to war beyond their fear due to the power growth of Athens. Thus, there are two objections to the mainstream IR interpretation of Thucydides which are most interesting here: first, the impact Thucydides ascribes to moral judgments in politics and second, the breach of a treaty which appears to be a major reason for the Peloponnesian War. When we further consider these two aspects, we have good reasons to understand Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian War not in neo-realist terms. On the contrary, we have to recognize that he narrated his history from a standpoint which criticized the warring parties from a universal perspective, rather than subscribing to the necessity and legitimacy of self-help, value-free and anti-ethical ‘realist’ arguments. Intervening and emphasizing the breach of a treaty as a vital reason for war, while at the same time excoriating the warring parties for not abiding by their previous treaty commitments, requires a universal and ethically based philosophy-of-right reference. And stressing the importance of moral judgments made by Athenian and Spartan leaders, as argued by Bagby, requires some normative outlook in Thucydides which can be derived only from general ethics. Contrary to neo-realist and IR mainstream interpretations, which do not differentiate between the analytical (or factual) and normative dimension of Thucydides’s history, Thucydides does not confine his thoughts on politics to the analysis of particular communities or their mutually particularistic interrelations. When he composes the history of the Peloponnesian War from both a philosophy-of-right perspective and an ethical outlook, he embeds his thoughts in universal projections of, and ideas on, international politics. The universalism-particularism feature thus illustrates most clearly that Thucydides is not a ‘realist’, nor is it an appropriate position to locate neo-realism in the legacies of Thucydidean thinking. Thucydides’s reference to universal legal standards explaining the reason for war Thucydides narrates his history of the Peloponnesian War as if it were one single and connected occurrence of 27 years, extending from 431 to 404 BC. Indeed, however, his contemporaries witnessed two wars: the so-called

Greek and Roman Antiquity 25

Archidamian or Ten Years War, which lasted from 431 to 421, and the Decelean or Ionian War, which lasted from 414 to 404. Accordingly, when we discuss Thucydides, we should, if not consider the two wars individually, at least ask why he subsumes the two wars into one: the Peloponnesian War. More importantly, however, we should distinguish the two incidents when we are interested in the cause(s) of the war(s), a question, which seems to fascinate present-day neo-realists who believe they have found another example of a structural pattern of power and security in Thucydides. Contrary to that belief, scholars of classical history, philology, and philosophy argue that Thucydides speaks of two circumstances which have caused the wars: on the one side, he stresses, surely, the power growth of the Athenian empire and its increasing hegemonic role in Hellas. On the other side, however, this appears not to be a structural cause that automatically led to war, but a period in which there have been negotiations between the Athenians and the Spartans as well as between their actual and potential allies. Thucydides tells us about these negotiations comprehensively in the form of several speeches and debates between their respective political and military representatives. The Melian Dialogue (5.83–113) might be the most famous one, but there is also the meticulously reported debate between Cleon and Diodotus (in 3.37–48; for a more detailed interpretation of the Melian dialogue see below), which refers to the sanctity of previous oaths, the value of promises, and the obligation of peace treaties – while each party accuses the other of having violated the mentioned principles. We hence learn that a system of treaties existed, based on the idea of legal principles ethically binding each party to stick to the treaties and to redeem its previous subscription to the principles agreed upon (in detail, see Wolf, 1956, who deals with this topic of Thucydides’s History in his Chapter III.2). Before rushing to war, and above all, beyond any independently given structural reasons which automatically forced the parties into war, the relations among city-states in Hellas were based upon a legal framework of mutually obligatory agreements. As Thucydides puts it very clearly, there were two causes of war: imperial power politics and the breach of treaties. The breach of treaties did not lead to knee-jerk reactions of warfare, but it was accompanied by negotiations, which Thucydides describes as assemblies in which the political leaders reciprocally aired and debated grievances about the other party having violated common principles. Raphael Sealey points to the Greek practice of hostile parties bringing forward grievances as justification for their preparation for warfare. He draws parallels between Thucydides’s History and Herodotus’s history of the Persian Wars: A modern historian may seek the causes of war in the objects, which the belligerents seek to attain, or in their passions, perhaps for vengeance or imperial expansion. Herodotus seeks the cause of war in a grievance or

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chain of grievances. His proneness towards this type of explanation can be accounted for. When a Greek state went to war, it ... recited a list of grievances as justification. And in 1.23.5 of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides would have conveyed that The Athenians and the Peloponnesians (broke) the Thirty Years Peace. There can be no doubt that this statement refers to his account of the quarrels over Corcyra and Potidaea [which are reported by Thucydides as an example of men abrogating ‘common principles’; see 3.84.3, and below]. The significance which Thucydides attributes to each of these quarrels has perhaps not been accurately appreciated ... It appears that Thucydides treated the quarrels ... as forming a chain of grievances of the Herodotean type.’ (Sealey, 1957a, p. 10) The crucial passage, in which Thucydides talks about the causes of the war, also should be quoted: All this came upon them [Thucydides is reporting about earthquakes and violence, even eclipses of the sun, droughts, and the plague] with the late war, which was begun by the Athenians and the Peloponnesians by the dissolution of the thirty years’ truce made after the conquest of Euboea. As for why they broke the treaty, I have written down first the complaints and the disputes, so that no one may ever inquire whence so great a war arose among the Greeks. Now the most genuine cause, though least spoken of, was this: it was the Athenians, in my opinion, as they were growing great and furnishing an occasion of fear to the Lacedaemonians, who compelled the latter to go to war. But the complaints of each side, spoken of openly, were the following, complaints which led the parties to break the treaty and enter a state of war. (1.23.4–6; translation by Sealey, 1957b, p. 92)19 The breach of the treaty is once more emphasized by Thucydides when, some passages later, he reports four speeches from a Lacedaemonian meeting which resulted in the Spartan declaration that Athens had broken the peace treaty and was therefore committing an injustice (1.68–86). The Spartan reference to the treaty and Thucydides’s support for this view – after all he quotes the breach of the treaty as one reason of the general war, and even as the reason for the first, the Archidamian or Ten Years War (431 to 421) – highlight the Greek attitudes about justice and injustice in war and peace as it is expressed by the negotiation system of ‘complaints and grievances’. It furthermore symbolizes the guidelines of Thucydides’s composition of this system when he returns to the Spartan outlook on the war(s) in the seventh

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book of his History (7.18.2), and the nineteenth year of the war in Summer 413, respectively. He here writes: For in the previous war, they thought, the injustice had been more their own, because the Thebans attacked Plataea during a state of peace, and although a clause of the earlier treaty had forbidden recourse to arms of the other side proposed arbitration, they themselves did not respond when the Athenians invited them to submit the disputes to arbitration. On this account they thought it was only reasonable that they had undergone setbacks, and they called to mind the disaster at Pylos and any other that had occurred. (translation by Sealey, 1957b, p. 93) Besides the circumstance that reflections on justice and injustice in wartime can, beyond hostile accusation of others, also initiate critical self-reflection, Thucydides shows us that the war(s), as well as the course of its events, were not inevitable. The war(s) depended for the most part less on determined reasons than on contigent outcome of negotiations, on assumptions of justice and injustice, and on ethical positions with which the parties were endowed. Withal Thucydides does not concede, and accept, the pure ‘factualism’ that treaties are weak, promises not kept, human nature bellicose, and so on, but instead argues in favour of universal ethical orientations which should guide men’s actions. Antithetically he ‘teaches’ with the History what happens when, and if, common ethical grounds and political virtue decay and become lost. ‘Thucydides’ admission of ... frustration and remorse in the face of the complexity of [war] softens considerably the common portrait of him as a steely-minded pragmatist’ (Flory, 1988, pp. 55–6). As we have seen so far, Thucydides refers, too, to legal standards when explaining the reasons of war, not just to the factor of power and the Athenian power growth. His reference to legal standards clearly signals the universal background of his thinking. Because legal standards are regarded as binding for all parties who formerly subscribed to them, they, once agreed, transcend the particularity of each signatory and establish a new common and superior entity. And since Thucydides uses the breach of the Athenian-Spartan Thirty Years Peace Treaty as an important reason for the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, he also believes in, and adheres to, a legal ethics which derives from the circumstance that the parties once agreed upon treaties. This ethics normatively states that treaty obligations have to be fulfilled and the treaties themselves have to be kept. When already the existence of treaties establishes some common superior, which transcends the particularity of the treaty powers, then this ethics of an obligation to keep the treaty agreements symbolizes much more a reference to universal (legal) thought. This is because this ethics, which can be termed an early version of the principle of pacta sunt servanda,20 can only be derived normatively from some universal idea of what has, and ought to be, done to impart

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legal agreements with power. The principle of pacta sunt servanda cannot be achieved from a particularized point of view (from the particular will of one party, for instance), because a situation can arise when the particular perspective of one party (from its ‘national interest’, so to speak) would perceive it as appropriate and opportune to breach the treaty and to pursue different goals from those formerly agreed upon. In spite of such a potential turn of interests, the legal ethics of pacta sunt servanda nevertheless claims that the treaty obligations have to be redeemed and the treaty is sacred. Consequently, this legal principle has to transcend the particular wills and interests of the single treaty parties, interests which could potentially arise after the treaty has been agreed and that might be different from what is laid down in the treaties. This principle thus sets up a new guideline, which states that treaties only become powerful and meaningful under the condition of a superior principle which, however, is not part of the treaties themselves, but stems from a universal ethical idea. The claim that the breach of treaties can explain a war (in the case in question the Peloponnesian War) consequently requires such a universal reference to ethical legal standards which postulates that treaties have to be sacred and sacrosanct to the particular wills of the treaty powers once they have been contracted. Thucydides here reveals himself as quite a modern thinker since the principle of pacta sunt servanda was not clearly elaborated in legal theory before the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, Thucydides has a distinct concept and term when he refers to this legal idea (see also de St. Croix, 1972): what has later been termed pacta sunt servanda is in Thucydides called justice. A few examples illustrate this. Thucydides narrates from a prewar meeting in Athens where the Corinthians tried to convince the Athenians not to ally with the Corcyraeans. The Corcyraeans, however, got wind of the Corinthians’ plan and sent their own legation to Athens. An assembly was then convened in Athens, and the Corcyraeans accused the Corinthians of having behaved unjustly by violating the principles of negotiation and legal arbitration with regard to their mutual claim to the city of Epidamnus: ‘And that Corinth was injuring us is clear. Invited to refer the dispute about Epidamnus to arbitration, they chose to prosecute their complaints by war rather than by a fair trial’ (The Peloponnesian War, II.34.2). Why should Thucydides report from this prewar assembly and the Corcyraeans’ speech and emphasize, just by reporting it, its meaning for the outbreak of the war and the emerging alliances, if he had not perceived the parties’ resort to legal principles and to the concept of justice for momentous? Obviously, Thucydides thought of legal principles and justice as important. Another example, from Book 5.27.1 of the Peloponnesian War, supports this view and tells us once more of the parties’ sense of justice and injustice as well as illustrates Thucydides’s idea about, and esteem of, law and justice as his or the parties’ ultimate reference. The narration is this: In the tenth

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year of the war, in Winter 422/421, the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians agreed on a 50-years’ peace treaty, the so-called Peace of Nicias. By this treaty the first war, the Archidamian war or the first 10 years of the whole Peloponnesian War, were over. The reason for the outbreak of the second war, the Decelean or Ionian War, which lasted for another 10 years, can again be found in mutual suspicions and grievances between the Athenians and the Spartans that the other party violated treaty determinations (see The Peloponnesian War, 5.20–26). After the treaty negotiations have been finished, all legations returned home in expectation and hope of peace; the Corinthians, however, suspected the Lacedaemonians of having agreed upon peace with the Athenians, not in good faith, but in order to subjugate the Peloponnesian peoples. Their suspicion was based on their disbelief in a peace treaty, in the good intentions of both the Spartans and Athenians, and in the possibilities of reconciliation after 10 years of war. They now started negotiations with the Argives, perceiving themselves as being now responsible for the protection of smaller peoples on the Peloponnese. Their argument and, respectively the motive shown by Thucydides, aims at fair and equal ground of law and justice for, and between, all peoples and poleis, irrespectively of their size and power (The Peloponnesian War, 5.27.1). Thus they (and/or Thucydides, respectively) normatively claim that, independent of military and political power as well as regardless of the immediate outcome of the war, all people and poleis who are independent and have a constitution of their own should have the same rights to be recognized and to partake in negotiations. They should also have the same duties and obligations stemming from the treaties. The Corinthians and Argives, and ‘with them’ Thucydides, are critical towards both Athens and Sparta due to their violation of treaties as well as due to their unethical behaviour (see below). They thus refer to, and claim, justice in the sense of both keeping treaty agreements sacrosanct and guaranteeing equal participation of poleis in treaty negotiations instead of just acknowledging the will of strong and hegemonic powers. 21 Thucydides’s ethics Thucydides’s History is a narration of war. As most commentators agree, Thucydides’s style is mostly narrative, sober and neutral. To conclude, however, that his narration could be understood just as a depiction or report is misleading. On the contrary, his narration of war battles, revolutions, and insurgencies as well as their accompanying atrocities is ethically informed. We find paragraphs in which he seems to be pretty neutral, and we find passages in which he posits explicitly an ethical condemnation of single war acts, but also of war in general. The background from which and the reference relating to which he narrates and judges reflect an ‘archaic pattern of ethical thought and are informed by the “world of traditional Greek religion” ’ (Edmunds, 1975, p. 74; Lloyd-Jones, 1971, pp. 144 and 206; also Strauss, 1964).

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A famous part of Thucydides’s History, which clearly highlights his ethical position, is his narration of the Corcyraean revolution in Book 3.82–84. His main argument and ethical reference become obvious when he states that, in wartime in general and with the Corcyraean revolution as a notable empirical example, ‘human nature [is] triumphant over the laws’ (3.82– 4–8). Here, we not only face another example of Thucydides’s reference to law (as argued above), but can also study his criticism of a moral deterioration in war, which he treats as an inversion of the normal when noting, for instance, that noble simplicity was laughed at while sophistication was admired, intelligence lost out to force, prudence was considered cowardice, and impulsiveness was seen as manliness. As Bagby notes, ‘Thucydides places the blame for this inversion of values on “the desire to rule which greed and ambition inspire, and also, springing from them, that ardour which belongs to men who once have become engaged in factious rivalry” (3.82.8)’ (Bagby, 1994, p. 144). We should read a paragraph from Thucydides’s ‘Pathology of War’: So bloody was the march of the revolution, and the impression which it made was the greater as it was one of the first to occur ... The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible ... Word had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak of unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries ... The leaders in the cities ... went to even greater lengths (in their acts of vengeance), not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment their only standard ... Thus religion was in honour with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation ... Men abrogated in advance the common principles – those principles upon which depends every man’s own hope of salvation. (The Peloponnesian War, 3.82–84) Thucydides characterizes the behaviour and moral attitudes in and during the war and wartime as a censure to prewar ethics. He provides several examples of how attitudes changed and how once-typical meanings of words turned into their opposite. All examples indicate that a traditional idea of ethical thought, which existed in prewar times, namely, the virtue of striking the happy medium between two opposite extremes of human

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behaviour – a virtue, which is paradigmatically elaborated in Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI) – perished because of selfish and hubristic behaviour during the war. According to Thucydides, only the negative patterns of behaviour prevailed; however, they were celebrated by his contemporaries as positive. But not only previously typical patterns of behaviour provide the standard for Thucydides’s critique of the decline and devastation of ethics in, during, and by the war. It is also normative standards, provided by religion and by considerations about the common good for the polis, which guide Thucydides’s critique. According to Lowell Edmunds, we find in Thucydides a unity of universal ethics, rooted in human reason, religion, and politics. He notes that the ‘distinction between the two realms is sharper for us than for him’ and for Greek political mythology and philosophy in general (Edmunds, 1975, p. 79). The ethical attitude, which characterizes Thucydides’s critique of the revolutions in Hellas during the war, threads through his whole narration of the Peloponnesian War and is symbolized by the term and concept of sophrosyne. (He discusses sophrosyne, both as an ethical value and as a form of political constitution; see also The Peloponnesian War, 2.37, 4.28, 8.64, and 8.97). Sophrosyne derives from Greek ‘sophron’, which means ‘sound and prudent mind’. The term also appears in many of Plato’s dialogues and bears the same meaning as in Thucydides. Translating the term and its inherent political and ethical idea into English is problematic because English has no word which encompasses the complex idea of ‘excellence in character and soundness of mind, both combined in one well-balanced person’, as the concept is explained in Plato. Another similar definition states that sophrosyne is the ‘agreement of the passion that reason should rule one’s behavior’. The best English translations might be temperance, moderation, prudence, self-control, and self-restraint; in any case, it expresses the radical opposite of arrogance, ignorance, and hubris, which increasingly imparted people’s character and deeds as well as the degradation from order to disorder during war. Due to the war, ethics became inverted. Thucydides’s view is that the war, the particularization of party interests, and selfishness are responsible not only for the loss of ethical orientations (like sophrosyne), but also for the loss of common political ethics between Sparta and Athens, which they shared in prewar times, and which once, in the Periclean Age, worked as a common ground of, and for, legal and political order in Hellas. Against various efforts in IR to instrumentalize Thucydides as a ‘realist’, it is most informative to look more closely at one more aspect of his ethics, namely, the fact that he adheres to an anti-utilitarian concept of political behaviour. Hence, his ethics does not allow, as neo-realists do, one to ask for the politically opportune outcome of one’s behaviour. According to such a view, a polis could support a certain policy or engage in some alliance (as a ‘bandwagoner’, so to speak in neo-realist terms) as long as this alliance appears to serve its interest. We can discern Thucydides’s anti-utilitarian

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ethics from the so-called Plataean episode (The Peloponnesian War, 3.21–23) in which Thucydides narrates the Plataean’s attack against, and flight of, the city of Mytilene. What is interesting here is Thucydides’s favourable and meticulous treatment of, and sympathy with, the Plataeans. This episode hence suggests that he has a strong ethical view about the morally right and wrong of this attack, independently of the outcome since the Plataeans are, in the end, destroyed. Nevertheless, Thucydides shares sympathies with their plans and judges them as ethically right, foremost because of the militarily unnecessary atrocities of the Thracians (see in this regard also Book 7.29.4–5; also Bagby, 1994). A further example which demonstrates Thucydides’s ethical background is the Melian Dialogue. The Melian Dialogue is usually cited as an example of the ‘realist’ (‘Machiavellian’) side of Thucydides (Keohane, 1986, p. 7). We will see, however, that this is a shortsighted and one-sided interpretation. In the Melian Dialogue, which is part of Thucydides’s narration of the fifteenth year of war in winter 417/416, he reports a meeting between Athenian legates and the Melians who met in Melos to negotiate the future of the island of Argos and of the Melians themselves. The Melians were part of the Lacedaemonian peoples and thus part of the Hellenic alliance against Athens. The Athenian legates did not speak to the people of Melos but to their council. The Melian Dialogue narrates their speeches. The end of the negotiations was brought about by a retreat of the Athenians who then, in their final comment, threatened the Melians with being sentenced and destroyed. Their extinction actually followed, and thus, Thucydides’s narration symbolizes and condemns another militarily unnecessary atrocity of the war. We read in 5.112–113: The Athenians now withdrew from the conference; and the Melians, left to themselves, came to a decision corresponding with what they had maintained in the discussion, and answered: ‘Our resolution, Athenians, is the same as it was at first. We will not in a moment deprive of freedom a city that has been inhabited since seven hundred years; but we put our trust in the fortune by which the gods have preserved it until now, and in the help of men, that is, of the Lacedaemonians; and so we will try and save ourselves. Meanwhile we invite you to allow us to be friends to you and foes to neither party, and to retire from our country after making such a treaty as shall seem fit to us both’ ... Such was the answer of the Melians. The Athenians now departing from the conference said: ‘Well, you alone, as it seems to us, judging from these resolutions, regard what is future as more certain than what is before your eyes, and what is out of sight, in your eagerness, as already coming to pass; and as you have staked most on, and trusted most in, the Lacedaemonians, your fortune, and your hopes, so will you be most completely deceived.’

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As we see, Thucydides seems to simply report the ‘fact’ of what happened, without any explicit ethical judgement. The very fact, however, that he reports the dialogue and constructs his narration in such a way that the dialogue ends up with the failure of the negotiations and Athens’s threat of destroying the Melians, does make, as Bagby (1994, p. 147) argues, something valuable to the Melians’ death and their bravery, and at the same time points to a black stain in Athenian warfare. Their threatening to destroy, and finally their executing of, the Melians symbolizes their hubris, which is the most disdained human misbehaviour in ancient Greek ethical thought. Hence, we see that the Melian Dialogue is just seemingly ‘Machiavellian’ as Thucydides clearly expresses his dismay and moral indignation about the atrocities of war (a further example of this can be found in The Peloponnesian War, 7.29.4–5). He uses the Melian Dialogue, and his ostensibly sober style of reporting, as another example to criticize the decline of ethics in wartime and to evoke a similar response in his audience. According to Otto Luschnat, Thucydides’s intention to cause dismay and to evoke criticism both of war and the devastation of ethics has to be understood as theological historiography in its antique meaning (Luschnat, 1978). Greek theological historiography aimed at representing the orderly and divine array of the world and men’s place within this order. Luschnat notes that construing this intention and inspiration merely as pessimism, fatalism, and resignation (as ‘realists’ and neo-realists tend to do) is too myopic. The stylistic device to express consternation in Athenian tragic poetry consisted not in overt moral outcry but in ‘plain’ reporting. The intention that stood behind and accompanied this sort of textual composition was, however, crystal clear. The ethical dimension was always present and obvious to the author and the audience. It was standing permanently in the background, without a special need to be explicitly stressed (see also Creed, 1973). The selection and presentation of ‘facts’, so the general perception, did suffice to express and stipulate ethical dismay. The mainstream of present-day interpretation in IR, however, probably due to its naïve identification of the analytical and the normative (see more on this in Chapter IV.2), lost this understanding of classical texts and construes a Thucydidean ‘factualism’, taking his narration at face value. Considering the backgrounds discussed so far – namely, that (1) Thucydides refers to universal legal standards for explaining the causes of the war; that he (2) describes the ‘pathology of war’ and here criticizes the inversion of ethics and virtues caused by the war, and, in the Plataean episode, which tells another story of militarily unnecessary atrocities against a defeated city, assesses the moral right and wrong regardless of the outcome, arguing for an anti-utilitarian ethics; and that he (3) denounces Athenians’ behaviour and expresses his moral indignation about their exclusion of all considerations of justice (as symbolized in the Melian Dialogue) – we can conclude that Thucydides’s narration of the Peloponnesian War is deeply embedded

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in Greek traditions of political thought. Throughout his History, as the discussed examples demonstrate, he critically juxtaposes factual moral disorder, which both caused war and increased during the war, with the normative idea of ‘good order’. ‘Moral degradation, incompetence, political convulsion, disorder of the individual soul – these are his leading themes’ (Fliess, 1959, p. 593). At the same time, he complements Plato insofar as Thucydides is concerned with the causes of disorder and describes them, primarily focusing on Athens, while Plato was engaged in the attempt to reconstruct the political order of postwar Athens. Eric Voegelin notes, ‘The science of Thucydides explored the idea of ... the disturbance of order; Plato explored the idea of order itself ... Thucydides studied a political society in crisis, and created the empirical science of the lethal disease of order; Plato created the other half of politics, the empirical science of order’ (Voegelin, 1957, p. 357). The complementation of both authors, Thucydides and Plato, is, however, not just due to the pattern of disorder and order. This pattern also has a historical nexus because Plato is studying the devastation of the Athenian polis after the war which was reported by Thucydides. In his juxtaposition of disorder and order, Thucydides applies two metaphors: the one is an antithetical construction of the major war opponents, Athens and Sparta, symbolized by respective speeches, rhetorical features, and deeds; the other is the use of the historical contrast of pre- and post-Periclean Athens. Obviously, Thucydides’s emphasis is on Athens and Athenian policies, while he traces Athenian offensiveness and war atrocities back to internal moral and social disorder of the city.22 Thucydides criticizes Athens because it has decayed into a political culture of hubris in the post-Periclean age. Besides several examples recounted by him (see above), it is again the Melian Dialogue which epitomizes the Athenians’ lack of humaneness and ethical honesty, namely, when they place the alternatives of submission or total annihilation of their city before the Melians. The relation between a morally decayed foreign politics, which resulted in militarily wasteful actions of war crimes, is highlighted by Thucydides throughout several passages when he declares the tyrannical fashion of the Athenian polis liable for aggressive external behaviour. Individual atrocities are seen, hence, as just symptoms of the steady decline of political ethics. The tyrannical fashion of the Athenian polis is – here again the complementary relation between Thucydides and Plato emerges – exactly what Plato has in mind when he (in Politeia (The State), 562c–563e) accuses the ‘council of the four hundred’, which seized power in May 411, and the ‘council of the five hundred’, which replaced the former in summer of the same year, of tyrannical subversion of the polis. Consequently, Thucydides criticized, from a normative ethical perspective embedded in the classical politico-theological teaching of his time, the imperial restlessness of Athenian imperial politics, which he perceived as interrelated with the domestic decline of virtues. On

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the other hand, he complains about Spartan complacency, which for a long time did not realize Athenian armament and growth of imperial and economic power. ‘If the ruin of Athens was the result of domestic disorder and Spartan complacency almost caused the Peloponnesians to come to grief, it is little wonder that the dynamics of internal politics should have commanded Thucydides’ full attention. Time and again he shows how the shell of party polemics interposed itself by forcing leaders to ignore the logic of diplomacy under the impact of domestic pressure ... He was fully conscious of the need for a steady and fair-minded citizenry, in the absence of which all constitutions ... remain essentially empty forms. It is therefore not surprising that he should have gone on to expatiate on the disintegration of the ethos at a length which forms a striking contrast to the compendiousness and subtlety that characterizes the rest of his work’ (Fliess, 1959, p. 604). The ground of Thucydides’s ethical framework is generally to be found in his admiration for legal and political justice through an equal distribution of rights and privileges among the Athenian citizens (isonomia). As Gregory Vlastos points out in his study on isonomia, equal distribution of rights buttressed the citizens’ obedience to law and furthers their good ethical behaviour (Vlastos, 1953, pp. 350–1). This political view corresponds, again, with Plato’s and Aristotle’s political ethics, which teaches that a sound moral constitution of the polis transcends selfish class and individual interests through the foundation and spiritual anchorage of courage, honour, a sense of duty, fairminded toleration, and cosmopolitan acceptance of foreigners. The political life of a polis then appears clearly dependant on its ethical constitution, and the latter again is immediately informed by the virtues of its very members. The social and moral decay, however, as it began to take shape in postPericlean Athens, extended to the entire Hellenic world under the destructive influences of the war. Thucydides dwells on this feature in several passages by introducing in his narration many speeches, which refer to some transcendental values (however, complain about their loss) and depictions of war crimes (as seen above; additionally see the dialectically opposed and lengthy presented speeches of Cleon and Diodotus in 3.37–48, The Peloponnesian War). We can hence summarize with Peter J. Fliess that Thucydides’s History is a critique of contemporary politics, targeted both against Athens and Sparta, and that he argues from a normative standpoint, which is embedded in the idea of universal political and ethical truth existing across human civilization (which was, however, perceived as more or less limited to the Hellenic world); however, the ‘orientation toward the transcendental Good having been abandoned by an extroverted [Hellenic] society’ (Fliess, 1959, p. 608).

2. Cicero The Roman statesman, lawyer, and political thinker Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) does not belong to the discipline’s canon of international

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political theorists. There are at least three forceful reasons, however, to consider his writings from an international perspective, too: first, he represents the political thought of republican (and imperial) Rome as meaningful and pointed as no other author;23 second, he stands for the tradition and legacies of Greek political thought in the Roman Empire (for Platonist and Aristotelian influences on Cicero see Striker, 1995); and third, he developed political ideas and a vocabulary which are worth study and interpretation from an international politics perspective in their own right. Although all three aspects are acknowledged by our neighbour disciplines, IR/International Politics widely ignored Cicero. The reason for this neglect seems to be found in the neo-realist mainstream (and its aversion to political thought and normative theory; see more on that below) into which Cicero definitely does not fit, and into which he cannot easily be made to fit in the same way that Thucydides (wrongfully) was made to fit. Nevertheless, Cicero’s writings contain many interesting aspects for the study of international politics, namely, a threefold relationship between his thoughts on empire and (original) views on the justification of war and warfare, both developed within the framework of a universalistic conception of reason and natural law (and a subsequent law of nations, a term and concept which, according to some commentators [Pangle, 1998, p. 243], was introduced and can be found for the first time in Cicero). The following discussion will start with Cicero’s universalistic idea of human reason because it represents both the framework within and the basis from which his concepts of just war and empire are embedded and derived, respectively. Cicero’s notion of reason and, subsequently, of law derived from human reason undoubtedly belongs to the most explicit universal conceptualizations in international political thought. Withal one has to notice that he lacks a developed philosophical foundation but most of the time refers to, and relies on, the tradition of philosophical thought layered by Plato and Aristotle from where he then straightforwardly concludes his own political statements. He seems especially influenced and impressed by Plato whom he admires as the greatest philosopher. Consequently, it is less a philosophical groundwork which raises our interest in Cicero here, but his conceptual framework of some major notions, such as reason and law, and especially his political conclusions gained from that framework. The relevance of these conclusions for an international politics perspective may be anticipated here in order to target and provide the structure of the following discussions: Cicero realizes and admits that there is no natural relationship and legal status between nations (and, due to that, no natural justice in the international realm); however, from this assumption, he concludes neither a natural state of war or ‘anarchy’ (as a neo-realist perspective would do), nor the necessity to establish interstate (international) political and legal institutions (a more Thucydidean or, as we would say today, liberal solution), but the erection of an empire in order to create an ‘international

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commonwealth’. Empire – and for Cicero the only acceptable empire would be a republican-governed Roman Empire – is the solution to create and to provide political and legal relations, and finally justice, among nations. This solution has, however, an ambivalent source because it results, on the one hand, from a deep affection of patriotism to Rome according to which Rome naturally is, and should be, the master of the world, and, on the other hand, from a reciprocal conception of universal natural law, human reason, and right and justice. The universality of reason and law Cicero’s notion of human reason and its universality rests upon a political anthropology. This political anthropology can be described – in an Aristotelian sense – as teleological insofar as Cicero views the basic anthropological characteristics of human nature and its end purpose (telos) as an entity. The raison d’être of human life, including the ethical obligations of men, relate to, and stem from, the potentials of human condition imparted in human nature. The ought of our ethical conduct of life, of our social and political commitments, as well as the development of our potential skills emerges from the potentiality of how we are able to life and what we are able to achieve and to develop (on this see excellent discussions in Marx, 1961, 1972). Typically human potentials and potentialities to develop can be seen according to Cicero’s political anthropology – what is typical for most political anthropologies – by a distinction between archetypical human and animal characteristics. In On Moral Duties (De officiis), Cicero writes: But between man and beast there is essential difference, that the latter, moved by sense alone, adapts himself only to that which is present in place and time, having very little cognizance of the past or the future. Man, on the other hand – because he is possessed of reason, by which he discerns consequences, sees the causes of things, understands the rise and progress of events, compares similar objects, and connects and associates the future with the present – easily takes into view the whole course of life, and provides things necessary for it. (Book I.4)24 The use, application, and further development of reason – that is, the ability to logically identify causes and consequences, to compare outcomes and the progression of events due to different causes which gave rise to them, and to dispose over time-consciousness – is construed by Cicero not only as a human condition but also, in accordance with his teleological outlook, as an ethical obligation to aim at and to accomplish for the realization of our potential aptitudes, talents, and predispositions. This conceptualization of reason is also to be characterized mainly by two aspects: it is per se universal and applies to all human beings as humans and as such naturally distinguished from animals;25 and in addition to that, it is incrementally practical

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since a successful life – or what Aristotle calls a ‘good life’, that is, a life conducted in accordance with men’s natural disposition – can only be lived through the active realization of our anthropologically given constitution. Cicero notes in this regard that ‘(the) reputation of virtue consists wholly in active life’ (On Moral Duties, Book I.6). When we think both aspects together, the universalistic anthropological conception of reason and its realization through practical, active life, two consequences of Cicero’s anthropological foundation of politics become obvious, which need further discussion: first, there is a necessity of creating a social and political framework which is binding for all members of a political body since Cicero’s anthropological determination of human life applies to every human;26 such a framework is socially and politically binding due to his anthropological teleology according to which individual life and political life can only be rational when, and if, they are conducted and organized in a way which accomplishes and abides by the teleological determinants of men’s anthropological pre-determination, that is, if they develop men’s potential of rationality. Second, the necessity of creating such a socially and politically binding framework generates Cicero’s concept of law and justice, which are thought of as genuinely universal and strictly compulsory because they are construed as based upon human nature and its (teleologically determined) rational development. Deviating from this conception of natural law would mean to contradict and violate the human condition itself. In Treatise on the Commonwealth, Book III, Cicero notes that ‘he who obeys it not, flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man’ since – as we read in, and can combine with, On Moral Duties – ‘nature is the fountain of law’ (Book III.17). Supplementary to this, we read on the relation between nature, reason, and law in Treatise on Law (De Legibus) that ‘nature hath not only given us reason, but right reason, and consequently that law which is nothing else than right reason enjoining what is good, and forbidding what is evil’ (Book I.33). Thus, in order to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘rightful’ and ‘wrongful’, Cicero relies on our judgements by reason (or ‘common sense’, sensus communis) and conscience, which has to steadily take into account and to consider the moral aspects of the law of nature (see De Legibus, Book I). We hence recognize that Cicero’s idea of law and legal justice is not only anthropologically based upon human nature, universal as it applies to all humans regardless of their political and social culture, and endowed with the power of being binding and compulsory for every human, but furthermore is incrementally driven by and inherits ethical aspirations (‘conscience’). Thus, law as the consequent institution of human nature at the same time points to and requires ethics and human virtue. Finally, since law is the framework which not only corresponds to human nature, and vice versa, but also creates the political organization in which men can realize their natural disposition as rational beings, law both has a fundamental

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ethical element – indeed men are ethically obliged to realize their virtues in accordance with law – and is thought of as universal. Cicero writes in Treatise on Government, Book III.33: There is a true law, a right reason, conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. From an international politics perspective, this construction is interesting for at least two reasons on which I will concentrate my following interpretations: one point of interest is that Cicero distinguishes between three sorts of law, namely, natural law, civil law, and law of nations, thus explicitly taking an international perspective. Another interesting and important aspect to further investigate – and which elevates astonishments that Cicero has been excluded from the canon of IR literature – consists in Cicero’s application of his legal thought to war and warfare, thus to another distinctively international politics topic. As Thomas Pangle notes, ‘Cicero laid down some of the most influential ... pronouncements ever made on the moral limits of war’ (Pangle, 1998, p. 239). Consequently, he becomes probably the first Western author to contribute to what was later called the ‘just war theory’. At the very least, he formulates international legal restrictions on war and warfare some 1,500 years prior to Hugo Grotius to whom the foundation of such theorems is usually assigned (albeit Grotius explicitly drew on Cicero). About the distinction between law of nature, law of the state, and law of nations, Cicero reasons as follows: (Our) ancestors recognized a distinction between the law of nations and the law of the state. What is the law of the state is not necessarily also the law of nations; but whatever is the law of nations ought also to be the law of the state ... (True) law and genuine justice ... are drawn from excellent models presented by nature and truth. (On Moral Duties, Book III.17) We learn from this paragraph that the law of nature is fundamental and prior to both the law of the state and the law of nations.27 Thus, how a state should be governed and how the relations among nations should be organized is both derived and derivable from the law of nature. At the same time, we learn that, for Cicero, the law of the state and the law of nations are not necessarily the same and that what is determined in the

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law of nations should be incorporated into the law of the state. This means that the law of the state appears more complex because this incorporation does not work otherwise; however, Cicero also requests that the law of the state should neither violate the law of the nations nor natural law (see also Nederman, 1993, p. 506). Most important, however, is that Cicero thinks of international politics in terms of legal relations among the political bodies. Moreover, those regulations stem from one source, and that is natural law, thus, international relations have, according to the above discussed ethical impact of the law of nature, a moral codification as well; Pangle speaks of a ‘Ciceronian Moral Code of International Relations’ (Pangle, 1998, p. 251). And the law of nations and its determinations are universal as is the law of the state. In the Treatise on Commonwealth we read: (Law) is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; one thing today and another tomorrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must for ever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author – its promulgator – its enforcer. (Book III.33) These are so far only formal definitions; in political terms, however, it seems important to develop concrete ideas and to develop precise determinations of a law of state and nations. We know from the previous discussion that the law of state and the law of nations are not identical, nevertheless we can conclude – since both are derived from the law of nature – that what is rightful according to the one cannot be wrongful in the realm of the other. Cicero is aware that his formal definitions have to be concretized, and he addresses this problem by asking, ‘But the great question is “Who are the ‘good men’, and what is to be ‘fairly done’ ”?’ (On Moral Duties, Book III.17). Especially in his writing On Moral Duties (De officiis), Cicero elaborates legal standards – backed by the system of thought as described, dependant on political ethics and virtue, and driven by the aspiration of justice – which apply either to the law of the state or the law of nations, or to both. For the following discussion, I refer to those standards that are most relevant for the conduct and the organization of international law, that is, his legal restrictions on war and warfare.28 We find within Cicero’s legal thought seven determinations affecting the rights of war and warfare. The excursions, in which he speaks about legal restrictions on war, are spread over several of his writings. Mainly, however, we find relevant paragraphs in his De republica and De officiis. If we read those paragraphs together and produce a collection of his thoughts, we find that his concepts aim to restrict warfare in terms of excluding certain actions as principally illegitimate and/or practically counterproductive and also because they intend to impose prohibitions on war in general, or certain kinds of war, respectively. Most of these ideas reappear in Grotius nearly identically.

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Before discussing Cicero’s legal determinations or restrictions on war and warfare, it should be demonstrated that, and how, those legal thoughts are embedded in a universal framework. Universal ethics and reason provide in Cicero the structure in which his just war theorems are formulated and from which they are at all derived. Here, we see the impact of the above discussed relations between anthropological universalism and universalism of the reason, ethics, and law on very concrete political considerations. Just war theorems as outlined in Cicero seem only possible due to his fundamental concepts of, and beliefs in, the universalism of ethics, reason, and law, which create a common bond and solidarity among mankind and its several, ethnically heterogeneous nations. This commonness is rationally tangible because humans are gifted with reason to investigate their anthropological constitution. In De officiis, Cicero speaks of a ‘fellowship of the human race which is in the closest accordance with nature’ (Book III.33). Furthermore, universal solidarity is an ethical obligation, according to the teleological principle that what constitutes our nature predetermines the way we ought to act in order to realize our nature, as well as being part of human destiny and prophecy according to which ‘mankind was intended to compose one fraternal association’ (De Legibus, Book I.32). It seems that only such a conception or a similar29 universalistic conception grants modes of thought which allow, by transcending the separateness and multitude of individual political bodies into visions of some commonality, the foundation of legal standards regulating war and unifying war-waging parties by common obligations. Thus, Cicero’s rights of war are preceded by general ethical demands from which they are specifications applying to distinct situations and contexts, namely war, while also in war and wartime, as it should generally be the case, the point politics bears on, ‘(is) the moral end of our actions (ad finem bonorum) to which all things are to be referred, and for the sake of which all things are to be undertaken’ (De Legibus, Book I.52). In addition to this, we read in De officiis, Book I.7: The first demand of justice is, that no one do harm to another, unless provoked by injury; the next, that one use common possessions as common, private, as belonging to their owners. Private possessions, indeed, are not so by nature, but by ancient occupancy, as in the case of settlers in a previously uninhabited region; or by conquest, as in the territory acquired in war ... If any one endeavours to obtain for himself, he will violate the law of human society. But since ... we are not born for ourselves alone; since our country claims a part in us, our parents a part, our friends a part; and since ... whatever the earth bears is created for the use of men, while men were brought into being for the sake of men, that they might do good to one another – is this matter we ought to ... strengthen the social union of men among men. But the foundation of justice is good faith, that is, steadfastness and truth in promises and agreements.

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The rights of war and warfare we find in Cicero and which are derived from these general ethical axioms, in terms of the general legitimization of a war are: Wars must be undertaken only with a proper motive. But what is a proper motive? Here Cicero introduces the first and most relevant motive of self-defence, which accomplished axiomatic status in international law until the present day. His second general motive to term a war a ‘just’ war is that it must be undertaken for reasons of restoring peace. Both selfdefence and peace are hence motives for a just war, while the most deniable motive for war is a personal ‘desire of fame’ which, however, appears to Cicero unfortunately to be very often the case (see De officiis, Book I). Consequently, all wars which are not fought either for reasons of selfdefence or reestablishing peace are to be termed unjust. Cicero writes: ‘All wars undertaken without a proper motive are unjust ... (and) no war can be undertaken by a just and wise state, unless for ... self-defence’ (De republica, Book III, Fragments); ‘(war) should be undertaken in such a way that it may seem nothing else than quest for peace’ (De officiis, Book I.23); and ‘wars ... are to be waged in order to render it possible to live in peace’ (De officiis, Book I.11). In addition to these two general determinations on just war, that is, general in the sense that self-defence and peace specify war regardless of how the war itself is fought, we find individual restrictions related to warfare. Here the most important – which again traces throughout the history of international law until the present day – is that a war to be perceived as legitimate needs a war declaration; ‘(every) war which was not duly announced and declared, might be adjudged illegitimate’ (De republica, Book II.34). Further to that, Cicero appeals to the general legal-ethical dictum that promises have to be kept with mutual respect and rectitude and consequently views stratagems a violation of rights. In De officiis, Book I, he exemplifies this dictum using the example of a 30-days’ truce between two armies during which one party would attack at night arguing that the truce only referred to days, not nights. Such an interpretation would obviously contradict common sense and maliciously betray the other party. Cicero’s fifth restriction on warfare consists in the appeal to compassion and moderation of the winning party treating war prisoners, refugees, and the people of the conquered and besieged territories kindly. In De officiis Cicero states that all behaviour during and after a war should be ‘free from personal insult, and should have reference, not to the pleasure of him who administers punishment or reproof, but to the public good’ (Book I.25). His sixth appeal concerns good faith on both sides that laying down arms and flight to the other’s party command will be perceived as surrender and soldiers doing so will be spared (see De officiis, Book I.11, 12, 22). Finally, he underlines the importance of diplomacy and negotiation between politicians that require certain skills of a statesmen since the ‘skill in the settlement of controversies is more desirable than courage in disputing them by arms’ (De officiis, Book I.23).

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All of these determinations on warfare – war declaration, no stratagems, compassion, moderation, and good faith – serve the higher purpose of the aforementioned general criterion of just war, namely, that war has to serve peace, aim at the creation of peace, and focus on the ‘public good’. They serve this higher purpose insofar as they contribute to avoid feelings of injustice, unnecessary atrocities and violence, and longing for revenge after the war has been fought. Thus, Cicero is aware of the need of reconciliation after war, which seems to be, however, less an end in itself rather than a pragmatic political imperative to pacify societies under the banner of Roman republican imperialism. This qualification is revealed when taking into account Cicero’s discussions on the relationship between expedience and the unconditioned procession of the moral common good; and his discussion is by all means ambivalent because Cicero, notwithstanding his legal restrictions on war and warfare which apply unconditionally, represents a very distinct attitude towards peace-bringing wars, which are the second type of just wars after wars of self-defence. But what kind of peace and war has Cicero in mind? It is with regard to this question that Cicero’s thoughts become ambivalent. He qualifies utilitarian, consequentialist behaviour against unconditioned and honest ethical behaviour in case of altered circumstances, and he begins to justify expediency. ‘Justice for Cicero’, Marcia Colish writes, ‘is the paramount virtue for the duties flowing from it above all “pertinent ad hominum utilitatem” ... In applying these principles Cicero stresses ... that circumstances alter cases ... In particular, political life frequently requires us to apply the latter rule. We should conduct war and peace without guile or violence, if possible. But while such strategies are bestial rather than human, we may have to use them as the last resort’ (Colish, 1978, p. 87). Ambivalently to his ethical postulates, Cicero views such altered circumstances, which allow a justification of expedience and war, when the wealth, glory, and honour of the Roman Empire are at stake. Here, the image of wars in order to create peace becomes relevant, a peace, however, which is a Pax Romana, thus an imperial peace which is pacifying only insofar as it dictates, if necessary by war, the conditions of peace unilaterally to other nations and can be peaceful only insofar as besieged nations can be made allies after the war. Under the condition of Roman imperialism, which is for Cicero the best and the only thinkable and wishful order of international politics, such wars are, however, unavoidable. In order to turn besieged nations into allies, however, unnecessary violence and subsequent feelings of revenge have to be prevented and reconciliation after the war has to have a chance. The legal restrictions of warfare finally aim at, and should serve the purpose of, this post-war policy what constitutes their very practical character beyond all ethical considerations. Along this line, we can understand the following verdict of Cicero as a conclusion of his consideration on war and peace: ‘Let all wars be just, and justly prosecuted. Let allies be spared, and our

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armies restrained from all unnecessary violence, that glory of our country may be augmented. Then shall our soldiers return home with honour’ (De Legibus, Book III.28). This takes us to the next paragraph on patriotism and empire in Cicero’s international political thought. The Ciceronian concepts of ‘patriotism’ and ‘empire’ The relation between patriotism and empire in Cicero implies an ambivalence between imperial universalism, on the one hand, and an univocal attachment to the particular polity of Rome, on the other hand. This ambivalent relationship remains unresolved in his thoughts and threads through all his writings. It furthermore provides the pattern to understand the paradox why he perceives wars for the increase of Roman glory, honour, and wealth as legitimate while, at the same time, condemning acts of war as atrocities against humanity and restricting warfare on legal grounds. The idea behind that paradox points to Cicero’s outlook that war on behalf of the Roman empire will at some point, namely, when the previous enemies have been turned into allies and pacified satellite states of the imperial centre of Rome, benefit all and will be the best for everyone. Thus, the outcome of Roman imperial warfare aspires to include the world (or what has been perceived as the world) into Roman political order and is hence based on universal ideas of international political order – the Pax Romana – by means and an ideological agency, however, which are indeed particularistic in nature. Nevertheless, even if it is probably not at all tangible for Rome’s enemies, Cicero is driven by the unreserved conviction that the imperial peacekeeping order enacted and invigilated – if required by further wars to pacify and keep the peace – by Rome is to the advantage not only of Rome, but also of the imperialized nations themselves. Thus, Roman war against its neighbouring nations is initially perceived not as punishment or as retaliation, but to do them good: politically, culturally, and in the name of humanity. In On Moral Duties we read: Yet so long as the sway of the Roman people was maintained by the bestowal of benefits, not by injustice, wars were waged either in defence of our allies or of our own government; the issues of our successful wars were either merciful or no more severe than necessity demanded; our Senate was the harbour and refuge of kings, tribes, nations; while our magistrates and military commanders sought to obtain the highest praise from this one thing, – the guarding of interests of our provinces and our allies by equity and good faith. Our sovereignty might then be termed patronage, rather than the government, of the world. (Book II.8) Such a paternalistic system, called ‘patronage’ by Cicero, in which Rome not only conquers and besieges foreign nations and subsequently includes them in their empire with rights and duties, but also will be obliged to accept responsibilities to defend their (new) allies, is termed by S. E. Smethurst a

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‘protectorate system of government’: ‘The Roman Empire, he claims, evolved as a result of Rome’s defence of her allies, and is justified on these grounds. It is a protectorate – patrocinium orbis terrarrum’ (Smethurst, 1953, p. 217); in addition to that he argues: In case of any conflict of interests Rome naturally must have first consideration ... More significant is the fact that he [Cicero] takes for granted the impossibility of any system except one in which Rome will continue to rule the nations. His attitude is paternalistic. Originally, Rome’s right to rule depended on the moral character of her leaders and the justice of her constitution ... She has retained her predominance because ... natural justice demands the rule of the ‘best’ over the weak for the benefit of the latter ... It is not surprising, therefore, that in his speeches there are often suggestions, if not of racial basis, at least of certain consciousness of superiority. (Smethurst, 1953, p. 219) We can conclude from here that Cicero’s paternalistic imperialism is based on three foundations – moral, legal, and policy-oriented (i.e., republican, as we will see later) – all driven by the very notion of (universal) Roman superiority over the world. The ultimate point of reference for his universalistic political thought, from which he derives his moral, legal, and policy- oriented outlooks, is, however, anthropological and consists in his belief in one human nature which finds, and undoubtedly should find, its political manifestation in one universal commonwealth. In addition to the evidence of this view, as discussed in ‘The universality of reason and law’, two examples of Cicero’s very pregnant representation of this view on a ‘common body of humanity’ (On Moral Duties, Book III.6) reads as quoted below. It becomes again clear that his universalism incrementally includes the aforementioned paradoxical relation to a patriotic particularism, such as: (All) mankind bear a fraternal resemblance and relationship to each other [while] the main object of this whole discussion is to strengthen the foundations of our Commonwealth, to establish its forces, and to benefit its population in all their relations. (Treatise on the Laws, Book I.35; emphasis H.B.) Or (The) whole human race of mankind, as being united together by one common nature as a citizen of the universe, [is] considered as a single Commonwealth. (Treatise on the Laws, Book I.61) The groundings of Cicero’s paternalism will be discussed now; first, however, it has to be emphasized that Rome’s universal rule is not unconditionally

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granted, but has to be earned. In other words, Rome’s superiority, and Cicero’s claim of Roman superiority, only has a legitimate basis insofar as – however cynical this might sound – its imperial politics is conducted with honesty and courtesy, supported by the ideas of overall security, peace, and benefit for the whole Commonwealth, and preservation of life, as well as guided by good faith and philanthropy for other nations and races. Concretely, the father (pater) has to proof himself worth of his reign. Consequently, if Rome fails to prove the righteousness of this role, she does not deserve to be acknowledged as ruler over the world. Cicero sees Rome’s deserved failure and disregard as the imperial motherland approaching with the decline of the Roman republic and the monarchical and dictatorial transformations under Caesar (100 to 44 BC) and Sulla (138/134 to 78 BC). Accordingly, Cicero became an opponent of both during the Roman Civil War (88 to 82 BC) and proves himself as a firm adherent of Roman republicanism. As Marcus Wheeler notes, ‘Endless quotations may be taken from the political speeches, from the Catilinarians to the Philipps, to witness to Cicero’s distrust in any kind of monarchy’ (Wheeler, 1952, p. 52). Only a republican Roman Empire would deserve recognition, following, obedience, and solidarity by other nations. Cicero himself notes in On Moral Duties: (After) Sulla’s victory we entirely departed from it [justice and patronage; HB]; for nothing any longer appeared inequitable toward our allies, after so much cruelty had been exercised upon our own citizens ... And so, foreign nations being thus oppressed and ruined, in token of our forfeited empire, we saw Massilia borne in a triumphal procession, and triumph celebrated over that city without whose aid our commanders never gained a Transalpine triumph. I might mention many other abominable things done to our allies, if the sun had ever beheld anything more shameful than this very transaction. We therefore are justly punished ... We have fallen in to these calamities because we preferred to be feared rather than to be loved and esteemed. (Book II.8)30 This throws an interesting light on Cicero’s patriotism. Even if the paradox between universalism and particularism cannot be dissolved completely, at least we learn from the contingency of his loyal feelings to Roman politics that even his particularism (patriotism) has a universal basis, that is, there is something higher than his patriotic loyalty to Rome and that is his belief in the value of republicanism (concretely in his case: the sovereignty of the Roman senate) and philanthropy. Finally, it is because of the observation and realization of these two highest common goods that Rome (meaning the Roman Republic only) would deserve universal reign over other nations and the world; or rightfully deserve punishment by resisting nations in case Roman politics and warfare violate the norms of both goods – as, according

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to the above quotation – Sulla and Cicero. In case Roman politics abides by and realizes the norms of republican politics and philanthropy, it warrants being pater mundi and having foreign nations be obedient to its patronage. We hence find in Cicero, according the abovementioned paradox, the notion of universal values manifesting themselves in the particular unit of Roman republicanism and its paternalistic imperialism. Universalism in Cicero thus reveals both the advantage of universal thought in international politics in that it allows the development and application of indiscriminate values and policies to all nations, cultures, and individuals, connecting and incorporating all political bodies into a theoretically conflict-free order of peaceful relations and sharply points out the downfalls of this concept in that this order is only thinkable as a hierarchic hegemony under the supreme authority and, if necessary, violent reign of Rome. However – and that will play decisively into the distinction between pre-nineteenth century universalism and nineteenth and twentieth century universalization, the latter being informed by positivistic, instead of normative, rationality (for this discussion, see Chapter IV.1) – Cicero adheres to a political philosophy of order and hence views a reference point beyond the political which determines the righteousness of concrete political conduct (in his case, the righteousness, or not, of Roman politics) and finally is solid enough to even qualify his patriotic love to Rome. As he notes in his treatise on the Commonwealth, Book I.1, ‘so great is the necessity of this patriotism which nature has implanted in man, so great is the ambition to defend the safety of our country, that its energy has continually overcome all the blandishments of pleasure and repose ... but all virtue consists in its proper use and action’ (emphasis mine). We can conclude that Cicero’s patriotism to Rome is founded by, and consists of, the realization of certain highest values by Roman (republican) politics. When Roman politics deviate from this ideal (which happened in Cicero’s view with Sulla’s and Caesar’s violation of the Senate’s authority), Cicero’s love for Rome qualifies accordingly and is as such contingent.31 Smethurst writes, ‘Cicero was considering the good old times. The protectorate system, however, was modified before Sulla’s time and has been abandoned altogether since. Sulla, Cinna, Pompey, and Caesar, all aspired to a regnum, a term which ... denoted not monarchy, but the possession of excessive power within the framework of the republic ... Caesar’s ambition dealt the deathblow to constitutional government. Such is Cicero’s bitter indictment in the second book of De Officiis ... which we may assume presents his final and considered judgement on the most aggressive of Roman imperialists’ (Smethurst, 1953, p. 221). As long as Roman politics corresponds with republican politics and protectorate virtue, Cicero believes in the superiority of Rome in legal, political (i.e., republican politics as the best form of government), and moral terms. It appears that there is a clear hierarchy among these three in Cicero: derived from the supremacy of natural law itself, the legal order of a commonwealth

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provided the embedment for the realization of both the political and moral order. Thus, a commonwealth can only be, and rightfully claim to be, superior to other nations if it realizes just laws and equality among its citizens, inspired by God and imitating ‘nothing else than a nature perfect in itself and developed in all its excellence’ (Treatise on the Laws, Book I.25). This realization has been accomplished in republican Rome, ‘the most equitable of all nations’ (On the Commonwealth, Book III.16), whereby it is this legal universal order realizing justice and equality which enabled the political life to be republican. Mutually, the Roman constitution protected the legal order and guaranteed its orderly functioning ‘to regulate the affairs of that universal city [Rome]’ (Treatise on the Laws, Book I.23). In Book II.2, Treatise on the Commonwealth, Cicero writes: (The) government of Rome was superior to that of other states ... Our Roman constitution ... did not spring from the genius of an individual, but of many; and it was established, not in the lifetime of a man, but in the course of ages and centuries. The mutual enforcement between legal and political-constitutional order and their duration in Rome over centuries, as Cicero argues, lifts Roman superiority on a structural, eternal, and illustrious level beyond the influence of individual action32 and unique in comparison with other nations. It made Rome a sacred institution, immortal and, as Andrew Bell emphasizes, ‘the stage of the world’ (Bell, 1997, p. 1), being an universal manifestation of the trinity of human nature, ‘God’s’ will and (the only rightful) political-legal principles and hence possessing the natural right to impose an universal empire. This manifestation in Rome and respective realizations of these principles in the republican past of the Roman Empire, constitute finally the moral superiority of the Roman people. Rome’s ‘very greatness of soul’ thus consists not only in the disposition over ultimate reason and divine spirituality – both legally and politically – but, based on that, also in the possession of the virtue to create, guide and ‘preserve the common harmony and fellowship of the whole human race’ as well as common safety (Cicero, On Moral Duties, Book I.41). Thus, the Roman Empire is in Cicero’s view also a cosmopolitan ethical ideal, endowed with, and responsible for, the care and cultivation of humanity at large – a care and responsibility which paradoxically, that is, albeit Cicero’s moral and legal restrictions on war and warfare (see the discussions in ‘The universality of reason and law’) are to be put into practice, if necessary, by imperialist wars of expansion cynically for the sake and welfare of others. Cicero’s imperialism is symbolically informed by a geopolitical pattern typical for imperial thought, not only in antiquity but apparently throughout the centuries until the present day (see Eisenstadt, 1963; Voegelin, 1974; Bauer, 1980; Sinopoli, 1994; critically Ashley, 1987; Behr, 2007). Cicero’s

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geopolitical vision merges into a political cosmology which centres Rome in the middle of the universe and constructs the rest of the world as the periphery of Rome. According to Cicero, these peripheral zones nevertheless belong to the universal commonwealth. By using a political cosmology, Cicero emphasizes another time, now symbolically, the universalism of his thought and of the Roman Republic, respectively. It is thus suggested that Rome is not only the centre of the commonwealth and all its integrated nations (i.e., of the political world), but of the cosmos as such because the cosmos appeared to be ordered geocentrically and Rome is thought of as the universal centre of the globe. Thus, this political vision of imperial privilege becomes endorsed by objective, eternal, and unchangeable, that is, cosmic, principles and is construed not only as metaphysically based on ‘natural law’ and anthropology, but further as a human order, a monument, corresponding to, and at the same time coined in the stone of, the physis of the imaginable.33

I.2 Christian Political Pragmatism and Ethical Universalism – Aurelius Augustine and Thomas Aquinas

1. Prolegomena This chapter will be on the international political thought of probably the two most important and influential Christian philosophers: Aurelius Augustine (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225[?]–1274). Discussing both as theorists of international politics is obviously not part of the historic canon constructed by the discipline of IR; nevertheless, both contribute importantly to the history of international political theory. The knowledge and interpretation of their writings enhance our understanding of traditions and legacies in international political thought and how they fed into perceptions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century inter-national politics. Both authors are part of a stream which is nowadays called ‘idealistic’ and their normative ethical tenets have, whether positively shared or not, solidified as commonsense knowledge (at least in Christian cultures, Protestant or Catholic), such as the dogmas of the Sermon on the Mount to international politics, ‘pacifist’ attitude towards international politics, and thoughts on ‘just war’. The latter perceptions, however, have to be put into question: a Christian pacifism cannot be coherently and convincingly derived either from Augustine or Aquinas and has been criticized, for example, by Reinhold Niebuhr as a-political (more on this later); and a Christian just war theory remains quite vague, at least as an original contribution to international political thought while, in a retrospective view, Cicero elaborated a much more coherent concept of ‘just wars’ long before the Christian Fathers (see Chapter I.1). Against the popular views that Christian international political thought provides coherent teachings for pacifist international politics or delivers an original just war theory, I will argue that Augustine as well as Aquinas subscribe to rather pessimistic and sceptical outlooks on international politics (as on politics in general), which view a permanent threat of war due to a lack of human rectitude and social reliability as well as due to human feelings of 50

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retaliation and aspirations of glory and pride. Saying this, it has to be emphasized that they also speak of ‘just war’, ‘justice’, ‘peace’, and a Christian duty to love one’s enemies and neighbours. And this is important here because both Augustine and Aquinas elaborate a normative framework consisting of ethical and legal instructions which operate, or should operate, as guidelines for more peaceful and just human relations, on an interpersonal and ‘international’ level. This is finally why they contribute to the central question of this study as a further example of universally oriented international political thought, even when rooted in perceptions which some would call traditional ‘realist’. It is argued here, however, that such categorization as ‘realist’ would be misleading for mainly one reason: it is a blurred categorization because, as will be seen throughout this study, it seems impossible to define what ‘realist’ actually means, and that is why I prefer, with Niebuhr, to term Augustine’s and Aquinas’s thoughts as (partly) ‘pragmatic’. Finally, the strong normative counter-picture against their pragmatic view of reality, drafted and claimed on the basis of Christian beliefs, either drops out of a secular and scientistic reading or is decried as idealistic and utopian. In both regards, they are not suitable for the construction of ‘realist’ legacies, and this might be the reason why Augustine and Aquinas are being widely neglected by IR theory. Augustine and Aquinas, as different as their historic circumstances and the initials for their oeuvre were, argue on common ground which is typical for all Christian thinkers, orthodox or liberal, historic or modern, about the principal situation of men and its important consequences for their political world. R. W. Southern summarizes this common ground as follows: ‘Man is a fallen creature, who has lost that immediate knowledge of God which was the central feature of human nature before the Fall; that human instincts are now deeply disturbed and are often in conflict with reason; that human beings are now radically disorganized and disoriented – all this is common ground to all Christian thinkers at all times’ (Southern, 1995, p. 22). Nevertheless, there is an unshaken normative belief which is set against this pessimism of the ‘human condition’: ‘The first fundamental characteristic is ... a strong sense of the dignity of human nature’ (Southern, 1995, p. 22). This fundamental assumption is to be revealed for further discussing and understanding Augustine’s and Aquinas’s political conceptualizations relevant for international politics. For this discussion, it is less important whether, or not, one shares these assumptions or beliefs, but much more relevant to be aware of them in order to understand their pragmatic approach to the ‘real world’ and to recognize at the same time, first, the existence and, second, the strength, of their normative (counter-) world. With regard to this study’s question of universalistic and particularistic ontologies of international/inter-national order, Augustine and Aquinas have many thoughts in common. They evidently share the Christian tenets from the Holy Scriptures, acknowledge the authorities of Aristotle and, to lesser extent, of Cicero in relation to ethics and natural law; and Aquinas

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recognizes unrestrictedly the authority of Augustine.34 Interpreting Aquinas and Augustine regarding the problematic at hand, their writings are complementary. This correlation provides the structure for this chapter; and recognizing that there appears to be no aspect in regard to our question in which Aquinas would oppose Augustine, the following sections of this chapter apply to both Augustine and Aquinas. Whereas Augustine develops fundamental outlooks then adopted by Aquinas, continuing the tradition of orthodox Christian thinking on politics, such as the differentiation between a ‘godly’ and ‘earthly’ city (called Civitas Dei and Civitas Terrena), Aquinas is more explicit on law and legal aspects and their nature and function to order human action and politics (Questions 90–108, Summa Theologica; further referred to as Aquinas, 2007). However, we can legitimately assume that his conclusions are, or would be, in line with Augustine’s since most of his arguments end up with an authoritative quotation taken from Augustine. Another difference, though again complementary, relates to their explicitness on just war and laws of warfare, which are worth discussing (see ‘Transcendental universalism and the intelligibility of order: Peace and justice’) even when they remain quite vague. Here, it is also Aquinas who is more specific. Their vagueness, however, seems all in all to be due to the idea that men have a natural knowledge of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (and their exceptions) through their rational participation in divine law (or eternal law and subsequently natural law), a knowledge imparted in men as rational beings and finally guaranteed by their belief in God and the Holy Scriptures. At the same time, both Augustine and Aquinas, although they find their ultimate reference in God and the Scriptures as well as the human belief herein, share, perhaps astonishingly, a rational conception of God. It is only because of this rationality, which guarantees a universal intelligibility of divine and natural law for all human beings, that the lessons of the Holy Scriptures and the vision of the Civitas Dei (or the Kingdom of God) can operate as the normative framework of politics (or the Earthly City). It is also this intelligibility and the knowledge imparted in men by belief and devotion to God by which both Augustine’s and Aquinas’s vagueness can be explained when it comes to politics (compared to Cicero and Thucydides, for example) since this knowledge is supposed to be, or supposed to be able to be, known nat urally and hence, as they trust, does not need to be explained at great length. In addition to this, and this is a most relevant consequence for our discussion, this rationality manifests in a profound humanism in both: their illumination of Christianity derives from their interest in its lessons in relation to and for men in this world, based on a profound conviction of human dignity, even after the Fall. R. W. Southern notes: Just as human nature has an inherent dignity which, though ruined by the Fall, has not been altogether lost, so too the whole natural order is in a similar situation. The continuing human power to recognize the

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grandeur and splendour of the universe, to understand the principles of the organization of nature, and to order human life in accordance with nature, is symptomatic of the survival of human dignity, in however depleted a form, after the Fall. But it is also symptomatic of the continuing dignity of the natural world itself that it is intelligible. Consequently, when human beings understand the laws of nature, they not only achieve their true dignity as nature’s keystone, holding the whole created order together in an intelligible union, but they also recognize the rationality of nature itself. Further, this position gives human minds access to the divine purpose in the Creation, and therefore, in some degree access through reason, as well as through Revelation, to the divine nature itself. (Southern, 1995, p. 23) Consequently, Augustine and Aquinas utter strong and determined views on politics which will, especially in Section 3 of this chapter, be interpreted with relation to international politics, that is, to the problem of diversity of humankind into nations, languages, and customs and the principles of interaction of diverse entities; to the human inclination towards glory and pride (sought primarily in waging wars); and to efforts of, and teachings about, establishing peace.

2. Political pragmatism35 in Augustine and Aquinas To further investigate the basic belief of Christian theology in the dilemma of human beings and human society in its political relevance, the narrative36 of the Fall has to be further discussed. This narration lies at the ground of both Augustine’s and Aquinas’s pragmatic outlook on politics. According to this narrative, humankind, initially created by God in his image and in unity descending from the first man created by God37 lost its innocence and paradisaical conditions when starting to reflect upon its contingence and when seeking for knowledge, symbolized in the metaphor of Eve seducing Adam. With this incidence, and from this point onwards, humankind, or as Augustine puts it, the ‘earthly City’ fell from God, its creator and governor, lost its original virtue, and sank in sin. This narrative is, of course, deeply ambivalent since mankind’s human condition and anthropological constituents, namely, its quest for knowledge and capacity of reflexivity, in other words humans’ self-consciousness, self-confidence, and free will, depended on the denial of unconditioned belief in, and devotion to, its creator. This ambivalence is also emphasized by Niebuhr who argues that ‘Augustine sought God in the mystery of self-consciousness’ (Niebuhr, 1941, p. 168); he further explains: ‘His description of the capacity to transcend temporal process, and of the ultimate power of self-determination and self-transcendence, stirs a sense of amazement in Augustine and the conviction that the limits of the self lie finally outside the self ... The conclusions at which Augustine arrives in the contemplation of this mystery of human self-transcendence are of tremendous importance for

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the understanding of man’s religious nature. He concludes that the power of transcendence places him so much outside of everything else that he can find a home only in God’ (Niebuhr, 1941, p. 167). This narrative’s symbolism also describes the human condition as genuinely conflicted since the capacity of reflexivity naturally leads to the tendency that men start to draft and create their life in general and their political order in particular due to their own visions, imaginations, and passions. This again leads to the division of mankind into different opinions, political communities, tribes, races, empires, languages, customs, and social practices.38 However, God as the creator remains the governor over human destiny: ‘(The) times of all kings and kingdoms have been ordained by the judgment and power of God’ (Augustine, 1998, p. 184). Thus, this narrative is embedded in another narrative, which conveys that humankind was punished by God for its fall from divine order and its separation and individualization from God. Put differently, the invention of politics as humans’ vision to create their order on their own free will, principally independent of God and symbolized in the Fall, results in the punishment and destiny of being eternally and irretrievably divided, diversified, and morally sinful. Henceforth, humankind has to deal with diversity and conflict, having lost its initial togetherness and unity in peace before the Fall (see Augustine, 1995, Book XIV, and especially Book XVI, chapter 4, 6 and 8). This human condition of conflict, diversity, strife, and war among nations, accompanied and initiated by men’s passions, pride, desire for glory, and lust for mastery, compared to the innocent life of obedience, contemplation, and firm belief before the Fall, is symbolized in Augustine by the metaphor of the earthly city where no political order is everlasting (1995; Book XV, chapter 4), where triumph in war brings nothing but death (ibid.) and where peace is only temporary. These conditions, represented as God’s punishment for men’s longing for knowledge and autonomy, are referred to by Augustine in Book XVI of the City of God by the story of the city of Babylon and the erection of its towers which stand for men’s ‘ungodly pride’ or hubris (see chapter 4) as they reach into heaven and thereby would provoke God. God’s answer is the division of mankind into nations and different tongues. Babylon, Augustine argues, therefore means nothing else but ‘confusion’; and more than that, men’s activity which stands behind his longing for knowledge and capability of reflectivity, namely, philosophy, is equated with Babylon, confusing people by its multitude of opinions, sects, and speculative questions. Consequently, he describes the earthly city as reign by ‘the lust for mastery’ (1995, p. 644), where peace can never be eternal (1995; Book XIX, chapter 5) and social bonds were genuinely nonreliable (1995; Book XIX, chapter 8);39 and he further illustrates: Do we not know that human affairs are everywhere full of such undoubted evils: of injuries, suspicions, hostilities, and war? And even peace is an

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uncertain good, since we do not know the hearts of those with whom we wish to maintain peace. Moreover, even if we could know them today, we should not know what they might be like in the future ... And these ills are bitter in proportion to the sweetness of the peace which, though believed to be true peace, was only a most clever pretence ... If ... there is no security even in the home from the common evils which befall the human race, what of the city? The larger the city, the more is its forum filled with civil law-suits and criminal trials. Even when the city is at peace and free from actual sedition and civil war, it is never free from the danger of such disturbance, or, more often, bloodshed’. (1995, pp. 925–6) He concludes that historically Rome was such a earthly city, or a ‘second Babylon’ (p. 824).40 Facing such ‘realities’ – which are, indeed, just one side of men’s reality, namely, the part bare of the normative world which is later symbolized by the ‘City of God’ – Augustine’s pragmatism aggrandizes to its utmost form. He even tends to relativize the value and relevance of political order and politics. In Book XVIII, chapter 41, The City of God, he considers: ‘But, in any case, what does it matter in what direction or way unhappy humankind sets out on its pursuit of happiness, if it is not guided by divine authority?’ (p. 880; also Book V, chapter 17, ‘About the consent of the conquered’); and in Soliloquia, Book II (1986), he declares the righteousness of deception in political and social life if expedient for the realization of a higher cause (which remains quite vague and foremost lies in the perspective of the very agent). However, this is just one part of Augustine’s outlook, which nevertheless conveys how bald and penurious human life would be without the ethical guidance of God. We find the same pragmatism in Aquinas, based upon common beliefs in the human condition and upon the use of the same metaphors and symbolic narratives. Aquinas’s political pragmatism communicates most decisively from his Summa Theologica when he argues, based on the assumption that each nation, or people, naturally knows external or foreign enemies, that human relations are usually divided into hostile and befriended interactions (2007, pp. 1472–3), and that some forms of war (i.e., those for defending the common weal against those external enemies or those fought in God’s command41) are righteously fought, and that slaying is here a conventional and habitual part of peoples’ affairs. Aquinas notes: A distinction was observed with regard to hostile cities ... When they had taken these cities, they killed all the men who had fought against God’s people; whereas the women and children were speared. But in the neighbouring cities which had been promised to them, all were ordered to be slain, on account of former crimes, to punish which God sent the Israelites as executor of Divine justice. (p. 1473)

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So far, I have summarized some basic beliefs as they are typical for Christian orthodoxy, recapitulated by Augustine, shared by Aquinas, and providing both pragmatic and prosaic outlooks on men’s fundamental condition. Nevertheless, humankind is not completely lost, and Augustine turns this negative into a positive by some astonishing arguments which describe men’s intellectual capacity to reflect and transcend their conditions and their factual reality not as a complete downfall and decline. Finally, he even binds – and this might be most surprising, however, founds his reputation as philosopher and last but not least as a political thinker important for this study – the notion of God to men’s intellect, and thus reverses the initial dilemma of men’s Fall into a positive political philosophy of order. This is achieved by Augustine – and shared by Aquinas – through a juxtaposition of the earthly city, characterized by human misbehaviour and all the subsequent shortcomings, and the City of God, or Kingdom of Heaven as Aquinas terms it. Before Augustine’s and (Aquinas’s) political philosophy evolves and can convincingly be demonstrated in its relevance for international politics (see Section 3), the City of God and its relation to the crude reality of human and political life have to be explained. Humankind is not totally forlorn, albeit all the failings, weaknesses of men’s behaviour, their opposition to God, and humankind’s diversities and disunity. Responsible for men’s deliverance from evil is a humanism, which prevails in Augustine’s and Aquinas’s thinking since they assume some remnants of dignity in men through its creation by God in his image while at the same time men were punished by God for resembling, or imitating, his power and entitlement of creating order. Augustine writes: ‘For there is nothing so social by nature as this race, no matter how discordant [and disobedient to God, one can add here] it has become through its fault; and human nature can call upon nothing more appropriate ... than the remembrance of that first parent of us all’ (1998, p. 540). The dignity of men is hence manifest in its nature; men are not only at the top of God’s order of creation, but are closest to him out of all creatures;42 and no man is God’s enemy by nature but only by a misguided will and soul.43 This understanding of humanism can be pushed further to an interpretation which finally argues that God is for men, or at least not without and apart from men, what last but not least is symbolized in God’s sacrifice of his son for the salvation of humankind. What does the City of God stand for? To put it simply, the City of God represents all virtues, values, and potentials of men that are imparted in men and which men are potentially capable of possessing and realizing, but which have been lost and become repeatedly lost through passion, pride, lust for glory and mastery, disbelief, and paganism. However, even if not men’s manifest reality, men do have some knowledge of this transcendental world (see more on that below in Section 3); and what is more important, they have the potential and possibility to realize, and live accordingly to, the

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norms of the City of God, that is, the Holy Scriptures and the Sermon on the Mount. This is why there is a normative template for men’s life in the earthly city and for political order. Although there is only temporal peace, transience, and mortality,44 because ‘all things are woven into a temporal order’ (1995, p. 87), as well as strife, war, disconcert, and conflictive diversity in the earthly city, that is, in politics, there is eternal peace, concord, unity, immortality, and love in the City of God, that is, in the possibilities of human life, which should guide their action. The temporal structure, in which the earthly city and political life are woven, leads furthermore to a mutability of ‘human affairs [so] that no people is ever granted a security so great that it need never fear incursions to this life’ (Augustine, 1998, p. 801). This being-in-time and its political consequences are overcome, or surmountable, in the City of God where eternal peace by complete security through peoples’ unity and unification under divine principles of ethical conduct of life is possible. Thus, these thoughts on security not only represent (another time) Augustine’s pragmatism (insofar as security is never fully achievable and war is an always looming threat),45 but also point to the chance and eventuality of a better reality and of having a more peaceful political life when men would (only) rationally bethink the normative substructure of their reality (symbolized in obedience to God’s prescriptions). However, the juxtaposition of the earthly city and the City of God (the Kingdom of Heaven) is not dualistic but rather dialectic; and only therefore it can be aspired and operate as a normative template for political life at all. Thus, the interrelation between both cities (Augustine and Aquinas also sometimes term them ‘societies’) has to be elaborated. However, first of all, it is interesting to acknowledge that there is such a dialectical connection and to realize that the City of God is not something otherworldly, but of this world. Even if it does not describe the major factual characteristics of human and political reality, it nevertheless is something from this world. As a (the) normative realm of human rationality, it relates to humans’ capacity to reflect upon the contingency of their existence and to transcend their factual being into future visions of social and political life; it hence points the way to possible developments of real people and their society. The City of God can be regarded as the telos and ethical purpose of personal and societal advancement. Augustine writes: ‘(The) two cities – that is of the earthly and the heavenly – ... are in this present world mixed together and ... entangled with one another’ (1998, p. 450); and further he notes that the human race belongs, albeit its division into a multitude of nations, to two societies, which are depicted as follows: (It) is that, though there are a great many nations throughout the world, living according to different rites and customs, and distinguished by many different forms of language, arms and dress, there nonetheless

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exist only two orders ... of human society ... two cities ... The one is made of men who live according to the flesh, and the other of those who live according to the spirit. Each desires its own kind of peace, and, when, they have found what they sought, each lives in its own kind of peace. (Augustine, 1998, p. 581; see also ibid., p. 632) From this description we see clearly that living according to the City of God, that is, the normative counter-vision to the ‘real’ world, is possible when men overcome their inclination to mere passion (including their lust for mastery, glory, and pride) and live according to their reason and spirit. Both sides – the turn to live ‘according to the flesh’ and the capability to live ‘according to the spirit’ (the ability to use one’s reason) – are part of the anthropological condition of men. This is symbolized in the narrative of Adam, being, on the one hand, established in a perfectly organized material and intellectual order, while, on the other hand and at the same time, being inclined to transgress this order and becoming finally too weak to resist his passions.46 Men have an ambivalent anthropological constitution and are torn between ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’, passion and reason. To live without normative guidance and visions means to remain in the realm of passion and not to develop the reasonable side of one’s being. Living without transcending the desperate crawling in factuality and momentariness corresponds, as Augustine says, an eternal punishment. But men do possess, by their nature, the chance to free themselves through their love of God, that is, the use of their reason and intellect.47 However, while ‘human life points beyond itself ... it must not make itself into that beyond ... [Human] freedom is the basic of both creativity and sin’ (Niebuhr, 1941, pp. 169, 298). Equating human life and power of creation with God’s power and putting men in place of God would be what was called ‘hubris’ in ancient Greek ethics (see section on Thucydides) and what Augustine circumscribes as men’s basic sin. Put differently, Augustine’s anthropological ambivalence, his humanism, and his tendencies to deify human self-consciousness suggest a metaphorical understanding of God as a transcendental and ethical counterbalance in political and social life against human arrogant pride and self-righteous feelings of security, both of which are either humiliating to one’s fellow men or inappropriate in the face of the weaknesses and shortfalls of human life.48 Aquinas agrees with this conception of Augustine about the normative nature of human life and political order. In Aquinas, this conception is embedded in his idea of natural law whose development takes up a huge part of his Summa Theologica (2007; QQ 90–108). According to Aquinas, natural law is ‘nothing else but the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law’ (quoted in O’Connor, 1967, p. 62); as such, it is identical with Augustine’s notion of the earthly city and the City of God being intertwined. And the divine law in Aquinas is to be equated with the City of God

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in Augustine. The natural law in Aquinas is, as Augustine’s conception of men’s anthropological ambivalence, also an anthropological characteristic; and furthermore, the participation of men in eternal (or divine) law refers to the same kind of tension which has been observed in Augustine. What distinguishes Aquinas from Augustine is a legal terminology differentiating between natural, divine, eternal, and human law, as well as an explicit legacy of Aristotle, which we find in Aquinas’s oeuvre. In political terms and with regard to the normative guidelines of politics, which men can gain and derive from divine law/the City of God for their actual life and social order, it is possible to precise both, Augustine’s and Aquinas’s, notions according to the commonness of their views when we look deeper into Aquinas’s terminologically more secular discussions about the relation between natural and divine law. The divine, or eternal, law imparts in men the possibility of transcending and developing their actual being. This does not mean that men actually or necessarily make use of this possibility and capability, however, it means that they do have the faculty to do so by their natural condition. In Aquinas, this faculty and condition is terminologically referred to as inclinatio naturalis, which is identical to the Aristotle’s concept of telos imparted in men and prescribing their anthropological disposition to develop their potential as rational beings.49 The inclinatio naturalis, or the telos, of politics in Augustine and Aquinas is to retrieve political life from the up and downs of mutability and temporality and to create a society which aspires to the City of God, that is, the universal order of eternal law (the order of the cosmos in Aristotle). D. J. O’Connor explains: The eternal law is the ideal type or order of the universe pre-existing in God ‘just as in every artificer there pre-exists a type of the things made by his art.’ The divine plan pre-exists and controls the construction of the building that he has designed ... The word ‘law’ in the sense of a moral rule or in the rather different sense of a socially established ordinance has a prescriptive sense, being a direction designed to bring about a certain type of conduct ... Anything obeys the eternal law by following its ‘natural inclination’ ... And as it is part of my natural inclination as a human being that I ‘act in accordance with reason’ I am following my natural inclinations as much when I make a moral judgment as when I digest my food or act ... in accordance with any other law of nature ... The inclinatio naturalis of a thing is simply that set of dispositions or tendencies to act and react with other things that it has in virtue of its nature or essence. In the case of a chemical element, say, a piece of iron, its natural inclination is to combine. (1967, pp. 59–61) The natural inclination, or in modern terms, the very concept of the political, which is, even if not fully, at least, however, approximately achievable, realizable, and possible in this world, is, according to Augustine and

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Aquinas, peace and justice, both gained and derived from the normative ethical framework of eternal and divine law symbolized in the Christian symbolic cosmos of the New Testament in general and the Sermon on the Mount in particular. In Aquinas’s terminology, according to theoretical reasoning, men know that peace and justice are necessary consequences and universal truths of divine law in which politics can, and should, participate; practical reason, however, ‘since [it] concerns the complex contingencies of every day affairs [i.e., of political affairs]’ (O’Connor, 1967, p. 63) varies between peoples and nations, and throughout history. Nevertheless, they represent the universal guideline for politics and the amalgam for the political relations among nations. Without this universal guideline, the best kind of peace possible – which is an unjust and deficient peace – is hegemonic peace as Augustine describes the imperial order of the Roman Empire. We read that Rome intended to unite (the world) in the society of a single commonwealth and its laws, and so to impose peace throughout its length and breadth. For there were at this time strong and mighty nations, accomplished in arms, nations who would not easily submit; and their conquest involved vast peril and no little destruction on both sides, and horrible toil. For at the time when the Assyrian kingdom subjugated almost the whole of Asia, although this conquest was achieved by war, it was possible to accomplish it without a great deal of cruel and difficult strife, because the nations were as yet unskilled in resistance, and were not as numerous or as great as they were later to become ... Rome ... did not so rapidly and easily subdue all those nations of East and West which, as we see, are now part of the Roman Empire; for she increased little by little, and, wherever she spread, she encountered robust and warlike peoples. (1998, p. 848) What a better peace can and should look like, how justice relates to peace, and vice versa, and how the normative template of universal values impacts international political order will be discussed in the next section.

3. Transcendental universalism and the intelligibility of order: Peace and justice The relationship among politics, justice, and peace IR literature which discusses Augustine (or Aquinas) is very rare. As stated earlier in this chapter, neither belongs to the canon of international political thought, which the discipline constructed. Apart from an interpretation of Niebuhr (see below) and the inclusion of Aquinas in a text compilation on international relations in political thought that was, unfortunately, only marginally annotated (Brown, Nardin andRengger, 2002), it is to my knowledge only Michael Loriaux who brought attention to Christian international

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political theory in an article on Augustine that was well placed in the journal of the International Studies Association, the International Studies Quarterly (Loriaux, 1992). It is quite unusual to feature an article so prominently, but for several reasons, this appears to be justified here. What we learn from this article is not primarily something about Augustine’s moral scepticism and his (partly) pragmatic approach to politics (see section 2 above; also Loriaux, p. 401), rather this article serves as (another) inglorious example of the (mis) construction of a realist legacy in international political thought. As such, however, it does not stand alone as demonstrated previously and as will be discussed in later chapters in this book. What distinguishes this article, and what becomes obvious here, is the inability of a (the) neo-realist perspective – or of those authors who set out to promote such a perspective – to be conscious of the normative dimension of political thought; and to even manipulate single authors (in this case Augustine), if not complete traditions of political thought, in order to neglect such a dimension since it does not fit their understanding and reading of politics. These are serious accusations, but I will show in the next paragraph how Loriaux conducts this obscure job. As will especially be argued at the end of this study (in the Part V), and as has been mentioned in the Introduction, this loss of capability (and unwillingness) to recognize a normative dimension in political thought by a neorealist, scientistic reading of single authors and of political order contributes to a ‘loss of ethics’ in international politics. Loriaux is prominently placed at this point manifesting this inability to understand, read, and recognize normative political theory and projecting either base materialism onto some authors (as has happened to Thucydides or Hobbes, for example; see above and below, respectively) or naïve Christian beliefs (as Loriaux projected onto Augustine, deducing some political moralism, while missing the important point of a huge normative cosmos in Augustine and a distinct notion of the political). The discussion on Augustine’s pragmatism showed, among other things, the despair and hopelessness of the material world as well as his tendency to relativize politics, as long as there is no hope and comfort for a better life. To envision improvement, Augustine introduces a triangle relation between love, hope, and faith as the basic (Christian) virtues.50 In politics, hope for a better order stems from the incorporation of justice as the norm of politics. There is a constituent, universal, and mutual relation between politics and justice in Augustine which is finally responsible for his (nevertheless vague) thoughts on just war and warfare, and his thoughts on peace. Finally, and most importantly, justice distinguishes politics, political order, and society from any other assembly of men. Thus, justice is the very essence and, at the same time, the purpose (telos) of politics, and without justice, there is no peace. That is also why, alternatively, peace can be termed the very essence

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and telos of politics. This complex relationship will be elaborated in detail below; first, however, I will discuss the trajectory of Loriaux’s misinterpretation of Augustine. First of all, Loriaux assumes an ambivalence in Augustine, which concerns not Augustine’s definition of men’s nature (thus, where Augustine is indeed ambivalent), but his attitude towards politics. Loriaux notes: ‘Augustine’s ambivalence regarding the supposed merits of a given ... order is also quite pronounced. It is rooted ... in his conviction that humankind is incapable of establishing a truly just political order in the saeculum’ (Loriaux, 1992, p. 407). As I agree with the statement that men cannot, according to Augustine, establish true peace and true justice in political reality, I, however, suspect that Loriaux separates the saeculum – in which such establishment is not possible – dualistically from a divine, next world (Augustine’s City of God). Loriaux seems not to realize that both worlds are, according to Augustine and as shown above, intertwined and interconnected. And even if he rightly states that in the saeculum true peace is not possible, he misleadingly deems the City of God as representing only some ought-regulations derived from the Christian virtues of love, caritas, and moralism (see Loriaux, 1992, p. 403) and not, however, standing for a distinct and practicable political norm. Missing the intertwining and interconnectedness of the ‘real’ world and its normative template, and consequently Augustine’s understanding of the political as something distinct from other human assemblies, namely, as distinguished by justice, Loriaux equates political orders with robber bands and asks, in (falsely) following Augustine: ‘(How) can one distinguish between the order imposed by the state and that found in robber bands?’ (1992, p. 407). Continuing with this line of reasoning, he quotes Augustine from the City of God (Book IV, chapter 4), ‘For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by a social compact (pacto societatis astringiture), and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon?’ (ibid.). The inglorious example which Loriaux represents ignores, or deliberately omits, the very beginning of this sentence in Augustine, and these words make all the difference. What Augustine actually writes is: ‘Justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?’ (1998, p. 147; emphasis mine). 51 Here it becomes clear that justice is the normative essence of politics which separates politics from all other forms of human assembly and agency; this is what Loriaux ignores and why he finally misappropriates the political dimension in Augustine and its normative vigour. Augustine specifies some pages later what, in opposition to politics, is to be called robbery, namely, ‘to wage war against neighbours, and to go from there against others, crushing and subjugating peoples who have done no harm, out of the mere desire to rule: what else is this to be called than great

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robbery?’ (1998, p. 150). In this example, we find an immediate relation between war and politics as well as what happens to politics, illustrated by this example of ‘unjust war’; when justice is missing, it diminishes into robbery. Thus, the very distinction of politics from nonpolitical forms of agency is clearly to be found in the principle of justice. And Augustine relates this principle first of all to war and warfare, which reveals both an instant international political dimension in Augustine52 as well as his approach to ‘just war’. Before I discuss this topic, the subject of justice (and politics) has to be further clarified in Augustine and subsequently in Aquinas. With regard to this study’s problematique of particularism and universalism and its exploration in Augustine and Aquinas, a discussion of the relation between justice and diversity in both further informs us about their political ontology. With the problem of diversity in mind, Augustine criticizes the common view that justice would diversify in relation to the multitude of cultural, social, and political practices as well as he condemns a political relativism which would determine men’s perceptions and thoughts on this topic. Since he does not agree with such a position, he notes: Some people have been stuck by the enormous diversity of social practices and in a state of drowsiness ... have concluded that justice has no absolute existence but that each race views its own practices as just. So since the practices of all races are diverse, whereas justice ought to remain unchangeable, there clearly is no such thing as justice anywhere. To say no more, they have not realized that the injunction ‘do not do to another what you would not wish to be done to yourself’ can in no way be modified by racial differences. (1998, p. 155) Very clearly here, Augustine argues against relativistic positions and for a universal concept of justice which is valid in all nations and represents a conjuncture between them across diversity and differences. It is not surprising that Augustine relates this universal principle to the Holy Scriptures and finds in it the ethical rule called the ‘Golden Rule’ (in Kantian terminology this corresponds with the ‘categorical imperative’ as an equally universal principle; see below II.2.3). Beyond all those differences, which Augustine lists as separating peoples and nations (language, customs, rites, and so on; see above), there is a universal ethical principle which unifies them and which, in the realm of international politics, connects, or at least has the potential and the normative quality to connect, nations. What does this mean for the relation between ‘justice’ and politics? Augustine discusses and exemplifies this relation looking at Rome and its historical development and drawing mainly on the writings of Cicero, he discusses the Roman Civil Wars as well as the decline of the Roman Republic into a dictatorship. Augustine terms the Roman Republic also a ‘commonwealth’ and praising the republican element (res publica) of this

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commonwealth, he applies justice and its different grades of realization, respectively, as the main criterion to discriminate both kinds of order. The distinct difference between political orders is hence to be found in their realization of the principle of justice.53 Consequently, only political and social criteria – such as grades of justice and professional and social relations – become relevant when Augustine lists and specifies the characteristics which differentiate, and sometimes, as he very pragmatically admits, separate men from each other. However, there are no ‘structural’ (to put in modern terms) and as such insurmountable criteria beyond men’s dispositions which would divide humankind and detach nations and peoples from each other.54 This outlook is shared by Aquinas when he refers to Augustine, The City of God, Book II, chapter 21, stating that ‘a nation is a body of men united together by consent of law and by community of welfare. Consequently it is of the essence of a nation that the mutual relations of the citizens be ordered by just laws’ (Aquinas, 2007, p. 1465). Aquinas has the points in common with Augustine that, first, justice is (to be) the essence of politics; second, a nation is (to be) ordered and bound together by justice; third, a nation is a foremost political body; and fourth, consequently, the relations between nations are to be thought of as political relations, that is, as relations which are subject to men’s agency and will and which are brought to order by justice. This conclusion sounds quite paradoxical, especially since Augustine often states that God would govern all kingdoms and preside over the destiny of men. As determined as this view is in Augustine, it is, however, due to men’s will and decision whether, or not, to follow God’s rule and precepts, individually or as a nation. And as such, it is a distinct political decision, that is, a decision due to men’s will and deliberate agency (apart from psychological factors concerning men as a ‘fallen being’, which are, however, not further discussed here) when it comes to community life and whether, or not, the community conducts a virtuous life. In this regard, it is worth to remember Augustine’s definition of the evil as a consequence of human will: in fact misguided, however, deliberate since the conduct of a rightful life is in men’s power and capacity. This, at first glance a paradox, points to a dialectic relation between religion and politics (i.e., common human agency due to men’s choice) which we find in Augustine (and Aquinas) and which will be explicitly discussed below. See Augustine further on this writing: ‘If ... we are asked what response the City of God makes ... and ... what it believes concerning the Final Good and Evil, we shall reply as follows: that eternal life is the Supreme Good, and eternal death the Supreme Evil, and that to achieve the one and avoid the other, we must live rightly. For this it is written, “The just man lives by faith” ’ (1998, p. 918). The phrasing of ‘to achieve’, ‘to avoid’, and ‘we must live’ clearly insinuates furthermore that good, or evil, lives are subject to and consequences of men’s choices.

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When Augustine sets out to specify ‘justice’, it is not surprising that he enters the realm of men’s faith in God and of Christian values. Men’s belief in God and the conduct of their lives according to God’s commandments are thus the common and universal bond of the political unification of all nations, peoples, and races. Here, Augustine and with him Aquinas develop a forceful dialectic between politics and religion (i.e., Christian precepts of justice and ethics, based on belief), typical for Christian orthodoxy. Augustine writes, emphasizing again the normative role of the City of God for ‘this present life’: If the kings of the earth and all nations, princes and all the judges of the earth, young men and maidens, old men and children; people of every age and each sex; if those to whom John the Baptist spoke, even the tax gatherers and soldiers: if all these together were to hear and embrace the Christian precepts of justice and moral virtue, then would the commonwealth adorn its lands with happiness in this present life and ascend to the summit of life eternal, there to reign in utmost blessedness. (1998, p. 74) The dialectic relation between politics and religion has been intensively elaborated by Reinhold Niebuhr and represents the core of his political interpretation of Christianity (see Niebuhr, especially 1935 [1963]). Niebuhr states that ‘the very essence of politics is the achievement of justice’ (1935, p. 116). When justice in Augustine’s and Aquinas’s thought is identical with the essence of politics and this in a normative sense, then the realm from which this norm stems has to be intelligible for human beings. On the one hand, this intelligibility is given due to the narrative of God’s revelation; on the other hand, it is possible to know due to the interconnection between the earthly city and the City of God (see the section on ‘Political pragmatism in Augustine and Aquinas’), or, to put it differently, due to men’s anthropological constitution to transcend their being, that is, their capability of reason. Niebuhr writes: ‘(It) is the function of reason to explore (the possibilities of a higher justice) ... as it is the function of a profound religion to discover the limits of these rational processes and reveal the canker of moral complacency in all moral idealism [i.e., to prevent hubris; H.B.]’ (1935, p. 101). This mutual relation between reason (and agency guided by reason) and religion describes the dialectic between politics and religion. The thereby intelligible world discloses, as Niebuhr terms it, a ‘higher justice’; this means principles of justice which are universal in the same way as men’s capability of reason is universal. Reason enables men to experience the intelligibility of a universal order for this world whose principle is justice. One (further) aspect of this dialectic includes that only within a political order and thus via politics, can the universal norm of Christianity, namely, justice, be realized. This dialectic, part of Augustine’s political thought, evolves fully in Aquinas.

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In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas extensively deals with law and legal prescriptions for men. Basic to his discussion is the perception that ‘law ... is the art of ordering the life of man’ (2007, p. 1460). Within the division of law in terms of its realms for which it prescribes certain kinds of behaviour, one most important part concerns the relation of citizens to foreigners such as ‘about wars ... and about the way to receive travelers and strangers’ (ibid.); thus ‘international’ law or, with Aquinas, the art of ordering the relations between nations and their respective citizens.55 We clearly see here the political nature of law and (again) justice since justice is the norm for (‘international’) law. With regard to international politics, the art of ordering the relations among nations by law finds its normative prescription and disposition in the creation of international justice. And since justice as the ordering principle of relations among nations would remove ‘the obstacles to peace’ (Aquinas, 2007, p. 1753), Aquinas concludes that ‘peace is the work of justice’ (ibid.) or, put differently, ‘peace is the effect of justice’ (ibid.; emphasis mine). We thus can summarize that both Augustine and Aquinas develop a normative framework for international politics whose essence lies in the principle of creating peace through the establishment of justice. This normative framework is universal in that it both applies to and is intelligible to all human beings due to their nature as rational beings (defined by natural law) which are thought of as being capable of understanding the ethical implications of divine law and of transcending the temporality of their immediate being, that is, of creating human law to order politics and society. What follows in Augustine and Aquinas are thoughts on peace in international politics, which are derived as universal rules from the normative template of the City of God (see also Cochrane, 1961, p. 511), and thoughts on just war and warfare and how they relate to the norm and practical establishment of peace. These thoughts will be investigated now while we will see, first, how the dialectic between politics and religion discussed above impacts the Christian ethics of just war and, second, that there are, despite the existence of the norm of just war, no reasons to assume some coherent pacifism in Christian orthodoxy since war very pragmatically belongs to the means of international politics (see the Section on ‘Political pragmatism in Augustine and Aquinas’). Peace, just war, and warfare I will discuss the topics of peace, just war, and warfare starting with Augustine and then proceeding to Aquinas. In Book XIX, The City of God, Augustine is most explicit with regard to definitions of peace and its dimensions. His basic idea is that peace is a great benefit, a benefit, however, which comes from true God and means living in full harmony with God. He writes: We may say of peace, then, what we have already said of eternal life: that is our Final Good ... For peace is so great a good that, even in the sphere of

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earthly and mortal affairs, we hear no word more thankfully, and nothing is desired with greater longing: in short, it is not possible to find anything better. (1998, p. 932) Since it is, however, impossible for men to aspire fully to their normative ideal and men differ in terms of their attachment to, and realization of, this idea, there are peoples who live close to and other who live remote from God. The respective approximation of their political life from God impacts on the peace they might enjoy. And since peace is the final good, the measurement of how close to or remote from God they live is to be found in their peace-loving and peace-bringing political order and actions (see Augustine, 1998, pp. 961–2). In two consecutive chapters of Book XIX, The City of God, chapter 13 and 14, Augustine specifies what this measurement concretely means. His arguments can be summarized that the best guarantee possible for ‘earthly’ peace is provided by good concord of political order. This applies both to the domestic and international political realm whose ‘peace lies in the tranquility of order’, as Augustine also states (1998, p. 938). Aquinas directly refers to this expression of Augustine in Summa Theologica (2007, p. 672) and he himself concludes: ‘Therefore the end of government of the world is the peaceful order in things themselves. Therefore the end of government of the world is not an extrinsic good’ (p. 763), but rather it is in men’s political disposition to aspire and work for peace. This work and aspiration describe the telos, or final good, of politics and men’s behaviour. Aquinas deduces: ‘therefore the intention of a ruler over a multitude is ... peace’ (2007, p. 674). Acknowledging that peace is more perfect in the Kingdom of Heaven than on earth or in actual international politics, Aquinas distinguishes between two kinds of peace, a perfect and an imperfect peace. However, he calls both types of peace a ‘true peace’ since both the perfect and the imperfect peace represent the quality of peace which is possible in either the Kingdom of Heaven or in real politics. In both types of peace, the maximum possible tranquillity of order manifests; here, ‘the perfect enjoyment of the sovereign good [which] unites all one’s desires by giving them rest in one object’, and there ‘imperfect peace, which may be had in this world, for though the chief movement of the soul finds rest in God, yet there are certain things within and without which disturb the peace’ (Aquinas, 2007, p. 1752). From here communicates the Christian idea of order. Criteria of order are harmony, unity, and rest; order is ‘anti-movement’, it is the complete fulfilment of every wish, desire, aspiration, and plan. This notion of order is, as are justice and perfect peace, normative, and can indeed only be found in God. In politics and the ‘real world’, Aquinas admits, everything is ‘disturbed by external things’ and never do ‘our desires rest altogether in one object’ (2007, p. 1197), thus, there is never complete tranquillity. We remember Aquinas’s and Augustine’s pragmatism, acknowledging divergent

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political interests, hostile groups, social conflicts, and strife; when all these come to an end and all divergent interests ‘rest altogether in one object’, then full peace is accomplished. This, although it is never achievable in politics, nevertheless remains the norm, the telos and charge for men and politics since ‘we are commanded to keep peace because it is an art of charity; and for this reason too it is a meritorious act. Hence it is placed among the beatitudes, which are acts of perfect virtue ... It is also numbered among the fruits, in so far it is a final good, having spiritual sweetness’ (Aquinas, 2007, p. 1754). If men are commanded, as Aquinas says, to keep peace and peace is perceived to be achievable, even true peace in this world following the normative template of perfect (or ‘eternal’) peace, and if the final, universal good of politics, is peace, then there must be a Christian ethics of peace, and war and warfare. I will now refer to Augustine’s and Aquinas’s thoughts on just war and warfare, before I will finally come back to the question of universal ethics in both. When changing the focus from peace to war, we find that war is related to peace in a normative way. Namely, insofar as peace is the overall telos of political action, this telos includes war and warfare. Augustine devotes a complete chapter to this normative determination of war (chapter 12, Book XIX, The City of God) and concludes that peace has to be the desired outcome of war, at least insofar as this war is deemed to be a just war (1998, pp. 933–7). Saying this does not mean, however, that war in general is not perceived as a misery, even just wars. We read in Augustine: By these [civil wars and wars among nations alike; H.B.], the human race is made even more miserable, either by warfare itself, waged for the sake of eventual peace, or by the constant fear that conflict will begin again. I could not possibly give a suitable eloquent description of these many evils, these manifold disasters, these harsh and dire necessities ... Let everyone, therefore, who reflects with pain upon such great evils, upon such horror and cruelty, acknowledge that this is misery. And of anyone either endures them or thinks of them without anguish of soul, his condition is still more miserable; for he thinks himself happy only because he has lost all human feeling. (1998, p. 929) Consequently, all war has to be avoided, and Augustine and Aquinas develop an ethics of peaceful political action (see below). Unfortunately, however, there are some conditions that make war necessary, and wars fought out of necessity are the only type which Augustine and Aquinas perceive as just. These just wars are exclusively those which, first, have the normative good in mind to create peace and, second, those which are ‘imposed upon’ (Augustine, 1998, p. 929), that is, wars of defence. The second cause of just war is straightforward to determine; in case of being attacked, it is legitimate to defend one’s nation and people. As a consequence of this,

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Augustine condemns most of the wars which the Roman Empire fought as unjust because they were caused by greed to subdue foreign cities and nations and by ‘lust for mastery,’ which ‘disturbs and consumes the human race with great ills’ (Augustine, 1998, p. 111). The first cause of a just war, ‘wars in order to create peace’, is, on the contrary, more complex and difficult to determine. It might be in international politics that occasions arise in which an offensive war – thus a war in which the war-waging party has not been attacked directly – stands on overwhelmingly legitimate and sound grounds and is the only means to avoid further chaos and death and to create peace in the long run; it might, however, also be that the legitimization of war by the motive of peace is less obvious and clear, and is yet declared by the war-waging party to serve peace and order.56 This case finally depends on the legitimization of order and of peace itself. And here, both Augustine and Aquinas are ambivalent and their thoughts on just war become quite vague. Both, although Augustine more that Aquinas, recognize legitimate causes for wars waged by the Roman Empire for the sake of their vision of (imperial) order and finally for the sake of unifying its neighbours. In fact, Augustine argues that Rome had to defend itself and resist ‘the savage incursions of their enemies’ (Augustine, 1998, p. 104). He neglects to mention, however, that this need to defend itself arose because previously conquered territories, which had recently been incorporated into the empire, subsequently had to be ‘defended’. From the perspective of the conquered, their wars would have been just wars of defence. A further ambivalence arises when Augustine refers to the holy city of Jerusalem. For the sake of Jerusalem, which would actually translates as ‘vision of peace’, and the unification of different people under the bond of Christianity, it would be, and it was, legitimate to go to war against foreign (‘pagan’ and savage) nations. Thus, we find in Augustine the legitimization of holy war and crusades for the higher cause of spreading Christianity among other people to subject them to Christian belief, the latter perceived as a (though utmost unilateral and hegemonic) bond of peace and security. This motive for the unrestricted legitimization of wars in the name of Christianity is the main reason why it is impossible to deduce and accomplish a coherent pacifism from Christian orthodoxy. In addition to this, we find in Augustine and Aquinas normative determinations of just warfare, which have to be unrestrictedly observed in order to keep a just war just and to prevent the very worst miseries in the case of war in general, whether it might be just or not. None of the criteria for just warfare, either singly or all of them together, can render a war just if it is waged for unjust reasons because whether a war is just, or not, depends on the reason why it is fought and not how it is fought. On the other hand, the violation of the regulations for just warfare can turn a just war into an unjust war, for example, if strategically unnecessary slaughter or bloodshed occurs or

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a rightful intention (such as to restore peace) turns into motives of aggrandizement or retaliation. Further regulations to observe, according to Augustine, are to regard churches and temples as places for asylum (even the Gauls conquering Rome observed this regulation when Romans were seeking shelter in their temples, as Augustine emphasizes in The City of God, Book I, chapter 4) and to respect the gods and religious feelings of the vanquished (ibid., chapter 2).57 Aquinas, who shares Augustine’s views on just war, is more explicit than Augustine on regulations of warfare – or ‘certain rights of war and covenants which ought to be observed even among enemies’ (Aquinas, 2007, p. 1817). Perhaps the most important condition he adds to Augustine’s regulations is that the command during the war has to be and to remain in the hands of the authority of the sovereign, ‘(for) it is not the business of a private individual to declare war’ (ibid., p. 1813).58 More detailed determinations of rights of war by Aquinas are that the first obligation besiegers of a city had is to make an offer of peace to the besieged (ibid., p. 1473); that men who are physically or mentally not fit for fighting and thus ‘an obstacle to the fight ... should be sent home (ibid.); that women and children should be spared (ibid.); that the besiegers should ‘not (cut) down fruit-trees of that country’ (ibid.), that is, they should not devastate the natural resources; and that ‘the breaking of promise’ would be false (ibid., p. 1817). Augustine’s determination of warfare or the ‘rights and covenants of war’, as Aquinas says, constitute a universal ethics of war and peace. In both, we read less about the legal institutionalization of warfare than about a distinct Christian version of ethical self-constraint, which prevails in their thoughts despite their partly pragmatic views. This ethics can be summarized by two canons: first, as Aquinas normatively states, well aware that wars occur, ‘no nation shall lift up sword against nation’ (2007, p. 2940); and, second, the well-renowned ethical precept from the New Testament to love one’s neighbours and enemies: For the word ‘neighbour’ implies a relationship: one can only be a neighbour to a neighbour ... The commandment extends even to our enemies; do good to those who hate you ... This is also the teaching of the apostle Paul when he says: “... You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” The love of one’s neighbour does no wrong. (Augustine, 1995, pp. 68–70; also 1998, p. 224) Well aware that both claims are highly normative, Augustine and Aquinas know that these ethical virtues do not exist in all men. That is, however, exactly why they are most relevant. And therefore, both have a distinct view how virtues can be imparted in men. The appropriate strategy would be education, and they argue here in a distinct neo-Platonist (Augustine) and Aristotelian (Aquinas) tradition. According to this legacy, virtue does not naturally exist in men and guide men’s behaviour, however, due to their

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rational capabilities and due to the intelligibility of some form of higher, universal order, men do have the disposition and potential to act ethically and to become virtuous. The very means to impart virtue into men is by teaching and adoption. Augustine writes: ‘Virtue, which, as the art of living, is the most excellent of all the goods of the soul, and which is implanted by teaching’ (1998, p. 916). But how does this ethical attitude manifest concretely? What kind of actual political behaviour does it require and recommend? The answer to this question refers back to the discussion of the dialectic between politics and religion (see above). Religion accomplishes the mythical role and task of representing values of a higher moral order. In Augustine’s and Aquinas’s political ethics, the primary purpose of ethical virtue is to enable men to engage in peaceful behaviour, guided, due to their rational and intellectual capabilities, by respect of values preventing hubris and inspiring modesty. In a metaphorical narrative, preceded by a critique of Roman imperial politics, Augustine communicates the rightful ethical attitude, which can be summarized as modesty as a means against war. We read: Is it wise or prudent to wish to glory in the breadth and magnitude of an empire when you cannot show that the men whose empire it is are happy? For the Romans always lived in dark fear and cruel lust, surrounded by the disasters of war and the shedding of blood which, whether for their fellow citizens or enemies, was human nonetheless. The joy of such men may be compared to the fragile splendour of glass: they are horribly afraid lest it be suddenly shattered ... Instead let us imagine two men ... Let us suppose one of these men to be poor ... and the other to be very wealthy. The wealthy men, however, is troubled by fears ... he is never secure; he is always unquiet and panting from endless confrontations with his enemies. To be sure, he adds to his patrimony in immense measure by these miseries; but alongside these additions he also heaps up the most bitter cares. By contrast, the man of moderate means is self-sufficient on his small and circumscribed estate. He is beloved of his family, and rejoices the most sweet peace with kindred, neighbours and friends ... As, therefore in the case of these two men, son in two families, two peoples, two kingdoms, the same principle of tranquillity applies. It is beneficial then that good men should rule far and wide and long, worshipping the true God and serving Him with true rites and good morals. (1998, p. 146)

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Part II Universalistic Thinking from Early Modern Times to Enlightenment

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II.1 Universalistic Thinking in Christian Legal Philosophy – Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria

1. Prolegomena This chapter will discuss a new epoch of universalisms in international political thought, namely, sixteenth-century legal philosophy as it developed in Spain during the reign of King Charles V and his successors, Kings Phillip II of Spain and Ferdinand I. This epoch is especially fascinating in the context of our discussions because it was not only highly influential for the development of a legal framework for the conduct of ‘international’ relations for the centuries to come, but it also faced a yet unknown confrontation between different, that is, European and non-European, cultures in the context of the Spanish overseas expansions into Central and South America. In the wake of respective experiences, questions arose regarding not only the legitimacy of those expansions and about just war and warfare, but also whether, or not, Indian natives are to be regarded as human beings. These questions were perceived as all but self-evident, and the legacies of Aristotelian, Augustinian, and Thomist philosophy were not regarded as providing sufficient and satisfactory answers. Fierce debates evolved between defenders of the Spanish conquests and their critics. Interestingly, the main criticism was pronounced by representatives of the Catholic Church while Catholicism was, on the other hand, used to legitimize the expansion by those who were in favour of the conquests. The main critical voices from within the Catholic Church came from Bartolomé de las Casas, Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco Suárez, Domingo de Soto, and Luis de Molina (for more on this body of political thought, see Hamilton, 1963). This body of critical literature as it developed in sixteenth century Spain is sharply distinguished from Northern European political thought, which emerged under the influences of the Reformation, in that Spain did not break with the natural law tradition. ‘The Thomist version of natural law theory, which was strongly attacked in all northern universities during 75

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the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and largely jettisoned in Protestant countries, continued unbroken in Spain, and had, indeed, a new flowering during the sixteenth “golden” century ... In all cases ... the Thomist hierarchy of laws, and in particular natural law, forms the framework for their discussion of politics and the political community’ (Hamilton, 1963, p. 11). This tradition and its critical discussion indeed provided the intellectual framework for what became the main achievements of international political thought as it developed in sixteenth-century Spain, namely, first, the framing of universal human rights, their extension beyond Christian Europe, and their application to Indian indigenous cultures in the Americas; and second, the development of universal legal standards and jurisdiction as a guarantor for peaceable relations among political communities. Here, also he idea of the sovereignty of political communities under the condition of their mutual recognition as sovereign was born under the intellectual auspices of natural law. This idea – which prepared the soil for legal thinking in international political thought as it developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – is very different from the modern idea of sovereignty and recognition as it emerged in the nineteenth century with regard to the transcendental structure which is perceived (and believed) to provide and guarantee recognition. Whereas it was universal natural or divine law (and ‘God’, respectively) and/or anthropological universalism which imposed legal and ethical principles of recognition up into Enlightenment philosophy, it became individual and particularized rationality (as it politically manifested in the coming nation state and the inside/outside logic of modern sovereignty) which underpinned the modern concept of recognition. This rationality is tangible and shared only – and indeed has over and over again been not shared – on the basis of individualized appreciation, toleration, and morality, however, not as a demand on the basis of something ‘natural’ and ‘normal’. As Bernice Hamilton explains, ‘Natural law has the twofold sense of something which is reasonable and at the same time is generally accepted ... The natural was ... the normal’ (Hamilton, 1963, p. 11). Against this background of the innovation of universal legal standards in sixteenth-century Spanish philosophy, including European overseas expansion and conquest, the Spanish authors of the sixteenth century belong to the main body of international political thought in their own right and are not only to be seen as predecessors of Hugo Grotius or successors of Thomist thought. Richard Hartigan emphasizes with regard to de Vitoria that his work was ‘no simple reiteration of St Thomas’ thought; rather, it is a thoroughly contemporary, sixteenth-century exposition, lucidly phrased, of the morality of war’ (Hartigan, 1973, p. 82); the same can be said of las Casas. And looking ahead in the centuries to come, a thorough study of las Casas and de Vitoria suggests that Grotius strictly follows the legacies of the former, rather than being the ‘founder’ of international law. Thomas A. Walker notes that ‘(again) and again the reader of the pages of Grotius, who shall have made the acquaintance of the lights of moral and legal learning

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of the sixteenth century, will catch the echo of their opinions and their very phrases’ (1899, p. 333).59 The following discussions will therefore emphasize las Casas and de Vitoria and link to other Spanish authors of the sixteenth century where it seems appropriate to highlight general patterns of sixteenth-century thought on universal human rights and international jurisdiction. With Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) and Francisco de Vitoria (1485 [?]–1546) we thus encounter the foundation of one of the most important tools for organizing international politics. Although the relevance of international legal arrangements, treaty systems, and a distinct legal ethics has been emphasized in the history of international political thought prior to las Casas and de Vitoria (as in Thucydides, Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas), the legal theorists of the sixteenth century developed these thoughts into a more coherent and formalized corpus of theories. While they drew, though critically, upon legacies stemming from Greek and Roman as well as Christian political thought, arguing on the basis of universal views on divine and natural law, they faced historically different and novel political situations and were situated in advanced secularized social and political contexts which influenced their theorizing. There are not only the rationalized versions of Christian humanism (founded by Augustine and Aquinas, as seen in the previous chapter) and the tremendously influential impacts of humanistic political culture of the Italian renaissance on political and social thought (see more on that in the next chapter on Machiavelli), but also the philosophical movements of scholasticism in general and nominalism in particular. Political thought, already rationalized in Augustine and Aquinas, developed more and more autonomy from, even if still liaised with, religious thinking. The sphere of natural and especially human law increasingly gained autonomy from divine law. Authors such as Anselm of Canterbury, Maimonides, Roger Bacon, Johannes Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and, of course, Thomas Hobbes (see the next chapter) represent these philosophical moves. Nevertheless, divine law, or universal reason (in which men as rational beings participate), was still perceived as the guarantee of the existence and operationability of human law. And their belief in the order of creation ‘backed up’ the order of the political, domestically and internationally. Thus, the old universalism of international political thought and corresponding ethical teachings lost their substantial identity with principles being perceived as divine and sacral; however, a strong notion of common ethical and natural bonds among peoples and humankind survived. Las Casas and de Vitoria are both linked with Latin American history and the effort to defend the indigenous peoples of Latin and South America against Spanish conquest and exploitation. Both did so by extending human rights to Indians and by introducing a body of legal restrictions and guidelines in international politics. The writings of both men established a strong legacy of modern legal thought, which then had a tremendous impact on

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Hugo Grotius, for example, who massively drew upon traditions of Roman and Christian political and legal thought. Some commentators describe de Vitoria as the ‘eminent precursor of Grotius ... Not that he alone is the author of modern [international law], but it is hard to envision the category in its present form without his contribution’ (Hartigan, 1973, p. 80). Also Joachim von Elbe writes with regard to the problem of just war that Grotius would adopt ‘more or less unchanged from his predecessors’, the Spanish theologians of the sixteenth century (von Elbe, 1939, p. 678). Anthony Padgen goes even further and notes that ‘Vitoria’s claim that all humans have a right grounded in nature of free (and peaceful) access to all parts of the world draws upon a long ancient and humanist tradition, which is, like the natural law, itself Stoic in origin ... All of them, together with Vitoria’s own formulation of the argument, were employed by Grotius in what was perhaps his most widely read work, De mare liberum of 1607, a tract whose initial purpose was to deny that the Portuguese had any right over trade in the Indian Ocean’ (Padgen, 2003, pp. 186–7). Padgen’s view is supported when we read in de Vitoria the following passage, which strongly foreshadows Grotius’s argument on the freedom of the sea or natural resources in general, respectively: Therefore it appears that friendship among men exists by natural law and it is against nature to shun the society of harmless folk ... By natural law running water and the sea are common to all, so are rivers and harbors, and by the law of nations ships from all parts may be moored here; and on the same principle they are public things ... it is an apparent rule of the jus gentium that foreigners may carry on trade, provided they do no harm to citizens. (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 152) Las Casas witnessed Spanish conquest in the Caribbean, foremost in Cuba, when he was a priest, the first Bishop of Chiapas, and later in his life when he became a Dominican monk. Apart from scholarly work, he became an advocate acting on behalf of the native population, protesting against Spanish genocidal attacks in the West Indies and travelling back and forth across the Atlantic, the most famous of his journeys leading him to the royal court for the important debate with Juan Gines de Sepulveda (more on that below). Consequently, most of his scholarly work is a defence of Indians’ human rights and against the emerging slave trade between the Caribbean and Europe. His conceptualization of human rights, explicitly including the Indians and applying to mankind as an universal reference, as well as of the equality of relations among humans and ‘nations’ is derived from an Augustinian and Thomist version of human reason and united mankind created in the image of God. On this basis, las Casas founded and represented a new type of critical political and legal thought at the time when European powers were going overseas in an unprecedented way and starting

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to colonize the new world. Paradoxically, however, he did this according to the legacies of (rationalized) Christian thought, hence, following the same pattern in whose name the devastation of indigenous cultures took place, a devastation that some politically defended (or at least tried to defend). Contrary to las Casas, we know very little of the life of de Vitoria; even his date of birth is uncertain. Like las Casas, he was later in his life a Dominican monk and then priest. It is recorded that he became a university teacher in Paris in 1512 where he stayed until 1523 when he received the title of a doctor of theology. Between 1523 and 1526, he taught theology in Valladolid at the Colego de San Gregorio before he was appointed catedra de prima (the most important chair of theology) at the renowned university of Salamanca where he worked until his death in 1546. De Vitoria’s most important writings are De potestate civili and De jure belli in which he elaborated a theory of state power and juridical foundation of international law. His most famous theological writing is a commentary on Aquinas’s Summa theologica in which he primarily discusses Aquinas’s views on justice. In his De Indis et de Jure Belli Relectiones, which will be discussed here as his most practical treatise, de Vitoria describes the motivation and background for his discussions as follows: The whole of this controversy and discussion was started on account of the aborigines of the New World, commonly called Indians, who came forty years ago into the power of the Spaniards, not having been previously known to our world. This present disputation about them will fall into three parts. In the first part we shall inquire by what right these Indian natives came under Spanish rule. In the second part, what rights the Spanish sovereigns obtained over them in temporal and spiritual matters. In the third part, what rights these sovereigns or the Church obtained over them in matters spiritual and touching religion. (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 116) Both las Casas and de Vitoria do not belong to the canon of political theorists in IR although they are, as we will see, much more original and foundational for modern international law than Grotius. Indeed, de Vitoria established the major part of the theoretical body of modern international law, arguing for equal state relations protected by legal arrangements on the ethical basis of just war and the legal basis of mutual recognition and territorial integrity. Las Casas was more concerned with human rights and their extension to the native peoples of the Americas (discovered and yet undiscovered). It is interesting to note that both las Casas and de Vitoria formulated their thoughts in a critical discussion of Christian thinking while, at the same time disassociating from Christian orthodoxy. It has to be asked, therefore, how far critical Christian thought, that is, critical towards the Augustinian

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and Thomist orthodoxy, provided the intellectual framework for the development of modern international political theory, mainly of the axioms of legal equality among states and the mutual recognition of sovereign rights. I argue that indeed major theorems of modern international political and IR theory are critically considered and partly secularized, nevertheless, Christian concepts while a strong theological background is alive until at least the eighteenth century, however, abandoned thereafter (see also Becker, 2003). In this regard Padgen argues that the modern ‘concept of human rights [for example] is a development of the older [Christian] notion of natural rights and that the modern understanding of natural rights evolved in the context of the European struggle to legitimate its overseas empires’ (Padgen, 2003, p. 171), or, what should be added, to delegitimize respective conquests, as in the case of las Casas and de Vitoria. This legacy might be the reason why Christian thinkers never found serious reception in IR, which started to perceive itself, especially during the second half of the twentieth century, as a rationalist, not to mention thoroughly secularized and antinormative, ‘science’; this perception took hold, however, at the cost of ignoring its origins and neglecting the wide range of international political thought and corresponding notions of ethical deliberation.

2. Universalistic human rights and their extension beyond Europe When the Spanish Empire started to conquer the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century and to subjugate its peoples, one might argue that neither Spain nor any other European nation was prepared for both the material and philosophical challenges of overseas expansion (see Donavan, 1965). Nevertheless, this is a retrospective assessment only, while the majority of contemporaries believed in the hierarchy of cultures with Europeans at the top and all other nations following on a declining ladder of (what was defined as) ‘barbarism’ (very instructive on this are Bitterli, 1991; Greenblatt, 1991; Ryan, 1981; Seed, 1992). The philosophical legacies, which were cited to support those prevailing forms of Eurocentrism and racism, followed by systematic politics of annihilation of indigenous people and cultures as well as by individual atrocities,60 were taken from Aristotle’s idea of a natural distinction of mankind in masters and slaves and from a Christian tradition of a civilizing mission stemming from Augustine and Aquinas (see above; and more on that in relation to las Casas below; for thoughts on ‘otherness’ in antiquity see the excellent monograph by Dihle, 1994). I will not discuss whether, or not, and how far these understandings seem to do justice to Aristotle; I will, however, come back to the chapter on Augustine and Aquinas since we find some references to possible misunderstanding in the previous interpretation which are also flagged and discussed by las Casas. The key questions, which arose with Spain’s overseas expeditions and related

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experience and which las Casas addresses61 while being personally involved in the Spanish conquests and becoming more and more critical towards the Spanish tyranny and economic exploitation in the Americas,62 were whether the Indians should have the same rights as Europeans; whether they possessed intrinsic rights to their land and culture; and whether they were to be perceived as human beings at all.63 The enduring relevance of las Casas’s main writing, In Defense of the Indians (1992a), lies, first, in its presentation of universal human rights, extending their validity beyond Europe, and his philosophical criticism of European traditions of thought which have been used to justify the Spanish conquests and the disregard of Indians as human beings; second, las Casas develops a system of jurisdiction which he perceived as the guaranteeing framework for the existence and observance of human rights and for relations among peoples based on equal rights and mutual recognition. The first aspect will be discussed now, the second in the following section. Two epochal events occurred during the lifetime of las Casas – the bull Sublimus Dei promulgated by Pope Paul III on May 29, 1537, and the so-called Valladolid debate in 1550 – which signalled a new course for the Catholic Church and for the King of Spain and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, towards the European overseas expeditions. In both events, las Casas is either directly involved (the Valladolid debate) or at least his arguments have been echoed and recognized by the pope. In Sublimus Dei, Pope Paul III, some years before the Valladolid debate, recognized Indians as ‘truly men’ and condemned any deprivation of their life, possessions, and liberty. This meant a revolutionary new ‘policy’ for the Vatican, emphasizing at the same time a new humanism and the Catholic Church’s claim for universal reign of mankind. The bull states that the Catholic Church considers Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith, but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it ... that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may have said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; not should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.64 We clearly see that, on the one hand, the relations of European powers towards the Indians and towards ‘all other people who may be discovered by Christians’ shall be conducted in an equal and respectful way regarding and preserving their life, liberty, and possessions; that, on the other hand, however, the fundament for this recognition is the Christian faith itself.

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The criteria, even, to define Indians as human beings is their capability to understand and finally receive Catholic faith. Taking this paradox – which David Campbell rightfully criticizes as a ‘persistent [Eurocentric, phonological, ontological, and epistemological] logocentrism’ (Campbell, 1992, p. 118) – into consideration as the weak part of traditional universalistic thinking, which can think about ‘otherness’ only in terms of self-definition,65 one nevertheless has to concede the revolutionary accomplishment by Sublimus Dei defining intercultural and international relations on the basis of the principal equality and recognizing beliefs other than the Christian as legitimate. The same paradox of ‘logocentrism’ on the one hand and the demand of human and religious equality on the other also applies to de Vitoria. In the ‘First Relectio’ of his De Indis et de Jure Belli Relectiones, he argues that the Indians would be true possessors of their land and dominion and the Spaniards had no right to deprive them of what naturally belongs to them. This is certainly a considerable accomplishment in terms of the recognition of their way of living and of different forms of rationality, emphasized by his notion that ‘they also have a kind of religion’. The rationale for this recognition is twofold: it stems from natural law as well as from the circumstance that the organization of their societies and politics is reasonable according to European standards. In this second rationale, the paradox reveals. De Vitoria writes: The Indian aborigines are not barred on this ground from the exercise of true dominion. This is proved from the fact that the true state of the case is that they are not of unsound mind, but have, according to their own kind, the use of reason. This is clear, because there is a certain method in their affairs, for they have polities which are orderly arranged and they have definite marriage and magistrates, overlords, laws, and workshops, and a system of exchange, all of which call for the use of reason; they also have a kind of religion. (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 127) The universal extension of human rights and subsequently the recognition of different peoples and their cultures as politically equal was effectively translated into the official position of King Charles V and the Spanish court when the emperor ordered las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepulveda, one of Spain’s leading intellectuals of the sixteenth century who had massive influence at court and who tried to defend the Spanish conquerors and the system of ‘encomienda’, together with other jurists and theologians to the ‘Council of the Indies’ at Valladolid for a debate on the merits of just wars and Aristotelian logic in order to determine ‘how conquests may be conducted justly and with security of conscience’ (quoted in Hanke, 1959, p. 36). Las Casas was given three days for his speech before the court in which he lectured from the manuscript of his In Defense of the Indians. Before discussing las Casas’s arguments in detail, which refute Sepulveda step by step, it

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is worth mentioning that we find the same logocentric paradox in las Casas that was communicated in Pope Paul’s bull. This logocentrism has been summarized by Bill Donovan as follows: Las Casas indicted individuals for the New World’s problems. Although he saw the encomienda system as inherently wicked, it was till colonists – not the king, Spain, or Christian Europe – whom he found responsible for the evil committed under its guise. The suggestion never arises, for example, that Indians just left be alone. Christian responsibility, for las Casas, meant exposing native people to Grace. Indeed, Indians could not be left alone: they were, to use, his phrase, good enough to be Christians and to be integrated into Christian society. Yet, what did it mean to be a Christian? Las Casas implies that that was unclear to Spaniards living in the Americas, but it was clear to him: he was a Christian opposed to Christianity as it existed in the New World. (Donovan, 1965, p. 21) Las Casas begins his defence of the Indian populations by a juxtaposition of the Indians and the Spaniards as the most peaceful and peace-loving, obedient, and friendly people on the one side and, on the other side, the Spanish conquerors ‘who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 29). This juxtaposition, which traces through all his writings, results in the historical narrative that ‘only after the Spaniards had used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise up against them’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 32). Besides the fact that this assessment leads to a clear judgement about the unrestricted guilt of the Spaniards, las Casas argues that, from a Christian point of view, this treatment most heavily violates every appropriate way to ‘have the Indians been brought to embrace the [Christian] Faith and to swear obedience to the kings of Castile’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 48). As he explains in detail in his work On the only Way of Attracting All Peoples to the True Faith (1992b) it is love, teaching, and preaching, not the sword, which have the power and which are described by the holy sacraments as the only rightful way to spread Christianity and to convert ‘unbelievers’. In the Indies, however, peoples were told that ‘they must embrace Christian Faith immediately, without hearing any sermon preached and without indoctrination.’ They were told ‘to subject themselves to a King they have never heard or nor seen ... by the King’s messengers who are such despicable and cruel tyrants that deprive them of their liberty, their possessions, their wives and children’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 48). The Spaniards’ behaviour would thus contradict the commandments of Christ Jesus, and the Indians eventually had no other choice than to resist. Las Casas asks, ‘What will these people think of Christ ... when they see Christians venting their rage against them with so many massacres?’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 27). However, las Casas’s condemnation of the Spanish

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conquerors relates not only to the violation of the holy sacraments and of Jesus’s teachings, but also to an utmost disregard of the Indians as human beings. This argument seems from an international politics perspective more relevant because it finally results in the recognition of other nations on the basis of equal mutuality; it deflects, as Hayward R. Alker emphasizes, ‘a process of mutual recognition, respect, and toleration’ (Alker, 1992, p. 362). Evolving the argument that Indians are to be regarded as ‘true men’ and belong to one (and the same) mankind as Europeans leads las Casas to discuss critically the arguments Sepulveda brought forward in the Valladolid debate. Sepulveda referred to an Aristotelian legacy of differentiating peoples into ‘barbarian’ and ‘civilized’ and applied this differentiation to the Spanish as civilized and the Indians as barbarian. He concluded from this differentiation some natural hierarchy between master and slave in order to justify the Spanish conquerors and their use of violence to dominate indigenous peoples. Las Casas criticizes Sepulveda’s argument and emphasis on Aristotle’s definition of barbarism as those forms of life which would not know any form of government, political institutions, and order. Las Casas writes that these ‘are barbarians in the absolute and strict sense of the word ... they lack reasoning and way of life suited to human beings and those things which all men habitually accept’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 30). Aristotle would indeed write about those peoples as barbarians calling them slaves by nature; however, contrary to Sepulveda’s interpretation and application of this distinction, Aristotle would note that this form of life is ‘rarely found in any part of the world and [is] few in number compared with the rest of mankind’ (las Casas, 1992a, pp. 33–4).66 Consequently, las Casas argues that this definition cannot be applied to the Indians who, in addition to the fact of the rareness of such a kind of barbarism in general, did develop highly sophisticated systems of government, would know legal bodies to regulate their social and political life, and had accomplished many cultural achievements (of which las Casas most admired their architecture). Therefore, they would not be barbarians, and Sepulveda’s understanding and application of Aristotle’s distinction would be wrong. Las Casas notes: They [the Indians] are not ignorant, inhuman or bestial. Rather, long before they had heard the word Spaniard they had properly organized states, wisely ordered by excellent laws, religion and custom. They cultivated friendship and, bound together in common fellowship, lived in populous cities in which they wisely administered the affairs of both peace and war justly and equitably, truly governed by laws. (las Casas, 1992a, pp. 42–3) It is less important here whether, or not, las Casas’s assessments of Indian life, culture, and politics communicates an historically true image

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and conveys a proper description, rather than that he critically discusses philosophical traditions which seemed to be set in stone and appeared all too easy to apply (by Sepulveda and the Spaniards) to the justification of Spanish conquests and mass murder. By his critical discussion, las Casas opens the intellectual and (as seen by the Valladolid debate) political horizon of sixteenth-century international politics, facing overseas expansions and experiencing different forms of human life which provoked philosophical reflection. Just as Machiavelli notes in the Preface of his Discourses that political philosophy has to break with traditions and metaphorically requests that it set out for new shores (see more on that below), las Casas is actually realizing such a program in the philosophical and most practical sense, being motivated by the factual historical realities of overseas expansion and novel intercultural encounters. Leaning towards John G. A. Pocock’s (1975) metaphor of a ‘Machiavellian moment’ in Renaissance political theory and its influences, Alker speaks of a ‘las Casas moment in Renaissance humanist thought’ (Alker, 1992, p. 363). What, according to las Casas, enabled the Indians to accomplish the cultural and political achievements that allowed them to be seen as ‘true’ human beings and as civilized? Las Casas’s answer to this question lies in his belief in God’s order of creation and subsequently in the endowment of universal mankind with reason. It is the rational nature of their being with which God gifted all men, by which all men are made perfect ‘in no other way than by his intellect’, and by which all men are finally distinguished from animals: ‘For since God’s love of mankind is so great and it is his will to save all men, it is in accord with his wisdom that in the whole universe, which is perfect in all its parts, his supreme wisdom should shine more and more in the most perfect thing: rational nature’ (las Casas, 1992a, pp. 35–6). According to this universal belief, las Casas concludes that a ‘natural light’ has been imparted in all human beings which requires mutual respect and humanist recognition for all forms of human life, even if they might be (very) different in their conduct of every life and in terms of religion, customs, and politics. Las Casas’s ethical backbone derived from this universal humanism can be found in the Christian (and later on philosophical; see below with regard to Kant) doctrine ‘See that you do not do to another what you would not have done to you by another’ or ‘(Always) treat others as you would like them to treat you’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 27). This ethical principle, las Casas argues, would be known, and has to be respected, by all men according to their natural reason. With regard to philosophical and Christian traditions, las Casas enters not only into critical debates with Aristotle, but also with Augustine and Aquinas. This becomes obvious when he radicalizes the elements of Augustine’s and Aquinas’s rationalist construction of God even more, arguing for some form of religious relativism. This does not mean that he leaves the common ground of perceiving Christianity as the only true faith,

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however, he admits freedom of religion and equal status to religious beliefs at least before Christianity was taught in the rightful way and made known to the yet ‘unbelievers’. Men, gifted with natural reason, would also be enlightened with some form of spirituality. However, las Casas denies that this would necessarily lead to one form of religious beliefs and practices, and states, rather, that a multitude of worshipping habitudes would legitimately exist among mankind. This multitude is to be respected by every true and honourable Christian, and that is why, ‘(if) they [the unbelievers] refuse to listen, we must go to other places, until we find friendly listeners’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 178). Las Casas argues for an anthropological constitution shared by all men which imparts spirituality or some form of ‘a common knowledge of God’, which is, however, ‘very vague and universal and shows only that there is someone who puts order in things that we see functioning according to some order’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 131); this does not, however, refer necessarily and only to the Christian God. Las Casas here radicalizes Augustine’s and Aquinas’s rationalist principle of God that perceives God as a cognitive construction, admitting that men, by their constitution, depend on some form of spirituality due to the intellectual ‘limitations in themselves’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 132). Due to this limitation, men were simply not capable of having logical explanations for the natural order of things. They therefore try to ‘reconcile’ their experience and such incomprehensibilities through religion and forms of worshipping; and ‘if someone objects that worshipping stones as god is contrary to natural reason and thus forbidden ... we answer that the ordinary and ultimate intention of those who worship idols is not to worship stones but to worship, through certain manifestations of divine power, the planner of the world, whoever it may be’ (ibid., pp. 132–3; emphasis mine). This recognition of a multitude of forms of worship as equally religious practices and beliefs is really revolutionary and places different religions at the same level with Christianity; not with regard to their final truthfulness, but in terms of their acknowledgement and deserved respect. Although they do not worship the true God, the Indians can, however, not be made responsible until Christianity has been preached and taught to them in a proper way. Before this might have been successfully, but peacefully, achieved, one religion is as true as any other and deserves full respect. For the humanist ethics of the respectful treatment of other cultures and religions, it is important to recall las Casas’s argument that the Gospel should not be spread among nations by the power of weapons and conquest, but must be taught in a peaceful and brotherly way. Only love for your neighbour and for all mankind would correspond with the ethics of the Sermon of the Mount (see particularly In Defense of the Indians, chapter XI). We can summarize that las Casas’s universalism consists of the extension of the definition of humanity to all mankind because all men, by the power of natural reason, bear the natural and unalienable right of their

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liberty, regardless of differences in cultural, habitual, and political matters; or, as Alker puts it, las Casas’s universalism consists of ‘the cognition of and respect for universally/naturally grounded, species-wide, creative capacities, together with the recognition of the intrinsic worth of different, voluntarily accepted, cultural expressions of these capacities’ (Alker, 1992, p. 363). In addition to this, the exercise of different religions is perceived as a human right itself, which has to be equally respected, and whose violation is a sin against the teachings of the holy sacraments. The previous discussions of human rights and the question whether, or not, they apply beyond Europe to the indigenous peoples of the Americas also included the question of the Indians’ right to possession. The conquest of the Spanish and the seizure and devastation of the Indian’s land brought up this question, and it is de Vitoria who devotes large parts of his De Indis et de Ivre Belli Relectiones to discussing it. De Vitoria develops his very clear outlook on this issue – stating uncompromisingly that the Indians have full rights to possession and dominion and that neither the Spanish King (the ‘Emperor’) nor the Pope has any legitimization to deprive the Indians of this right – on the basis of natural law. Hamilton argues that de Vitoria formed a theory of human dignity based on natural law, which would bridge the differences between peoples and cultures and demand mutual responsibility ‘extending far beyond the bounds of one country’ (Hamilton, 1963, p. 105). De Vitoria writes: ‘I ask first whether the aborigines in question were true owners in both private and public law before the arrival of the Spaniards’, and he concludes ‘that the people in question were in peaceable possession of their goods, both publicly and privately. Therefore, unless the contrary is shown, they must be treated as owners and not be disturbed in their possession unless cause be shown’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 120). This right of true possession, according to natural law, applies to all mankind, regardless of their differences in race, culture, and religion. Indeed, de Vitoria explicitly states that The foundation of the law is in fact that no matter how many diverse peoples and kingdoms the human race may be divided into, it always has a certain unity, not merely as a species but even a sort of political and moral unit, which is indicated by the natural precept of mutual love and mercy which extends to everyone, even to foreigners of any nation. (de Vitoria quoted in Hamilton, 1963, pp. 108–9) The unity of mankind of which de Vitoria speaks is created by natural law and does not suffer any harm from differences in religion. The abovementioned recognition of different rationalities, as it communicates from de Vitoria (and also from las Casas), reveals also here with regard to the right of possession. And even if de Vitoria is bound to term the Indians’ religion ‘unbelief’, he nevertheless contests the idea that ‘unbelief’ would prevent ‘anyone from

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being a true owner’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 123) since natural law establishes ‘a bond of relationship between all men’, which is why ‘it is contrary to natural law for one man to disassociate himself from another without good reason’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 153). Thus, according to Vitoria, the right to possession is guaranteed by natural law, and as an unalienable right cannot be taken away from anyone on the basis of human law whatsoever this law might suggest. He thus declares the Spanish conquests and their seizure of Indian land and goods as illegitimate. As did las Casas, Vitoria assumes that natural law, tangible by all men, exists among all peoples, whether Christians or not, as a system which provides human dignity and an ethical bond among all men and which stands on its own regardless of individual attributes. How this universalism of reason and human rights translates into teachings for legal relations among nations will be discussed in the next section.

3. Jurisdiction as landmark and guarantor for universal human rights and just war In the Preface of his In Defense of the Indians, las Casas outlines the course of his arguments against Sepulveda. First, he says, he shall refute his argument that war against the Indians would be justified assuming that they are barbarous and uncivilized. This argument and las Casas’s anthropological universalism of human rights was discussed in the previous section. I will now discuss his second, third, and fourth argument of the Valladolid debate, which focus on the question of just war in general (his second and third argument) and on the question whether, or not, the Indians were subject of both the King of Spain and the Catholic Church and would thus fall under their authority and jurisdiction (his fourth argument; for this argument also de Vitoria is very relevant; see below). It is with regard to this argument and the question of jurisdiction and boundaries of jurisdiction, respectively, that las Casas and de Vitoria developed a new standard for the conduct of state relations. This standard puts the same legal restrictions on each state, requires mutual recognition among states, and protects each of them on an equal basis against hostile aspirations of other states and unjust war. The reference for this international jurisdiction stems, on the one hand, from their universalism of human rights, and, on the other hand, from a universal notion of natural and divine law. Although we have reviewed discussions of universal legal standards to regulate state relations from Thucydides and Cicero, and of divine law from Augustine and Aquinas, thus prior to las Casas and de Vitoria, there is nevertheless a new momentum in both. This originality is to be seen in the equality of nations being protected from each others’ claims of any nature and subsequently in the recognition of diverse cultural, political, and social patterns of life, whereas prior legal principles were either quite vague (Thucydides), even if their notion existed, or drafted in favour of imperial

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power (Cicero) and superior truth (Augustine and Aquinas), not, however, on the basis of nations’ equality and guaranteed protection by mutual recognition. Equality and recognition in las Casas and de Vitoria are based upon the notion of spheres of jurisdiction and are as such supposed to not only protect each nation from other nations’ political aspirations, but, in case war should break out and seems inevitable, also to provide standards for just war and warfare.67 When las Casas prepares his defence and approaches the development of his second, third, and fourth arguments, he again critically refers to Augustine, Aquinas, and the official position of the Catholic Church prior to Sublimus Dei (1537) and breaks with previously well-established traditions – traditions which have been emphasized by Sepulveda and which las Casas set out to refute successfully. His critique goes to the heart of Christian selfperception and politics, tackling the question of the righteousness of mission and appropriate respective political means. He argues that Sepulveda concludes from Christian authorities, namely, Augustine, Aquinas, and previous papal bulls,68 that it would be ‘totally just, as well as most beneficial to these barbarians [the Indians], that they be conquered and brought under the rule of the Spaniards’ since this might be the easiest way for them to embrace the Christian religion (las Casas, 1992a, p. 15). He then explicitly criticizes Augustine and Aquinas for having stated that ‘if someone is unwilling to do what is good for himself and he is obliged to act for his own welfare, it is just to force him to do even he is unwilling and resists’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 12). Las Casas puts Christian superiority in spiritual and political matters into question and refutes the perception that the Indians themselves were responsible for being forced to be subjugated to the Spaniards and Christian rule because they did not recognize and even denied what might be good for them. This perception sounds absurd to us, and so it does to las Casas (see also Donavan, 1965, p. 15).69 Before evolving his arguments regarding just war, las Casas summarizes Sepulveda’s view that the armed expeditions against the Indians were justified as long as they corresponded with the rule(s) under the authority of the King of Spain as the legitimate sovereign. It might thus be sufficient to expect the Indians to immediately subjugate themselves to this rule and to embrace Christian belief without any negotiation. If this does not happen, then waging war against them would be just according to civil law (set up by the sovereignty of the Spanish king) and natural law: according to natural law, the Indians’ status is to be perceived as uncivilized and barbarous, and consequently it would be justified that the civilized (Spain) should govern them. Las Casas’s critique of that outlook applies to the just war problematic in that he radically alters this definition and declares all wars that the Spaniards fought against the Indians were ‘unjust wars’ and all wars that the Indians fought against the Spanish conquerors were ‘justifiable’ (las Casas, 1992a, pp. 41–8).

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The main criterion for this turn is a redefinition of natural law from an ostensible natural master-slave hierarchy to the natural right of peoples to defend their liberty. Rhetorically, he introduces an historical analogy asking Sepulveda (as well as the jurists, theologians, and representatives of the Spanish court at the Valladolid debate) what he thinks of the Spanish wars against the Roman Empire and whether they were just or unjust, then applying this analogy to the rebellions of the Indians against the Spanish conquerors. ‘Did the Spanish wage an unjust war when they vigorously defended themselves against them [the Romans]?’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 43). Las Casas’s answer is they did not, and he denounces such an argument as ‘absurd’. This does not mean, on the other side, that he renounces all claims of spreading Christianity and preaching the gospel to other, non-Christian peoples because las Casas – despite all of his arguments on behalf of equality and recognition – remains convinced that it belongs to the church to teach the ‘truth’. But, as was argued above and as he lays down in The Only Way (1992b), this has to occur by means of brotherly love and peaceful means, not by war, violence, and coercion. If, however, someone actively opposes the Catholic Church preaching the gospel, then it becomes just to wage war against those ‘unbelievers’, when and under the condition that this happens within the jurisdiction of the church. He writes: Therefore the Church, to which belongs the care of peoples throughput the world as regards to preaching the truth, can justly wage war upon those who prevent the gospel from being preached within their jurisdiction ... It should be noted that ... war against unbelievers can be just only when the rulers or kings maliciously prevent the spread or preaching of the gospel ... But if both the rulers and all their peoples ... out of love for and devotion to their religion, refuse to hear or admit Christian preaching, then, under no circumstances, can they be forced by war to let them come in. (las Casas, 1992a, pp. 170, 172; also ibid., p. 107) We find here a clear insinuation towards the relevance of jurisdiction; before I discuss this matter explicitly below, I shall further reconstruct las Casas’s argument for the justification and legitimization of self-defence. His first argument can be summarized by the dictum that when the Catholic faith is or has been lectured in a proper Christian way, everyone is obliged to accept and to follow. This, he argues, would be a consequence of natural law since no one can, or should, resist the truth; in this regard, las Casas subscribes to orthodox Christian beliefs. If, however, someone is forced to accept Christianity and coercively baptized (or tried to be baptized), resistance would be legitimate since violent conversion would not only contradict Christian values, but also natural law. Las Casas develops here an individualistic voluntarism which goes hand in hand with his universal anthropology

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of reason and virtue, writing that ‘men are obliged by the natural law to do many things they cannot be forced to do against their will’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 46). Individual voluntarism and reason, which make men equal, count higher than the ambitions of missionary work and (the pretence of) superior wisdom; they thus represent eternal law.70 This individualistic notion, both with regard to the individual human being and an individual nation, is las Casas’s strongest argument against, and at the same time represents his philosophical dissociation from, Aristotelian legacies and Christian orthodox doctrine handed down from Augustine and Aquinas.71 He concludes that ‘every nation, no matter how barbaric, has the right to defend itself against a more civilized one that wants to conquer it and take away its freedom’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 47).72 De Vitoria shares these views, and in his practical way of thinking, being sometimes more like a lawyer than a philosopher, he lists three reasons which could never justify war and hence always initiate unjust war. In his ‘Second Relectio’ of his De Indis et Jure Belli Relectiones, he posits that ‘difference of religion is not a cause for just war’,73 that ‘extension of empire is not a just cause of war’, and that neither would ‘the personal glory of the prince nor any other advantage to him [be] a just cause of war’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 170).74 The last aspect would not only characterize just or unjust war, but in addition to this also mark the difference between a lawful king and a tyrant in that the latter would seek his own advantage in war, a lawful king, however, would wage war only for the common good or avoid war when it would not be necessary for realizing the common good. The perspective that war declared for the glory of the king is always an unjust war, and the related idea questioning whether the belief of the king that a certain war would be just can actually make a war just, are important for de Vitoria. Here, the experience with the reign of Charles V and the absolutist declaration of the empire’s expansion might have been the impetus for de Vitoria to further argue that a ‘king is not by himself capable of examining into the causes of a war and the possibility of a mistake on his part is not unlikely and such a mistake would bring great evil and ruin multitudes ... war ought not to be made on the sole judgment of the king, nor, indeed, on the judgment of a few, but on that of many, and they be wise and upright men’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 174). A circumstance in which war can be just exists, de Vitoria argues, only when and under the circumstance that a ‘wrong has been received’ and that this circumstance is scrutinized carefully (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 170). The definition ‘when a wrong has been received’ results in the argument, similar to las Casas (as well as to what we know from Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas), that only wars of defence could be declared just wars because ‘(not) every kind and degree of wrong can suffice for commencing a war’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 172). He concludes, therefore, that the Spanish conquests would be profoundly unjust – indeed they would be waged for reasons of ‘expansion

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of empire’ and attempted to be justified by ‘difference of religion’ and the necessity to spread Christianity. We read: The Indians in question are not bound ... to believe it [the Christian faith], in such way that they commit mortal sin by not believing it, merely because it has been declared and announced to them that Christianity is the true religion and that Christ is the Saviour and Redeemer of the world, without miracle or any other proof of persuasion ... Therefore, where there are no such signs nor anything else of persuasive force, the aborigines are not bound to believe ... which of the two is the truer religion, unless a greater weight of probability be apparent on one side ... From this proposition it follows that, if the faith be presented to the Indians in the way named only and they do not receive it, the Spaniards can not make this a reason for waging war on them or for proceeding against them under the law of war. This is manifest, because they are innocent in this respect and have done no wrong to the Spaniards ... Where, then, no wrong has previously been committed by the Indians, there is no cause of just war. (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 143) From this treatment, the following arguments on just war and warfare can be concluded which then lead to de Vitoria’s outlook on the final purpose of war itself. He introduces a basic notion which is thoroughly innovative for the discussion of just war against the views of the Spanish colonialists and those who support them. De Vitoria puts stress not on an enemy’s subjective or subjectively perceived guilt, but on objective acts and their assessment as just or unjust according to their status as combatants or non-combatants. ‘No longer must there be a rather vague identification of the enemy as a mass of wrong-willed individuals whose subjective guilt must be certified or supposed, according to which criterion a determination of the innocent is almost impossible’ (Hartigan, 1973, p. 89). From this is derived a norm of noncombatant immunity, which is a universal norm that must be observed by everyone, including the emperor and the Spanish conquerors. Hartigan argues that de Vitoria thereby established ‘real life’ for an abstract moral principle: the ‘innocence’ was not a tangible reality. The spirit of innocence could now have concrete form as the ‘uninvolved’ (Hartigan, 1973, p. 89). When this norm is combined with de Vitoria’s determination of unjust causes of war, the final purpose of war, if it is necessary at all, is revealed. This final purpose is found in the realization of peace, security, and the common good not only for one political community, but also for mankind and the world as a whole. De Vitoria writes, ‘there would be no condition of happiness for the world, nay, its condition would be one of utter misery, if oppressors and robbers and plunderers could with impunity commit their crimes and oppress the good and innocent, and these latter could not in turn retaliate on them’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 167). The question which

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arises now is this: who are the oppressors, robbers, and plunderers, and why? Here, de Vitoria relates to a thoroughly Aristotelian (and Augustinian and Thomist) definition in that he shares the idea that a perfect political community ‘is one which is complete in itself, that is, which is not part of another community, but has its own laws and its own council and its own magistrates (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 169). What does this mean for the question of the legitimacy of Spanish colonialism in the Americas? Here, the question of jurisdiction and sovereignty develops its full meaning. For if a community is only a perfect one under the condition of sovereignty (‘not being part of another community’), if war is unjust for reasons of a prince’s glory as well as because of mere expansion, and if different religion(s) is (are) not a just cause of war, however, self-defence is a just reason of war, it then follows that the Spanish have no right whatsoever to subjugate the Indians. In addition to this, the primary obligation of each king and prince, who acts lawfully, is to recognize the above conditions; de Vitoria argues: Now, in point of human law, it is manifest that the Emperor is not lord of the world, because either this would be by the sole authority of some law, and there is none such; or, if there were, it would be void of effect, inasmuch as law presupposes jurisdiction. If, then, the Emperor had no jurisdiction over the world before the law, the law could not bind one who was not previously subject to it. Nor, on the other hand, had the Emperor this position by lawful succession or by gift or by exchange or by purchase or by just war or by election or by any other legal title, as is admitted. Therefore, the Emperor never was the lord of the whole world. Second conclusion: Granted that the Emperor were the lord of the world, still that would not entitle him to seize the provinces of the Indian aborigines and erect new lords there and put down the former ones or take taxes. The proof is herein, namely, that even those who attribute lordship over the world to the Emperor do not claim that he is the lord of ownership, but only in jurisdiction, and this latter right does not go so far as to warrant him in converting provinces to his own use or in giving towns or even estates away at his pleasure. This, then, shows that the Spaniards can not justify on this ground their seizure of the provinces in question. (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 134) And some pages later in the same paragraph of this treatise he repeats ‘that at the time of the Spaniards’ first voyages to America they took with them no right to occupy the lands of the indigenous population’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 138). The next question, which arises for de Vitoria is this: Can the pope be said to have jurisdiction over the Indians due to his religious and spiritual authority? In order to investigate this question, de Vitoria distinguishes between

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temporal power, civil power, and spiritual jurisdiction. In this regard, de Vitoria is certain that the pope has no temporal or civil power, because not even Christ wielded this kind of power, and the pope is nothing but ‘Christ’s vicar’; so how could he have this type of power? (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 135). What about his spiritual power and his religious authority over the Indians? In his answer, de Vitoria refers to the New Testament (St. John) and the narrative about inner-world temporality as it is expressed by the metaphor of ‘one flock and one shepherd’. This metaphor clearly suggests that there will be only ‘one flock and one shepherd’ at the end of ages, that is, when Christ descends from heaven. As long as this has not happened, the world is divided into different peoples and religions. From this reality of the peoples of the world being differentiated into a multitude of religions and organized in diverse political communities, de Vitoria regards it as evident that the pope also has no spiritual power over the Indians or any nonChristian people. He concludes: The Pope has no temporal power over the Indian aborigines or over other unbelievers ... For he has no temporal power save such as subserves spiritual matters. But he has no spiritual power over them ... Therefore he has no temporal power either. The corollary follows that even if the barbarians refuse to recognize any lordship of the Pope, that furnishes no ground for making war on them and seizing their property ... even if the barbarians refuse to accept Christ as their lord, this does not justify making war on them or doing them any hurt ... Therefore they cannot be compelled to recognize this lordship. (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 138) It also would be false to assume ‘that the Pope has jurisdiction over the Indian aborigines’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 146). From las Casas’s and de Vitoria’s conceptions of jurisdiction and sovereign spheres of jurisdiction follows a triangular relation between natural law, the right to defend one’s freedom, and the right to repel force by force (see, for example, in las Casas, Defense of the Indians, chapter XXVII). Consequently, war against the Indians in order to convert them to Christianity is unlawful and their ‘rebellion’ and eventual war against the Spanish conquerors is just. In addition to this, there is still another argument that waging war against non-Christian peoples is unlawful and unjust. This argument embodies another important pillar of their juridical framework, pointing to the circumstance of innocence and the conclusion that killing innocent people can under no circumstances be lawful. This fully applies to the Indians (and other native peoples to be ‘discovered’ in the future) because they had no chance to hear of the Christian God, thus, they are not responsible for their ‘unbelief’. Punishing them for this ‘unbelief’ or, put differently, for worshipping their own gods consequently would be unjust and evil. It will be important to come back to this aspect of innocence. First, however, I shall

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discuss how this emphasis on innocence provides important criteria not only for just or unjust war, but also for laws of war and warfare. Las Casas explores the problem of laws of warfare in two chapters of his Defense (chapters XXVIII and XXX). In doing so, he develops an anti-utilitarian, universal ethics. His arguments again are directed against Sepulveda and his argument that, in order to successfully subjugate the Indians to Spanish (and Christian) rule, not only war itself would be justified, but also each means of warfare which would make them obedient, such as means of killing, massacres, public punishing to terrify others, retaliation, and so on. Las Casas condemns such behaviour as sinful not only according to Christian morality, but also on grounds of an ethical position that means can never cure or justify the (possible) ends. He writes: From this arises the rule that when evil and good [the prospect of conversion to Christianity as such] are so conjoined that, from the good I wish to do, evil would necessarily or almost always result, if the evil is greater than the good I seek to accomplish, the good (action) must always be omitted lest the evil should result. (las Casas, 1992a, p. 202) From this ethical position, he claims that not only innocent people, but also obviously harmless persons such as children, women, and the elderly must be spared. Las Casas illustrates this claim and his respective ethics by the question whether, or not, and under which circumstances to attack a city or fortress. With this example,75 he makes the same important argument which we know from Cicero and Augustine, namely, that a just war – that is, a war which was begun and waged with just reasons – can turn into an unjust war simply by using methods of unjust warfare. Therefore, he first condemns the argument that when once a city has been taken in a just war, all its inhabitants are presumed to be enemies as well and consequently have to be killed; and second, he states that when some military action is not necessary ‘for the favorable outcome of the whole war’ (1992a, p. 200), such as the attack of a fortress and its complete annihilation, it would be unjust to undertake this attack. The reason behind these repudiations is that in every city or fortress, in each community, there are innocent people (such as children, women, and the elderly, but also ‘farmers, workmen, merchants, and pilgrims’; ibid.), and to attack or kill such people would be a mortal sin. His notion of just war is therefore bound to certain methods of warfare to both ensure that a just war remains just and, given an unjust war, to avoid at least the worst outcome of a war which in itself, is an evil deed. Those methods require restriction of warfare to those who are supposed to fight the war and who are professional soldiers and to spare the innocent and civilians. The following question has to be asked: how are las Casas’s and de Vitoria’s normative determinations of the recognition of universal human rights,

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religious freedom, and just war and warfare to be guaranteed in practical political life? The following elaboration of this question reveals their original principles of international jurisdiction. These principles revolutionized the medieval notion of one (Christian) empire and introduced the early modern concept of a world divided into different ‘nations’ with individual systems of law and authority. According to las Casas, and as seen above in de Vitoria, in such a world different ‘nations’ can exist concurrently and are granted mutually recognized sovereignty, however, only on the basis of an universal conceptualization of equality and equal rights to freedom, property, and religion. Kenneth Pennington acknowledges that las Casas’s principles ‘were preliminary to a nascent international law’ (1970, p. 160). Las Casas’s international legal principles are established on, and depend upon, his anthropological and ethical universalism. Further than that, only this universalism allows him to recognize and acknowledge differences as equally legitimate articulations and manifestations of one and the same substance of which the human and political world is made, namely, universal human and divine reason, ethics, and finally universal humanity. Similar to Pennington, Hamilton argues that ‘for sixteenth century Spaniards the jus gentium was in one sense normative, a reflection of the natural law, in another sense customary and improving slowly’, and he concludes that, when considering these foundations of international law, ‘we are forced back on the hypothesis that morality, and not our selfish interests or those of our state, may prove the best policy in our relations with all mankind’ (Hamilton, 1963, p. 167). The framework which politically warrants, or is supposed to warrant, the mutual recognition and acknowledgement of difference is delivered by rights and obligations of ‘international’ jurisdiction. In developing this framework, las Casas and de Vitoria refer to their argument against the claim, which the Spaniards upheld, namely, of superior wisdom which would legitimize conquest (see above). Contrary to such a claim, las Casas argued that the Indians’ war of defence against the Spaniards is by all means to be perceived as the legitimate form of violence in all confrontations which take place in the ‘New World’. ‘(No) free person, and much less a free people, is bound to submit to anyone, whether king or nation, no matter how much better the latter may be and no matter how advantageous he may think it will be to himself’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 47). Following this argument, he consequently declines to term the Indians’ resistance a ‘rebellion’ and the Indians themselves ‘rebels’ because, as he notes, ‘no one can be called a rebel if ... he is not a subject of the King’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 65). This definition goes immediately to the heart of the body of the universalistic thinking in Christian legal philosophy in the sixteenth century which is based upon the conviction that the legitimate use of authority and power stems from legalized relations between those who exert authority and those who are subject to this authority, domestically and internationally.

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All these arguments were developed against those who supported the Spanish conquests, most prominently Sepulveda, and the conviction that the Spaniards would rightfully conquer the Americas and could punish the Indians for ‘idolatry’ and ‘disbelief’. ‘The ancient concept of jus gentium received new life in Spain through the discovery and conquest of the Americas ... But their consciousness of living in an expanding world made them [the respective critical theologians] more aware of the unity of mankind and more anxious to assert it’ (Hamilton, 1963, p. 98). In chapter VI of In Defense of the Indians, in which las Casas attacks Sepulveda on the ground of his legal theory, he is more explicit on his definition of jurisdiction. ‘In this chapter ... we shall prove that unbelievers who have never embraced the faith of Christ and who are not Christian subjects cannot be punished by Christians, or even by the Church, for any crime at all, no matter how atrocious it may be’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 55).76 Jurisdiction, and then the definition of being subject to one’s authority, or not, and of legitimately, or illegitimately, exerting political power, is determined by territorial spheres. Only within the territory of his own nation is a sovereign entitled to wield his authority. He has no legitimate power outside the borders of his body politic. Those living outside, as the Indians with regard to the Spanish Empire, are therefore neither subject of the Spanish Empire nor of the authority and power of the King of Spain who ‘has no jurisdiction in this area’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 55, here similar to de Vitoria; see above), regardless of the possible seriousness of ‘crimes’: ‘Therefore, in this case, the emperor, the prince, or the king has no jurisdiction but is the same as a private citizen, and whatever he does has no force’ (ibid.). Beyond the territorial definition of political power, authority, and jurisdiction, we see that certain terms and concepts become political and accomplish political character only by the possibility of their legal definition, such as ‘rebellion’, ‘rebel’, and ‘crime’, which become definable only under the condition that they apply and can be applied in a juridical context. The limitation of political authority through a territorially defined body politic and the recognition of the political sovereignty and independence of other ‘nations’ relates, however, not only to matters of resistance and punishment, but also to religious or spiritual matters. Also here, the power to convert people ends at one’s own kingdom’s borders, hand in hand with the request to recognize other peoples’ right of religious freedom. Las Casas notes in the same tone as de Vitoria: (As) regards to religion or spiritual matters, no matter whether they be Jews, Mohammedans, or idolaters they are in no way subject to the Church nor to her members, that is, Christian rulers. And therefore when they celebrate and observe rites they cannot be punished by Christian rulers, for [they] lack jurisdiction in this area. (las Casas, 1992a, pp. 54–5)

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This form of ‘relativism’, or as termed above with regard to de Vitoria, ‘recognition of different rationalities’ is more strongly developed in las Casas than in de Vitoria, and therefore he shall be discussed in further detail. Pursuing this ‘relativism’, las Casas extends the determination of the territorial limits of jurisdiction and subsequently the assignment of who is, or is not, subject to a distinct authority beyond the relation between Spain and the Indians to, first, the Catholic Church and the pope and, second, to each kind of relations among states. Regarding the Catholic Church and the authority of the pope, las Casas differentiates between ‘actual’ (or ‘factual’) and ‘potential’ power. Actual power relates to those who are indeed subject to the Catholic Church by embracing the Catholic faith and by being baptized, that is, believers and heretics or sinners who break from the church, but are under the jurisdiction of the church. They belong, as las Casas states in reference to Augustine, to the City of God, and hence the church and the pope may exert power over them. In contrast, persons who never embraced the Christian faith and did not subject themselves to Christ’s jurisdiction are therefore outside the church and Christian law. Although the ‘Eternal Father’, as las Casas says, ‘gave Christ power over all nations, believing and unbelieving in heaven and on earth’ (1992a, pp. 55–6), those who are not baptized and did not willingly submit themselves are only potentially, or ‘habitually’ (ibid., p. 57) subject. In Book IX of In Defence of the Indians, las Casas describes the holy sacraments as the borders of the City of God and baptism as the gate to this city. Here again we see the importance, as it has been in his discussion of just war and warfare, of innocence and, as has been seen in his debate on human rights, the powerful aspect of voluntarism, which overrides philosophical and orthodox Christian traditions claiming some form of natural communitarism. Innocence applies here to the ‘pagan’ who has never heard of Christ nor received faith and hence cannot be an actual subject to the church and the pope; the pagan cannot be made guilty of not embracing Christian faith because he or she never learned about Christ and the sacraments. In addition, las Casas stresses the voluntary character of receiving faith and why, in religious matters, no one can be made a subject against his or her free will. Regarding the aspect of innocence in relation to jurisdiction and the power of the church and the Vatican, see especially chapter XVIII (las Casas, 1992, pp. 127–9). To summarize this point, the pope has no authority to judge those who are outside, ‘he has no actual jurisdiction over these ... unbelievers who are completely outside the Church [and] are not subject to the Church, nor do they belong to its territory or competence’ (ibid., p. 62). He is ‘actual king within the Church and potential king outside the Church’ (ibid., p. 144), and as such has theoretically no greater political power than any secular ruler. Indeed, their power is both limited and granted by the spheres of their actual jurisdiction; in case of a secular ruler, this limitation is territorial

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because ‘jurisdiction is said to be implanted in a locality or territory’ (ibid., p. 83); in the case of the pope, this limitation is symbolized by individuals who are, in terms of their belief and spirituality, outside the Christian faith and who must not forcefully be converted against their will. This principle of recognition applies generally to the relations among all ‘nations’ and peoples. Every ruler and sovereign is thus restricted in the exercise of his power to the territory of his polity and has to respect the sovereign jurisdiction of other polities. Power and authority for all sovereigns end with the borders of their own body politic. This principle has to be acknowledged by everyone as a divine law which ‘forbids anyone to violate or transgress another’s territory or jurisdiction’ (las Casas, 1992a, p. 84). Las Casas employs this principle to the international relationship between France and Spain and states that neither have authority outside the borders of their empire, nor would the ‘king of France pronounce sentence in Spain [or] the king of Spain dictate laws for France’ (ibid., p. 83); and borders were called so because they ‘limit, determine, or restrict the property, power, or jurisdiction of someone’ (ibid., p. 80). It is important to see that this new principle of international jurisdiction and territorial integrity breaks with Roman law according to which possession was perceived as legitimate by physical presence and the factual hold of territories. Las Casas replaces this traditional notion with the principles of territorial jurisdiction (see also Seed, 1992). It is also worth pointing to the explicitness with which the principle of political territoriality in relation to jurisdiction and political power has been introduced, while there is a clear hierarchy between politics and jurisdiction. As seen above, politics and political terms, respectively, attain meaning only in a legal framework which defines relations of legitimate authority. The triangular interlink between politics, territoriality, and jurisdiction and the claim of mutual recognition of territorial integrity characterizes the Spanish theologians as major thinkers of the early modern state system, which was established about one hundred years later in Europe as the so-called Westphalian state system. Lewis Hanke even goes so far as to declare that las Casas prefigures the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights (Hanke, 1970, p. 116). Even if this might appear to be an overstatement because there is a clear difference between modern international law and the jus gentium of, and leading up to, the sixteenth century not only with regard to the notion that the jus gentium is solely customary and unwritten law, but also in relation to their philosophical and epistemological frameworks regarding their universalism, it can nevertheless be stated that a practically significant (in its own times) and relevant (for the centuries to come) universalistic ethical and legal normative philosophy emerged based ‘not on the habits and conduct of one people or another, but of the whole world ... in harmony with the unity of mankind’ (Suárez, quoted in Hamilton, 1963, p. 108).

II.2 Universalistic Frameworks in Early Modern Political Theory

1. Niccolo Machiavelli Any interpretation of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), which intends to portray him as a nontotalitarian, or even republican thinker in the tradition of ancient Greek and Roman thought has to fight against deeply rooted mainstream perceptions of so-called Machiavellism. These perceptions construe Machiavelli as a reckless and brutal defender of power politics as long as such politics serve the power-increase of a political leader and the stability of the political system. The ethics underlying Machiavelli are said to be functional because the ends would legitimate the means, thus, all means would be acceptable to accomplish the growth and stability of a political leader’s power. Machiavellism is widely applied to domestic and international politics, and this perception was introduced by Elizabethan writers in England and strongly promoted and popularized by the Prussian king Frederick II and his work L’ anti Machiavel, ou, Essai de critique sur le Prince de Machiavel (1958).77 It is interesting, however, that those who promote this perception of Machiavellism appear to base their interpretation exclusively on one work of Machiavelli, namely, The Prince (written in 1513), thereby ignoring Machiavelli’s main work, The Discourses, which was finalized some years later (around 1518). (Both works were published posthumously; copies of The Prince, however, were circulated during Machiavelli’s lifetime.) This neglect is especially the case in International Politics/IR, leading to an interesting question: why was The Prince, and not The Discourses, received by posterity as the main piece on which interpretations of Machiavelli were based? Or, to put it differently: why did posterity choose Machiavelli’s small piece and not his more comprehensive volume? Perhaps The Prince was chosen because it is shorter; perhaps because it is more bellicose and less reflective and thus makes a better fit with the prevailing perception of Machiavellism. Perhaps interpreters chose this work because it better suits their own ideological interests in two ways, that is, they can use Machiavelli as a political ‘realist’, 100

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who very vividly described politics, both domestic and international, with a clear view for reality, or they can blame him for a political tradition and attitude of rigid and amoral power ambitions. Whatever the answer, the ignorance of his Discourses is striking, and Bernard Crick ironically paraphrases ‘What do you know of Machiavelli who only The Prince have read?’, suggesting that it is probably the brevity of The Prince which made this piece ‘famous’ (Crick, 2003, p. 19). There is, however, another tradition in the interpretation of Machiavelli, which promoted a kind of rehabilitated reading of Machiavelli as a republican in the tradition of Aristotle and Cicero78 and understanding his Prince as one of the first works in what we would call today ‘political sociology’ and ‘totalitarianism studies’. This tradition starts with Alberico Gentili in the second half of the sixteenth century and comprises, for instance, James Harrington, Francis Bacon, David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, Charles de Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau who wrote, ‘While appearing to instruct kings he has done much to educate the people. Machiavelli’s Prince is the book of Republicans’ (quoted in Viroli, 2005, p. xix).79 With regard to the discipline of International Politics/IR, only a few works explicitly discuss The Discourses while many (pretend to) know The Prince, raising their voices in accordance with the orthodox interpretation of Machiavellism and contributing to the solidification of this one-sided perception. At the same time, Machiavellism became a keyword in International Politics/IR while Machiavelli is (mis)used by ‘realists’ and neo-realists as a kind of founding figure (together with Thucydides and Hobbes) of their own patterns of international thought. Machiavelli also is (mis)used by internationalists, who cast him as the villain who established selfishness and brutality in international politics and created the basis for others, mostly dictators, to legitimize their politics (see Russett, 1974, 1993), and members of the school of democratic peace, who usually juxtapose Machiavelli as the villain and Kant as the upright politician.80 I do not intend discussing Machiavelli to provide the right interpretation. Nor do I want to try to understand Machiavelli solely on the basis of his Discourses, an approach that would commit the same error as the many interpreters from our discipline who focus only on The Prince, only the other way around. Nor do I want to turn Machiavelli into a peace-loving ‘good guy’ and mitigate his statements from The Prince while arguing that the real Machiavelli can be found in The Discourses. I rather want to point to three circumstances which highlight the relevance of interpreting Machiavelli for our present-day understanding of international/inter-national politics. First, The Discourses also comprises important thoughts on international politics, and this work should not be ignored in interpretations of Machiavelli’s outlook on international politics. Second, to get the ‘whole story’, it does not suffice, therefore, to quote again and again only from The Prince; those who do generate suspicions that they are less interested in

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Machiavelli and more interested in promoting their own politically motivated interests. And finally, we get a different picture of Machiavelli when we broaden the basis for our understanding and interpretation; thus, including both The Prince and The Discourses suggests some revisions of orthodox beliefs in International Politics/IR. That we should consider both of his writings is last but not least suggested by Machiavelli himself when he explicitly advises his audience in the first book of The Prince to read the Discourses, too, because he notes that The Prince deals with principalities only and not with republics (which, as he says, he had treated ‘elsewhere’ at great length). This is a clear statement very early in the text saying that The Prince does not provide Machiavelli’s complete outlook on the political world but a partial one focusing solely on one form of government (‘De principatibus’). Those who ignore The Discourses hence appear not to have read The Prince from the beginning, or they have not taken Machiavelli’s advice seriously. The different picture we get when we consider both The Prince and The Discourses and inquire his conceptualizations of international politics consists of the following: Machiavelli’s main interest tends to be in domestic politics, and above all in the well-being of the city-republic of Florence. Nevertheless, he is fully aware that a republic’s welfare also depends on its foreign politics. He therefore perceives the international realm divided up into competing republics, city-states, and empires which are all interested in their own political and economic well-being. Machiavelli has no principal complaint about this situation and does not construct a metaphysically or ethically inspired counter-picture of the international world against this reality. He rather conceptualizes political order and political action within this given context and accepts conflict and competition as patterns of political reality. However – and the mainstream interpretation in our discipline repeatedly ignores this – Machiavelli has a notion of universalistic principles which are common to all political bodies and affect all politics, and he envisions the creation of principles to construct international order in this reality. These are the vital forces of republican politics and virtue. These principles have an impact on political fortune and qualify the fate of single political bodies. State leaders must be aware of these principles and must not only develop instruments of political, sometimes despotic power, but also virtue, confidence, and morality. Finally, these principles constitute common guidelines of politics in general and foreign politics in particular and affect the conduct of each state’s foreign politics with the same ordering principles. Consequently, they integrate ‘international’ politics in frameworks common to all political communities. From this perspective, it is not only and not always a thirst for power and power maximization which prevails over international politics, but also aspirations of harmonic conduct of ‘state-to-state’ relations, diplomacy, and international negotiation. At the same time, diplomacy and negotiation not only generate common norms and values among republics and city-states, but they also are backed by, and

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based upon, common norms and values – under the condition that state leaders have developed certain capacities of virtue and morality. If we read Machiavelli this way – and this picture will be elaborated throughout the following paragraphs – against the mainstream interpretation of Machiavelli as an all-out ‘realist’, we learn to conceive of him as an intermediate figure. He is not universal like Augustine and Aquinas (see above) or universalistic like las Casas and de Vitoria (see above) or Kant (see below), and he differs from Thucydides (see above) in the decisiveness of excoriating war atrocities and requesting legal norms. We learn, however, that he also refers to universalistically valid principles, which impinge on international politics and apply to all political units, bridge potential disintegration of the ‘international’, and provide eventual ethical standards for the conduct of foreign politics. ‘Two Machiavellis’: Political sociology and republican ethics, or the ‘analytical’ and the ‘normative’ We know statements from Machiavelli such as ‘A wise ruler ... cannot and should not keep his word when such an observance would be to his disadvantage, and when the reasons that caused him to make a promise are removed’ (The Prince, chapter VXIII), or ‘A Prince ... must not have any other object nor any other thought, nor must he adopt anything as his art but war, its institutions, and its discipline’ (The Prince, chapter XIV). These and similar statements have been used by scholars and politicians alike to form the interpretations of Machiavellism. However, we also find other statements such as ‘But let us come to the second instance, when a private citizen becomes prince of his native city not through wickedness or any other intolerable violence, but with the favour of his fellow citizens’ (from The Prince, chapter IX, ‘Of the civil principality’; my emphasis). We also read about his admiration of ‘Ecclesiastical Principalities’ because of their realization of what can be called good and humane government (The Prince, chapter XI); we encounter the statement ‘For there is such a distance between how one lives and how one ought to live, that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done achieves his downfall rather than his preservation’ (The Prince, chapter XV); and we find Machiavelli writing ‘How praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and to live with integrity ... everybody knows’ (The Prince, chapter XVIII). The purpose of these quotations81 is to illustrate an ambivalence in Machiavelli, which opened his writings to one-sided interpretations that either exploit him as a supporter of brutal power politics and reckless selfishness, if opportune, or construe him as a republican thinker. Both ways of understanding are, to my point of view, insufficient because both have a strong tendency to neglect one or the other side of his writings and to pick out single sentences and paragraphs without trying to read them in combination with, and with regard to, the architecture of both The Prince and

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The Discourses. We have to ask the following questions: Why this ambivalence? How can it be explained? What consequently is this architecture of his political thoughts? By trying to find an answer to these questions, I intend to demonstrate that Machiavelli is much more complex than assigning him for now and ever to be a republican or a totalitarian. Or to put it differently, I believe that we have ‘two Machiavellis’ and that we have to understand his two sides in combination in order to solve the seeming ambivalences. However, I would like to suggest that the two sides of Machiavelli are not represented in either The Prince (a despotic Machiavelli) or The Discourses (a republican Machiavelli), but rather alongside the distinction of a Machiavellian historic-analytical political sociology (of principalities and republics) and a Machiavellian ethically oriented political thought. Machiavelli knows very well the importance of distinguishing between the analytical (i.e., his political-sociology approach) and the normative in the study of politics (i.e., his judging and evaluating comments). In most parts of both writings, Machiavelli is a political sociologist. He analyzes politics in principalities and in republics, more or less descriptively, focusing on the mechanisms and ‘logic’ of power. Thus, he asks questions – evidently using a different political terminology, but one that is similar to modern political sociology – concerning political leadership, political friendship, the role of political elites, the function of religion and the role of the church, polit ical power, the significance of political mores, ‘social capital,’ and so on.82 The discussion of such questions, in combination with Machiavelli’s quite unsparing treatments of political power, appears to be responsible for his reputation as a supporter of reckless power politics and political deceit and for interpretations of Machiavellism as if he subscribed normatively to these mechanisms, instead of having them (just) analyzed. However, to assume that a scholar of totalitarianism would be a totalitarian thinker is absurd, and indeed most of them during the twentieth century – for example, Hannah Arendt, Carl Joachim Friedrich, Eric Voegelin, and many others – have been themselves victims of European totalitarian politics and staunch republican thinkers. But Machiavelli was not a great methodologist and he provides just some hints about what he is doing and heading for, namely in the ‘Preface’ of The Discourses when he writes: Although owing to the envy inherent in man’s nature it has always been no less dangerous to discover new ways and methods than to set off in search of new seas and unknown lands because most men are much more ready to belittle than to praise another’s actions, none the less, impelled by the natural desire I have always had to labour, regardless of anything,

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on that which I believe to be for the common benefit of all, I have decided to enter upon a new way, as yet untrodden by anyone else. (1983, p. 97) This introductory paragraph can be understood in two ways: as the invention of a historical method comparing the current situation in sixteenth century Italy and primarily Florence with examples from Greek and Roman antiquity and especially with the Roman Republic (what would not be really a new method); or as the invention of an analytical method to describe the mechanisms and structures of government and practices of power, both in principalities and republics (what would indeed be a new method). He notes in the Dedicatory Letter and the second chapter of The Prince: I have neither decorated nor filled this work with elaborate sentences, with rich and magnificent words, or with any other form of rhetorical or unnecessary ornamentation that many writers normally use in describing and enriching their subject-matter, for I wished that nothing should set my work apart or make it pleasing except the variety of its material and the gravity of its contents ... I shall aside any discussions of republics, because I have treated them elsewhere. I shall consider solely the principality ... and I shall discuss how these principalities can be [not ought to be] governed and maintained. (2005, pp. 3, 7; emphasis mine) We here learn that Machiavelli intends to restrict himself in order to be analytical and that he refrains from presenting his analysis normatively. As with the navigator and explorers of his time who sailed across the oceans to discover new land, Machiavelli wants to invent a new ‘way’ (methodos) of political study. This new way should be without ‘ornamentation’ and ‘rhetoric’, but straightforwardly heading for an ‘objective’ (‘objective’ in his sense of drawing lessons from historical comparison by refraining from personal comments) and analytical description of state leaders’ successful conduct of politics. I hence ask if we tend to suppose George Orwell had an interest in defending and legitimizing the totalitarian government of pigs in his Animal Farm or, much worse, to advise dictators in their government? My guess is that we well understand that Orwell’s intention was to describe and illustrate (and, of course, to criticize) the mechanisms of totalitarian government in order to teach people how such governments come into being and how they operate. So why do we assume then that Machiavelli supports rude and selfish government, without taking seriously enough into account his statements from the Preface of the Discourses and the Dedicatory Letter and the second chapter of The Prince (as quoted above) about his real interest? And why are we instead seduced in our understanding by misled assumptions either about ‘his’ normative support of egoistic and opportune government, or about a Machiavellian tendency to seperate politics from morality?83

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Instead of being trapped in such misleading assumptions, a different view is suggested here, namely, to understand Machiavelli’s analytical focus as, in modern terms, a ‘political sociology’ perspective. On this aspect, Alker’s notion is instructive when he writes about ‘Machiavelli, Renaissance Humanism, and Modernity’ and reveals an analytical dimension in Machiavelli which he deems being ‘reflectively modern’. ‘With a keen eye and ear for provocative formulations, he built an imperfect but prescient, proto-scientific ... grammar of emerging ... modern power relations’ (Alker, 1992, p. 358; emphasis mine).84 In order to further investigate Machiavelli’s analytical and normative dimension, I suggest that we carefully read Machiavelli’s comments on ‘good’ and ‘evil’ behaviour, ‘just’ and ‘fair’ government, and a cooperative and peaceful conduct of international politics in the short paragraphs he interspersed throughout the main text despite his stated intention to omit ‘rhetoric’ and ‘unnecessary ornamentation’. In these paragraphs, Machiavelli discloses his normative ideas, apart from his analytical outlook. We hence have to understand Machiavelli as an author who sharply distinguishes the analytical from the normative level and who consequently focuses on two separate units of his study.85 The empirical-analytical outlook in Machiavelli is thereby based on his historical studies of Roman and Greek antiquity, especially the Roman Republic, whereas his normative views are derived from political principles and ethics of republicanism and self-government. This applies, as I will try to demonstrate, both to domestic and international politics. No argument, however, can be made that Machiavelli would derive his normative outlook from his analysis of the ‘real’ world. He does not derive normative ‘ought’ obligations from his analyses, but only ‘must’ maxims about what a prince or republican leader had to do in order to stabilize his power (the reification problem, which we observe in neo-realism, thus does not apply to Machiavelli and appears to be a distinct problem of scientific epistemology; see below, IV.2.2). Thereby, Machiavelli tries to uncover the mechanisms of despotic and republican government; however, he never states that principalities or bellicose empires would represent ideal political orders and one should, normatively speaking, realize them. There might be times and certain circumstances when a principal government is necessary to guarantee stability and to overcome crisis. This does not imply Machiavelli’s normative outlook, however, but merely his concession towards the might of ‘necessity’ (necessita), that is, to do the right thing in the right moment. (The gauge to judge what is ‘right’ is political stability and the question of what can bring about stability.)86 When a situation arises in which necessity requires certain actions, and they might imply war and dictatorial leadership, it then is, according to Machiavelli, crucially important to know what to do and how to act.87 But again, this is not a normative ‘ought’ obligation but a ‘must’ maxim due to political analysis and born out of necessity, that is, the requirement

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to act successfully in order to stabilize the community. Only from the viewpoint of a contemporary political-science orthodoxy – which lost its normative orientation – and of an International Politics/IR – which is dominated by the epistemological naivety of neo-realism and identifies the normative with the analytical – can Machiavelli be understood as someone who takes political reality (or what he thinks it is) at face value to derive general ‘ought’ obligations from it.88 Coming back to the question of international politics in Machiavelli: much is here about war and warfare and the leader’s capability and knowledge of how to wage war successfully. Machiavelli also writes about colonies and how empires expanded and why they declined. He also covers the question of how military discipline can be created and how important it is that troops are well trained and reliable to their leader and home country, and how a country and its society that have been defeated can successfully be ruled. The criteria and the standard for success are provided by the realization of stability. As Crick notes, Machiavelli attaches an ‘extraordinarily high value to political stability’ (Crick, 2003, p. 24). This concern stems from his belief in the periodic and inevitable rise and fall of political orders which would cause each political unit to decline eventually, regardless how huge and powerful it once was. Thus, stability can at least enable a political unit to last, although it cannot prevent its final decline. In this regard, Machiavelli stands in the tradition of the Greek-Roman historian Polybius, and, as he writes in The Discourses, there is a ‘cycle through which all governments pass’ (1983, p. 109). It therefore is the greatest challenge for a political community, whether it is a principality, an empire, or a republic, to resist its decline as long as possible. One guarantor for stability, according to Machiavelli, is expansion, if necessitated by war. Thus, war and statesmen’s necessary capabilities and expertise as war leaders are permanent motives in The Discourses and The Prince. His thoughts on that topic can, in a summarized form, also be found in The Art of War, which ‘repeats and assumes every essential proposition of both The Prince and The Discourses – for the art of war is an extension of the whole condition of society’ (Crick, 2003, p. 37; also Machiavelli, 2003). I do not want to discuss this further because this discussion would distract from my main concern, which aims to address the question whether, or not, there is something in Machiavelli pointing to an international order in the sense of some common principles shared by single states. Regional republican order Asking whether, or not, there is some principle in Machiavelli constituting an in-between among states, and whether Machiavelli’s thought does, or does not, reach beyond the interests of single political units, it might be surprising that we find in his writings the idea of a regional republican order. This idea relates to the normative, not to the analytical, side of his

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writings and therefore may be not part of the main attention his studies have received. This is, however, astonishing because it is as early as in Book I.1 of The Discourses when Machiavelli talks about the very reason for the foundation of cities, and he refers to international politics to explain this reason. We thus can conclude that, for Machiavelli, international politics lies at the very heart of each city (and politics), and the foundation of a city is the first occasion when dispersed small communities join, and that is for the better enjoyment of their security. ‘Hence ... either of their own accord or at the suggestion of someone of greater authority among them, such communities undertake living together in some place they have chosen in order to live more conveniently and the more easily to defend themselves’ (Machiavelli, 1983, pp. 100–1). What Machiavelli describes here is nothing else but the creation of a security community in which cities, because of their individual smallness, unite together for the better realization of their commonly shared interest in security. Machiavelli construes such a unification of small communities into a greater (and stronger) association as the most fundamental motor in, and the first motive for, the creation of politics, and both relate to international politics. This motor and motif are understood by Machiavelli as historical conditions and, as such, as an analytical description of ‘The Origins of Cities in General and of Rome in Particular’ (Book I.1, The Discourses). It seems crucially important to relate any understanding and interpretation of Machiavelli with regard to international politics to the paragraphs mentioned above. He herein not only esteems international politics as the fundamental grounding of politics, he also describes how, and why, individual communities form an association of a greater community. In Machiavelli, we do not find the image of only particularized and singularized interests ‘out there’ in international politics, but of unifying common principles and shared values guiding states’ (foreign) politics. According to our present-day terminology, Machiavelli here notes the beginnings and foundation of an ‘international society’. And even if such a society breaks apart from time to time because of the natural rise and decline of states and empires and due to their eventually selfish, bellicose, and power-seeking behaviour, common interests and the shared value of security operate as the founding principles of international politics. Shared norms and values hence do exist in international politics and operate in the international realm as ordering standards. As I argued above, this picture is to be comprehended as historical and analytical, not (yet) normative. Much about security depends on the military organization of a community and the state-leader’s capacity as general of his army. In The Discourses, I.4, we read that ‘where the military organization is good there must be good order’ (p. 113). We now have to turn to Machiavelli’s normative thinking, because the term good order is elusive at first. When further inquiring into the meaning of good order, we have to consider two aspects: both relate to the domestic

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order of cities, and both reach out into the international sphere. Thus, there is a link between domestic order and international politics in Machiavelli, not only in terms of negative impacts because of bellicose and imperialistic politics of states, but also in a positive, normative sense. One of these aspects concerns Machiavelli’s preference for small republics. His argument does not, however, foreshadow Rousseau’s (domestically oriented) argument stating that small cities are better suited for (‘democratic’) republics, but is, on the contrary, borrowed fully from an international perspective. He writes: I am firmly convinced ... that to set up a republic which is to last a long time, the way to set about it is to constitute it as Sparta and Venice were constituted: ... not to make it so large as to appear formidable to its neighbours ... if it be content with its own territory, and it becomes clear by experience that it has no ambitions, it will never occur that someone may make war through fear for himself, especially if by its constitution or by its laws expansion is prohibited. Nor have I the least doubt that, if this balance could be maintained, there would be a genuine political life and real tranquility in such a city. (Machiavelli, 1983, pp. 122–3)89 It is the domestic organization of a city as a small city which has a pacifying effect on the international sphere. No other state, Machiavelli argues, has to fear a small city. If the peaceful conduct of its foreign politics were additionally determined by its constitution and laws, this would produce an even better and more preferable situation. Machiavelli well realizes analytically that states may be driven by ambitions to increase their influence, power, and glory; however, normatively he envisions a different, and more peaceful, international order, one which is made up of small states unified by their common interest in increasing, and their value for, their quality of life.90 Towards the end of this quotation, we notice that Machiavelli talks about ‘genuine political life’ and ‘real tranquility’ that stipulates a deeper inquiry into the second aspect of (and link between) domestic order and international politics. The second aspect touches upon good ‘order’. There should be no doubt that Machiavelli prefers republics to all other forms of government, such as principalities, empires, and, of course, dictatorships – ‘if you can get them’, as Crick formulates (Crick, 2003, p. 24). A paragraph from The Discourses should leave no doubt about this position: It is not the well-being of individuals that makes cities great, but the well-being of the community; and it is beyond question that it is only in republics that the common good is looked to properly in that all that promotes it is carried out ... The opposite happens where there is a prince. (II.1)

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We can add now that he prefers small republics to large ones due to their pacifying effect on international politics. Machiavelli explicitly discusses the question of a confederation of republics in Book I.59 of The Discourses under the topic ‘What Confederations or Leagues can be trusted most; those made with a Republic or those made with a Prince’ (p. 257). His answer to this question is very clear. He comments that confederations made by republics are much more reliable. And ‘(instances) might be cited of treaties broken by princes for a very small advantage, and of treaties which have not been broken by a republic for a very great advantage’ (p. 259). We hence learn that republics would be more reliable because they ‘abide by their agreements far better than do princes’ (p. 259). Again, the ‘normative Machiavelli’ not only highly esteems associations of republics (what he calls ‘confederations’ or ‘leagues’) based on their common norm and value of security, but he also measures the preference of republics over principalities by their far better fulfilment of treaty obligations (see also Gaubatz, 1996, pp. 109–23). We here touch upon an aspect which seems constantly neglected in International Politics/IR when it comes to Machiavelli, namely his normative esteem (and factual analysis) of international treaties. It should be clear by now that we have to revise the common picture of Machiavelli as an uncompromising realist, who is nowhere speaking of ‘anarchy’ in ‘international’ politics, and who qualifies power politics by normative principles. His normative notion of ‘international’ politics is based on a twofold notion of common norms and shared values between states: stability and international law. In this regard it is interesting to look closer at his argument why republics are more reliable. Although his argument is hidden in one sentence only and Machiavelli lacks a modern political science terminology, we can nevertheless learn that his preference for republics is very much due to (what we would call today) a system of checks and balances which operates in republics, but not in principalities. His argument is about time, and he notes that republics ‘are slower to act and take more time than princes in arriving at a decision’ (1983, p. 259). In more current terminology, this argument is well known from the Federalist Papers when James Madison argues for the advantages of republican orders in opposite to kingdoms and refers to the idea of time in the decision-making process of republics. The momentum of a slower pace in the decision-making process of republics would guarantee a more reflective, moderate, and thus less emotional and sounder political outcome. The mechanism, according to Madison, for preventing decisions being made too promptly is the system of checks and balances between the executive, the legislative, and eventually the juridical branch. That is, in terms of time, a system of negotiation, vetoes, co-operation, and votes operates in republics. When it comes to defence issues and military questions, however, Madison finds his counter-argument in the Federalist-articles of

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Alexander Hamilton who argued that in wartime decisions have to be made immediately and without delay. Therefore, a strong executive, equipped with military command, would be required.91 As to Machiavelli, he views the slow pace of decisions made in republics as beneficial for international politics because it increases the reliability of such governments with regard to their treaty obligations. Thus, we have to realize two links which universally operate between the domestic order of cities and the international sphere. On the one hand, (small) republics are less frightening and are of a more peaceful character towards their neighbours; on the other hand, the quality of domestic decision-making endows republics with a greater reliability in the international environment. Both characteristics are conducive for less conflictive and more cooperative international relations; this again provides not only international, but also domestic stability. In The Discourses, II.4, Machiavelli consequently projects a regional order of free republics, a projection, which is based on his normative outlook as well as on historical examples of peaceful and flourishing state relations. We read: The student of ancient histories will find that there are three ways in which republics have expanded. The first was that which the Tuscans of old adopted, namely, that of forming a league consisting of several republics in which no one of them had preference, authority or rank above the others; and in which, when other cities were acquired, they made them constituent members in the same way as the Swiss act in our times, and as in Greece the Achaeans and the Aetolians acted in olden times ... The method of leagues ... does not readily involve you in wars ... Twelve or fourteen communities join together, and beyond that they do not seek to go ... Hence, when they have reached the number which appears to promise them security, they devote themselves to ... the protection of those who apply for it, and by this means get from all around money which can easily be distributed among them. (1983, pp. 285–7)92 I do not want to overstretch my interpretation of Machiavelli, either in terms of a modern political science terminology nor by turning him into a peace-loving universalist. However, I would argue that his normative picture for an international order made up by republics strongly resembles models which are in our days discussed as regional security orders, or ‘regional security complexes’ (Buzan and Waever, 2003). No convincing argument exists, however, for seizing Machiavelli as a ‘realist’, who would argue in favour of power politics and a leadership of foreign policy elites (a ‘prince’ and his cronies), independent from their society, and who would furthermore base his analysis and international outlook on assumptions of ‘anarchy’ and a intransigent promotion of ‘national interest’. On the contrary, we could see that reliability, treaty obligations, cooperation, and the internationalization

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of republicanism rank high in his thoughts. Further to this, he perceives no dualism between domestic (‘inside’) and international (‘outside’) order, with two aspects of the domestic order (of republicanism) reaching into the international. The belief to expose Machiavelli as a realist must hence be understood as one (further) misreading of present-day International Politics/IR. This misreading seems due to the lack of a differentiation between, and the equation of, a normative and an analytical level of studying the international as well as due to the solidification of an ‘inside’-‘outside’-dualism in post-nineteenth century inter-national theory, which appears to operate as an a-historical, ontological lens, even when looking at pre-nineteenth century international politics. The purpose of this chapter, to say it again, is not to show the right and the one and only possible Machiavelli. Rather, I intend to show him in a different light, contrary to how he is usually portrayed in our discipline, and thereby to broaden the perspective of understanding him as an international theorist. Finally, we must realize that he does not fit into the modern dualism of thinking the domestic here and the international there, that he thinks beyond the welfare and interest of a single (his) state only, and that his thoughts are well informed by international principles which are valid, if not always empirically, then normatively, for all states. There remains one aspect to discuss which is important for domestic and international politics likewise: conflict. Machiavelli is aware of the (potentially and factually) conflictive behaviour of states, and it is in order of their stability, not for some power maximization (or expansion, or glory) per se that states have to deal and to cope successfully with political conflicts.93 However, Machiavelli accepts the reality of political conflict and does not try to project an order in which conflicts are eliminated. On the contrary, he perceives conflict as a stimulating and ‘creative momentum’ of politics (Crick, 2003, p. 36). He thus does not believe in any eternal or divine harmonic order of the world and its political and social affairs (as, for instance, in Augustine and Aquinas). He discharges medieval political metaphysics in the most sustainable way. He formulates a concept which displays conflict not as some decline and disassociation from order, but as a genuine pattern of the world and within the sociopolitical order. Conflict is nothing bad which has to be overcome. It is a pattern with which politics has to deal and which has to be civilized, cannot be abolished, and, after all, should not be abolished. This is true for domestic and international politics, and in international politics, it is the projection of a regional republican order which would best suit the challenge to civilize conflict. A further aspect, fundamental to Machiavelli’s conception of politics, comes into play when we consider why conflict should not be abolished. Recapitulating Machiavelli’s idea of a republican international order in combination with his perception of political conflict, we see that such an international order best suits the challenge to civilize international conflict

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and therefore is the order which provides the most stability. Consequently, a successful conduct of international politics requires distinct capabilities from statesmen as much as the conduct of domestic politics does. We can hence apply Machiavelli’s concept of virtù to international politics. From a theory of action-perspective, virtù represents for Machiavelli a guideline and normative requirement for a league (or confederation) made up of republics as the best international order possible. But what is the meaning of virtù? To put it simply, a basic meaning of virtù is the capacity ‘to do the job well’. It can be compared with Aristotle’s techne (art; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1139b, 5–17), which has a practical goal beyond mere knowledge. There is a medical art, which aims at healing the patient; there is the art of an architect to build a house; there is the art of a musician to play the flute; there is the art of a carpenter to construct chairs and tables and so on. In this meaning, ‘art’ combines knowledge with practical wisdom aiming at a certain goal (telos). Pursuing the art of one’s profession with great excellence and realizing the goal of the related action (e.g., the doctor heals the patient, the musician plays the flute well, the carpenter constructs a nice chair) entitles the person who acts with virtue. There is a virtue of a doctor, a carpenter, a musician, and so on. The highest form of art in Aristotle is the techne politica, the art of politics (Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a, 21–24), which aims at the realization of the ‘good life’ for individuals and tranquillity for the political community (eudamonia as the virtue of politics; 1097b, 12–34). Construing Machiavelli’s virtù from this perspective, we can concretize his talk about the virtù of a general, for instance, who successfully controls his troops and achieves glory for his country through successful battles (see, e.g., The Discourses, III.12, 18); or about the virtù of a doctor (one of Machiavelli’s favourite examples) who heals his patients and contributes to their well-being. What does this imply for a republic and for international politics pursued in a republican international confederation? In political terms, virtue means a ‘civic spirit’ (Crick, 2003, p. 46), which is necessary because a republic’s good order and tranquillity depend on citizens’ readiness to subordinate their own interests to that of the common good. Machiavelli says, both in The Discourses and the Prince, a city which rests upon the virtù of its citizens is the most difficult to seize by a foreign army, and its stability enables it to resist domestic disorder and decline. But how to create virtù in a city and in a republican international confederation? At this point, Machiavelli’s esteem of political conflict has to be reconsidered. In his architecture of the political, conflict is the momentum which keeps politics alive, it is the immediate matter of politics, and it prevents stagnation. Finally, conflict is the rationale behind the ‘come and go’ of cities, empires, and leagues. Because conflict is, however, the very nature of politics, the art of politics and political virtue develop through dealing with conflicts and trying to civilize them. This is a radical discharge of

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the ancient and medieval imagination that political virtue becomes manifest in acting in accordance with harmony and a divine order of concord. Machiavelli topples that picture upside-down, saying that it is exactly the opposite, namely, the management and civilization of conflict which create and generate political virtue, and the capability of doing so characterizes a great politician and a tranquil political community. And because conflict is permanent, this kind of political virtue is always required. If, so we can conclude, conflict would be eliminated (which is, moreover, impossible), then the development of virtù would stagnate, a community would become complacent, and the attitude of political leaders would degenerate into hubris. We hence can conclude that virtù always implies political ethics. This is an ethics which is not gained from imaginations of acting according to some eternal ‘good order’ or harmonic cosmic or divine law, but rather an ethics which stems from the idea that political conflicts have to be dealt with and civilized. It is thus an inner-worldly ethics,94 arising from the practical and purely political knowledge of what to do strategically in the right moment in order to cope with conflictive circumstances. However, the goal of acting ethically in this sense is not glory or power or something similar per se, but – and here again we encounter ‘the normative’ in Machiavelli – the realization of republican order. And a republican order is one in which the civic spirit is most developed and which, due to the existence of civic spirit, is most difficult to destroy; it best resists instabilities as well as the cycle of rise and decline. We can conclude that there exists a genuine fourfold relation in Machiavelli between the art of politics, virtù (or civic spirit), republican order, and stability. When we apply this picture to the international sphere, we learn that virtue in international politics never exists in a policy which tries to eliminate conflict by oppressing others directly because this would represent a ‘useless method’ (The Discourses, II.4; pp. 283–5). It is also difficult to form hegemonic and imperial alliances ‘in which you reserve to yourself the headship, the seat in which the central authority resides, and the right of initiative’ (p. 284), a method which the Romans applied but which appears historically unique. From this point of view, a league of republics consequently appears to be the best and most appropriate method because it is governed by ‘a council’, which has to arrive ‘at any common decision’ (p. 286) and which symbolizes the institutional body for dealing with and managing conflicts among its members. Again, conflict is being seen as a positive motivator which requires a certain virtue. According to Machiavelli, probably the most important ‘art of civilizing conflict’ in international politics is diplomacy. The conduct of diplomatic relations contributes to the creation of trust and confidence among states, and it is the most effective means of moderating conflict through direct and personal political communication. Machiavelli is regarded the ‘founder of modern diplomacy’ because he invented the idea and practice of continuing diplomatic relations with neighbour states by permanent ambassadors and

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embassies, a practice which replaced the then-usual practice of individual and temporary delegations when required for immediate conflict settlement. It may overinterpret this picture arguing that Machiavelli perceives such a league of republics as a means for peace in international politics. However, we see that Machiavelli has a (normative) outlook on inter national politics which is based on the idea of cooperation and an inner-worldly ethics oriented towards the stabilization of a republican regional order. The rationale behind such a mode of cooperation is a notion of conflict, which is a constant in politics and cannot be abolished but has to be dealt with and to be civilized. Conflict, however, as history teaches, is also played out from time to time through war. In wartime, yet another virtù is required, namely, the virtue of a general and perhaps a prince, so that the state might last through the politics of hardship and not perish too quickly before the historical cycle of decline and fortune (fortuna) will eventually extinguish even a successful and powerful state. However, a state based upon ‘wellordered’ virtue will last longer because fortune, like a river, ‘turns her impetus towards where she knows no dikes and dams have been constructed to hold her in’ (for this metaphor see The Prince, chapter XXV; here p. 84). Furthermore, the perception of a cycle of the rise and fall of powers teaches not only prudence, but also ‘moderation’ as a matter of political virtue and as a ‘moral lesson’ in foreign politics. According to this teaching, even a powerful and successful state should act with ‘responsible moderation’ and not challenge the mighty powers of fortuna (see Mansfield, 1981). We have seen that construing Machiavelli as a ‘realist’ whose thinking would lack normative perspectives on cooperative international politics and who would not know about common ethical principles bridging states and enabling them to consider jointly their common matters appears to be not only incorrect, but also an instrumentalization of his notion of conflict as if he would promote and approve of bellicose, malicious politics. We thus can learn about a very different Machiavelli compared to the image we are used to understand as Machiavellism.

2. Thomas Hobbes The references in International Politics/IR to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) as a ‘realist’ are endless.95 And indeed, it is very difficult and challenging to argue against this image and to demonstrate arguments which allude to a political, if not ethical, self-constraint in Hobbes. The ‘realist’ picture consolidated in our discipline performs predominantly as ‘the liberal’ script of modern political thinking. And of course, we all know paragraphs which seem to leave no room for interpretation, such as the following: I show that ... the condition of men outside civil society (the condition one may call the state of nature) is no other than a war of all men against

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all men; and in that war all men have right to all things ... All men, by necessity of their nature, want to get out of that miserable and hateful state, as soon as they recognize its misery. But they can only do so by entering into agreements to give up their right to all things. (Hobbes, 1968, pp. 11–12) Applied to the sphere of international politics,96 this paragraph seems to serve the projection of anarchy perfectly, although Hobbes’s statement does not refer to the international realm, rather to the state of human life before individual men enter into a social contract. In the Leviathan (Part II, chapter 30) we read: Concerning the Offices of one Soveraign to another, which are comprehended in that Law, which is commonly called the Law of Nations, I need not say any thing in this place; because the Law of Nations, and the Law of Nature, is the same thing. And every Soveraign hath the same Right, in procuring the savety of his People, that any particular man can have, in procuring the savety of his own Body. And the same Law, that dictateth to men that have no Civil Government, what they ought to do, and what to avoyd in regard of one another, dictateth the same to Commonwealths, that is to the Consciences of Soveraign Princes, and Soveraign Assemblies; there is no Court of Natural Justice, but in the Conscience only; where not Man, but God raigneth. (Hobbes, 1968, p. 394) Following these statements, two options appear to exist for international order only. One option seems to be the natural state where all states fight each other, and anarchy would prevail due to the lack of international law (or Law of Nations, as Hobbes says). The other option would be the erection of a world-state Leviathan which would, on the basis of his sovereignty superior to single nations, govern the single states like the ‘domestic’ Leviathan is supposed to govern its people: namely, with strict laws, according to his definition of ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’, with the power of the sword, and the submission of the individual units.97 The benefit for single nations – comparable to individuals in the state – would be the provision of ‘safety’ by which ‘is not meant a bare Preservation [of life], but also all other Contentments of life, which every man by lawfull Industry, without danger, or hurt to the Commonwealth, shall acquire to himselfe (Leviathan, Part II, chapter 30; p. 376). However, as Hobbes posits very concisely in A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, ‘there is no Common Power in this World to punish injustice: mutual fear may keep them [states] apart for a time, but upon every visible advantage they will invade one another’ (1971, p. 57). It is probably due to these paragraphs that Hobbes is univocally called a ‘realist’ and his approach is called an ‘empirical realism’ (e.g., Boucher, 1998).

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However, we have to ask whether these views do justice to Hobbes’s philosophical outlook and what conclusion we can draw from Hobbes for international politics. Can we find indications for a third and, compared to the well-established views in International Politics/IR, more appropriate option for interpreting Hobbes based on a deeper philosophical understanding of his writings? The following interpretations assume that the central points for understanding Hobbesian international politics can be seen neither in the ‘problem’ whether, or not, the notion of individual behaviour applies to state behaviour nor, if we suppose it does apply, in the understanding whether, or not, international politics would be characterized by permanent war, due the lack of an international sovereign.98 I rather argue that, for understanding Hobbes, the question whether states act like individuals and the question of a world-state Leviathan are completely irrelevant. They are irrelevant because, although an international sovereign obviously does not exist, a mechanism operates in international politics which functions totally independent both from (the erection of) international sovereignty and from a possible analogy between individuals and states. This mechanism relates to Hobbes’s construction of a relation between sovereignty, legitimacy, and security which powerfully reaches from domestic politics into the international realm and which establishes a common (and, apart from defensive wars, pacifying) regulative reference for all sovereigns in their conduct of foreign policy. The difficulty with Hobbes’s outlook on international politics is to be found in the circumstance that he seems to be primarily interested not in international but in domestic politics. We thus find just a few paragraphs in his oeuvre where he is explicitly considering interstate relations. There is nothing, however, that prevents us from investigating Hobbes’s contribution to international politics further or, as David Gauthier puts it: ‘The elements of my presentation are all to be found in Hobbes, but what I shall present is the theory he never gave’ (Gauthier, 1979, p. 548). Such investigation into the consequences and deeper meaning of his thoughts has to analyze the notions of conscience, rationality, fear, legitimacy, and law of nature, and will reveal that the legitimacy of the sovereign is not unconditioned. It rather rests on his fulfilment of the mutual obligations derived from the social contract which is conceptualized as an equally binding agreement between the people and the sovereign himself. Hence, he can loose his legitimacy – a contingency which has far-reaching impact on international politics and foreign policy. The triangular relationship between conscience, political rationality, and fear Prior to the analysis of the relation between sovereignty, legitimacy, and security, we have to consider Hobbes’s outlook on international politics in a

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much wider context than relying on his direct statements on international politics only. We therefore have to take into consideration his references to conscience, political rationality, and fear. This triangular relationship enables us to see Hobbes’s thought on international politics in a different way. Against the common understanding, Hobbes’s theory is informed by a counterbalance to unrestricted sovereignty of the Leviathan, which, at least normatively, is mighty enough to discipline and regulate states’ behaviour so that the prevailing picture of international politics in Hobbes is not anarchy and permanent war, but a political and ethical norm of self- constraint. This counterbalance is not just an accidental aspect of his politico-philosophical worldview, but lies very much at the heart of his system. We have to ask three basic questions in relation to the function of conscience, political rationality, and fear in his philosophical system in order to understand this counterbalance, which qualifies the familiar statement and image of anarchy. First, how do people or states, which are said to fight each other constantly because they are being driven by their passions, achieve reasonable judgment when they begin to understand that only the rendering of their individual natural rights to a common sovereign power could overcome their bellicose natural state? Second, where ‘in man’ is his ability for reasonable judgment located? Is it a mere functional consequence of ‘fear’, is it political rationality, or is it a capacity endowed by ‘God’? And third, is there a relation between domestic and international politics in Hobbes: If yes, how does it affect the foreign policy of sovereigns? In discussing these questions, I try to demonstrate that we find a political and ethical counterbalance against the state of ‘anarchy’ and permanent war in Hobbesian international politics. Consequently, we have to rethink the understanding of Hobbes as a ‘realist’ and should renounce the perception of a ‘realist’ tradition in international political thought which would last from Thucydides over Machiavelli to Hobbes. Conscience In order to answer the first question, we have to examine the reason for conflict. It seems to be a popular assumption in International Politics/IR that fear, implanted naturally in human beings, is the reason for conflict and war. However, not fear seems to be the real reason for the ‘war of all men against all men’,99 but fear is only the psychological dimension accompanying, and itself being caused by, the fight over conflicts. The reasons of conflicts in politics are to be found foremost in religious and metaphysical worldviews solidified into ideologies. Hobbes himself experienced such conflicts in his lifetime, encountering the religious and civil wars in England (a period which can be dated from 1580 to 1680), which prompted him to flee England for France and back again. In relation to traditional metaphysics, Hobbes has mainly the political philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero in mind, which would be based on speculations instead of reason and logic

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and thus seduce the people. Traditions of ‘naturall Philosophy’ and religious ideologists would be responsible for revolution, war, and conflict: To conclude, there is nothing so absurd, that the old Philosophers (as Cicero saith, who is one of them) have not some of them maintained. And I believe that scarce any thing can be more absurdly said in naturall Philosophy, than that which now is called Aristotle’s Metaphysics; nor more repugnant to Government, than much of that hee hath said in his Politiques; nor more ignorantly, than a great part of his Ethiques ... If such Metaphysiques, and Physique as this, be not Vain Philosophy, there was never any. (Leviathan, chapter 46; here, 1968, pp. 686–7, 696) In the first dialogue of the Behemoth (written between 1665 and 1668), Hobbes identifies the seduction of metaphysics and religion, combined with human passion, as the evil of contemporary politics. He especially refers to the unrest in the period between the ‘Long Parliament’ and the reestablishment of the Stuart monarchy under Charles II (1660 to 1680). The most important reasons of conflict are listed below: The seducers were of divers sorts. One sort were ministers; ministers, as they called themselves, of Christ; and sometimes, in their sermons to the people, God’s ambassadors; pretending to have a right from God to govern every one his parish and their assembly the whole nation. Secondly, there were a great number ... which notwithstanding that the Pope’s power in England ... had been by Act of Parliament abolished, still retain a belief that we ought to be governed by the Pope ... Fourthly, there were an exceeding great number of men of better sort, that had been so educated, as that in their youth having read the books written by famous men of the ancient Grecian and Roman commonwealths concerning their polity and great actions; in which books the popular government was extolled by the glorious name of liberty, and monarchy disgraced by the name of tyranny ... Sixthly, there were a very great number that had either wasted their fortunes, or thought them too mean for the good parts which they thought were in themselves; and more there were, that had able bodies, but saw no means how honestly to get their bread ... These longed for war. (Hobbes, 1969, pp. 2, 3) I quoted this paragraph because it makes very clear that, in Hobbes’s analysis of unrest and (civil) war, fear plays a minor role and is not – neither is human nature – said to be the reason of conflict. Instead, Hobbes offers a range of politically and socially grounded reasons for civil conflicts. As we know from the Leviathan and much more from De Cive, men are also perceived as passion-driven and are instilled with an existential fear of violent death (‘metus mortis violentiae’). But as we learn from the above quoted

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paragraph, fear itself is caused by the possibility of being killed, by civil unrest, and permanent insecurity. It is though far from being the genuine cause of conflict. One element, which operates as an additional driving force behind conflictive human behaviour is, however, passion. But passions not only have a conflictive nature, they also perform as pacifying forces, namely, they are ‘that incline men to Peace’ because of his ‘Feare of Death’ and ‘Desire ... to commodious living’ (Leviathan, chapter 13; p. 188). However, there is no automatism, which translates fear (and passion) into (reasonable) judgment of individuals when they eventually transfer their rights to a sovereign power in order to achieve an ending of conflict, peace, and political order. Passions and fear form initiating and energetic, but not causal, forces. Such a force, to bring about a decisive turning point, is yet required when men proceed from the state of natural conflict and war to the institutionalization of a common sovereign as conceptualized in Hobbes by the social contract. In regard to the reason of conflict in Hobbes, the discussions of Richard Ashcraft are very informative: ‘Hobbes’ ... explanation of the civil war establishes a relationship between class interests and ideology, or, in his terms, the economic, political and religious meanings of faction’ (1978, p. 44). Ashcraft further argues that Hobbes’s explanation of the English Revolution offers the basic parameters within which his political philosophy – foremost his analysis of conflict, its reasons, and means to overcome conflict – has to be understood. Consequently, Ashcraft argues that Hobbes’s Behemoth (where Hobbes analyzes political conflict historically) and Leviathan (where he develops his theory to discipline and overcome conflict) form a unit, and the one could not be understood properly without the other. He quotes from a letter which Hobbes wrote in August 1641 in which he maintains that ‘the cause of civil war in all places of Christendom’ is traceable to religious controversies which undermine the exercise of civil power (quoted in Ashcraft, 1978, p. 33). The same point results from the debate between C. B. Macpherson and D. J. C. Carmichael – initiated by Macpherson’s book The Political Theory about Possessive Individualism (1962) – about the influence of class interests and bourgeois capitalism on social conflict. Although the mutual criticism is quite harsh, there is nevertheless on common point in Macpherson’s and Carmichael’s arguments, namely, that neither fear nor human nature are the reasons of conflict, but conflicts are social and political in nature (see Carmichael, 1983; Macpherson, 1983). Thus, there must be something that finally enables men to cease engaging in conflict and to progress to rational action and reasonable judgment. This ‘something’ must furthermore instil social trust and confidence into the individuals and make them believe that the sovereign power to be erected is of different character than anything else and all the other institutions men are familiar with and that previously ‘seduced’ them. The sovereign power to be established must be thought of – different from what people

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know from their ‘state of nature’ – as an institution which does not act for its own profit and well-being but for the good of the people. (In De Homine, chapter 11, Hobbes calls this good a ‘common good’ that all human beings want and can share; here Hobbes, 1972.) The yet missing link is what Hobbes calls ‘reason’ perceived as a kind of rational calculation and ‘counting’ (see the quotes below as well Leviathan, chapter 5; pp. 110–18). But where does this ability come from? Political rationality This ‘missing link’ is provided by the human ability to use reason and to conclude reasonable judgment. Since reason is, according to Hobbes, counting, subtraction, and addition, we have to ask what do men subtract and add and consequently conclude to accomplish reasonable judgment? Hobbes writes in the Leviathan (chapter 3), ‘Prudence is a Praesumtion of the Future, contracted from the Experience of the Past: So there is a Praesumtion of things Past taken from other things (not future but) past also’ (p. 98). We therefore can determine that reasonable judgment is experienced-based, and each conclusion by men is founded on the evidence of his past and of what he knows from the past. But to what experience and logical operation of the mind does Hobbes refer – especially under the paradox that this experience is, on the one hand, the ground of people’s judgment and, on the other hand, the constituents of the same experience which must be left behind in order to establish something completely new (namely, political order and the Leviathan)? Hobbes is referring to the addition of one distinct logical operation grounded in experience-based evidences, evidences, which yet taught nothing but fear, ruin, chaos, and men making war. Evidence-based judgment is hence grounded in politically and socially taught (bad) experience. But abstract reasoning, by ‘addition’ and ‘subtraction’, attaches the decisive added value by one intellectual operation, which asks the following question: if there is (and was) a predominant cause for substantial fear in the past (namely, conflict and war), what has to be logically ‘added’ to this experience in order to abolish the reason of fear? That is, what has to be added to the experience of the past and ‘links the past with the present’ (Ashcraft, 1978, p. 38) is – so reason teaches – another logical step (a kind of ‘subtotal’100), namely, the ‘entering into agreements’ by which people ‘give up their right to all things’ (from the Preface of On the citizen). They thus become disciplined for the future, renouncing their passion-driven aspirations (of the past) to possess the belongings of, and to govern the lives of, others while at the same time trusting the newly erected sovereign power – and finally trusting the operations and results of mathematical reason.101 In so far, reasoning means, even if ‘taken from past’, a leap in being of human life by becoming political, although reasoning has no insinuation about the quality of the future besides the promises of logical reasoning itself.

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This understanding of reason points to Hobbes’s methodology of, and his political confidence in, more geometricus. Walker thematizes this leap under the rubrics of change and ‘the historicity of the contract’ (Walker, 1987, p. 74). Perhaps Walker’s argument that Hobbes intends to abandon time entirely is overdone – because we could see the paramount relevance of ‘experience’ in Hobbes; nevertheless, he realizes very clearly that the ‘geometrical method, the appeal to reason, the artifice based on reason’, and finally ‘his concern with order’ (ibid.) constitute a completely new political situation after the social contract has been agreed. This new situation causes us to revise the Hobbesian outlook on international politics and to finally realize that the analogy between the individuals’ ‘state of nature’ – which relates to the time before the social contract – and the principles operating in international politics does not lead us any further. On the ‘Use and End of Reason’ Hobbes writes: The Use and End of Reason, is not the finding of the summe, and truth of one, or a few consequences, remote from the first definitions, and settled significations of names; but to begin at these; and proceed from one consequence to another. For there can be no certainty of the last Conclusion, without any certainty of all those Affirmations and Negations, on which it was grounded. (Leviathan, chapter V; 1968, p. 112) Passion seems to be excluded from this logic of ‘Addition of parcels’ and ‘Substraction of one summe from another’ (ibid., p. 110) and appears to be irrelevant in this kind of mathematically guided intellectual operation. Applied to politics, the experience on which political judgment is based is summed up and aggregated by what man ‘hath seen by what courses and degrees, a flourishing State hath first come into civil warre, and then to ruine; upon the sights of the ruine of any other State, will guesse, the like warre, and the like courses have been there also’ (ibid., p. 98). The experience of such ruin, chaos, and battle, and the addition of such experience might trigger in men the fear to encounter the same destiny, to suffer physical violence, and to be in permanent danger of a violent death. Experience, accompanied by fear, might convince men eventually to use their capability of prudence and reasonable judgment by adding these experiences and ‘conceiving of the consequences’ (ibid., p. 110). However, fear is far from being the causal reason of prudence and judgment (as well as of conflict), rather it is a trigger, and judgment is grounded in experience and made by an experience-based, logical conclusion. Experience of social conflict and war, evaluated by logical reasoning (or prudence), and only accompanied by fear and passion, leads individuals to political judgment in order to relinquish insecurity, ruin, and chaos. This complex relationship is at the foundation of the Hobbesian social

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contract and its erection of the sovereign body. Consequently, sovereignty is fundamentally based on the sovereign’s guarantee to prevent citizens from further exposure to political conflict, fear of violent death, and insecurity. As Hobbes very clearly states, the sovereign’s legitimacy to exert power over its citizens depends totally on its success guaranteeing safety for its citizens. This guarantee constitutes the whole purpose of the social contract. We read: The Office of the Soveraign, (be it a Monarch, or an Assembly) consisteth in the end, for which he was trusted with the Soveraign Power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people. (Leviathan, chapter 30; p. 376) Or: The Obligation, and Liberty of the Subject, is to be derived ... from the End of the Institution of Soveraingty; namely, the Peace of the Subjects within themselves, and their Defence against a common enemy. (Leviathan, chapter 21; p. 268) We can therefore conclude a vital interdependency among sovereignty, the legitimacy of the sovereign’s power, and the provision of safety. Fear Security is the rationale of sovereignty and of the legitimacy of the sovereign’s power, institutionalized due to individuals’ political (rational) judgment. We have to understand security as a protection from domestic and external threats and violence. Before entering into the agreement to erect a common sovereign body, the social contract, men were living in per manent fear and insecurity, but free. Now, under the conditions of the social contract, men renounce their ‘rights to everything’ and are subordinate to the sovereign. However, security, which is the initial rationale for the social contract, also remains its lasting rationale. This means that The Obligation of Subjects to the Sovereign, is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. The Soveraignty is the Soule of the Common-wealth; which once departed from the Body, the members doe no more receive their motion from it. The end of Obedience is Protection. (Leviathan, chapter 21; 1968, p. 272) Accordingly, the individuals regain their full right of nature under the condition that the sovereign does not, or is not able to, guarantee their

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security any more. They then fall back into their original state of nature, and every person is fully responsible and entitled to care for his or her own life. The sovereign’s legitimacy to exercise power then consequently comes to an end, too. The social contract and even the political itself dissolve because the mutual obligation of the contract between the sovereign and the individuals depends on obedience as the people’s contribution, on the one side, and on the sovereign’s obligation to ensure their security, on the other side. As Peter Steinberger notes, ‘For Hobbes, the bonds of the commonwealth dissolve when it fails to achieve the ends for which is was created ... When the state fails to do what it was designed to do – when it threatens, rather than protects, the interests of the citizens – then the social contract, i.e., the original agreement ... is annulled’ (Steinberger, 2002, pp. 858–59). This mechanism is based on the unalienable ‘Right of Nature’ (ius naturale) which Is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. (Leviathan, chapter 12; p. 189) This ‘Right of Nature’ – that is, liberty – results in a ‘Law of Nature’ (lex naturalis) – two categories which, according to D. J. C. Carmichael, are the ‘twin pillars of Hobbes’ jurisprudence’ (1990, p. 4) – which remains valid even under the condition of the social contract.102 And if the sovereign breaks his obligation to ensure security for his subjects, and the lives of the individuals are threatened (again), the law of nature – derived from natural, unalienable liberty to do everything to preserve one’s own security – prevails over the political, sovereign law established by the social contract; or, as Morton Kaplan notes, the ‘laws of nature and the rights of nature apply to the actions of men, even after formation of the commonwealth ... A higher law does limit the sovereign’ (Kaplan, 1956, pp. 390–1).103 Men then do not have to abide by the political law any more and can refer in their decisions and acts to the permanent validity of the law and right of nature. And, even more, they are not only allowed to return to the presocietal and prepolitical state of nature, according to Hobbes, they are even prohibited (by the law of nature) to do anything which could harm one’s life or contradicts its conservation. This prohibition includes the observation of orders of the sovereign in the case that he risks his subjects’ lives. It then appears to be an obligation by the law of nature to resist those orders; at least, the subjects have a right to resist. A Law of Nature ... is a Precept, or generell Rule, found out by Reason, by which man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or

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taketh away means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, which he thinketh it may be best preserved. (Leviathan, chapter 12; p. 189) The subjects must abide, however, by the sovereign’s orders when these orders aim at, and do serve, their security. Hobbes qualifies the conditions of the right for self-protection, on the one hand, and the duty to obedience, on the other hand, quite clearly in chapter 21 of the Leviathan. He here discusses, from an individual’s point of view, both righteous conditions of desertion and the duty to perform the obligations of a military draft (in the case that they aim to, and are appropriate to, defend the people’s security). Hobbes trusts the individual to competently decide and judge whether, or not, a policy enacted by the sovereign is appropriate to produce and to preserve security.104 If an individual feels that a sovereign’s policy or order does not lead to security and endangers his personal life, Hobbes concedes this individual a right to desert or to lay down his arms. Another case in which surrender is legitimate is simply fear. The background, however, is the same: to secure one’s security and prevent violent death. No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man; And consequently, that the Obligation a man may sometimes have, upon the Command of the Sovereign to execute any dangerous, or dishonourable Office, dependeth not on the word of our Submission; but on the Intention; which is to be understood by the End thereof. When therefore our refusall to obey, frustrates the End for which Soveraignty was ordained; then there is no Liberty to refuse: otherwise there is ... Upon this ground, a man that is commanded as a soldier to fight against the enemy, though his Soveraign have Right enough to punish his refusall with death, may nevertheless in many cases refuse, without Injustice ... And there is allowance to be made for naturall timorousnesse ... When armies fight, there is one side, or both, a running away; yet when they did it not out of trechery, but fear, they are not esteemed to do it unjustly, but dishonourably. For the same reason, to avoid battell, is not Injustice, but Cowardise. But ... when the Defence of the Common-wealth, requireth at once the help of all that are able to bear Arms, every one is obliged; because otherwise the Institution of the Common-wealth, which they have not the purpose, or the courage to preserve, was in vain. (pp. 269–70) A revised interpretation of Hobbesian international politics What can we conclude from these arguments? My argument is that the mechanism of sovereignty, legitimacy, and security also applies to, and operates in, international politics. I am not alone with this proposition. In the wide field of interpreting Hobbes’s outlook on international politics, it is to my knowledge, however, only Michael C. Williams who relates Hobbesian international politics to the question of, and interconnectedness between,

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sovereignty and legitimacy and endorses the argument of a ‘relationship between (the sovereign’s) external relations and relations with its own citizens’ (Williams, 1996, p. 232). Although Williams develops his argument differently – reading, to my view, Hobbes too much as a ‘constructivist’ and neglecting, or at least relativizing, thereby the fundamental and universal roles of reason and of the law(s) and right(s) of nature – this circumstance does not detract from the coincidence of our finding. To put it in Williams’s words: ‘While the sovereign ... has in principle the right to act in any way it chooses, Hobbes argues that a correct understanding of politics will lead not only to obedient citizens but also to prudential self-limitation of activity by a rational sovereign. The sovereign will avoid actions that too obviously threaten the interests of the citizens for fear that will lose their acceptance of its authority ... This places considerable limits ... on state action both domestically and internationally. Since the sovereign’s authority ... depends upon its ability to retain legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens, the sovereign should always weigh the implications of its actions on the lives and opinions of its citizens ... In its external relations, the same logic applies’ (Williams, 1996, pp. 221–2). My argument consists of three parts. Its first part stems from Hobbes’s universalistic outlooks, which are rooted in the nature of the social contract itself. This construction claims validity not only for the contemporary politics which Hobbes witnessed, but also for all political bodies and all men. Second, the ‘mechanism’ of the social contract consequently applies to all sovereigns internationally and thus represents a regulative function of foreign policy conduct, qualifying conditions and constraints of political legitimacy. And third, from this qualification we learn a Hobbesian universalistic norm for the conduct of (each sovereign’s) foreign policies which contradicts ‘realist’ interpretations on three levels: There is a fundamental relation between domestic and international politics which contradicts the (neo-)realist notion of the state as an unitary actor (on this point, see also Williams, 1996, p. 223). There is also a self-constraining element in foreign and international politics which sees the ‘national interest’ of a state in relative terms. Finally, there is a notion which forbids offensive, preventive, and/ or hegemonic war, which is fought in order to create alliances or to amount the nation’s security targeting potential threats, however, actually risks people’s life. The only war, which can be judged as a legitimate (just) war is a war to defend the political ‘commonwealth’ from an immediate external threat when otherwise the people’s security could not be guaranteed. And even here, if an enemy’s army is overwhelmingly stronger, surrender and submission to another sovereign for the purpose of saving one’s life are deemed by Hobbes not as illegitimate behaviour, but just as cowardice (see the quotation above). In general terms, we can determine that the mechanism of sovereignty, legitimacy, and security constrains a sovereign from leading a war in which

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he endangers his people’s lives and security (besides a defensive war; see more below). If the sovereign risks his people’s lives unnecessarily, he is losing his (domestically obtained) legitimacy. And because this risk and endangerment are present in each war, and because this mechanism operates in each state, we have a powerful norm in international politics which universally regulates foreign politics. This Hobbesian norm should not be mistaken for the conceptualization of an international sovereign who rules international politics and governs over single states, but as a norm for interstate conduct. This norm does not stem from international politics itself, but is derived from the realm of domestic politics. Nevertheless, we clearly see that there is no anarchy ‘out there’, no haphazardous state, and no unbridgeable dualism between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Rather, the domestic norm of legitimacy reaches into the international sphere and teaches each sovereign to avoid war on behalf of safeguarding his citizen’s security. The only exception to this general rule is a war of defence, which must necessarily be commanded and fought so that the citizens will not be victims of a foreign army and be violently killed due to another sovereign’s orders. The arguments developed by Hobbes resemble the definition of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ war from Hugo Grotius (see Tooke, 1965): the only just war is a war of defence, and the aim of war always must be peace. However, the threat must be immediate, and a war which is waged preventively, anticipating a future possible threat, or due to hegemonic aspirations, even if such a war aims at finally pacifying state relations, is unconditionally unjust and evil.105 Hobbes considers – in a passage in chapter 14 of the Leviathan which is mostly ignored in interpreting his outlook – peace to be the general aim of politics, which would correspond with the fundamental law of nature and the general rule of reason. This rule of reason can legitimately be suspended only in a case of defence when all means of warfare were allowed. We read: And consequently it is a precept, or generell rule of Reason, That every man, ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of Warre. The first branch of which Rule, containeth the first, and Fundamentall Law of Nature; which is, to seek Peace, and follow it. The second, the summe of the Right of Nature; which is, By all means we can, defend our selves. (1968, p. 190; emphasis in the original) We thus find two universalistic elements in Hobbes’s thoughts on international politics. First, the mechanism of sovereignty, security, and legitimacy applies to all commonwealths and is an unconditioned, general element of each political order (and social contract). Second, this mechanism, which fundamentally qualifies war and warfare, is based on universal reason with which all men are endowed and from which we can assume – as we know from no restriction in Hobbes due to culture, development, or

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‘civilization’ – that it operates in every state. On the ground of both universalities, we can further conclude a regulative momentum in international politics. Although there is no sovereign beyond states, there exists a mechanism in international politics which applies to all states. This mechanism operates in interstate relations and ties together sovereigns’ foreign policy decisions by dictating, with the power of universal reason and the law of nature, the same principle of an interdependent mechanism between sovereignty and legitimacy upon them. There is, however, one condition to make this mechanism work effectively, namely, that all states have to be commonwealths based on the identical principle of legitimacy. Additionally, all states must recognize the permanent validity of the basic fundamental right of nature (which remains valid even under the social contract) as well as of the general rule of reason. The fundamental right of nature and universal reason guarantees two things: first, that men have an unalienable right to protect and preserve their life and second, that men and sovereigns should seek peace. In short, all commonwealths have to be political bodies organized and operating according to Hobbes’s construction of the social contract so that the norm of not waging wars, which unnecessarily puts citizens’ lives at risk, can perform internationally. As mentioned above, the only wars, which do not expose men to inconsequential risks and endanger their lives unnecessarily are wars to defend one’s commonwealth facing an immediate threat. These are likewise the only wars which can be perceived as ‘just’ wars, because destruction and occupation of the commonwealth by another sovereign would render worthless the entire reason and rationale for why it has been erected, namely, to provide security. It is not my intention to over-interpret Hobbes. But because this interpretation causes us to revise our familiar picture of Hobbes, one further consideration seems worthwhile: namely, answering the questions whether the Hobbesian mechanism of sovereignty, legitimacy, and security and the deriving norms of avoiding war (apart from wars of defence) and seeking peace constitute two basic principles of what we today call ‘international society’? Although I do not want to elaborate on this question, I think it is worth conceding that this mechanism creates a political principle which can be common to all (or at least a group of) states. This principle unifies states on the basis of their common acknowledgement of each state’s ‘right of nature’ (i.e., to procure for its security) and the ‘law of nature’ (or ‘general rule of reason’, i.e., to seek peace). It creates a shared norm of conducting peaceful relations in the primary sense of avoiding war and in a subsequent meaning of producing cooperation, concordance, and international institution building. ‘Hobbes suggests’, so confirms Donald W. Hanson, ‘that the true sovereign would recognize the imprudence of an adventurous foreign policy’ (Hanson, 1984, p. 349).

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From this perspective, which supports the ‘emphasis on rules and norms in the constitution of “international society” ’ (Williams, 1996, p. 215), Hobbes’s principles can be understood as a precaution against international despotism, hegemony, and the arbitrariness of sovereigns’ foreign policy; they create a ‘pacifying dynamic’ (Williams, 1996, p. 232) must, however, be understood and seems to be endorsed, if not enabled, politically by the verdicts of the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the Treaties of Westphalia (1648), the latter being agreed three years before the first publication of Hobbes’s Leviathan. Hobbes himself lifts these principles to ethical standards and adds a second ‘Law of Nature’ to the first – which stated that men must (and should) seek peace. His second law of nature claims a mutual policy of concession, which reminds us of Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ and the Gospel’s ‘golden rule’, respectively. From the viewpoint of international politics/IR orthodoxy, the assertion of an ethical dimension in Hobbes might be the most controversial conclusion of my interpretation. However, the consequences of the ‘First and Second Law of Nature’ make clear statements which should not be ignored. ‘The laws of nature’, Gauthier endorses, ‘are the grounds at [which] point morality enters Hobbes’s account ... Peace is a common instrumental good, since it is a necessary means to each man’s chief good, his own preservation. Reason is instrumental, but the laws of nature, which prescribe the means of peace, are addressed equally to each man’s reason, and so are rational for all’ (1979, pp. 551, 553). An ethical interpretation on these ‘laws of nature’ is also presented by Jean Hampton who concludes the assertion of a norm of ‘cooperative forms of behaviour [which] effect peace and peace in turn helps to effect longer life’ (Hampton, 1992, p. 337). It thus seems consequent that Hobbes, in the Leviathan, chapter 15, writes that ‘all men agree on this, that Peace is Good, and therefore also the way, or means of Peace, which (as I have shewed before) are Justice, Gratitude, Modesty, Equity, Mercy, & the rest of the Laws of Nature’ (Hobbes, 1968, p. 216; emphasis in the original).106 Finally Hobbes notes: From (the) Fundamentall Law of Nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour Peace, is derived this second Law; That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence ... himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe ... For as long as every man holdeth this Right, of doing any thing he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of Warre ... This is that Law of the Gospell; Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them. (Leviathan, chapter 14; p. 190; emphasis in the original)

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3. Immanuel Kant In this chapter, I will focus on Immanuel Kant’s On Perpetual Peace, which will be identified as the last work in the history of political thought which adheres to, and at the same time enables, universal/universalistic thinking of an international order. Its appearance in 1795107 sharply marks the shift from universalism to particularism, which evolved around the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Just two decades later, particularism found a seminally important originator of nationalized and particularized inter-national thought in Hegel (see Chapter III.1). Kant is writing explicitly about peace, and thus there is a twofold coincidence of his On Perpetual Peace according to the interpretations undertaken here. On the one side, we learn about his ideas on peace and how he thinks international peace can be possible: it is not just ‘some’ peace, but an eternal peace. On the other hand, it is exactly this work which best reveals his ideas on political universalism in a practical sense. Kant’s definition of peace already points to his universalistic concept of an international order insofar as this determination is so fundamental that it necessarily requires some general grounding. The first paragraph of the First Section of On Perpetual Peace contains Kant’s preliminary articles of a perpetual peace as well as his statement that ‘no conclusion of Peace shall be held to be valid as such, when it has been made with the secret reservation of the material for a future War’.108 Kant thus specifies peace as a true peace which, in the first instance, is different and has to be distinguished from a mere truce or ‘suspension of hostilities’. As he further explains in this paragraph, he deems this qualification necessary because of his ambitious aim to talk about an eternal, or perpetual, peace, and hence he would be remiss not to distinguish the objective of such an undertaking from minor forms of ‘peace’ like a cease-fire, for example. In practical concerns, such a peace would have to be characterized by an entire abolishment of all standing armies, both because war will always threaten as long as states maintain armies and because the expenses for the maintenance of standing armies become ‘in the long run even more oppressive than a short war’ (On Perpetual Peace, First Section, Third Article). Such a peace furthermore includes real chances for the reconciliation of two previously warring parties, what could best be accomplished by avoiding, or having avoided, any ‘dishonourable stratagems’ during past wars. These three major characteristics of an eternal peace – the definition of peace as more than just a truce, but as something more fundamental; the idea that armies must be abolished; and finally that war atrocities, or dishonourable behaviour, must be avoided – are, according to Kant, ‘valid without distinction of circumstance’ (On Perpetual Peace, First Section, Third Article). In this absoluteness, they represent a ‘right of humanity’ (ibid.). These short introductory notes on some of Kant’s main practical imperatives on peace reveal much about his conceptual approach to international

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political order and indicate the trajectories of his further argument. His further argument will be about universalistic determinations of rights, which should govern the international relations between states, as well as about the normative and ontological unit – which is mankind and cosmopolitan society – at which international politics aims or should aim. Kant’s principles of right encompass humanity as a whole, and his vision of peace hypothetically and normatively aims at an universal community of mankind, governed, as we will see at the end of this chapter, by cosmopolitan laws. This reference to an universally construed ontological unit not only communicates from Kant’s On Perpetual Peace, but can further be seen by his addition of a fourth philosophical main question – ‘What is man?’ – in his Anthropology (1974), supplementary to the three questions from his first Critique (1982; see also Kant, 2004; ‘What can I know?’ ‘What ought I do?’ ‘What may I hope?’).109 The creation of peace: universal republican, legal, and ethical order Both law as well as a universal foundation of international society are necessary conditions for Kant’s normative conception of peace to built upon because peace ‘is not the natural state’ of the international order, as Kant notes (On Perpetual Peace, Second Section, Introduction). This normative conception should not be confused with what we usually tend to understand as idealistic. Peace, Kant says, ‘has to be established’ (ibid.). It is thus a creation of men, and Kant’s intention is to demonstrate that an eternal peace is possible. He also wants to elaborate on the conditions of its possibility (Bedingung der Möglichkeit) as practical guidelines for international politics. In other words, Kant’s doctrine ‘sets forth ... those obligations which are the conditions of the achievement of peace among nations’ (Sacksteder, 1954, p. 853). Because the establishment of a peaceful international order (in the ‘true’ sense) is for Kant a moral obligation of politics and mankind, the question is for the guiding principle on which such an establishment must, and can, be based. The answer to that question points to Kant’s essential reference to law and to the elemental significance of internationally shared legal standards among states. For that reason of mandatory provision, Kant titles the section in which he states this credo ‘The definite articles of a perpetual peace between states’, and he notes that only under conditions ‘which are regulated by Law’ could peaceful state relations flourish (On Perpetual Peace, Second Section, Introduction). Such law, which is to guide and regulate the creation of peaceful international order, has two sides: one domestic, and one international. Strictly speaking, Kant discusses the domestic relation of international law only in the First Definitive Article of the Second Section. To my mind, however, the Second Definitive Article, in which Kant elaborates his famous idea about an international federation, belongs to the domestic side of his treatment

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of law. Because such a ‘federation of states’ develops from, and only under the condition of, a certain domestic order which is present in all states participating in this federation, the federation itself incrementally depends on the domestic side of law in each participating state. The international side of law is then the issue of the Third Definitive Article, in which Kant posits a cosmopolitan law of international hospitality. Both sides and aspects of law are understood by Kant as universal (universalistic) concepts which promote the creation of an eternal peace. According to Kant’s philosophical differentiation between the concrete possibility (the occurrence) of something and the condition of the possibility of something (and of its occurrence, respectively; Bedingung der Möglichkeit), law, both its domestic and its international side, does not create peace automatically. The application of laws does not automatically lead to peace; laws are, however, the necessary and indispensable conditions for peace insofar as they make an eternal peace principally possible at all. They provide, to take up Kant’s distinction again, not the concrete possibility of eternal peace but the condition of the possibility of eternal peace. As such, laws symbolize Kant’s reference to transcendental metaphysics, which is, theoretically speaking, to be found as the Bedingung der Möglichkeit, and, practically speaking, manifests in a certain pattern of domestic and international rule of law for conceptualizing and potentially accomplishing international peace. (The ontological unit of international politics for Kant is mankind; see below). The domestic side of law posits that ‘the civil constitution in every State shall be a republic’ (On Perpetual Peace, Second Section, First Definitive Article). Kant writes that a republican order in all states ‘includes the prospect of realizing the desired object: perpetual peace among the nations’ (ibid.). In addition to this, he conceives republicanism – which would be the only rightful fashion of domestic rule of law according to the imperatives of (pure) reason (see more on this below) – not only as the realization of the universal principle in the realm of domestic politics, but also as universally possible in all nations worldwide. The internationalization of republicanism is, to anticipate his next argument, the necessary condition on which an International Federation of Peoples can be based. A federation of this kind would eventually make eternal peace possible. However, we have to delve into Kant’s idea of republicanism in more detail, mainly because the equation of Kant’s republicanism with democracy, as has became common in present-day IR, buries another misconception in our discipline (amongst others, see Bruce Russet’s writings on the idea of ‘democratic peace’; Russett, 1974, 1993; see critically Williams, 1992). In the First Definitive Article of the Second Section, Kant notes that ‘the Republican Constitution is not to be confounded with the Democratic Constitution’ (italics in the original version). As this were ‘commonly done, the following remarks must be made in order to guard against this confusion’ (ibid.). Kant’s distinction between republicanism and democracy

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relates democracy, as it was usually decried in his time, to an immediate, nonrepresentative form of people’s government. He also distinguishes a republican form of government from a despotic form of government. The decisive difference is then that in a republican form of government the executive power is separate from the legislative power, whereas in a despotic form of government both powers are represented in one institutional body. Only a separation of powers that is both personal and institutional would, according to Kant, guarantee the realization of the ‘public will’ (as distinct from the ‘private will’). So Kant avoids the term democracy completely as an indication of preferred form of government because he associates this form of government with despotism. Democracy would not be a representative form of government, but the ‘lawgiver in one and the same person may, at the same time, be the executive administrator of his own Will’ (On Perpetual Peace, Second Section, First Definitive Article). By this definition it becomes clear that Kant’s understanding of democracy inherits the traditional way of thinking about republicanism and democracy, which associated democracy with an unleashed public will and which favoured, in order to conceptualize a free form of government ‘based on the consent of the governed’ (the famous definition of James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 10), the idea of republicanism. On the other hand, republicanism understood this way was perceived as a form of government which was realizable universally, without obstacles stemming from cultural and religious contexts or differences.110 International Pacific Federation This universal conceptualization becomes clear in the Second Definitive Article, where Kant argues in favour of an ‘international federation of the people’, based on republican national governments and assembling, at its best, all republican nations worldwide (‘would at last embrace all the Nations on Earth’). Such a federation would enthrone ‘reason’ as the ‘highest moral law-giving power’ and would condemn ‘War as a mode of Right, and, on the contrary, makes the state of Peace an immediate duty’. The international federation of the people may also be called a ‘Pacific Federation’, which is to be distinguished from a ‘mere treaty or Compact of Peace in the latter merely puts an end to one war whereas the former would seek to put an end to all wars forever’ (On Perpetual Peace, Second Section, First Definitive Article). In short, the universalism of the republican principle would bring and guarantee peace not just in the form of a ‘suspension of hostilities’, but as an ‘end of all hostilities’ (we remember Kant’s basic definition of peace from his First Section, First Article). It is important to note that this federation is not a world government or world state. Kant explicitly stresses that each nation in this federation remains sovereign and free from external regulation of its domestic affairs. A. C. Armstrong notes on this point that ‘the federation

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does not seek any of the powers of a state’ (1931, p. 203). Towards the end of the Second Definitive Article, Kant clearly juxtaposes the idea of a ‘Universal Republic’ and his idea of a ‘Federation of the States’. A ‘Federation’, opposite to an ‘Universal Republic’, will found in men a higher moral capacity based on reason and free will and will operate as a universal legal power, which is supposed to be based upon international treaties and international law between states that retain their sovereignty and individual political and legal personality. Kant writes: This Federation will not aim at the acquisition of any of the political powers of a State, but merely at the preservation and guarantee for itself, and likewise for the other confederated States, of the liberty that is proper to a State; and this would not require these States to subject themselves for this purpose ... to public laws and to coercion under them. The practicability and objective realization of this idea of Federalism, inasmuch as it has to spread itself over all States and thereby lead to Perpetual Peace, may be easily shewn. (On Perpetual Peace, Second Section, Second Definitive Article) Both the universalism of a worldwide federation of republics and the idea of the universal practicability of republicanism are interrelated with three more universal principles which are normative prerequisites and necessary conditions for a working peace system à la Kant: first, with universal reason, which provides and imparts to men the capability of overcoming the distinction of peoples into autonomous and divided nations (On Perpetual Peace, First Supplement); second, with a universal commercial spirit, which drives men to peaceful cooperation across their states in order to trade (ibid.); and third, with men’s natural right claiming universal and cosmopolitan hospitality (On Perpetual Peace, Second Section, Third Definitive Article). Possibly the most important underlying condition of Kant’s ‘Federation of States’ is the assumption of what Kant calls a ‘pure practical reason’111 which would be common to all human beings as an ‘objective reality’. Therefore, Kant posits that it can be ‘realized in fact’ (On Perpetual Peace, Appendix). This reason operates not only as a moral lawgiver, but also provides a system of ‘unconditionally authoritative laws [in a legal sense] ... in accordance with which we ought to act’ (ibid.). This system of authoritative law prominently manifests in the formal moral principle, which is known as Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’: ‘Act so that thou canst will that thy maxim shall become a universal Law whatever may be its end’ (ibid.). Applied to the idea of a perpetual peace, this principle reads as follows: ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of pure Practical Reason and its righteousness, and then will your object, the benefit of Perpetual Peace, be added unto you’ (ibid.). Williams concludes from this that ‘(in) Kant’s view, we must always ask the question “What would the world be like if everyone acted this way?” ’ (Williams,

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1992, p. 108). The categorical imperative, as the foundation of Kant’s moral philosophy, thus is essential for his understanding of international politics. What a difference this is to the maxim of international politics, which follows Kant, immediately in Hegel, and which is guided and determined by what can be termed the ‘national interest’! This maxim in opposition to Kant could be formulated alike: Act always and without restriction so that it benefits the well-being of your own state and its people and measure your means and strategies by that end (for further discussion, see Part III and onwards). A further quotation from Kant might be useful to emphasize this difference even more strongly: Perpetual peace and the rightful conduct of international politics, he says, Requires above all, an internal political constitution, arranged according to pure principles of right [that is republicanism], and further, the union of it with neighbouring or distant States, so as to attain a legal settlement of their disputes by a constitution that would be analogous to a universal State. This proposition just means that political maxims must not start from the prosperity and happiness that are to be expected in each State from following them, nor from the end which each of them makes the object of its will as the highest empirical principle of politics; but they must proceed from pure conception of the duty of Right or Justice, as an obligatory principle given a priori [this means as the condition of the possibility of peace (‘Bedingung der Möglichkeit’)] by pure reason. And this has to be held, whatever may be the physical consequences which follow from adopting these political principles. (On Perpetual Peace, Appendix) The second transcendental formula grounds Kant’s conception of a perpetual peace, based on an international federation of sovereign republics, is the idea of an universal commercial spirit that is deeply embedded in human nature and that is indispensable for a successful conduct of politics. This spirit is, according to Kant, a power strong enough to prevent war insofar as commercial interests and trade would be harmed by war and hence would impact international politics in a pacifying way. War would destroy the realization of commercial interests, and ‘the power of money is the most reliable’, Kant writes, ‘and thus the States find themselves driven to further the noble interest of peace’ (On Perpetual Peace, First Supplement). And last, but not least, there is the concept of universal hospitality, which is an unconditioned political necessity to make the concept of perpetual peace work. Kant discusses the concept of universal hospitality in the Second Section, Third Definitive Article. So at a very early stage in On Perpetual Peace he is indicating the importance of this concept within his whole treatise. Kant’s concept of universal hospitality is being used in the debates about global citizenship, which has become a frequent and popular topic in contemporary global studies.112 However, it is not only the idea of universal

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hospitality itself, which should be seen as topical, but also the founding idea which stands behind it. Kant notes that a peaceful conduct of international politics strongly depends on ‘means for social intercourse’ among the states (On Perpetual Peace, Third Definitive Article). In current terms, this idea of a social intercourse among states corresponds to what Raymond Aron called ‘transnational society’ (Aron, 1966). The similarity of both concepts can be seen when Kant notes, that the Social relations between the various Peoples of the world ... have now advanced everywhere so far that a violation of Right on one place of the earth, is felt all over it. Hence the idea of a Cosmo-political Right of the whole Human Race, is no phantastic or overstrained mode of representing Right, but is a necessary completion of the unwritten Code which carries national and international Right to a consummation in the Public Right of Mankind. (On Perpetual Peace, Third Definitive Article)113 According to this conception, the surface of the earth would not belong to a particular state or people, but to populate the earth is a right of nature to all men. Therefore, Kant concludes, a universal hospitality should indiscriminately grant a right of entering and visiting another state’s territory. This is not meant to be a guarantee for some form of permanent residence. However, by itself, the right to visit would promote peaceful relations among states and its peoples who would enter into mutual social bonds and communication by mutual contacts. Together with the driving force of commercial spirit and free trade among states, the cosmopolitical right of free entry into another state would propel societal international relations which in the long run would contribute to the abolishment of the danger that states, being interlinked by trade and transnational social ties, would wage war against each other. Kant’s conceptualization of universal hospitality, of the federation of states, and of the moral duty to act in accordance with universal law (the ‘categorical imperative’) emphasizes the paramount relevance of his thinking in constitutional and judicial terms. Consequently, just and peaceful international politics depends upon a legal regulation (Verrechtlichung) of states’ and men’s behaviour. Even if Kant endows men with the capability of reason through which they are enabled to overcome the distinction of the earth in different nations and peoples by conceiving and politically realizing the imperatives of pure and practical reason, he does not completely trust the good morality of men, but finally deems it necessary to refer back to law as guarantors for peace and well-being in the international realm. The ‘Federation of States’ will finally operate as an international treaty system. Consequently, he notes towards the end of his treatise: ‘Now, in fact, both philanthropy and respect for the rights of men, are obligatory as duties. But the former is only a conditional duty, the latter is unconditioned

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and absolutely imperative’ (On Perpetual Peace, Appendix; emphasis in the original). Kant’s vision of international politics, which is still framed within the traditions of natural law and unalienable natural rights of the individual, clearly marks the end of universal/universalistic thinking in international political thought. ‘The Kantian vision of a cosmopolitan world ... sank beneath the rising tide of nationalism, much of which, of course, was driven onward by precisely the kind of imperial ambitions Kant himself hoped would finally come to an end’ (Padgen, 2003, p. 188). In order to better understand this ‘hope’, we should briefly contrast Kant’s On Perpetual Peace with his Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784 [1963]). Although On Perpetual Peace is the more famous piece, we nevertheless should take a look at his Idea for a Universal History because we will note some interesting ambivalence with regard to his idea of cosmopolitanism and humanity. This ambivalence relates to the question of how best to prevent war and belligerent relations among states and whether a ‘Federation of States’ best promotes the conditions for the possibilities of accomplishing (eternal) peace (as outlined in On Perpetual Peace) or if peace were best guaranteed by a new authoritarian kind of world government (as argued in the Idea for a Universal History). This ambivalence demonstrates Kant’s struggle to recognize the diversity and plurality of sovereign states while, at the same time, he attempts to envision and to outline the conditions of the possibilities for international pacification through the integration of states in some common legal, political, and societal framework based on universality. A closer look at this ambivalence may even reveal some uncertainty and scepticism in Kant about the most appropriate and promising political, that is, practical, means for the realization of cosmopolitanism (for further discussion on this, see Franke, 2001; Höffe, 2006). He thus remains a true philosopher, one might say, in that he tries to imagine and to elaborate the conditions of the possibilities – which per definitionem are and have to be universal in character – which men can have to create peace. His focus on, and elaboration of, the conditions of the possibilities of (eternal) peace seems to be the reason why he titled his writing on peace not just Perpetual Peace (Ewiger Friede), but ON Perpetual Peace (Zum Ewigen Frieden) – and why the translation of the title as just ‘Perpetual Peace’ is deficient in this sense.114 Consequently, he ‘does not’, as Barry Hindness observes, ‘present his universal history as an exercise in empirical composition’; Kant would consequently not make an ‘attempt to synthesise what is known about the past and present conditions of the diverse sections of humanity and to extrapolate the results into the future’ (Hindness, The Very Idea of a Universal History, p. 3). His universalism and cosmopolitanism are therefore not to be seen and simplified as a straightforward template for some kind of liberal inter-national institutionalism (à la democratic peace theory), but rather as a last example of a philosophical draft on the

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conditions of the possibility of peaceful relations among mankind before the advent of the nineteenth century and its oncoming force of nationalism. Kant still tried to think of the international as integrated into some common telos of universal mankind and humanity, and understanding his attempt as a study of the conditions of the possibilities of such teleology strictly forbids stigmatizing Kant as an ‘idealist’ or his On Perpetual Peace as a work of ‘idealism’ in international political theory, opening up a dualism between (such kind of) ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’. The narratives in IR, which construct this kind of opposition and dualism, appear to ignore or to not understand the philosophically ambivalent character Kant’s writings on international politics, which acknowledge and even affirm the international system of sovereign states. At the same time, they seek to establish universal/universalistic ontological and epistemological principles and linkages across states – a worldview and interest that Kant has in common with all the authors discussed so far. However, this worldview comes to an end and becomes lost with the advent of the authors and schools of thought in International Political Theory/IR which we will discuss in the remainder of this book.

Part III The Emergence of Particularism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

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III.1 Philosophies of ‘National Interest’

1. Hegel on ‘international law’ In Chapter II.3, we could see the universally based conception of international order in Immanuel Kant. Kant’s philosophy proposes that peace and state cooperation are, despite all kinds of possible conflict, war, and disputes, implanted in universal principles of reason, commercial spirit, and ethics which apply to mankind and promote principles of ontological and epistemological togetherness and sociability among all states. As I note above, universalism in the history of international political thought comes to an end with Kant’s On Perpetual Peace. What we find after Kant are thoughts and concepts, which are based not on considerations and perceptions of universal ethics and natural law, but on notions guided by viewing the world as consisting of substantially particularized entities, each with its own solipsistic mores, political ideology, and interests. Thereby, the ultimate reference for formulating the ontological view of international political thought shifted from universalisms to particularism. From then on, something ‘in-between’, or above, states can only be accomplished by bringing particularities together to form a generalized mosaic. In terms of ethics, a loss of ethics appears to result consequently, which manifests in a loss of the traditional maxim and virtue of ethical self-restraint as it was conceptualized throughout previous centuries (see above Parts I and II). What is defined as good for the particular entity, that is, the nation, is good for its own sake, if not for the world. From an ancient perspective, for instance, such a position, which represents the actual birth of ‘realism’ in inter-national political thought, is nothing but hubris. Conceptually, such a position can be accomplished only under the condition that the particular, the nation, is constructed as something which symbolizes, in all its particularity, transcendental values and personifies some divine spirit. However, such transcendental values or divine spirit do not, as some might think, constitute an equally universal reference with pre-modern conceptualizations, but only express and manifest themselves in some particularistic and occasional entity. 141

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Withal the meaning of universalism seems to have changed. Whereas theories of international politics until, and including, Kant have been embedded in notions which were, ‘falsely’ or ‘rightly’ and with which consequences ever, universal in so far as their authors did discern some tangible transcendence of order, theories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries do not share this view any more. If they state something ‘universal’, this is necessarily something universalized which they, because of their lack of universal/universalistic ontologies and epistemologies, transfer and generalize as particular standards to other nations. However, the notion of the world as a unit, bound together by commonly tangible and joint principles, which indiscriminately belong to humankind as a whole, seems lost. This means that ethics, as consideration and conception of general standards and guidelines of human behaviour, which are valid for all human beings, regardless of their heritage, place of birth, ‘nationality’, and religion, is replaced by particular morals (see more on this in Part IV and the concluding sections). Even if such a conception did not result, as in the case of Kant (and others), in a world-state and all nation-states retained their full right of existence, Kant identifies principles which are supposed to work universally as unifying rules for and of international politics. The new thinking rejected not only the idea of a world-state – which no one really promoted, but which nevertheless spooked around – but also the existence of universal/universalistic principles of international politics. National morals are (now) said to differ so substantially from nation to nation that no principles superior to them would exist (for further discussion of that aspect, see below in Chapter IV.3). (This position seems to have been formulated initially by Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menscheit.) This paradigm shift in international political thought occurs in a very short time span, namely, between 1795, when Kant’s On Perpetual Peace was published, to 1821, when Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Rights appeared. Whatever the historical circumstances might have been for that shift, I will not inquire into those circumstances,115 but concentrate my study on the analysis of that shift in international thought. Hegel’s conception of the ‘external law of states’: The state in its absoluteness Hegel starts his section on ‘International Law’ writing that ‘International Law arises from the relations between independent states’ (Philosophy of Rights, §330).116 It is most significant that we find one of his key ideas, namely, about the independence of states, in the first sentence of his treatment of inter-national politics. The use of the term independent is very important in Hegel’s thoughts and is highly complex at the same time. And it is crucial for understanding and interpreting Hegel that we refer to the original German version and learn that here he does not use the term “international law” (internationales Recht), but writes about the external law of states. To

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emphasize this difference makes good sense because the term international law suggests that a new sphere of law might emerge, which, even if initiated by states, has some structurelike character, independent of the states after it has once been founded (by them). Exactly the contrary, however, is indicated when Hegel uses the term external law of states (äusseres Staatsrecht): what is called ‘international law’ in English translation is then, when we consult the German text, substantially and eternally primarily a law of the state (states). The state remains the uncontested subject and master of that law, comparable to its status in the realm of domestic (‘interior’) law. ‘International law’, according to Hegel, hence does not constitute something international, which might eventually establish a sphere of its own above and between individual states. Far from that, international law is nothing else but determinations of, and about, the state’s external legal relations by particular states themselves. Literally, when we take Hegel seriously, there could be as many external laws of the state as there are states, an idea which immediately turns into an absurdity when we think about international law as we are used to understanding it. This difference is crucial (and lost when we just talk about ‘international’ law as if it were to be understood to have the same meaning as, for instance, in de Vitoria or Kant) because it points to the substantially independent status of states. Thus, both meanings, merged in the very first sentence of §330, Philosophy of Rights, have to be interrelated, and only by doing so can we understand the substantially supreme and autonomous position which Hegel ascribes to states as particular units. The relation of states consequently goes back to, and depends upon, mutually exclusive and essentially distinct sovereign particular wills. There are no ‘international laws’ and no relations between states independent of the states, and if states decline to act internationally, there is no, nor has there ever been something, international. Although Hegel notes in §333, Philosophy of Rights, that treaties ought to be kept inviolate, he later admits that they have their reality not in a general will (as in Kant where such a ‘general will’ was peace, for instance), but in the particular will of the states. Accordingly, the fundamental proposition of the international would be a good intention, nothing more. We will see later that if it suits a state’s will to breach a treaty in order to promote its particular will and welfare, this breach is regarded by Hegel as legitimate. There are no ethical or legal principles above the states (such as the pacta sunt servanda) according to which states are obliged to keep their treaty obligations. When states cannot come to an agreement, they go to war, and Hegel regards this as the right solution. Hence, there is no substance or reason which can be in charge for setting up and creating something between and among states greater than states themselves. The international realm is incrementally due, and remains bounded, to the actor status and will of states. In the addition to the same paragraph, Hegel describes the state also as a ‘completely independent totality’ and, thereby, juxtaposes the status of

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states to that of the individual or private person. Whereas the status of private persons is not one of independence, because they are bound together by social conventions and legal rights and duties as well as subordinated to a superior moral body, Hegel perceives the state as ‘the absolute power on earth’ (Philosophy of Rights, §331), which had no higher power above or against it. For individuals, the binding moral, political, and legal framework arises from the state’s domestic order. The state itself, however, is bound by no restrictions or obligations other than those enacted by itself. As Pierre Hassner notes, ‘Hegel admits, international law is based solely on the will of states whose nature and duty command them to respect their commitments only in so far as they correspond to their interests’ (Hassner, 1994, p. 745). There is just one factor on which the state in its absoluteness relies, according to Hegel, and that is recognition. Because recognition is in Hegel a tricky matter, I will come back to it later. Before, however, we must discuss (again) some discrepancy between the English translation and the German original, specifically the first sentence of §331, Philosophy of Rights, because it contains Hegel’s idea about the identity of ‘the Be’ and ‘the Ought’. This part discloses another picture of Hegel’s idea of the state’s absoluteness, and finally helps us to concretize the image of particularity in Hegel. Emphasizing on translation, this time does not imply that the English version would be wrong; however, we understand that Hegel is indeed much more radical when refer to the German original; that the translation is an attenuation; and that it therefore forecloses the understanding of Hegel as a philosopher of particularism and (German) nationalism. According to the Cambridge edition, Hegel writes in §331, Philosophy of Rights: ‘The nation state [das Volk als Staat] is the spirit in its substantial rationality and immediate actuality ... each state is consequently a sovereign and independent entity in relation to others.’ There are two important differences with the original text. Hegel’s formulation ‘das Volk als Staat’ means something different than the English ‘nation state’. The correct corresponding term would be ‘the nation (or “folk” in the meaning of an ethnic people, an “ethnos”) as a state’. This difference is crucially important because it emphasizes Hegel’s thinking in terms of particular entities, that is, states, which are not only constituted as political, but also as ethnic entities. ‘The nation as a state’ also suggests that a nation – and this is the case with each nation (as an ethnically constituted unit) – is prior to the state, but manifests and materializes as a political unit in the form of a state. As such it enjoys absolute superiority and highest power. The manifestation and materialization of a nation as a state is an obligation in the sense of an ‘Ought’, and each factual establishment of a nation as a state has full legitimacy (because it symbolizes the realization of an ought obligation). That the nation predates the state and is supposed to be the ideal substance of which a state is constituted furthermore points to Hegel’s idea of particularism. Insofar as Hegel perceives states as essentially distinct not just in political terms but

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also, and prior to that, in terms of their national populations, that is in terms of their ethnic characteristics such as language, mores, religion and spirit (Volksgeist), the world and the inter-national are made up by such ethnic and political distinctiveness. We can push this interpretation of particularism in Hegel further by pointing to §337, Philosophy of Rights. As noted above, the Cambridge edition renders this section as ‘each state is ... a sovereign and independent entity in relation to others’ (my emphasis). According to the original version, however, it should be ‘each state ... is a sovereign and independent entity against [“gegen”] others’ (my emphasis and insertion). ‘Against’ means something very different than ‘in relation to’, namely, it communicates a much more aggressive and solipsistic notion. If one state is against another state, and each state in its absoluteness is, has, and ought to be, against each other state, there is no relation as something in common, but just opposition, which is another insinuation of the substantial particularity of states and nations (as their distinct forerunners).117 The particularity of states (and nations) is, however, not just a given fact, according to Hegel, but it is due to a metaphysical correspondence between ‘Being’ and ‘Ought’. The state, which is, is morally good and politically legitimate because it ought to be and because it is factual through the metaphysical providence of rationality. When Hegel qualifies this idea and restricts the identity between the ‘Ought’ and the ‘Being’ of a state to powerful states and those states only, which actually would be based on a nation (in the ethnic sense), we conceive once more the nationalistic inclination in his thinking. The rational identity between the ‘Ought’ and the ‘Being’ of a state actually would be provided by the circumstance that the nation as a state is ‘the spirit in its substantial rationality’ (in §337, Philosophy of Rights, Hegel describes the state also as the ‘ethical substance’; see also §331). With this idea, Hegel elevates the notion of particularity and distinctiveness of states into the spiritual realm of metaphysics. Particularized existence is thus something beyond men’s will and influence; it is given, and as such it has to be; and it ought to be because there is no chance to escape the commandments of metaphysical providence. They simply have to be fulfilled, or, as Hegel notes, such a spirit realizes itself, and it does that in and through each particular nation. Hence, each nation is in and for itself (an und für sich) the realization of the spirit in its rationality: ‘The relationship of states to one another is a relationship between independent entities and hence between particular wills’, Hegel notes some paragraphs later (§336, Philosophy of Rights; Cambridge edition). Hegel’s political notion of particularity is philosophically based on his Science of Logic (here 1969) and the principle ‘omnis determinatio est negatio’. This principle implies that ‘in order for a being ... to avoid empty abstractness, and to acquire determinateness, it must be “limited” or “negated”, in the sense that there must be something other than itself to which it can

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be contrasted, and through which its own positive being can be identified’ (Stern, 1989, p. 77). With regard to universalism Hegel argues that the category of the universal is itself empty and abstract because it contains no differentiation, and only by differentiation, that is, by developing something particular by which things can be distinguished from other ‘things’, they achieve real and concrete existence. They become ‘determinate by being differentiated into different particular individuals’ (Stern, 1989, p. 7). This principle applies to individual human beings as well as to states. In the inter-national realm, this principle tells us once more that states are real and accomplish real existence only by manifesting and materializing themselves as particular units on the basis of characteristics which are essentially distinct from other states. These particular characteristics are, last but not least, guaranteed by an ethnic notion of the state as ‘nation-state’ (or ‘the nation as a state’). As Robert Stern argues, Hegel’s perception of determinateness nonetheless comprises universalistic thinking because the very principles of particularity and differentiation refer to some universal which stands behind, and supports, the possibility that ‘something’ can be differentiated at all. Differentiation would thus require some essence, which could be differentiated at all and to which differentiation refers. Stern concludes that ‘although for Hegel each individual [state] must be particularized if it is to lose its abstractness and to come into being, this division of the universal into various specific instances does not mean that the universal is reduced to the status of a merely accidental common property; on the contrary, it is the universal essence of each of its instances’ (Stern, 1989, p. 78), and he points to Hegel’s Logic (here 1975, §24Z). Thus, according to Stern, there would be some notion of universalism in Hegel’s political philosophy. However, this universal principle is nothing but an abstract principle which is needed for logical reasons in Hegel’s construction as a metaphysically enabling essence to explain (and to legitimize) the existence of particular things, in our concern here of states. Hegel’s universalistic notion has hence no political reality and no real attributes, but exists as a logically necessary and metaphysical imagination only. Because universalism is in Hegel limited to such an abstract principle, it does not contain political principles, which could unite, or at least bridge, differences between particular entities in terms of common ethics or international legal standards; or, as Stern puts his criticism, ‘Hegel was too narrow in his conception of the kinds of differentiation that are to be found in the forms of human existence, and failed to show how it was possible to integrate into the community those types of radical difference between individuals that do in fact occur’ (Stern, 1989, p. 87). In terms of international politics, this implies that once states are differentiated and find their existence as particularistic units, they have nothing left in common other than the abstract principle pointing to the simple fact (which they only logically have in common) that they are differentiated. Alone, this circumstance does not

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constitute any substantial in-between and does not bridge concrete differences (in ethical, legal, and similar matters), but repetitively and reactively confirms and affirms their separateness and particularity. Scepticism about international law In the paragraphs on ‘World History’ in Philosophy of Rights, Hegel introduces his universalistic notion as universal ‘spirit’ which is supposed to materialize in particularistic nations (as states). This spirit would consist of, and emerge from, the antagonistic fight of states against each other. Antagonism, termed by Hegel as ‘the visible dialectic of the finite’, would produce world history, and it is the only political universal principle in Hegel’s conception of international order. However, this universal principle is the product of particularistic forces and hence paradoxically affirms the notion of a substantially given particularism of the inter-national. We finally read: ‘It is through this dialectic that the universal spirit, the spirit of the world [“Weltgeist”], produces itself in its freedom from all limits, and it is this spirit which exercises its right – which is the highest of all – over finite spirits in world history’ (§340, Philosophy of Rights; the Cambridge edition). It is ultimately due to this dialectical construction that Hegel can think in paradoxical terms and write: ‘The principles of the spirits of nations [Volksgeister] are in general of a limited nature because of that particularity in which they have their objective actuality and self-consciousness as existent individuals’ (§340, Philosophy of Rights; Cambridge edition). This understanding is elaborated at length by Hegel in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, which he held throughout the years from 1816 to 1830 at the universities of Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin (Hegel, 1995). These lectures can be read as a devotion to the idea demonstrating that not only political history, but also the general history of philosophy found their fulfilment and purpose – which appeared to have happened, according to Hegel, ironically exactly at his time and in his writings – in the actualization of the modern nationalist state as an absolute entity ‘in and for itself’. The complete history of mankind and its driving force, namely, world spirit, Hegel posits, had targeted, with necessity, at the realization of the nationstate and nationalism as ‘the basis of all higher life’ (Hegel, 1995, p. xxi). It is exactly this notion of the ‘revelation of God’ in the principle of national statehood ‘at the present day’ (1995, p. 698) – and, of course, its penetration of contemporary and future social, political, and intellectual life – according to which unleashed nationalism could develop and the ‘state’ in its particularity could become solidified and cemented as the ontological unit of modern (international) political thought.118 In the last section of his Lectures, Hegel consequently writes: ‘A new epoch has arisen in the world. It would appear as if the World-spirit had at least succeeded in stripping off from itself all alien objective existence and apprehending itself at last as absolute Spirit ... Spirit produces itself as ... the State’ (1995, p. 702).

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In epistemological terms, Hegel’s resort to the idea of metaphysical spirit and substantialized rationality is exactly the same as when premodern authors resort to anthropologically considered ethics, to the idea of, and belief in God, and to divine and natural law. What both constructivist principles have in common is the transfer of the argument’s rationality in something non-empirical and transcendental which is ‘intangible’ and ‘ineffable’ (for these terms in their philosophical meaning see Voegelin, 1990). Such a transcendental principle is construed as being responsible for the order ‘on earth’ and provides the guidelines for human life in political, ethical, and legal regards. There are, however, two fundamental differences, which are interrelated. First, whereas premodern conceptions of some transcendental being, which is said to provide the ordering principles for the world, keep the tension between the world and the eternal open, we observe in modern political conceptions (and we realize this in Hegel at his best) assumptions and suppositions of the realization and manifestation of the eternal, metaphysical principle in this world. In modern statist theories, the eternal is believed to manifest and realize itself in the state. This becomes obvious when we read in Hegel that ‘The nation [the nation as a state] is the spirit in its substantial rationality and immediate actuality’ or a ‘spiritual whole’ (§335, Philosophy of Rights).119 Second – and this touches directly upon our main hypothesis – the metaphysical principle of premodern authors was perceived as providing, while not materializing, universal guidelines for the ethical, political, and legal order of this world. Modern conceptions lack this belief in universalism. Their metaphysical principles provide only particularity and solipsism.120 This second difference becomes most obvious when Hegel discusses Kant’s idea of a perpetual peace (§333, Philosophy of Rights). Hegel writes: Kant’s idea [Vorstellung] of a perpetual peace guaranteed by a federation of states which would settle all disputes and which, as a power recognized by each individual state, would resolve all disagreements so as to make it impossible for these to be settled by war presupposes an agreement between states. But this agreement, whether based on moral, religious, or other grounds and considerations, would always be dependent on particular sovereign wills, and would therefore continue to be tainted with contingency. (Cambridge edition) It is very clear that Hegel is sceptical of Kant’s idea of peace. He is right in stating that such form of agreement as Kant is talking about rests upon shared notions, which are universally valid for all members of the federation. Alone, Hegel does not believe in the existence and possibility of such universal notions because agreements ‘would always depend on particular sovereign wills’. To be more concrete, Hegel does not believe in universal ‘moral, religious, or other grounds’, whereas Kant, as we have seen in

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the previous chapter, does.121 For Hegel, who is very different from Kant, the highest referential principle of the inter-national and of the relations between states is the ‘particular will’ of each state (§336; Philosophy of Rights). This notion of the particular will can be equated with what has later become termed, and what we know from neo-realist concepts, as the ‘national interest’. The following passage from §337 is helpful in this regard: The substantive weal of the state is its weal as a particular state in its definite interests and condition, its peculiar external circumstances, and its particular treaty obligations. Thus the government is a particular wisdom and not a universal providence ... So, too, its end in relation to other states; the principle justifying its wars and treaties, is not a general thought, such as philanthropy, but the actually wronged or threatened weal in its definite particularity. (Philosophy of Rights; Dyde translation) Particularity is regarded as the sanctifying practical principle of each state and of states’ politics. A state’s ultimate reference is its own well-being – not (eternal) peace, the well-being of humankind, and the reference to universal reason as in Kant; not domestic power legitimization, which generates ethical self-restraint in the conduct of external relations as in Hobbes; not universal reason, human rights, and jurisdiction as in las Casas and de Vitoria; not the obedience to divinity and common sense (‘sensus communis’) as in Augustine and Aquinas; not states’ and political leaders’ virtue to manage universal metaphysical forces such as fortuna and necessita as in Machiavelli; not the commitment to a universal legal principle such as pacta sunt servanda as in Thucydides; and not even paternalistic universalism as in Cicero – ‘a particular will [of the state which is] in its content its well-being’ (§336, Philosophy of Rights; Dyde translation).122 Let us come back to the discussion of recognition, which was mentioned at the beginning of this section. From his statement that the state is an absolute power, independent, and only committed to itself, Hegel concludes that each individual state has the right of recognition. Every state has, consequently, a right to be recognized by other states. This is not just any right in the realm of inter-national relations, but a primary and absolute, unconditional right,123 which, as we read in §338, Philosophy of Rights, has to be regarded even in war. Recognition is furthermore the only aspect with regard to which Hegel compares the state with the private person in civil society. He writes that ‘just as the individual person is not real unless related to others ... so the state is not really individual unless related to other states’ (§331, Philosophy of Rights; Dyde translation). In all other aspects, however, the state is not comparable with the private person. The vital reason for this difference is that the individual is living in a society which knows common legal standards, morality, and a common power that is superior to the individuals; which decides what is right and

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wrong; and, finally, which enacts its decisions. Such a power is, however, unknown in the inter-national realm; Hegel understands this lack as an empirical truth and as something theoretically impossible because the state is itself absolute, sovereign, and sacrosanct (for further discussion, see Brooks, 2004, and Jaeger, 2002). Another paradox is displayed here, which does confirm the particularity of states and the disintegration of the international, because the purpose and aim of recognition in Hegel is not to establish some commonality between states in the form of shared values and policies (what current IR calls an ‘international regime’ or what is called by the English School an ‘international society’; see below, Chapter III.2). Recognition finds its meaning solely in verifying the sovereignty and absolute power of states. Recognition in the Hegelian sense, although it has to be mutual as he argues, manifests, and results in, the acknowledgement and endorsement of a state’s status as an irreducible and almighty entity. The idea of confirming a state’s entity and sovereignty, through recognition, also underpins the unique case when states underlie common restrictions and obligations, namely, in war. As Hegel explains in §338, Philosophy of Rights, states have to recognize each other even during wartime because war is be to understood temporarily and warfare must not foreclose the possibility of future peace. However, peace is in Hegel not a value in itself,124 and the recognition of another state during war does not maintain or increase the prospects of reconciliation after the war. On the contrary, mutual obligations during wartime find their ratio merely in the idea that they affirm and confirm particularistic and individual sovereignty. We find this idea of mutual obligations in wartimes based upon recognition of the enemy’s sovereign rights prior to Hegel in, for example, Rousseau’s Social Contract (here 1994). The difference is, however, and that highlights the distinct feature of particularism in Hegel, to be found in the argument, which stands behind and backs that notion: Rousseau argues with reference to an idea of general justice, which alone could guarantee a mutual respect of common rights that are common insofar as and because the recognition of another’s rights is the normative basis of getting one’s own rights recognized. Thus, an a priori existing commonality is the object of recognition in Rousseau. Contrary to that, Hegel’s idea of recognition is oriented towards recognizing particularity for its own sake what is highlighted by his statement that strong and powerful states are neither seeking for, nor require, recognition. More of Hegel’s thoughts seem, however, to relate to war than to peace and can be found in the paragraphs prior to the section on ‘international law’ (§§324–329, Philosophy of Rights). Here, Hegel develops a view on war which seems to initiate the legacies, solidified during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by liberalist theories of statehood, national historiography, and geopolitical thought (see below), in which Kenneth Waltz has to be understood (even if he himself is not conscious of this) when

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he discussed the relations between war and domestic politics in Man, the State and War (see more on this below in Part IV). Hegel elaborates a view according to which war is perceived as an incremental momentum in the existence and life of a state. As Steven Smith argues, ‘Hegel’s purpose is to render war rational, that is, intelligible within the total compass of human experience ... Thus war, or at least the willingness to wage war, is made into a major component of statehood’ (Smith, 1983, pp. 627–8). In §324 of the Philosophy of Rights, Hegel notes: This is what makes it the moment in which the ideality of the particular attains its right and is actualized: War has the higher significance that by its agency ... the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions. As can be seen here, warfare of one state against another state fulfils a function related to domestic politics and provides another affirmative concept of the state’s absoluteness: in order to stabilize itself and on behalf of its own selfish well-being, Hegel regards war not only normatively as legitimate, but by the very nature of (this/his conceptualization of) the state even as necessary and unavoidable. It is primarily by war that a state can call its people to stand united behind the war efforts and thus prevent disintegration of the society into single interests. War thus aggregates the private interests which exist in a state. Through war, a state can reassert its primacy over individual orientations. According to Hegel, such a momentum is necessary ‘in order not to let them [the individuals of a state] get rooted and settled in this isolation and thus break up the whole into fragments and let the common spirit evaporate, government has from time to time to shake them to the very centre by war’ (Hegel, 1971, p. 474). The absoluteness of the state and the accomplishment of its metaphysical reason legitimate all means, even war, and qualify these means as essentially inherent in, and necessary for, the conduct of politics; as well as functionally required on behalf of the state’s primacy over all other aspects of human life. The selfish and solipsist notion of the state, and especially of recognition, reveals its full meaning in Hegel through the determination that recognition, as the fact of being acknowledged by others, is finally a need of weak states only. Consequently, it is only the state as a state in its concrete and practical existence to which Hegel’s concept of recognition applies, not to statehood as a metaphysical principle and theoretical concept. Alone for that reason, Hegel can esteem Napoleon Bonaparte’s position as rightful who is said to have stated, before the Peace of Campo Formio, that ‘the French Republic is no more in need of recognition than the sun is’. And Hegel added: ‘(His) words conveyed no more than that strength of existence [Existenz] ... carries with it a guarantee of recognition, even if this is not expressly formulated’ (§331, Addition G; Cambridge edition).

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2. National monumental historiography National monumental historiography has been inspired by the solipsistic metaphysics of Hegelian philosophy (see the previous chapter): and has been of tremendous influence for, as well as it was contemporaneously part of and interlinked with, the formal and institutional differentiation of academic disciplines, such as political geography (see the next chapter). In so doing, national monumental history was no phenomenon of one distinct (European) nation-state, but was the main approach to write history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.125 The imagination of the nation-state as a political, economic, social, ethnic, and cultural unit distinct from other similar units, which was actively supported by political and social movements in all European states and the United States, was strongly sustained by intellectual communities which further developed those imaginations writing narratives on single nation-states’ historical origins, uniqueness, singularities, might, glory, and sacredness (see Kramer, 1997; Berger, Eriksonas and Mycock, 2008, as well as references and literature discussed here). Because the production and spread of those narratives relied on emerging national systems of print media – including books, newspapers, leaflets, academic writings, poetry and fiction, folk songs, and children’s books – as well as on national festivities and holidays, the ontology of particularism experienced an elevation and at the same time an anchorage in the social and political consciousness of individual national populations and intellectual elites. All this is part of national monumental historiography, and of this narrative universe only a few examples of academic writing can be discussed here. Nevertheless, these examples will demonstrate the intellectual strategies and projects of the nationalization of political thought as it took place throughout the nineteenth century and carried on to affect political and academic notions and conceptualizations of inter-national politics in the twentieth century. A general characteristic of national monumental historiography, which in its very national manifestations attempted (quite successfully) to found the imagination of distinct peoples as a collective national subject, is the combination of a claim of historical objectivity and factuality with the creation of identity. This combination is accomplished by a historiographic methodology which constructs and mystifies national histories as a linear, continuous, and evolutionary process of cultural and political homogeneity from times immemorial up to the present day. The constructed history of a nation transcends actual temporality and is imagined as an ever-existing and hence timeless particularistic and monolithic bloc. The nationalistic tenets of monumental national historiography imply for inter-national political thought in the nineteenth century and its development into the discipline of International Politics/IR in the early twentieth century the collective penetration of academic perceptions and concepts with the paradigm

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of the nation-state (as visible in the foundation of political geography and geopolitics as an academic discipline; see the next chapter); for international politics, national historiography undoubtedly contributed to the manifestation of national ideologies and the nation-state as the reality of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to this image, cooperation among nation-states abides exclusively by the principles of ‘national interest’ and power politics, and the metaphysical claims of national uniqueness and eminence create a conflict pattern which is, in theory and as history showed, by nothing governable unless by the random coincidence of shared national interests and balances of power. The image of anarchy in international politics, understood as the absence of governing principles (and institutions) beyond the national superiority of states, finds its foundation in nineteenth century inter-national political thought, essentially formulated by national monumental historiography, plus Hegelian inter-national thought and geopolitics – even though the academic mainstream of the discipline of IR invented its own (and divergent) narratives about its legacies (see more on this in Part IV). Concepts of national identity in monumental national historiography The construction of national identity in nineteenth century historiography builds upon three main visions: the nation as an organic unit, the nation as the manifestation of God, and the nation as a being beyond time and space. All three features indicate essentialist visions of national identity and thus place a nation on whose behalf an individual author writes on the top of a hierarchy of nations in general: one’s own nation is imagined as superior to all other nations. This belief and the related three visions of the nation as an organic unit, as a manifestation of God, and as a being beyond time and space can be observed throughout the oeuvre of nearly all historians and philosophers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.126 With regard to the influence of these patterns on the development of IR as an academic discipline, we shall see direct legacies that feed into the school of structural realism (or neo-realism) and constitute main tenets in Waltz’s Theory of International Politics. The imagination of the nation as an organic unit also plays an important role in geopolitical thought, and it is impossible to decide who influenced whom since cross-references between geopolitical thinkers and historians are difficult to see. It therefore seems that authors from both streams drew upon an intellectual climate of organismic thinking which was predominant in the nineteenth century and finds its sources in the emergence of positivist thought and natural sciences.127 The imagination of the nation as an organic unit supposes the idea of the existence of nations as something natural and takes the division of the world into nations for granted. This division is believed to correspond with the natural order and further posits that the process of history was linearly

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directed towards the realization of national communities as substantial units. By this means of historical necessity, the nation is posited to be an entity in and through time. This teleological notion is common among nineteenth-century historians, and it is, of course, always the own nation which represents this entity while other nations are perceived as incomplete and inferior. We see this, among others, in Heinrich von Treitschke’s History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (1916), especially in Volume Two, where he, ostensibly neutrally, describes ‘The Beginnings of the Germanic Federation, 1814–1819’. By itself, this title reveals an essentialist underpinning because Treitschke terms the states, which in 1871 will be invented and constituted as the ‘Deutsche Reich’, Germanic instead of German (which would be the literal translation). Hereby, he conveys the impression and belief that those states and their then-emerging political unification would reach back for centuries in history, would find their common heritage in the Germanic tribes of the fifth century AC, and would possess permanent, fixed, and determinable interests.128 Treitschke narrates history and politics as if they were directed towards the building and perfection of nationstates and, in this case, of the ‘Germanic Federation’. This essentialist view is accompanied by the imagination of a ‘German soil’ on which this historic linearity occurs, to which this history is incrementally linked, and which would be the natural territorial frame of national unity. The same observation can be made and the same argument be found in the essay History (1882) by the English historian Thomas B. Macaulay (1800–1859) in which he talks of an ‘essentially English’ character. He further posits an identity between political order, the characteristics of a nation, and the ground (or soil) on which the nation, here the English nation, is dwelling. The English nation is thereby imagined as an entity ‘melted down’ over the centuries into ‘one homogeneous mass’ with a distinct national character (Macaulay, History of England, Introduction). Everything that might disturb the development and manifestation of this entity is regarded as antagonistic and hostile by nature. These imaginaries constitute a distinct conflict pattern of inter-national relations, which are incrementally built upon the idea of the nation as an organic unit. This idea posits both the natural belonging of an individual to the body of a national community and the homogeneity of that unit in terms of political, social, religious, ‘ethnic’, and racial criteria. With regard to the idea of the natural belonging of an individual to a national organic unit, individual life is said originally and inseparably to be connected to, and embedded in, the national whole. Jules Michelet, a French historian (1787–1874), writes: Go to your books of natural history, of physiology, and endeavour to grasp for once the meaning of these words – Organic Unity. It is the unity of one nation, – of France. It is the unity of a people incapable of

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being dismembered; – of a national body whose circulation throughout is so rapid and complete that no separation of its parts can take place. (1871, p. 97) and Alone France watered with the blood the tree it planted. (1973, p. 185) We not only recognize a language, which metaphorically borrows from physical science to symbolize its organistic visions (like ‘circulation’, ‘body’, ‘blood’, ‘tree’), but we also learn that this organic unit is construed as providing a natural unity of hearts and morality among its members. Therefore, membership in the national body is nothing that can be acquired, rather, the individual is incorporated into the body by birth. In this regard, the nation even outranks the family and the paternal and maternal ties of the individual. The individual, with all his or her feelings, soul, and beliefs, merges into the nation and its all-encompassing entity. Michelet tells a narrative of a young boy who was taken by his father to see a military parade on the Avenue des Champs-Élyséés in Paris: Look, my son, look: there is France; there is your native land! All this is like one man – with one soul and one heart. They would all die for a single man, and each one ought also to live and die for all ... They are leaving their father and their aged mother who will need them. You will do the same, for you will never forget that your mother is France ... and let them love that house of France as much as or more than the paternal home ... The first lesson is the country as a doctrine and as a principle. Then the country as a legend. (1973, pp. 204, 206, 207) The nation, however, not only levels family relations and substitutes father and mother by elevating the individual to a higher unit, which is said to be a doctrine and principle at the same time, but furthermore makes all differences in class, interest, and social status forgotten by creating some ‘harmonious whole’ (Michelet, 1973, p. 193). The nation hence not only inescapably absorbs the individual (whose ‘attachment lasts as long as the native land. It is indestructible as their mortal soul’; Michelet, 1973, p. 157), but also elevates the individual to some higher unit beyond individual differences. The nation hence represents the reference for all individual life and longings. This construction results in the politically powerful narrative of loyalty, guilt, and sacrifice. This narration is not only powerful because it influences inter-national political theory in the twentieth century, but also because it manifested in national social and political consciousness throughout European nationstates in the nineteenth century and onwards, delivering the ideology for

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mobilizing vast armies and for maintaining military apparatuses which fought two devastating world wars. The composition of the nation as an organic unit and the subsequent absorption of the individual into the national community, declassifying all other relations and social and political positions as subordinate, allows the further construction of the individual’s position towards his or her nation in terms of individual guilt. The nation, as the highest substance and institution, is believed not only to enable life, but also to further deliver happiness, pride, and glory for everyone. In this narrative, the individual finds himself or herself in a position of responsibility for the nation and original guilt in case he or she is perceived as disloyal. Before this background, Treitschke argues for means of punishment for national disloyalty (1916, p. 46); and Michelet requests the willingness in every person to sacrifice his or her life for the well-being of the nation (in The People, ‘Of Association’). In these motives of guilt and sacrifice, the religious character of the nation becomes obvious,129 next to the idea of the nation as a direct manifestation of God (see below). A typical expression of this can again be found in Michelet when he writes: People seldom sacrifice themselves for anything but what they believe to be infinite. For sacrifice they must have a God, an altar; a God in whom men recognize themselves and love one another. How then could we sacrifice ourselves? We have lost our Gods! ... It was necessary that God should have a second period and appear upon earth in his incarnation of 1789. He then gave to association its broadest and truest form, what alone can still unite us, and through us save the world. Oh, glorious mother France! You who are not only our own, but who are destined to carry liberty to every nation, teach us to love one another in you. (1973, p. 176) The nation as the altar for individual and collective sacrifice; the nation as the infinite, the eternal, which gives meaning to the individual lives by demanding them – it is difficult to imagine an idea being more paradoxical. The nation as God’s incarnation is another (powerful) paradox because exactly this claim is made on behalf of each modern nation-state by the respective authors of national monumental historiography. We find the same narratives as exemplified here by Michelet, for example, in Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Ernst Moritz Arndt with regard to a German nation and the anti-Napoleonic wars; in George Bancroft and (even, one might not think) in the Federalist Papers with regard to the United States and the War of Independence; and in Macaulay with regard to England and the reign of King James II. The narrative of God’s incarnation and manifestation in the (one’s own) nation goes hand in hand with the ideas of national singularity, uniqueness, and originality. This is again expressed in Michelet when he notes: ‘No doubt

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every nation represents an idea important to the human race. But great God! How much more true this is of France!’ (1973, p. 183). And what else could provide and ‘guarantee’ a greater degree of both singularity and originality as if God ‘himself’ becomes incarnated (as Michelet writes) and manifests in the nation? Through this vision, the nation is being construed as something sacred, and nationalism is being founded as a religion. The nation becomes God, and God becomes manifest in the nation.130 The idea of sacrifice experiences here another enhancement because the nation appears as a predestined and sacred entity. And more than that, God needs the nation to prove his own existence; the nation is the locus of God’s revelation. This idea is perhaps most prominently represented in Fichte’s Reden an die Deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation).131 It is unnecessary to say, though nevertheless important to highlight, that each nation makes this similar declaration, and thereby a situation of essentialist, controversial claims emerges while each nation claims that it represents the highest metaphysical unit. The third main vision of the construction of national identity is an immediate consequence of the previous claim, namely, the vision that the nation would be exempt from the transience of temporal being. This determination declares that the body of the nation is exceptional and a supernatural being. That is because the nation, just like God – who, however, is and has become the nation – and unlike all other forms of life and being, is not part of the circle of becoming and dying away but is (said to be) eternal. The nation transcends all other forms of being and existence; it is something fixed beyond the ever-changing arbitrariness of time/temporality and space. According to the view of most national historiographers, the concurrence of similar visions by other nations is not necessarily a paradox. It seems they accept a world substantially divided into different nations, each claiming the same kind of originality, uniqueness, singularity, providence, and sacredness. Another quote from Michelet is most instructive in this sense: The most powerful means employed by God to create and develop distinctive originality is to maintain the world harmoniously divided into those grand and beautiful systems which we call nations, each of which opens to man a different field of action and is a living education ... A too perfect a harmony would be nothing but meaningless noise ... (but) strengthening our individuality and acquiring a more powerful and more productive originality. God preserve us from losing our individual identity in him. (1973, pp. 180, 181) The history of war and warfare in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should prove them wrong, and the conflict pattern which is incremental to this kind of particularistic outlook and their religious elevations should burst in the face of these nations. But how was the inter-national order perceived in national historiography and what were the ordering factors?

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National historiographic visions of inter-national order With regard to its outlook on the relations among states and inter-national order, national historiography lays the foundation for an intellectual feature which shall become a key theorem of neo-realist and neo-liberal theory in the twentieth century – balance of power – and enforces a conflict pattern of inter-national relations which is construed as the normal relation among sovereign nation-states. I will discuss this conflict pattern first because balance of power thinking is a consequence of it and appears to be indeed the only viable rationale for an inter-national world made up of this kind of conflict.132 The three visions of the construction of national identity discussed above – the nation as an organic unit, the nation as a manifestation of God, and the nation as being beyond time and space – are necessarily leading to the imagination of one’s own nation as the highest political, social, and moral unit on earth. The hierarchical gradation of nations, with one’s own nation placed on top of this hierarchy, has been mentioned above; in addition, this imagination and its declaration of the national unit as a sacred entity not only excludes all other political units as essentially different, but also denies them a status as alternative options of living. In the same way as a monotheistic ‘God’ does not allow other Gods beneath, the nation does not and cannot allow other nations living and being accepted at the same rank of originality and uniqueness. There is only one consequence of this way of imagining the world, and that is the struggle of each nation against other nations whose ideology is informed by the same visions and by a similar claim of superiority. This is a fight of highest political, social, and moral units while the acceptance of other nations as equal would mean simultaneously to deny the exceptional position of one’s own nation. The ‘holiness’ of one’s own nation forbids recognition of others as equal. This pattern is very different from the idea of recognition as we know it, for example, from las Casas and Kant (see above). Their idea of mutual recognition presupposes the perception of other states as equal and consequently a self-perception of not being something higher than they. The construction of national identity, based upon the three visions discussed, and the ideology of the nation-state, which claim the identity of the nation and all nationals with the political organization of the state as a ‘harmonious whole’, do not allow recognition of other nation-states as equal. Because other nationstates claim the same principles as highest principles, which are already occupied for the construction of one’s own nation, national identity and glory and their validity for, and applicability by, others have to be denied, even at the cost of war. The metaphor of individual sacrifice has been discussed above, and it is this sacrifice for the nation which is requested again and again throughout the oeuvre of national historiographers. Finally, the maintenance of national identity, for which all nationals would be obliged to fight and give away their life, is said to be in the ultimate national interest

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of the nation and state. Thus, the national interest requests the life of the individual for the higher purpose of the nation, which, as a sacred unit, transcends the individual and the value of individual life. Universal ethics with reference to a common mankind and common good, which would apply to all political communities, is replaced by national mores, which are constructed with reference to one nation only and apply to the idiosyncratic unit of one (one’s own) nation alone. How can a world constituted by nations that all make the same claim of being superior to each other be organized without permanent clashes and war? The dominant answer given to this question by national historiographers (and from this nineteenth century stream of inter-national political thought straight into neo-realism and neo-liberalism) is balance of power. The European concert of power is the immediate outcome of this sort of inter-national political thought – in company with geopolitical thought which contributed to the essentialism and determinism of national historiography in some important ways (see next chapter). The European concert of power in the nineteenth century served as the template of international order and its permanent structures for neo-realist authors in the twentieth century who tended to take this concert as the substantial manifestation of how inter-national politics is instead of understanding this concert as the consequence of a certain world construction and its underlying ontology. The rationale of balance of power rests upon the idea that no state, or alliances of states, grows stronger that any other state, or alliance of states, thus that there is an equilibrium of power among states (or in contemporary terminology, a zero sum game). From a particularistic perspective, this rationale appears as the only possible way to avoid war and to stabilize the relation among states. The underlying assumption of this rationale is that unbalanced power relations will initiate conflict and war because nation-states will use this imbalance in order to push forward their own interests against other states. Given the logic of particularistic ontology, nation-states are supposed to act according to this assumption because they have to constantly affirm and reaffirm their power positions and identity. However, a consequence of this rationale is that, assuming a steady equilibrium of power as the unconditional necessity for this idea to work, imbalances in power relations lead to vacuums which states aspire to occupy. Because a perfect equilibrium of power is impossible – both factually as well as with regard to security and threat perceptions of each state – the logic of the balanceof-power rationale, which aspires to equilibriums, necessarily creates (real or the feeling of the existence of) vacuums and hence instigates a spiral of permanent power acquisition and armament. The concept of power, which underlies this rationale, can be termed the predecessor of a crude neo-realist notion of power according to which power is understood as being constituted by material factors such as territory, populations, gross national products, and weapons. In Kantian terms, such a system is not creating peace

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nor is a balance-of-power equilibrium peace, but rather it is the absence of war with a permanent risk of the outbreak of war. War is a permanent possibility, states constantly prepare for warfare, and inter-national order is principally at the brink of war. The particularistic ontology of nationalism does not allow for any other principles of international politics. The Concert of Europe, also termed the ‘Congress System’, as it developed and lasted from 1815, with the Congress of Vienna, to 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, is the empirical example where this logic manifests; not accidentally, this period came to an end with a devastating and apocalyptic war. With the five major nation-states of Prussia, Austria, the British Empire, Russia, and France as the main actors of the Concert of Europe, we find prime examples of constructed national identities (in the sense discussed above), particularistic ontologies, and power politics. From a balanceof-power perspective (or, a twentieth-century ‘neo-realist’ perspective), the Concert of Europe might be regarded as a system of international stability which prevented war during the period from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to at least the Crimean War (1854–1856) between Russia, on the one side, and France, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other side; from a critical perspective, however, which reveals the perils of national identity construction and the fragile logic of the balance-of-power rationale, the Concert of Europe and its final collapse with two more major wars among European main powers – the AustroPrussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 – appears to be a pattern of inter-national order which is, logically speaking, a consequence of a particularistic construction of identity and order. This assessment is based on a genealogical view of the development of international politics which perceives certain modes and phases of political thought and political order and their underlying political practices and intellectual frameworks not as historical entities or in comparison with other modes and phases, likewise framed as entities, but in both their historical becoming and their legacies for future theorizing and practices. The merit of such a genealogical approach becomes obvious when we look at Paul Schroeder’s paper on ‘The 19th-Century International System: Changes in Structure’ (Schroeder, 1986), which is one of the few sophisticated treatments of the Concert of Europe in the discipline of IR. Its limitations, however, in assessing the Concert of Europe’s performance as a peace system are also articulate when he, rightfully though, observes major changes in the international/inter-national order from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century and argues that these changes were due to ‘systemic change’. He notes: ‘The 1815 settlement did not restore a 18th-century-type balance of power or revive 18th Century political practices; the European equilibrium established in 1815 and lasting well into the 19th century differed sharply from so-called balances of power in the 18th. The systemic change ... proved enduring; it lasted into the latter part of the century, despite the upheavals of 1848–1850 and the wars

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of 1854–1871 ... 19th-century political patterns of conduct differed from their 18th-century counterparts ... because the two prevailing systems afforded different systemic constraints and possibilities for action’ (1986, p. 2). This perspective held by Schroeder emphasizes the rather peaceful character of nineteenth-century balance of power, which would have lasted for nearly one century; the idea of equilibrium, together with the system of diplomacy emerging from the Congress of Vienna, had created ‘constraints’ for European nation-states and hence exerted a disciplining function. We learn many details of Schroeder’s analysis of how these ‘constraints’ – equilibrium of power and diplomacy – operated, but the virtual possibility of war which overshadows such a system and the outbreaks of actual wars (Crimean War, Austria-Prussia, France-Prussia), leading in the early twentieth century to the eventual complete collapse of this system, are not seen in their real virulence, namely, as incrementally anchored in the logic of this system. Indeed, Schroeder seems to deny that, in the nineteenth-century system, states steadily longed for power affirmation, and he does not see the genuine conflict pattern of particularistic constructions of the nation-state and an inter-national order made up of those states. For that reason, Schroeder writes ‘that for most of the period covered, up to 1890 or 1900 at least, there was no such struggle for mastery in the sense of a conscious drive to achieve pre-eminent position and dominant power’ (1986, p. 9; emphasis mine). Hence, Schroeder contradicts A. J. P. Taylor’s judgement about The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848–1918 (Taylor, 1954). A more critical and genealogical perspective would not only put Schroeder’s assessment in question, but also would put more weight on the European wars and consider the consequences of the nineteenth-century system. In doing so, such a perspective would include, as Taylor does, the First World War (see also Elrod, 1976) when the Concert of Europe came to a self-inverted and tragic end and collapsed through interstate conflict and war. Conflict and war can be termed the emblematic examples of the intrinsic deadlocks of particularistic ontology and solipsistic epistemology in inter-national political thought as represented in Hegelian philosophy, national monumental historiography, and geopolitical thought.

3. Geopolitical thought Geopolitical thought shall be the third example discussed in this study which represents the shift from universal and universalistic to particularistic ontology in the history of international/inter-national political thought. Geopolitics is, of course, too vast a field to be dealt with here in general. A comprehensive account would comprise the emergence and beginnings of geopolitics as an academic discipline;133 the discussion of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures of the discipline, investigating their individual oeuvres,134 as well as traditions in political thought which

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are underpinned by geographical assumptions;135 the radicalization of early geopolitical thinking in the German version of Geopolitik and its extenuated and critical adaptation in the United States;136 the role of geopolitics as a ‘security discourse’;137 the reemergence of geopolitical thinking in current foreign policies, primarily of the United States and Russia (amongst others, see Clover, 1999); and finally, the wide range of poststructuralist approaches of ‘critical geopolitics’ which might be characterized as the attempt to reveal and deconstruct the (sometimes naïve, sometimes offensive) implicit and explicit power assumptions (and ambitions) and the ‘mythic’ character of geopolitical strategies and representations.138 This recital is by no means comprehensive, but it at least makes clear that this chapter would not be able to pay justice to these, and more, histories, approaches, and schools if it aspired to discuss ‘geopolitics’ in general. What rather is the intention of this chapter is to analyze major tenets of geopolitical thought in light of the overall argument of this study and to examine its ontological stance in terms of the universalism-particularism framework. The argument shall be that traditional geopolitical thought represents a centre-periphery model of dividing the world in whose centre(s) the ontological unit of the/a particular nation-state is placed. The nationstate might thereby be perceived as the core of imperial order or as the centre from which ‘civilization’ would spread, steadily enlarging its spheres of influence139 or persisting as a self-contained and closed territorial unit.140 In any case, the nation-state is conceived as the ontological fixed point of political order and visions thereof. As such, geopolitical thought is not embedded in a universal or universalistic framework anchored in state-transcending images such as law, ethics, reason, and/or cooperation. This does not mean that geopolitical thinkers would not eventually support inter-national cooperation and supranational norms or would not think in terms of ‘circles of civilization’ beyond the state (which they explicitly do; see below). It does, however, imply that these are features to be produced from the categorical point of departure of the particularistic nation-state rather than being conceived as ontological qualities in their own right, which would act as the referential focus of, and normative guideline for, international political theory and agency. The following discussion will first problematize the idea of the geographical contingency of politics because it seems to be incremental in all geopolitical thinking throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This, considered by itself, is nothing exceptional because this assumption constitutes the link between ‘geo’ and ‘politics’, an assumption which oscillated between construing the geographical contingency of politics as, on the one side, more deterministic and, on the other side of the spectrum, more conditional. In both cases, however, geopolitical thinking is underpinned by some form of organismic ideas which envisions the nation-state as the territorial and cultural unit that is the natural result of processes of

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geographical determination and/or conditioning. Those processes, whether conceived as deterministic or conditional, and their results, that is, the formation of the nation-state, are again understood as historically longtermed, if not eternal, formulas or ‘laws’ of history and politics. From a geopolitical perspective and with the emergence of political geography as an academic discipline and ‘science’ (seeking as such for timeless truth and eternal ‘realities’), history and politics act and ‘operate’ under the paradigm of geographical contingency which, parallel with organism (and very often biologism and racism), makes the nation-state appear as the unit into which the world and inter-national politics is naturally and intractably particularized. This thinking seems to be characteristic for geopolitics from its foundation as an academic discipline in the late nineteenth century to at least the middle of the twentieth century. The geographical contingency of politics The idea that the political order of a community is influenced by its territorial size and location and therefore has to be drafted with respect to these geographical features can, in Western political thought, be traced back at least to the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle when they considered the ideal conditions for a polis. In Machiavelli, geography also played a distinctive role insofar as he believed that the military leader of a state should be well informed about the topography of the battlefield in order to plan wisely his strategies of attacking, defending, and eventually retreating. The factor of climate, in addition to topography, can be found most prominently in Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois, while both climate and topography also played a major role in his view regarding the differences of political and legal systems, including critical statements about the suitability and nonsuitability of republican government depending on climatic conditions, a statement which amounted in his argument of despotism in the Orient. And also the appreciation of Napoleon Bonaparte may also be well-known: La politique des toutes des puissances est dans leur geographie. The relation between a nation’s character and its physical environment, described by Jean Gottmann as often ‘oversimplified’ in political theory (Gottmann, 1951, p. 156), has a long tradition in Western politics (and many current studies undertake valuable efforts to critically reveal geographical imaginations picturing identity and determining ‘otherness’ in past and present politics and related security, immigration, cultural, and foreign policy discourses141). It was, however, not before the late nineteenth century that this relation developed into a more coherent body of academic teachings with the establishment of geography as an academic discipline, foremost in England, France, Germany, and the United States. Among the most influential writers on nineteenth-century geography was Sir Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) whose legacies extend to the present day and whose teachings are currently experiencing a vivid revival now that

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geopolitical thinking – having been most influential during the Cold War – is becoming (again) more popular after it underwent a short decline in the Western world during the 1990s.142 Mackinder can be seen as the founder of a ‘new geography,’ and a decisive step towards the institutionalization of geography occurred when he was appointed reader in geography at the University of Oxford in 1884, when he became involved in the foundation of the University of Reading, when he acted as director of the London School of Economics from 1903 to 1908, and when he founded the Geographical Association, over which he presided from 1913 to 1946. J. F. Unstead argues that before these significant activities, which had been influentially supported by the Royal Geographic Society, ‘there was not one Geography but two Geographies almost entirely separate: Physical Geography on the one side and Political Geography on the other’ (Unstead, 1949, p. 47). What had so far been something of a supporting, albeit powerful, assumption, namely, the relation between geographical features and politics, became lifted into the status of an academic discipline and ‘science’ which was searching for regularities, laws, and ‘external realities’ between geography as the static and politics as the momentum of human history (with regard to a similar development in Germany and the United States, see for an overview Gyorgy, 1944). In 1887, Mackinder published an article called ‘The Scope and Method of Geography’ in which he incisively argues for the unity of physical and political geography and posits a clear hierarchy between both. This hierarchical relation will finally be responsible for a spectrum between determinism and contingency, and the definition of the relation between physical and political geography oscillates between determinism and contingency. In Mackinder’s view, the primacy belongs to physical geography, and consequently the design of this hierarchy occurs as a deterministic and causal relationship between physical geography and politics and history. He writes: I propose ... to define geography as the science whose main function is to trace the interaction of man in society and so much of his environment as varies locally ... Before the interaction can be considered, the elements which are to interact mist be analyzed. One of these elements is the varying environment, and the analysis of this is, I hold, the function of physical geography ... We hold that no rational political geography can exist which is not built upon and subsequent to physical geography ... Perhaps nowhere is the damage done to geography by the theory which denies its unity better seen than in the case of physical geography. The subject has been abandoned to the geologists, and has in consequence a geological basis. It appears to me, therefore, that in the present decade we are for the first time in a position to attempt, with some degree of completeness, a correlation between the larger geographical and the larger historical generalizations. For the first time we can perceive something of the real proportion

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of features and events on the stage of the whole world, and may seek a formula which shall express certain aspects, at any rate, of geographical causation in universal history. (Mackinder, 1887, pp. 153, 158, 176; emphasis mine) The realization of this program manifests in Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, which he wrote in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I and the Treaties of Versailles, problematizing, and finally criticizing US President Woodrow Wilson’s idea of a League of Nations (Mackinder, 1942). Especially in chapter 4, ‘The Landman’s Point of View’, and chapter 5, ‘The Rivalry of Empire’, he presents a detailed description of worldwide physical geographies, with regards to steppes, deserts, mountain chains, rivers, forests, and shorelines, and draws conclusions from such features about the development and progress of social and political histories of peoples, tribes, states, areas, and whole continents. Two paragraphs from chapter 5 might be of special interest here: the first paragraph indicates the idea that world politics and great strategy are at the disposal of the geographer, his imaginations, and his pencil, and thus implicitly contains the vision of politics and history being both determined by the realities of physical geographies and being object of the representations of the geographer; the second paragraph explicitly states the definitional role of national and imperial geography. Let us now divide our Europe into East and West by a line so drawn from the Adriatic to the North Sea that Venice and the Netherlands may lie to the west, and also that part of Germany which has been German from the beginning of European history, but so that Berlin and Vienna are to the east, for Prussia and Austria are countries which the Germans have conquered and more or less forcible Teutonized. On the map thus divided let us >>think through<< the history of the last four generations: it will assume a new coherency. (Mackinder, 1942, p. 86) And: Geography defines co-operation and amity as well as war and conflict. Thus far we have been thinking of the rivalry of empires from the point of view of strategical opportunities, and we have come to the conclusion that the Word-Island and the Heartland are the final geographical realities in regard to sea-power and land-power, and that East Europe is essentially a part of the Heartland. (Mackinder, 1942, p. 99; emphasis mine) These paragraphs also contain Mackinder’s most famous belief, namely, his belief in the existence of a World-Island, or ‘Heartland’, of human history into which this determinism presumes. Mackinder’s geopolitical theorem of a ‘heartland’ has been appropriately described, and criticized,

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as ‘grand strategy’ (Blouet, 2005; O’Tuathail, 1994; Parker, 1982), with Mackinder suggesting that this continental area is to be perceived as the strategically most decisive geographical region of the world. World history has been determined, and will be settled in the future, on the basis of who holds power over this region, which he also terms ‘the geographical pivot of history’ (Mackinder, 1904). Furthermore, this argument is embedded in some idea of the ‘end of (geographic) history’ because he believed that the world, at the end of the nineteenth century, had evolved into what he called a ‘closed system’ (Mackinder, 1887, p. 176; also Fettweiss, 2000), that is, he assumed that there were no undiscovered regions in the world any more (apart from the Arctic and Antarctic), and thus a stage in history had been achieved where the world as a whole could be geographically examined and represented (mapped) as a complete entity. The definition of the relation between physical and political geography as deterministic is a consequence of this speculative and metaphysical credo: if all ‘facts’ (of relevance) seem to be known, what should be hindering the establishment of causalities and determinisms? For Mackinder, world history, which is accessible as an entity, is furthermore characterized by a constant conflict between land and sea power, and, as his mythical appreciation of the ‘heartland’ signifies, he believed that land power would prevail: It is evident that the Heartland is as real a physical fact within the World-Island [which is supposed to be European and Eurasian continent] as is the World-Island itself within the ocean, although its boundaries are not quite so clearly defined ... The Heartland ... includes the Baltic Sea, the navigable Middle and Lower Danube, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia, Tibet, and Mongolia ... The Heartland is the region to which, under modern conditions, sea-power can be refused access, though the western part of it lies without the region of Arctic and Continental drainage ... (We) have come to the conclusion that the World-Island and the Heartland are the final geographical realities. (Mackinder, 1942, pp. 80, 78, 99) And finally: The Heartland is the greatest natural fortress on earth. (Mackinder, 1943, p. 603) His ideas on the heartland are, however, not only interesting as an example of great strategy (including ideas on balance of power), but also with regard to their exemplifying the way in which geographical determinism operates. This determinism encompasses not only world history but also all things which fall within the realm of social and political life. In his article ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, Mackinder denotes, for example,

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religion and the spread of religion with ‘physical conformation’ and argues that ‘Buddhism’, ‘Brahaminism’, ‘Mahometanism’ and ‘Christianity’ would coincide with the four geographical parts of the heartland (1904, p. 186).143 Ellen Churchill Semple, the first influential American female geographer (1863–1932), offers another example of deterministic thought, which might be even more pronounced than in Mackinder. In her article ‘Geographical Location as a Factor in History’ (1908), she attempts to establish causal relations not only between geography, history, and strategy, but also between geographical locations and political, social and economic order, ethnicity, and race. Her conviction is captured by the following statement that ‘(location) ... means climate and plant life at one end of the scale, civilization and political status at the other’. She notes: Clearly defined natural locations, in which barriers of mountains and sea draw the boundaries and guarantee some degree of isolation, tend to hold their people in a calm embrace, to guard them against outside interference and infusion of foreign blood, and thus to make them develop the national genius in such direction as the local geographic conditions permit. These are the conspicuous areas of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of national differentiation which goes on in such secluded locations ... On the other hand, the fact that such a district embraces a certain number of geographic features, and encompasses them by obstructive boundaries, is of immense historical importance; because this restriction leads to the concentration of the national powers, to the more thorough utilization of natural advantages, both racial and geographical, and thereby to the growth of an historical individuality. (Semple, 1908, pp. 67, 69; see also Semple, 1911) Mackinder’s and Semple’s determinism of physical geographic conditions on political, social, cultural, religious, and economic life lead to a further pattern of geopolitical thought, namely, that of Euro- or Western-centrism. World history is said to take place and to be shaped in certain geographical areas of the world – Europe, Eurasia, and the West – while other world regions are stigmatized as being of secondary or no importance at all. This pattern creates not only a substantial political hierarchy between states and world regions by limiting the space of history and historical progress to these respective regions, but also constructs a category of ‘otherness’ according to which those subsumed under this category are said to be different (and hierarchically subordinated) by substantial criteria anchored in geographical, and thus, as the belief continues, ‘permanent’ and ‘unchangeable’ conditions. As a consequence, the identity of ‘otherness’ is perceived as not changeable and as being of a permanent nature.

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The hierarchy which is implicit in this construction also entails the notion of civilization, and subsequently, of non-civilization. Those states and regions of the world where history is said to take place are identical with those conceived as civilized and progressing. They are the subjects of history and historical innovation, while other world regions appear to be backward. Additional to this, this notion of civilization and centres of historical development goes hand in hand with racial and ethnic images, and thus seemingly allows this notion to be concretized and even applied to distinct nations and peoples, past and present. As an example of this pattern, we read in Mackinder: The late professor Freeman held that the only history which counts is that of the Mediterranean and European races. In a sense, of course, this is true, for it is among these races that have originated the ideas which have rendered the inheritors of Greece and Roman dominant throughout the world. (Mackinder, 1887, pp. 176, 177) And it is of course Mackinder’s heartland concept itself, which limits the occurrence of world history to a certain region by, at the same time, excluding others and denying them a key part of humanity, in both terms of acting as subjects in history and of participating in social and political temporality. With regard to the ‘heartland’, this notion is most obvious by only the title of the article ‘The geographical pivot of history’ (1904), the ‘pivot’ being the heartland. When we read this article in combination with his Democratic Ideals, his vision of civilization becomes clearly perceptible because he distinguishes between a fundamentally opposed and essentially different Europe West and East, and he terms Western Europe the ‘real’ Europe. Those differences were, however, not only due to geographical conditions but also much more with regard to ‘civilization’. Mackinder perceives the ‘superiority of Western Europe according to its higher civilization’ (1942, p. 106), and therefore concludes a natural unity of Western Europe against both its Eastern parts and the rest of the world. In this geopolitical vision, geography and the assumptions of certain geographical conditions coincide with the notion of ‘civilization’, with visions of a historically grown naturalness of West European states (particularly Germany) as well as with projections about the political significance of nations, nation-states, peoples, cultures, and civilizations in relation to their geographical location. The geopolitical feature of historicity, that is, of dividing the world into hierarchical zones of historical progress and ‘civilization’, which had massive impact on the development and emergence of the concept of ‘international society’ and the question of recognition in international law (see below in Chapter III.2), has become most influential in inter-national political theory during the twentieth century and can even be traced in the political thought of the European Union, especially with regard to accession and enlargement politics. A detailed discussion of these influences would

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distract from the analytical focus of this chapter,144 however, this chapter will come back to this geopolitical-historiographic narrative with regard to its conceptualization in the work of Nicholas J. Spykman and his mathematical vision of a world centre-periphery model. In an epistemological perspective, especially with regard to the twentieth-century development of geography and social sciences in general, it is crucial to acknowledge that it was not only the belief that the world as a whole would have become an object of geographical examination and representation which is liable for this determinism. In addition, the imagination of the calculability and measurability of factors related to the human world had a major impact on the development of, and belief in, geographical determinism. And physical geography, with its clear lines and structures of forests, desert, coasts, and other physical features was conceived as providing exactly the possibility of measuring and quantifying factors of social relevance. Mackinder argues that ‘geographical quantities ... are more measurable and more nearly constant than the human’s and hence, a geographical ‘formula’ for application to past and present politics would be expectable (1904, p. 192). Mathematical visions are suggested and introduced here, and they will indeed rank high in the further development of political geography in the twentieth century (see below on Spykman); an intermediate step, however, between calculability/measurability and mathematical formula consists in the imagination that geographical factors represent something of eternal existence and are not subject to change as human affairs are. Applied to political, social, cultural, and economic life, geographical eternities are conceived also to provide stability to the study of humanities and to free human affairs from permanent change and transformation. Methodological ravines brought in from physical geography were supposed to second this vision. The final goal of this epistemology is to accomplish a stage of geopolitical knowledge which allows prediction of the course of political life and action. Although this development is typical for nineteenth- and twentiethcentury positivism, but represents with Mackinder and Semple just its beginnings and foundations, positivism in political geography, as in other social sciences, flourished around the middle of the twentieth century, social sciences becoming increasingly modelled after natural sciences. One of the most outstanding figures of political geography, who represents geopolitical thought around the middle of the twentieth century, is Nicholas J. Spykman (1893–1943). He is probably best known as the forefather of the US Cold War strategy of containment. Spykman not only represents another example of geopolitics as a grand strategy and a ‘security discourse’, but he also is a key figure for the further development of political geography as a ‘science’ which should provide ‘facts’, mathematical exactness, and predictability to the fluctuating issues of politics.

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With regard to determinism, Spykman appears ambivalent at first. When he considers the factors that influence foreign policy, he admits that there are many such factors, that geography would be, however, the most fundamental. The reason for the fundamental impact of geography is, according to Spykman, the factor of stability geography would provide for the analysis and strategic planning of politics. ‘The geographic demands of ... states’, he writes, ‘will remain the same for centuries’ (1938a, p. 28) because related characteristics were relatively unchanging and unchangeable. Thus, geographical factors would have been determining politics and will be determining political strategy. Spykman emphasizes in his 1938 article series on ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, I and II’ that the relation between geography and politics would have to be thought of as a conditioning rather a determining factor – ‘The geography of a country is rather the material for, than the cause of, its policy (1938a, p. 30)145 – although his actual arguments suggest a different interpretation. Not only do we find explicit deterministic language, such as the ‘configuration of its sea frontiers but also that of its land frontiers will predetermine the relative importance of a state’s land and sea activities’ (1938b, p. 218; emphasis mine), but also we see that, further to this distinct geopolitical feature, a centre-periphery spatialization of the world underlies his approach. This feature is typical for geopolitical thought and relates to the narrative discussed above that history and historical progress were limited to the European and Western hemisphere. The same narrative, with ostensible mathematical exactness, can be found in Spykman when he writes: Politically and industrially, the northern hemisphere will always be more important than the southern, and relations between various parts of the northern hemisphere will have more influence on the history of the world than relations between parts of the southern hemisphere or between the two hemispheres. The location of a state north or south of the equator will therefore play a large part in determining the political significance of that state, the nature of its international relations, and the problems of its foreign policy ... In general, however, history is made between the latitudes of 25º and 60º, and because very little of the land mass of the southern hemisphere lies between these limits, history is made between 25º and 60º north latitude ... The facts of location do not change. (Spykman, 1938a, pp. 41, 43) Spykman’s narrative on human history, including such fundamental metaphysical assumptions as those about the production and the subject of history, is based upon a centre-periphery model of the world, which is itself determined by geographical ‘facts’ and which he attempts to elaborate with mathematical exactness. His deterministic approach is guided by the question of the ideal shape for a state which, he argues, is ‘that of a perfect

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circle’ (1938a, p. 32) because a state could fulfil its basic functions (amongst which defence is said to be the most important) only ‘when the vital centres are located away from the frontier’ (ibid.). That, in turn, means that in a circled state, the frontier lines are equidistant from the centre. In such a state, each part of its area would be equally close, or remote, from the centre, and thus all parts were as near as possible located within the reach of the central government. From this model, he precludes the significance of a state by calculating its correspondence with this ideal shape. ‘The geographical location of a state expressed ... in terms of the facts ... of its world and regional location is the most fundamental factor in its foreign policy’ (1938a, p. 40). The epistemological assumption on which such deterministic conceptualizations are based is the idea that, as Spykman posits, space and territory as the primary geographical units simply are, and that ‘by virtue of being’ (1938a, p. 32). Space and geographical conditions are hence construed as external and permanent realities which determine political order and strategic thinking. The facts of geography and location create political and social facts, and because they appear not to be changing, states, their political significance, and their borders are also presumed as realities, or ‘facts’. In a time of increasing positivism in social sciences, this essentialism seduced proponents to invent mathematical formulas which allowed for political planning and social engineering and that came to be used as figures for grand strategy and power politics. We find two of those formulas in Spykman when he notes: ‘The comparative size of states, provided there is an effective political and economic integration of the area, is a rough indication of comparative strength, and, as such, an element in foreign policy’ (1938a, p. 31). And even more ‘exact’: ‘The interest of a state in the sea can be expressed mathematically by dividing its area by the length of its sea frontiers. This figure will perhaps represent primarily the strategic interest of a state in the sea’ (1938b, p. 223). Much criticism has meanwhile been directed against this form of deterministic geopolitical thinking and its nineteenth-century legacies. Gerard O’Tuathail ascribes ‘mythic qualities’ to formal geopolitics because it would promise ‘uncanny clarity and insight in a complex world’ and would thus foreclose openness to the geographical diversity of the world. ‘The plurality of the world’, he argues, ‘is reduced to certain “transcendent truths” about strategy’ that account for the course of world politics (O’Tuathail, 1999, p. 113). The mythic quality of geopolitics is twofold: first, there is the presumption of eternal laws in human affairs which would be provided by the permanence of geographical conditions, which again subdue politics under their contingency; second, the idea of mathematical calculability and exact formulas suggests the existence, and at the same time the discovery, of some secret essence of world history and human agency. As seen in this discussion, a deterministic geopolitical epistemology as it emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries constructed not only

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assumptions of eternal laws, external realities to politics and human agency, and categorizations of identity (and ‘otherness’), but also practically divided the world into hierarchical zones of divergent historical progress, political importance and irrelevance, circles of civilization, and finally single nations, ethnicities, races, and states. Within this compartmentalization, the single nation-state, as part of ‘its’ civilizational and historical world region, appears as the final ontological unit which also is perceived as something of eternal quality, shaped by, and dependant upon, the essentialist durability of borders: because ‘facts of location do not change’ (Spykman), neither do states and the division of the world into the singularity and ‘uniqueness’ of states. The consequences of this ontology will be discussed now. The geographical division of the world into national units and subunits The ontology of the nation-state and the division of the world into national units (and subunits) are a consequence of the tenets of geographical contingency framed as geopolitical determinism as well as of the application of resulting determinants to civilizational, political, ethnic, and racial ‘units’. Those units emerge to the geopolitical eye through the observation of topographical characteristics (shores, rivers, mountain chains, deserts, and so on) and the attribution of ‘their’ significance and functions as political borders. A determinist outlook and the search for historical ‘proofs’ of those characteristics make the geopolitical observer believe that the units, their territories, and their borders embossed by those topographical lines were ‘natural’, genuine, and eternal in the same way as topography is. Geographical conditions are raised not only as creators of political entities in general, but – because this determinism coincides with organism – particularly as originators of single nations and nation-states. It is a consequence of geopolitical organismic thinking that the nation-state is perceived as the ultimate ontological unit and as the highest and sublime form of collective and individual being. This further conviction is communicated best, but not exclusively, from Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals, chapters 6 and 7, ‘The Freedom of Nations’ and ‘The Freedom of Man’, when he links the freedom of men to the freedom of nations. The freedom of individual men could not only best flourish in a free nation where men are together with their peers; but a free nation can only be one which exists alongside its natural conditions and within its natural territory and borders as a sovereign community. Thus, the particularized unit of nation-states appears not just as a necessary and legitimate entity in itself, it additionally obtains the status as a socioanthropological framework through the localization and connection of individual freedom and self-determination within and with its soil (as a critical account of this, see also Flint and Taylor, 2007). In this regard, the chapter on ‘The Freedom of Men’ and Mackinder’s criticism and rejection of each kind of internationalism (such

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as international class structures) is of particular interest because internationalism would destroy the national unity of states. Mackinder writes: Nationalist movements are based on the restlessness of intelligent young men who wish for scope to live the life of ideas and to be among those who >>can<< because they are allowed to ... The natural place of an exceptional man is to be leading his oven people and helping them to bear their burdens. Your exceptional brain is serving the nation best if it remains racy of its own particular soil ... That is precisely what the real freedom of men requires: scope for a full live in their own locality. (1942, pp. 133, 136, 137, 138) The idea of organism in relation to geopolitics, however, probably has been most prominently and at the same time aggressively posited in the German version of Geopolitik by Karl Haushofer (1927, 1937, 1943). One of Haushofer’s pupils was Rudolph Hess, formal deputy leader of the Third Reich, who made Haushofer’s ideas ‘presentable’ to the echelons of the Nazi regime as one of the ideological pillars of the Drang nach Osten – and the war crimes and genocide committed under this motto. It is questionable whether this ideological instrumentalization really corresponds with Haushofer’s ideas, or whether Haushofer was ‘just’ one of the politically naïve German mandarins of the 1920s and 1930s (Ringer, 1969). This naivety would certainly not excuse the aggressive approach of his organismic version of Geopolitik, but it would highlight the dangers of political-ideological instrumentalization of academic writings. I do not pursue this point further,146 but want to refer the discussion of organism back to Mackinder. It is finally this epistemology, which is parallel to geopolitical determinism, that is liable for the ontology of the nation-state. Mackinder describes the natural unit of a (national) society as being analogous to the life of trees, according to which the conditions of its existence, its well-being, and its growth are determined by its environment. His metaphor, too, reflects another example of the geopolitical centre-periphery vision with a vital centre and steadily declining and even dying back areas to the periphery; influences of social-Darwinist thought and nineteenth century biologism also manifest here.147 He writes: Consider the life of trees. In the forests of nature competition is severe, and no trees attains to the full and balanced growth of which it is capable. The trees of the middle forest struggle upward to the light; those of the border spread outward onesidedly; and in the slum depths are all manner of rottenness and parasitism. (1942, p. 138) Mackinder, however, is not the only one whose thought is based upon, and oriented towards, organism. Following Stephen B. Jones, Spykman also

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‘came close to organismicism’ with his depiction of the state as a ‘dynamic force of every organic entity’ (Jones, 1959, p. 253). The nation-state is thus identified as both determined by its geographical settings and, in this determination, as coinciding and representing – or it should at least coincide and represent – an organic entity. In a twofold way, the nation-state thus appears as a creation with metaphysical attributes which are withdrawn from human and political agency. This position describes Mackinder’s fundamental outlook in Democratic Ideals with which he intended to contribute to strategies of reconstruction after World War I; this position also traces through Spykman’s strategic thinking when he posits his strategic axiom that ‘the geographic area of the state is the territorial base from which it operates in time of war ... and peace’ (1938a, p. 29) and asks whether states will ‘develop a consciousness of national difference and a nationality of their own’ which would live up to and fulfil their foreseen (and determined) role as units and main actors of politics and of history (1938b, p. 216). Thereby, a historically continuous existence of nations as states, their territories and borders, is taken as self-evident, and the geopolitical mainstream talks as if they exist and had existed forever. When we look again into chapters 4 and 5 of Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals (‘The Landman’s Point of View’ and ‘The Rivalry of Empire’), we find historical narratives which reach from the European Middle Ages (the ‘Dark Ages’) into Mackinder’s time and comprise basically all world regions. He also talks about states and nations as if they actually existed in the late nineteenth century and projects their entities back throughout history as if they had some unchanged territorial and ethnic existence and continuity. There is a German nation and state, a Turkish, a Russian, an Iranian nation and state; there is China, India, Armenia, Denmark and so on; there is also a European history, a Europe East and West, and so on. Finally, of course, there is the heartland. What we learn from Mackinder in its maybe most pronounced form is the common geopolitical belief of the late nineteenth and, at least, the first half of the twentieth century, which has been ‘confirmed’, backed up, and supplemented by a more explicit geopolitical study of territory and borders. These studies are characterized by the dichotomy between the two notions of political borders as either artificial or natural, a dichotomy which was succeeded by a more functional view of borders. In each case, however, territorial borders were perceived as political demarcations of nation-states and as geographically coincident, even if it was admitted that they were also partially subject to political contests, negotiations, and war (see Minghi, 1963). Representatives of the geopolitical notion of borders, their historical durability, and their predetermining relationship with the being of nationstates are authors such as Semple, Spenser Wilkinson, Werner Cahnmann (1949), and finally Spykman. Wilkinson, for instance, argues ‘that it is of vital importance that the racial unit should coincide with the geographical unit’ (1915, p. 141); Semple notes that ‘a broad territorial base and security

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of possession are the guarantees of national survival’ (1908, p. 74); and Cahnmann claims to observe the steady historical reemergence of similar borders which were (therefore) natural borders (1949). It is finally Spykman who explicitly introduced borders as points of territorial power structures where political, social, economic, and ideological contests between nation-states would crystallize. Spykman’s ontological view of the nation-state as an indispensable political entity and historical truth permeates all his writings. By his conceptualization of borders as clashing points of national power ambitions, he gives theoretical shape to the notion of conflict among states as geopolitically determined and permanent. To the same degree as the nation-state represents the fundamental ontology, so, too, conflict becomes an ontological structure of inter-national politics (see Spykman, 1938b, pp. 213–15; 226–8; critically and very instructive on this is Kratochvil, 1986). The degree to which these ideas are cemented in geopolitical thought becomes visible, paradoxically one might argue, in the writings of Jean Gottmann; paradoxically because Gottmann is perhaps the first political geographer who is critical of deterministic simplifications of geopolitics and emphasizes, against geopolitical metaphysics of unity, the differentiation of political space. It appears not exaggerated to see indications of constructivist thinking in Gottmann when he stresses the existence of borders due to what people feel and ‘are taught to see in the physical and social conditions’ (Gottmann, 1951, p. 163). Contrary to deterministic geopolitical dogmas, Gottman makes the point that there is an organization of space and he notes: ‘So many problems would have been easier to settle if nations were less attached to their pride, their past, their way of life, their culture – all that we round up in the term “national spirit” ... geography demonstrates that the main partitions observed in the space accessible to men are not those of topography or vegetation but those that are in the minds of the people’ (1951, pp. 163, 165; emphasis mine). Surprisingly now, he asks the following rhetorical question: ‘But would life be worth living if we did not have those values to care for’ (ibid.)? Thus, he seems to be aware of the negatives and problems of geographical determinism and the resulting essentialism of the nation-state, yet buys into this ontology. With regard to the universalism-particularism problematique, these discussions exemplify the loss of a universal or universalistic framework for theorizing international politics and the contribution of political geography to the image of a world particularized into individual nation-states. For most representatives of geopolitical thought, this ‘loss’ seems not to have been perceived as such but rather has been seen as an accomplishment in the progress of the academic (‘scientific’) investigation of the world. Especially in contrast to universal and universalistic concepts of politics, this ‘accomplishment’ or loss is, however, part of the development beginning in the nineteenth century, which gives birth not only to the ideology of ‘national

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interest’ but also to the perception of permanent conflict and war among nation-states; conflict and a conflict pattern are construed as natural and genuine to politics as the unit of the nation-state is itself taken for granted. Part of the particularistic ontology of the nation-state is therefore the ontology of permanent conflict and war. Conceptualizations of peace consequently suffer from being disconnected from any kind of substance and viability. Peace is maximally perceived as a provisional and random phase between warlike encounters among nation-states, as a ‘temporary armistice’ (Spykman, 1938a, p. 29). Efforts of thinking and conceptualizing peace as well as of creating a world order conducive to peaceful international relations become thinkable only as (artificial) mosaics of solipsistically existing units (see below in Chapter III.2), are, however, not part of the nineteenthand twentieth-century ontology of inter-national politics. Peace evolves in the focus of inter-national politics as something exceptional, as not part of the order and the world of international politics. Hence, peace is something beyond the realm of ‘rational’ thinking. This focus and the way it has become dominant in inter-national political thought and particularly in IR theory not only obfuscate the practical realization of peace, but also intensify the ontological problem. The development of war strategies, power politics, and balance-of-power theories, at best of ‘conflict studies’ and war prevention, becomes the academic and political commonplace while peace studies in a general sense are pushed into the corner of idealism and reverie. The sense of a loss of universal frameworks, which might be able to bridge the nationally divided world and therefore enable a focus on common bonds and the good of humanity, communicates from Gottmann; however, it also signifies the whole problematic. On the one side, Gottmann is fully aware of the dilemmas brought into the world by the national particularities and deeply embedded feelings of uniqueness and declares these features responsible for war and conflict; on the other hand, however, it seems that he does not dispose over an alternative ontological framework, both rationally and emotionally, asking whether life would be worth living without national values (and identity). This ontology lived on throughout the twentieth century and had a massive impact on the development of inter-national political thought and on the discipline of IR. Before I discuss this impact in Part IV, I will reflect upon the English School of thought which, on the one hand, is aware of the normative shortfalls of particularistic ontology and epistemology and consequently tries to manufacture conceptually international cooperation. On the other hand, the English School is stuck in the legacies of Hegelian thoughts and therefore seems to find itself in an irresolvable quandary (see Chapter III.2).

III.2 Manufacturing Inter-National Cooperation – The English School

1. Hegelian legacies and the ‘international system’ This chapter will discuss main ontological questions of the so-called English School, which was founded by international relations scholars in the late 1950s and has experienced a kind ‘re-invention’ (Dunne, 1998) and ‘re-evaluation’ (Little, 2002) during the past ten years or so. The English School can be identified for methodological, epistemological and ontological reasons with the idea of ‘international society’; it is said to present, and its representatives perceive themselves to promote, a distinct approach to the study of international politics whose distinctiveness can be found in exploring and developing a third way between a seemingly well-established ‘realist’ outlook on power politics and anarchy as the main and inevitable characteristics of state relations, on the one hand, and a supposedly ‘idealist’ and naïve vision of cosmopolitanism and world order on the other hand.148 Although this distinctiveness, especially as distinguished from structural realism or neo-realism, can be confirmed with regard to methodological and epistemological questions, such as the normative nature and the historicity of theorizing as well as the English School’s anti-positivist stance towards the role of empirical research, hypotheses generation, and deductibility (see more on this Dunne, 1998, p. 186; Hoffmann, 1986, pp. 181–4; and Bull, 1995, p. xviii and p. 7), some doubts seem to be justified about whether the claim of directing a third way can any longer be proclaimed when we look at ontological issues. I will develop the argument that the English School is ontologically trapped in the quandary of the normative desire to envision, think, and conceptualize international solidarism beyond anarchy and power politics (i.e., ‘international society’) while it is at the same time fundamentally sharing the belief in the existence, predominance, and analytical value of the very same structures – a quandary which is ontologically irresolvable and furthermore reaffirms the particularistic notions of anarchy, power politics, and state sovereignty. 177

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It should be clarified in the beginning that it is, as in all cases of labelling academic thought(s), problematic to speak of the English School, and there are many authors who more or less positively refer to main authors who are associated with the foundation of English School approaches, such as E. H. Carr, Herbert Butterfield, Martin Wight, C. A. W. Manning, Adam Watson, R. J. Vincent, and above all Hedley Bull, who, however, cannot be pigeonholed and who would not label themselves as English School thinkers (as Andrew Linklater does, for example). As Richard Little notes in 1995, it is ‘debatable whether the research so far produced possess the necessary critical mass to justify the identification of a school of thought’, however, there was ‘no doubt that the members of this putative school have generated a sufficiently coherent body of ideas to form a framework for thinking about international relations which warrants further critical investigation’ (Little, 1995, p. 10). Nevertheless, in order to avoid problems of unjustified homogenization of different thoughts, I shall henceforward concentrate my discussions on those authors who were directly linked to the work of the ‘British Committee on International Relations’. According to Tim Dunne, this committee had its formative years from 1958, when it held its first meeting in January of the same year, to 1962, and it then ‘had evolved into a more purposeful structure under the guidance of Adam Watson and Hedley Bull’ from the mid- to the late 1970s (Dunne, 1998, p. xiv). This history is marked by the committee’s joint publications of Diplomatic Investigations (1967) and The Expansion of International Society (1984) as well as by single-authored writings, particularly from Hedley Bull (The Anarchical Society, 1977 [here 1995]) and Martin Wight (Power Politics, 1978). In these authors and their respective contributions, a common core of conceptual narratives about international politics and international political theory can be seen which reflects the ontological quandary mentioned above. In my further discussion of this quandary, of fundamental ontological belief sets of English School authors, and of the resulting contradictions, I will not refer to, or share the view of, their basic ontological assumptions about anarchy, power politics, and state sovereignty being anchored in some form of ‘realist’ thinking and respective ‘traditions’, rather than argue that their ontology is based upon the Hegelian notion of recognition. The reason for this is easy to see: the previous discussions have demonstrated that we cannot assume and straightforwardly speak of a realist tradition or of ontological ‘realism’ in international political thought, which would be associated with ideas about anarchy, power politics, and state sovereignty as the fundamental and irresistible characteristics of international politics – because there is no such tradition. It could be seen, however, that these ideas clearly entered the stage of international political thought (and, as we will see, of International Relations Theory) with Hegel. Therefore, I will relate the ontological assumptions of the English School to Hegelian recognition.

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There may be a methodological or epistemological realism in political theory and political thought which could be applied to international politics and which would be sceptical about knowledge of and assumptions about ‘reality’ (see also in this regard Luke, 1994). Such a form of scepticism would be assigned clearly to the philosophical traditions of David Hume. However, first, I do not see references in international political thought and theory to Hume, and second, there is no necessary relation between such a form of methodological (or epistemological) realism and an ontological realism of anarchy, because a methodological or epistemological realism would exactly be sceptical of anarchy being assumed to be the structure of international political reality. Such a form of methodological and epistemological realism is not what is generally meant when scholars of IR talk about ‘realism’; and even if some dimensions of the understanding of realism would refer or could be related to this aspect of epistemological scepticism, this debate is yet underdeveloped. It would, however, be most elucidating for furthering our understanding of international political/IR theory and of the obscure use and meanings of ‘realism’. An approach in this direction seems to be intended by Williams, 2005, who notes: ‘The Realism I explore ... is not a rationalist theory of anarchy ... It is a reflection on the politics of the construction of knowledge’ (p. 9). The question which occurs to me is this: is it not better in this case, which points to a very worthwhile undertaking, to avoid the term ‘realism’ and instead to speak of scepticism and its respective philosophical and epistemological traditions and legacies? Interestingly though, English School authors all share the basic differentiation of international theory according to Wight’s categories of ‘rationalist’, ‘realist’, and ‘revolutionist’ (Wight and Butterfield, 1967) or Bull’s similar distinction of a Hobbesian or realist, Kantian, and Grotian tradition, respectively (Bull; such as in 1995, p. 23). These categorizations voice and affirm the narratives (and misreadings) of neo-realism (and neo-liberalism); at the same time, the relevance of Hegel and the influence of Hegel on international political thought and International Relations Theory appear not to be seen. This feeds into the quandary mentioned as well as to related contradictions when investigating and trying to conceptualize ‘international society’ in contrast to what is called the ‘international system’. In short, the ontological problem of the English School is to be found in the (theoretically unresolved and irresolvable) question of how to progress from particularistic, Hegelian ontology (of the international system) to universal/ universalistic notions (of international society).149 International system/society It is one of the central objectives of English School authors to elaborate the difference between the ideas of ‘international system’ and ‘international society’. At the same time, this difference is perceived as marking the departure of the English School from the ontology of the so-called

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Hobbesian or ‘realist’ tradition in that English School authors emphasize the relevance of institutions of international politics which are supposed to overcome ‘realist’/Hobbesian structures of anarchy and power politics and to develop an international system into an international society. These institutions are, so the narrative continues, to be found in forms of diplomacy and dialogue, political norms and cultural values of interstate conduct, international law, balance of power, and also war. International organizations as they materialize in international politics, such as the League of Nations or the United Nations, were to be distinguished from this kind of institutions in that they would build upon and put these institutions into practice (see on these definitions and differentiation Bull, 1995, pp. xvii, xviii). In their vision of international society as the means and principles to overcome anarchy and power politics, English School authors refer back to what they call the Grotian or ‘rationalist’ tradition in international political thought, which is said to represent a counter-image to a Hobbesian world of interstate relations. In their envisioning international society, there seems to be a clear normative preference for international cooperation based on the institutions of diplomacy, common norms and values, and international law, as well as a critical awareness of the political and moral deficits of national power politics. In elaborating and theorizing international society, there is hence a normative desire to leave behind the particularistic imaginaries of anarchy and power politics and to refer to the universalistic legacies of international law as it developed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe – a desire which is accompanied by an awareness of the risks of war and conflict in case of the lack of or deficient development of institutions of international society. At the same time, however, English School theorizations of international politics (or ‘international order’ in the writings of Bull) fundamentally share the particularistic ontology of interstate anarchy, power politics, and state sovereignty. This ontology and its inherent solipsism cannot be found in what respective authors of the English School call the Hobbesian or ‘realist’ tradition. Due to the nonexistence of such a tradition, however, the legacies of the English School ontology stem, as I try to show in the next section, from Hegelian international political thought. The subsequent question is then how can international society be conceptualized on the basis of a Hegelian model of international politics and recognition. As I shall argue, we encounter, when engaging with this question, the quandary in which the English School is trapped, namely, the impossibility of reconciling pre-Hegelian ideas and concepts of international politics (such as Grotius) with the Hegelian model of recognition. In order to overcome this quandary, English School theory would need to develop universal or universalistic principles operating among states, which then could be juxtaposed to Hegelian particularism on the same level of ontological reasoning. Given the lack of such ontology, the concept of international society necessarily

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remains unclear and blurred. The English School affirms the Hegelian solipsism of state sovereignty and of the international system of sovereign states because it also reiterates the misreadings of international political thought by framing a Hobbesian or ‘realist’ tradition – unaware either that this tradition never existed or that what they frame as Grotian or ‘rationalist’ thinking (namely, universalistic ontologies of state cooperation) came to an end in the nineteenth century through the predominance of ‘philosophies of national interest’ (as discussed in Chapter III.1). It may be of minor relevance here but nevertheless important to note the different heuristic status of Wight’s terms ‘rationalist’, ‘realist’, and ‘revolutionist’ because the treatment of these concepts and terms as heuristically equal (which they are not) indicates some of the conceptual obscurity within the English School (see also the parallel categorizations of Bull in, for example, Bull, 1977, pp. 23–6). Without further elaborating on this, the following questions can simply be asked: Are the (ostensible) Hobbesian ‘realism’ and Kantian ‘revolutionism’ believed to be irrational because they are opposed to, and distinguished from, ‘rationalist’? Or is Hobbesian ‘realism’ less revolutionary than Kant? And what, finally, is that revolutionary in Kant who clearly acknowledges the principle of state sovereignty as the irreversible foundation of international politics and further elaborates on (which is, however, most important) the ontological conditions of the possibilities of developing the international system of sovereign states into a more than solipsistic and bellicose balance of powers by introducing ideas of cooperation, solidarity, and sociability? It further can be questioned whether ‘rationalist’, ‘realist’, and ‘revolutionist’ are not indicating very different and noncompatible heuristic levels: ‘rationalist’ refers to methodological and epistemological issues, ‘realist’ relates to ontological aspects, and ‘revolutionist’ again implies temporalities in relation to questions of process, stagnation, transition, and so on. Hence, we have to recognize that all three categories play on three very different heuristic levels. (This criticism is not to be confused with David Yost’s suggestion that Wight’s categories were not ‘straitjackets, but organising frameworks used to group closely related ... ideas together’ [Yost, 1994, p. 268], and I would agree with the idea that we should understand these categories as Weberian ideal-types – given these categories would make sense.) There is no debate in the English School on Bull’s (and Wight’s) categorizations because they seem to be widely accepted, and hence the ongoing lore of and on realism, Hobbes, Machiavelli and so on (and, too, on Morgenthau; see Buzan, 1993, p. 337) becomes reiterated and reaffirmed. Martin Wight’s concept of power politics and Hedley Bull’s definition of the international system represented the English School’s fundamental, and at the same time most arguable, ontological theorems. The paramount position of this ontology of power politics and international system is why the English School is rightfully said to operate within, and why it locates itself at least partly in, the paradigm of ‘realism’, or, as I would call it and as I

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will show in this section, the Hegelian model of recognition. This Hegelian ontology of the international system of sovereign states forms its undeniable empirical and structural point of reference to begin with when analyzing and theorizing international politics, even if the body of English School literature criticized the concept normatively and tried to overcome it conceptually. Questions of how, for example, to relate this ontology to normative questions of more sociable interstate relations – to what is called the international society, to theorems of structural realism, to the emergence and operative principles of international organizations, or to the institutions of international politics (such as international law, diplomacy, war, and so on) – are manifold in English School literature. However, the principal ontological ground on which relations among states are construed to be based and where the study of these relations is supposed to begin analytically, namely, the power politics of sovereign states, seems to be ubiquitously appreciated. In Bull’s Anarchical Society, we find the paradigmatic definition of the discipline as understood by the English School: The starting point of international relations is the existence of states, or independent political communities each of which possesses a government and asserts sovereignty in relation to a particular portion of the earth’s surface and a particular segment of the human population. On the one hand, states assert, in relation to this territory and population, what may be called internal sovereignty, which means supremacy over all other authorities within that territory and population. On the other hand, they assert what may be called external sovereignty, by which is meant not supremacy but independence of outside authorities. The sovereignty of states, both internal and external, may be said to exist both at a normative level and at a factual level. (1995, p. 8) And as Wight notes in 1978, nearly authoritatively for the discussions to come: (Power) politics is a colloquial phrase for international politics ... It has the merit of pointing to a central truth about international politics ... For, whatever else it may suggest, ‘power politics’ suggests the relationship between independent powers, and we take such a state of affairs as granted. It implies two conditions: there are independent political units acknowledging no political superior, and claiming to be ‘sovereign’; and secondly, there are continuous and organized relations between them. This is the modern states-system ... The present states-system has existed roughly since the early sixteenth century. (1978, p. 23; see also Wight, 1977) Some 15 years later, the same ontological understanding still seems to operate even if we encounter another problem here. The following is a

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representative quote from the 1993 article by Barry Buzan, ‘From International System to International Society’: ‘The distinction between system and society is central. System is logically the more basic, and prior idea: an international system can exist without a society, but the converse is not true ... For a system to exist requires the existence of units, among which significant interaction takes place and that are arranged or structured according to some ordering principle ... In the international system, the units are states ... The interactions among them include war, diplomacy, trade, migration, and the movements of ideas’ (1993, p. 331). When reading further, it appears that Buzan and other English School authors, including Wight and Bull, understand ‘anarchy’ as a historical and empirical datum. Therefore, Buzan’s attempt to reconcile the English School approach with structural realism must fail for the fundamental inconsistency in that ‘anarchy’ has a very different heuristic status in structural realism. As will be discussed in Chapter IV.1, in structural realism anarchy is understood as a nonfactual, a-empirical assumption. Thus, when structural or neo-realists and English School authors talk about anarchy, they refer to two epistemologically, fundamentally different concepts which seem not to be compatible, including their implications and consequences. To begin with, Wight’s questionable historical contextualization of the ‘present’ states system (in the quotation above) – where ‘present’ refers to the time immediately after World War II when Wight’s book was first published – ignores fundamental shifts in international political thought and international politics and constructs a continuous history of the (European) states system from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century as well as of the principles on which it is built (for more on this, see below in Chapter IV.3). The above referenced quotation from the very beginning of Wight’s book on Power Politics also contains a contradiction which reveals and indicates the crucial problem found in all further discussions about international system and international society. This problem is due to the obscure and unclear definition and arises with Hegelian (and thus the English School and also the neo-realist) ontology, because as soon as political powers (or communities, entities, and other social bodies) are perceived and defined as independent, the question arises how coexistence and cooperation can operate and be construed. States are either not independent and hence acknowledge political (or legal or moral) superiorities, a condition under which they appear to be socialized towards each other in one or another way; or, taking the idea of independence seriously, their political priorities are to be perceived as being opposed to the acknowledgement of any commonalities whatsoever, and cooperation becomes completely random (or a matter of expedient ‘national interest’). Strictly speaking, an ontology of independence does not allow for cooperation, either empirically or conceptually. This is the Hegelian model, which, in addition to this, depicts independence also as a norm of statehood and international politics. Thus,

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the two conditions implied in Wight’s definition – ‘independence’, on the one hand, and ‘organized relations between them’, on the other hand – are not reconcilable and hence contradictory. If there are ‘organized relations’, then some form of dependencies, that is, an acknowledgement of common principles which transcend individual units, must exist; and if there is independence, then there cannot be ‘organized relations’. This contradiction shall dominate the discussions within the English School literature150 (and foreshadows the problem and quandary discussed in the next chapter ‘From Hegel to International Cooperation?’). The ontology of power politics and the international system defined as independence among political units is not, however, renounced or seriously questioned within the debates of the English School. This problem or quandary is clearly one which arises with Hegelian ontology of international politics. As we have seen throughout the previous chapters discussing pre-nineteenth-century international political thought, the idea of an independence of and among political communities either did not exist (as in universal ontologies) or, in cases where it did exist (however, to a certain degree only as in pre-Hegelian notions of sovereignty), it was moderated by universalistic political, legal, and moral principles operating in each polity and thus socializing and unifying them (as, for example, in Machiavelli, Hobbes, or Kant). The idea of independence is thus a thoroughly modern (Hegelian) notion which brings about a typically modern, post-Hegelian problematic: either perceive cooperation as random and (erroneously) accept non-cooperation – and its consequences of power politics and inevitably violence and war – as the norm (see Bull, 1977, p. 16, p. 179, and Chapter 8 on ‘War and International Order’, as well as the neo-realist IR mainstream; see more on this in the next chapter), or overcome the modern, Hegelian legacies of independence and recognition ‘for and in itself’ by re-intervening some form of universal or universalistic ontology. Thereby, Wight seems to see the deficits and perils involved in Hegelian ontology clearly (without naming it as such) when he notes that ‘(in) the modern states-system the sense of unity has become rarefied as a multitude of powers have developed their independence of one another, and agreement on moral standards has been weakened by doctrinal strife ... It seems that ... the whole is nothing but the sum of the parts’ (Wight, 1978, p. 26). Again, the solipsism captured with the sentence that ‘the whole is nothing but the sum of the parts’ is true for the Hegelian model. This Hegelian ontology, accepted, though unconsciously, by Wight (and others), does not apply, however, to pre-Hegelian notions of international politics, which had been informed by varying visions of transcendental principles and vocabularies which either saw the ‘world’ as an universal whole or theoretically guaranteed diversity and the recognition of plurality of political communities in the first place – notions which are ontologically at odds with the idea of independence. Even so, Wight recognizes these deficits and their

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ontological restrictiveness – without, however, fully understanding their distinctive modern (Hegelian) historicity and legacies – and notes that it ‘would be foolish to suppose that statesmen are not moved by considerations of right and justice, and that international relations are governed exclusively by force’, he continues holding up this ontology: “But it is wisest to start from the recognition that power politics as we defined them ... are inexorably approximating to ‘power politics’ in the immoral sense, and to analyse them in this light” (Wight, 1978, p. 29).151 Following this logic, Wight is emphasizing the structure of ‘anarchy of sovereign states’ (ibid., p. 101), ‘balance of power’ as ‘the principle of what might be called the mechanics of power politics’ (p. 168) and the only means of avoiding ‘universal anarchy or universal dominion’ (p. 184), the function of alliances to serve the national interests of the alliance partners (ibid., Chapter 12), ‘war’ (p. 104) and ‘self-help’ (p. 109) as states’ last resorts to secure their interests, and the idea of ‘states as international persons’ (p. 108) highlighting the vision of states as self-circuited and encapsulated units. In doing so, he repeats the complete and mistaken narratives about Hobbes’s image of anarchy and the function of fear about Thucydides’s ‘realism’, interpretations for which he refers to Herbert Butterfield (1949, 1951). What is even more instructive for understanding this ontology and its adoption of the Hegelian model are Wight’s statements on recognition when he refers to Napoleon Bonaparte’s metaphor (which is also echoed by Hegel) that France, as one of the paradigmatic modern nation-states, would require ‘recognition as little as the sun requires it’ and then continues that ‘(a) great power does not wait for recognition, it reveals itself ... The existence of what is recognized determines the act of recognition, and not the other way around ... The selfrevelation of a great power is completed by war’ (p. 46). This is an adoption of nineteenth-century modernity in international relations and of Hegel in its purest form, which derivates completely from the concept of recognition as it manifested, for example, in the Treaties of Westphalia where recognition was informed by the ethical idea of respect and mutual benefit (see more on that in Chapter IV.3). Wight’s notion expressed in the formulation that ‘what is recognized determines the act of recognition’ inverts the idea of mutuality, takes the idea of recognition away from the act of recognizing (the ‘recognizer’), declares mere power as the rationale for recognition, and is informed by the Hegelian view that recognition serves the recognized state merely for its self-revelation and self-affirmation – while paradoxically this kind of state would not need it. This perception becomes even more pointed and explicit when we look into Bull. In Anarchical Society, Bull writes that what any particular state ‘hopes to gain from participation in the society of states is recognition of its independence of outside authority, and in particular of its supreme jurisdiction over its subjects and territory’ (1995, p. 16). Although this passage appears to reflect some notion of mutuality on which recognition among states is

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based (see also p. 67)152, we find several other statements, which teach us that the opposite is the case. Most revealing in this regard are Bull’s endorsements of the modern (Western) idea of sovereignty and its global extension in the nineteenth century under the so-called ‘standards of civilization’ (1995, p. 31). In his sanctioning of the expansion of Western international society, he ignores the fact that this expansion occurred under the violation of exactly the same principle of sovereignty as the norm of nonintervention and autonomous control over one’s own population and territory (for more on this, see Gong, 1984; Behr, 2007). We thereby can conclude that he tends to accept a definition of international society which understands recognition in minimalized Hegelian terms, according to which self-affirmation is sufficient for the emergence and existence of common interests (see Bull, 1995, p. 64). In this sense, we read that ‘states themselves are the principle institutions of the society of states’ (p. 68) and that ‘both general and local balances of power ... have provided the conditions under which other institutions on which international order depends ... have been able to operate’ (p. 102), as if the institution of balance of power would be some natural mechanism and as such independent of political agency as well as of other institutions (e.g., diplomacy and international law) by which balance of power is actually generated, or with which balance of power is at least mutually interdependent.153 Thereby the problem emerges of what should constitute mutuality and international society from the ontological starting point of, and the reference to, Hegelian recognition; to put it more precisely: what are the (universal or universalistic) transcendental principles which associate solipsistic states, enable mutuality, transform international system into inter national society, and allow for an ontology of international society when the fundamental institutions of the international system/ international society, namely, sovereignty, power politics, and balance of power, are anchored in (self-sufficient, totalized) states themselves? Finally, it is to be assumed that this logic would require that states – because they are perceived to be the ultimate institutions of the international system/ society – had to abolish themselves in order to make possible an ontology of international (and world) society.

2. From Hegel to international cooperation? The central focus of this chapter will be on the question of how English School authors construct the transition from ‘international system’ to ‘international society’, on the principles of this transition, and on the role which international institutions play in historical examples of such a transition. I will also reflect on the possibilities of the political fabrication of such a transition. As Linklater and Hidemi Suganami also point out, ‘the important conceptual question is where one should locate the point at which states

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can be said to pass from involvement in an international system to membership in an international society’ (2006, p. 124; see also Stivachtis, 1998). Investigating this question and arguments around the quest for answers does not appear, however, to be exhausted in ‘historical inquiry’, but will also have to consider the issue of whether, or not, English School literature elaborates an ontology of international society which can be juxtaposed with their ontology of the international system. Such a juxtaposition in order to reason on international society with the same ontological ‘quality’ as on ‘the’ international system would finally be the condition of resolving the Hegelian legacies and being and remaining bound to the (anyway contradictive) idea of independent states. Though the question of how to proceed from ‘international system’ to ‘international society’ is discussed at considerable length within the English School, problematizations of this question as an ontological concern (i.e., as a conceptual concern of how to envision the principles of being of international society) seem scarce.154 In regard to the relation between ontology and the categories of being (and their conceptualization), see Nicolai Hartman, 1953, who notes: ‘All ontology has to do with fundamental assertions about being ... Assertions of this sort are precisely what we call categories of being’ which are ‘not independent but presuppose an ontological understanding of the whole field of the objects of knowledge’ (pp. 13, 19). Applied to the problem at hand, this means that English School authors in their engagement with the conceptualization of international society had to develop the categories (of being) of international society carefully, a process which rests upon an ontological understanding of what constitutes international society. One has to concede the English School attempt to accomplish the elaboration of such categories and of an understanding of ‘the field’ of ‘their object of knowledge’ (i.e., international society); however, the crucial question is whether this endeavour can succeed while at the same time committing itself to a Hegelian ontology. My argument denies this accomplishment and the possibility of this accomplishment, and I will hypothesize towards the end of this chapter that the reason for this may be found in the initial futility of understanding structural anarchy of the international system of states as an empirical and historical datum and, abiding by the ostensible logic of this understanding, searching for historical examples or conceptual means which could manufacture the/a progress from such an empirical datum to international society. Here, Walker’s argument becomes important, when he writes that the plurality of the international system of states (i.e., the coexistence of political communities, generally speaking, which even carries on in war, as examples of the law of war and regulations of warfare indicate) always comprises the transcendental principle of its functioning, namely, some sort of mutually shared and recognized principles of its operation and sociability (Walker, 1993, 2009). The understanding of this epistemology of the international

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may be the reason why we do not find any idea of anarchy, but we do find universal and universalistic principles of the international in preHegelian thought, as divergent as they may be otherwise. As argued in this study, this understanding, however, ended with Hegel when international political theory became particularistic and the transcendental principles of the functioning of the international system were sacrificed on behalf of national solipsism(s). Taking ‘anarchy’ as an empirical datum, looking for historical manifestations of anarchy, and then trying to conceptualize progressions from this ontology appears therefore to be absurd itself because it cannot be found as an empirical datum (which would be epistemologically and ontologically comparable to the absurd ities of methodological individualism and of conceptualizing an ‘autonomous self’; see critically Arendt, 1958; Taylor, 1989). Irrespective of its own absurdities and normatively arguable implications and consequences, this seems to be something what Waltz is cognizant of when he conceptualizes and fiercely defends ‘anarchy’ as an heuristic assumption – just as Hegel understood his solipsistic notions of recognition and the state as formalistic and metaphysical principles of a general idea of ‘statehood’ (see above in Chapter III.1). The issue here is that, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we do not find anarchy and the Hegelian paradigm of ‘the state’ as an empirical/historical datum (even if this is arguably present to some degree in Hegel’s vision of German nationalism), but we can theorize and problematize the practically and politically (sometimes ideologically, as in the case of Waltz and neo-realism) reinforcing function of this intellectual and ‘rationalized’ concept for political agency. Institutions of international society/system and their functions Of key significance, therefore, for investigating the English School with regard to conceptual answers given for conditions and possibilities of transition from the international system to international society and for an ontology of international society is to be seen in the functions of the so-called institutions of international system/society as they are attributed to processes of transition. As seen in the previous section, the following are deemed to be the most important institutions of international system and society: diplomacy, international law, shared cultural norms and values, and war. With regard to functions of diplomacy, we find an instructive historical description by Bull in his chapter on ‘The emergence of a universal international society’: An actual international society worldwide in its dimensions, as opposed to the merely theoretical one of the natural lawyers, emerged only as European states and the various independent political communities with which they were involved in a common international system came to perceive common interests in a structure of coexistence and of co-operation,

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and tacitly or explicitly to consent to common rules and institutions. One of the elements in this process was the exchange of diplomatic representatives on a permanent basis, beginning with ad hoc envoys and leading to the establishment of resident missions and the adoption of common protocol and procedure. Another was the adoption of common forms of international law, at first indicated in practice in the making and observance of treaties according to common procedures, and later recognized by international legal publicists who spoke to the expansion of ‘the family of nations’. A further element was the representation of states at those periodic multilateral conferences that have marked the evolution of modern international society from the time of the Peace of Westphalia. One way of charting the evolution of a universal international society is to trace the widening representation of non-European states at these conferences. (1984a, pp. 120, 121) An open question here is whether, and to which degree, this kind of expansion was one of coercion and a process forced upon non-European nations by European states. The writings of Bull provide a quite ambivalent picture of this. In the same chapter, he continues to depict this process as ‘simply an instrument of European dominance’ (p. 122), as based upon European assumptions ‘about the superiority of their religion and civilization’ and of European hypocrisy (p. 125); and in a second chapter in the same edited volume on ‘The revolt against the West’ he notes that ‘the governments and peoples of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, who were subjected to these [European] rules, had not given their consent’ (1984b, p. 217). On the other hand, we find pejorative vocabulary with regard to non-European states, referring to them as ‘backward’ (p. 218) and ‘under-developed’ (ibid.), as well as paragraphs which seem to forward an understanding of the European process of expansion into, and subjugation of, the world as largely beneficial for those non-European nations (Bull, 1984b, p. 224), indicating that because those nations finally transformed themselves according to European standards, they therefore were granted membership in international organizations by, and equal treaty status with, European states (e.g., Japan as the first nonEuropean state in 1899). Apart from this historical depiction (and its ambivalences) and the function of diplomacy, what kind of answers can we learn from English School literature in conceptual terms regarding the transition from ‘system’ to ‘society’? Here, Wight and, later on, Barry Buzan appear to be conceptually more profound thinkers than Bull. Two institutions are construed as playing paramount functions in such a transition: first, the idea of a common culture and values which underpin international society as an ostensibly more advanced pattern of the organization of the relations among sovereign states, and second, international law. Common culture and values are stressed as primordial reasons and conditions for the existence and emergence of

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international society on which advanced relations among sovereign states seem to rest, and from which advanced relations seem to stem naturally. In addition to Wight’s vocabulary of ‘organic units’ (1978, p. 87), the idea of primordial, pre-political togetherness of a group of states also exists in Bull, and his argument that ‘common culture or civilization’ (which would further indicate common language, religion, ethical codes, and common epistemologies) facilitates cooperation and socializes states familially (amongst others, see 1995, p. 15). This idea pervades English School thought up to Buzan who, even as he puts this idea forward in an analogy to the concept of (German) Gemeinschaft, seems, however, not to be clear about the transitory function of culture, civilization, and identity from system to society. In the paper on ‘From International System to International Society’ (1993), he gives two divergent definitions of the role and function of common identity. He first writes that at ‘a very minimum it [Gemeinschaft] suggests that the preexistence of a common culture among the units of a system is a great advantage in stimulating the formation of an international system earlier than otherwise would occur’ (p. 333; emphasis mine). Then some pages later, he notes that ‘(unless) there is some sense of common identity ... society cannot exist’ (p. 336; emphasis mine). Buzan refers here to the concepts of Gemeinschaft: (community) and Gesellschaft: (society) according to the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies from his monograph with the same title (published 1887 [1988]). Buzan promotes the idea of Gemeinschaft as the most basic form of an international society where states would naturally belong together due to religion, identity, language, and other common traits. This underlines an important primordial, pre-political aspect of the idea of international society in Buzan’s thinking because Tönnies clearly associates blood, kinship, residentialism, and spiritual togetherness with the concept of Gemeinschaft – and Buzan does refer to Tönnies. It is, however, doubtful whether this Gemeinschafts-concept can even be applied to political and international associations because the social realities of Gemeinschaft, according to Tönnies, are to be located only in the family, village life, and religious parishes. The same obscurity and lack of clear conceptualization, not only of what is to be considered an international system but also as to how the transition from system to society is supposed to take place (i.e., where their distinct places and their interdigitations are supposed to be), also communicates from the conceptualization of international law as another institution of international system/society. Wight states in one of his attempts to define international society that the ‘most essential evidence’ for its existence was ‘the existence of international law’ (1978, p. 106). One has to ask here critically when and where in history do we not find some kind of legal agreements among political communities. Here, the quandary discussed so far reveals another time. This definition of international society is so minimal that it cannot provide a viable conceptual and empirical distinction between

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society and system because every kind of legal interaction and treaty system, as crude as it may be, appears to be an international society, and one has to ask ‘what then is not a society?’ (see also James, 1993). Hence, international society seems to be a normative idea within the English School (and something which its proponents consistently attempted to detect empirically), but it does not represent a conceptual advancement from the ontology of an international system of sovereign states.155 A third important aspect of international system/society appears to be the institution of war, which receives a most lengthy treatment in Bull’s Anarchical Society. Here, war is construed to have three basic functions, all of them are said to be relevant to the transition from system to society. The first function grows from the fact that war is deemed to be ‘a manifestation of disorder in international society, bringing with it the threat of breakdown of international society itself into a state of pure enmity’ (1995, p. 181). From the point of view of international society, that is, ‘from the point of view of common values, rules and institutions accepted by the system of states as a whole’ (ibid.), the states within this society would consequently have an interest in limiting and containing war by determination of rules of war and warfare. It appears accordingly that war would not be containable or be limited, hence constant, in the absence of such common values, rules, and institutions. Again, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find an example in history and or a historical narrative on war where the conduct of war, sooner or later, was not accompanied by some form of diplomacy about rules of warfare and the ending of that war. And even war has been seen as a form of relationship among the warring parties (so, for example, by Rousseau; see, amongst others, the discussions in Behr/Heath, 2009; Behr, 2004). A second function, which Bull assigns to war, is its ‘means which international society itself feels a need to exploit so as to achieve its own purposes’, such as for ‘enforcing international law’ and ‘preserving the balance of power’ (1995, p. 182). Bull terms this the ‘instrumentality’ of war in order for the international society to secure its own sustainability and existence. War hence becomes an incremental part of international society, a function which seems fundamentally to be at odds with any helpful conceptual distinction between system and society because society is time and time again to be defined as transcending the so-called Hobbesian state of war and fear, which was said to be symptomatic for the international system. This contradiction is expressed clearly in the following statement by Bull: ‘Given the absence of a central authority or world government, international law can be enforced only by particular states able to and willing to take up arms on its behalf’ (ibid.). Finally, Bull mentions a third function of war, which he declares to be a thoroughly positive one and where war would not be fought ‘on behalf of the international legal order or the balance of power, but in order to bring about just change’; he also terms war the ‘the agent of just change’ (ibid., p. 183). In addition to the contradiction

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between the ideas of system and society when it comes to the functions of war (mentioned above) and the lack of normative explanations of what is understood here as ‘just’ and ‘justice’, it follows from these statements that international society is in need of some states (or one state?) of the whole group of states assembled in this society who lead the way and who are more powerful than others in the same society of states, first, in that they play and are able to play this role and, second, in that they are granted this role by other members of the same society. Thus, there is inequality among states as an inherent element of international society due to conceptual reasons. The question arises on which grounds this is to be accepted by other members of the same society. With regard to this, we can figure out some kind of answer in Bull. This answer is, however, dissatisfying because it emphasizes the mere ‘acquiescence’ of some states towards the behaviour of others in their same club. He notes: ‘(There) have sometimes been occasions when the acquiescence of international society in a change brought about by force reflects ... a widespread feeling that the use or threat of force has been a just one’ (Bull, 1995, p. 183). Apparently we encounter the functions of two other, not elucidated, ‘institutions’ of international system/society which relate to inequality and power relations among states of the same international society. Furthermore, how is justice finally perceived? Or does it simply survive without further normative considerations as a residual category which is perceived as being a consequence of (the power of) definition exerted by the more powerful state(s)? Reviewing these deficits and contradictions in the attempts of conceptualizing basic functions of the international system/society and of the transition from system to society, these discussions come to a different conclusion than Little who argues that the English School ‘subscribes to an ontology which extends beyond a states-system’ and ‘generates an ontology which diverges dramatically from the ... image of states interacting in an anarchic arena’ (1995, pp. 18, 21). My conclusion is based upon an understanding of ontology as the conceptualization of fundamental categories of the field of knowledge – which is in this case ‘international society’ (see endnote 187). Before the background of this understanding, the English School literature does not present – and I argue it cannot present, due to its fixation on Hegelian ontology – either a clear enough and distinctive concept or ontology of international society (i.e., categories of the field of knowledge) or principles of transition which would characterize this development and advancement from international system to international society. The only principle, which could count in this meaning is the idea of common culture and shared norms, which are, however, construed as primordial and organistic and therefore do not represent a political idea, but a pre-political and a-political idea. The conceptual aspiration of the English School to proceed from international system to society must therefore be seen as abortive156 and trapped in the quandary discussed above. What remains is the

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normative claim that international society (and world society) would be preferable to the international system as well as critical acknowledgements of deficits of the concept and reality of the international system, such as the risk of violence, armament, and war (the latter, however, being seen as inherent in the institution of balance of power by both Bull and Wight). Their declaration of balance of power as one of the basic institutions of international system/society protects and affirms the Hegelian principle of state sovereignty and does not serve the creation of mutuality of recognition as some advanced transitory principle from system to society. Instead, the kind of mutuality, which Bull adheres to is ironically the mutuality of deterrence and fear, a hard-core principle of the international system (see Bull, 1995, pp. 112–21).157 For purposes of historical inquiry, the focus on empirical phenomena with regard to transitions from international system to society (if both as well as the transition can be determined at all) may suffice, but the conceptual lack of an ontology of international society and of the differentiability between system and society ignores the theory-practice relationship of the discipline of International Politics/IR. This ignorance is not aware of the mutually reinforcing relation between theoretical perceptions of the world and political agency in the world. This aspect of academic knowledge production will be further discussed in Part IV and Part V.

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Part IV The Triumph of Particularism in Twentieth-Century International Relations Theory

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IV.1 Neo-Realism and the ‘Scientification’158 of International Political Theory

Whereas the English School proponents and their idea of an international society struggled with the question of what principles constitute and how to construct cooperation among states and finally failed in envisioning state-transcending, universal notions (as discussed in the previous chapter159), mainstream inter-national political theory in the twentieth century epitomized in neo-realism (or ‘structural realism’ as Waltz initially termed it) and neo-liberalism abandoned the idea of unity among states. Particularism triumphs, and both the ontology and the epistemology of twentieth-century IR mainstream solidify and lift the particularistic entity of the nation state as ultimate reference for political theory and practice. Ontologically, this enhancement of particularism manifests in the notions of nationalism, patriotism, and the ‘national interest’; epistemologically, the particularizing neo-realist/neo-liberal assumption of ‘anarchy’ and the confusion between an analytical and normative dimension of political theorizing, based on the self-belief of nonnormative theorizing and the scientification of international political theory according to a natural science model – or, to put it differently, the reification of politics – are liable for the ‘triumph of particularism’. This ontological and epistemological abandonment of unity (see below Chapter IV.1.1) results in a theoretical logic of the inevitability of conflict and war among states (see below Chapter IV.1.2). War and conflict indeed come to be seen as the normality of inter-national politics; the Clausewitzian dictum of war as a continuation of politics becomes redeemed and axiomized in the theoretical mainstream of twentieth-century IR. The particularistic dogma does not allow any other conclusions, and conceptualizations of inter-national politics following this dogma are restricted to engineering mechanisms to mitigate the circumstances under which war might break out, they cannot, however, move beyond the intrinsic ‘reality’ of war and conflict inherent in its solipsistic theorizing. 197

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1. Solipsistic ontology and epistemology The ontological notions of nationalism, particularism, and ‘national interest’ stand at the beginning of Waltz’s oeuvre theorizing international politics in Man, the State and War (1954). In this early work, Waltz discusses different authors from the history of political thought. It is noteworthy that Waltz understood himself (still) as a ‘realist’ when he wrote Man, the State and War. However, analyzing especially his interpretation of Rousseau reveals a coherent line of thought throughout his oeuvre which reaches from this earlier work into Theory of International Politics (1979). Waltz might not have been fully conscious of this coherency, and writing in the 1950s he certainly did not arrange and coin his later arguments. Nevertheless, this continuity exposes his (and neo-realism’s) fundamental ontological focus on nationalism and patriotism. Discussing Rousseau, Waltz particularly emphasizes the notion that under the conditions of advanced civilization, a powerful state has to exist in order to govern the people because human beings were not able to live together peacefully on their own. In addition to that understanding, two additional thoughts derived from Rousseau become crucial for the development of Waltz’s (neo-) realist concept. First, he posits that it is not useful to examine domestic structures for the analysis of foreign policy because there were no causal relations between the domestic and the inter-national. Second, and based on that idea of foreign politics as an autonomous segment of the state, Waltz argues that the nation-state has to be understood as an acting unit. Both thoughts are not self-evident and thus Waltz poses two questions in order to develop his idea of the state as an acting unit: ‘Just how is it [the rational will of everyone] tied up with everyone else’s?’ (Waltz, 1954, p. 170). And: ‘Clearly states recognize no common superior, but can they be described as acting units?’ (ibid., p. 173; emphasis mine). How does Waltz address these questions? In answering these questions, Waltz supposes a questionable distinction between an empirical and a normative state in Rousseau, arguing that the unity of the state would be achieved as soon as the terms and conditions were guaranteed under which a/the ‘general will’ (ibid., p. 174) would manifest itself and amalgamate the empirical and the normative dimensions of the state. Thus, for Waltz, the existence, and eventually the political implementation, of Rousseau’s volonté général is the precondition of the unity of the state as an ‘acting unit’. However, the separation of Rousseau’s concept of the state into an empirical and a normative dimension is not convincing. To investigate this argument and to reveal the weakness of Waltz’s discussion, Rousseau’s construction of sovereignty must be taken into account. This reveals that, according to Rousseau, the normative and the empirical are ontologically identical and can never be separate(d) as Waltz posits. Rousseau develops this concept of the political body in Chapter 7 – ‘The

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sovereign’ – of his Contract Social. There, Rousseau constructs the sovereign as the political body which is constituted by the entire population and only as such can be regarded as the body politic. It follows from this principle of identity (or sameness) between the sovereign and the entire population that the sovereign cannot be bound by, or subordinate to, anyone except himself. Whenever the sovereign acts, it thus establishes and manifests, simultaneously and perpetually, the supreme power as well as the (entire) population’s will. Resulting from this substantively identical construction between the governed and the government as indistinguishable, the seemingly paradoxical formulation arises in Rousseau that the ‘sovereign, by the mere fact that it is, is always everything it ought to be’ (Rousseau, 1997, p. 52). Rousseau’s identification of the people as the political body, its empirical will (volonté de tous), and the highest power of the state (volonté general or the Sovereign) does not allow the separation of an empirical and normative concept of the state, as Waltz claims. Because of this separation, Waltz mistakenly uses Rousseau to speculate for the empirical conditions to accomplish the/a unity of the state which it should have. This speculation, though, does not exist in Rousseau due to the absoluteness of the state, normatively and empirically. Rousseau’s ‘state’ does comprise this unity always and a priori in itself. In the two empir ical examples where Rousseau applies his theory of the Social Contract to concrete political and cultural circumstances, namely, Poland and Corsica, he comes upon the unity of the people already as a pre-political (namely ethnic) condition on which the political body and political order could be based. At least in those cases where Rousseau applies his theory, it is seen that neither the theoretical nor the empirical questions of his normative understanding of state realization manifest as serious matters of concern – ‘the state always is what it ought to be’.160 It appears that Waltz is not aware of this substantively identical construction in Rousseau. Because he separates a normative and empirical notion of the state, he finds himself in the position of having to develop a solution as to how this identity can be accomplished for the state to perform as an acting unit. Nevertheless, how does Waltz answer this question? Ironically, he refers to Rousseau’s comments on patriotism. This recourse is also questionable because Waltz assigns patriotism the status of a situation or condition of the state, which has yet to be accomplished and created, while Rousseau is very clear that patriotism exists a priori according to his concept of the state which fundamentally rests upon the unity of the people. More importantly, as seen above, this unity is regarded by Rousseau as granted prior to the political through ethnic and now patriotic homogeneity. The problem actually existing in Rousseau is not the question of how to accomplish the unity of the people in the first place; rather the problem is how to preserve it under the conditions of daily political life, individual wills, and fractions which would harm the initial unity of the political body. Waltz, nevertheless,

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bases his outlook on Rousseau’s notion of patriotism as something which has to be fabricated. This represents not only a second misinterpretation of Rousseau by Waltz, but also a fundamental and far-reaching contradiction in Waltz’s theory itself. Waltz refers to Rousseau’s Political Economy (1997) where Rousseau speaks about the education of children. Specifically, he refers to Rousseau’s claim that children have to earn their living while they would deserve special treatment not because they long for it, but because they would physically or mentally need it. He also speaks about the duty of children to be obedient. From these Rousseauean ideas on education, which Waltz perceives as an ideal grounding of a political organic whole, he concludes: In such a state, conflict is eliminated and unity is achieved because ... equality prevents the development of those partial interests so fatal to the unity of the state [and because] the inculcation of public feeling imparts to the citizen a spirit of devotion to the welfare of the whole. The will of the state is the general will; there is no problem of disunity and conflict. Furthermore, and immediately without additional consideration, he adds: ‘In studying international relations it is convenient to speak of states as acting units’ (1954, p. 175). In addition to Waltz’s misinterpretation of patriotism as something which has to be created, his interpretation appears dubious in respect to Rousseau’s use of the term political economy in affiliation with the affairs of private administration (which is derived from the Greek term ‘oikos’ and notably disassociated with public and political affairs). Contrary to Rousseau’s own explanations, Waltz understands Rousseau’s writings on economy as incrementally political in nature. Interestingly, Rousseau writes in passages just before the ones Waltz quotes that only the private is based on government, the public, by contrast, on agreement. ‘I invite my readers also clearly to distinguish public economy ... which I call government, from the supreme authority, which I call sovereignty’ (1997, p. 6). Regardless of the fact that Waltz seemingly disregarded this plea, what is of further interest (and has significant political-ideological implications for Waltz’s theory) is his reference to patriotism regarding the unity of the state to create this unity politically. How exactly does Waltz understand ‘patriotism’? He writes in Man, the State and War: ‘The existence of group patriotism ... gets fused with the idea of nationality. There we have the immensely important fact of modern nationalism’ (1954, p. 176). Due to an historical analogy of the church for which people would have sacrificed their lives, Waltz notices and demands a comparable devotion of the people for the state. Thereby, a shapeless mass would transform into a common political body: ‘The centripetal force of nationalism may itself explain why states can be thought of as units’ (ibid., p. 177). But Waltz

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proceeds, arguing even more contradictorily to Rousseau, that a state could also achieve such a unity through mere force and power rather than through socialization or a sense of spiritual devotion among the people. Waltz concedes that this solution would not be ideal, but may be sufficient in order to establish a state, which would speak with ‘one voice’ in external relations and would come to assert itself authoritatively in the domestic realm. Under the circumstance that patriotism does not exist to a degree where the whole population would sacrifice itself for the sake of the state, Waltz’s demand for patriotism reduces a people’s political role to mere acquiescence with a government’s decisions. Furthermore, it reduces the relation between the government and the people to stark authoritarianism. His commitment to, and his understanding of, democracy seem fundamentally at risk. Authoritarianism, he argues, might be necessary from time to time and acceptable to gain the consent and support of the entire population to go to war – a support whose demand seems to be the ideological intent and objective of his Rousseau-interpretation (on this point, see also Hoffmann, 1963; Hoffmann and Filder, 1991). Finally Waltz writes, ‘One state makes war on another state’ (Waltz, 1954, p. 179; emphasis mine). From this construction, the popular neo-realist paradigm of the primacy of foreign policy and its distinct rationality has been propagated. This paradigm is construed in neo-realism from the argument that there is no substantial relation between domestic and foreign policy, such as Waltz argues in the beginning of Man, the State and War. However, this paradigm should be called into question because it appears to be a fundamental contradiction in Waltz, who indeed conceptualizes an incremental (and authoritarian) relation between both foreign policy and domestic affairs. Particularism in Waltz does not only manifest ontologically, but also in the epistemology of structural realism (and neo-realism). This becomes obvious when scrutinizing his understanding of theory and of what theory provides, drawing together his long-standing views on this from Man, the State and War (1954), to Theory of International Politics (1979), and finally to his article on ‘Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory’ (1990). During this time span of some 40 years, Waltz advanced the same understanding of the theory of international politics, and it is this basic understanding plus its inherent logic which evolved from these principles and founded an epistemology of particularism. This epistemology does not merely back up the particularistic ontology of neo-realism but rather it requires and determines its political outlook. It can be argued that this epistemology forecloses and hence does not allow conceptualization and thinking about the world in any way other than in a particularistic (and bellicose) one. Thus, we face as the basis of twentieth-century mainstream IR a manner of thinking which produces a view of international politics and concepts, subconcepts, typologies, and practical axioms which not only divides and disperses the world into particularistic units, (assuming that there is something in common

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which then can be decomposed), but whose fundamental intellectual originator is the particularized individual unit, which is self-sufficient, does not need anything apart and beyond itself, and is, in Hegelian language, for and in itself. And indeed, the legacies of Hegelian inter-national political thinking, in combination with nineteenth-century national historiography and geopolitical thinking, manifest the ontological fundamentals of neorealist theory; or, to put it differently, neo-realism does not find its roots and predecessors in a ‘realist’ tradition in international political thought, but in nineteenth-century ontologies of particularism, foremost stemming from Hegelian philosophy, which were becoming interfused with twentiethcentury scientism. At the basis of Waltz’s theory construction is the idea of anarchy among states which is being derived in Man, the State and War from ostensibly similar patterns in Thucydides (1954, p. 159) and particularly Rousseau (1954, p. 165; see also above). About anarchy we read: In anarchy there is no automatic harmony ... A state will use force to attain its goals if, after assessing the prospects for success, it values those goals more than it values the pleasures of peace. Because each state is the final judge of its own cause, any state may at any time use force to implement its policies. Because any state at any time use force, all states must constantly be ready to either counter force with force or to pay the costs of weakness. (1954, p. 160) It is also in this early writing that we read about ‘states as the acting units’ (1954, p. 175); it is, however, not before his Theory of International Politics and ‘Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory’ that the epistemological status of anarchy becomes eluded and hence developed into more than some assertion dubiously derived from political thought. First of all, it might be important to acknowledge that Waltz radicalizes his view on anarchy and notes: Among states, the state of nature is a state of war. This is meant not in the sense that war constantly occurs but in the sense that, with each state deciding for itself whether or not to use force, war may at any time break out ... Among men as states, anarchy, or the absence of government, is associated with the occurrence of violence. (1979, p. 102) Whereas anarchy was thought of as no ‘automatic harmony’ in Waltz’s early writings, it then became construed as a ‘state of war’; despite this radicalization, both images suggest that we can observe or at least that we know or have heard of some situation resembling such a state of affairs. One might argue to encounter a first contradiction in Waltz when he then reveals the true nature of the image of anarchy (and of the logic which concludes from it). In chapter I of Theory of International Politics, ‘Laws and

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Theories’, he presents his general concept of theory,161 and he concludes from this discussion that ‘theories contain theoretical (nonfactual) assumptions’ (1979, p. 20), a proposition which he repeats several times throughout this book as, for example, in chapter VI: ‘A theory contains at least one theoretical assumption. Such assumptions are not factual. One therefore one cannot legitimately ask if they are true, but only if they are useful’ (pp. 117–18); and ‘A theory contains assumptions that are theoretical, not factual’ (p. 119). These epistemological propositions are confusing for all social scientists who think that there is, or should be, some kind of relation between ‘experience’ and theory (in the sense of humanities and social sciences as Erfahrungswissenschaften in the wider sense), and Waltz spent most of his academic work after the publication of Theory of International Politics explaining what he actually meant. One of these attempts was the 1990 article ‘Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory’ where he delivered more information on this rationalistic and scientific idea of theory: Theory is artifice. A theory is an intellectual construction ... The challenge is to bring theory to bear on facts in ways that permit explanation and prediction ... Theory cannot be fashioned from the answers to ... factual questions ... An assumption or a set of assumptions is [therefore] necessary. In making assumptions about men’s (or states’) motivations, the world must be drastically simplified; subtleties must be rudely pushed aside, and reality must be grossly distorted. Descriptions strive for accuracy, assumptions are brazenly false. The assumptions on which theories are built are radical simplifications of the world and are useful only because they are such. Any radical simplification conveys a false picture of the world ... International structures are defined, first, by the ordering principle of the system, in our case anarchy, and second, by the distribution of capabilities across units. (1990, pp. 22, 23, 27, 29) This is highly interesting and relevant for getting a grasp of Waltzian and neo-realist particularism for two reasons: First, once we realize that anarchy is one of the assumptions which fundamentally underlies (his) theory, the question seems not to be whether anarchy really exists in international politics. Second, this is important because of the logical consequences of the epistemological features of anarchy, which are inherent in its character as an assumption. When Waltz talks about anarchy, we would be mistaken to ask whether anarchy really exists and if state relations are indeed historically and contemporarily anarchic. This is not what Waltz is interested in, and his approach his totally a-historic and unempirical.162 As he clearly states several times, anarchy is to be understood as one, and perhaps as the most fundamental, of his assumptions and not as a factual or empirical characteristic of international politics.163 As such, however, it creates many severe consequences.

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One of these consequences lies in an answer to the question asking what Waltz has in mind when he is talking about the usefulness of his assumption (and its nonfactuality) as the criterion by which assumption should be evaluated. I will argue that the criterion of usefulness of the assumption of anarchy in Waltz is its delivery of political strategies for US foreign policy and that hence his criterion is thoroughly ideological (see below in Chapter IV.1.2). Another consequence is the immunization of this theoretical understanding against any form of criticism. Because anarchy is understood ‘just’ as an assumption, and as such as neutral and value-free, which is as possible, though not necessarily as plausible, as any other assumption, the only rationale for assuming anarchy as the structure of the inter-national system as well as for buying, or not, into it is its ‘usefulness’. By declaring the main pillar of his theory an assumption, which does not contain any statement about political reality, Waltz immunizes his theory against criticism, not acknowledging that assuming anarchy not only leads to a set of serious consequences, but also is ignorant of the fact that it is based on a certain ontology of the world. This is finally why the assumption of anarchy is not neutral or value-free. Waltz’s statement that ‘(critics) of neorealist theory fail to understand that a theory is not a statement about everything that is important in international political life, but rather a necessary slender explanatory construct’ (1990, p. 32) is emblematic of this kind of ignorance.164 Finally, a third consequence – which becomes endorsed by Waltz’s immunization against criticism because it contributes to its theoretical cementation – is the particularism and solipsism of this epistemology itself, which necessarily creates dualisms and dichotomies, not only between neorealist theorists and those critical of it, but between the political entities themselves about which neo-realism theorizes. Because the epistemological starting point of this theoretical endeavour is the ‘impregnable’ assumption of anarchy construed as the permanent likelihood of war, each state is moved in insurmountable (qua the consequential logic inherent in the initial assumption) opposition to every other state, and not just in parts of it, but in total as complete entities. The assumption of anarchy does not allow us to see anything but endless dualisms, and it enforces this vision upon each theorizing about international politics – while at the same time declaring criticism as illegitimate and ostracizing different epistemologies as either backward (this happened to ‘realist thought’, according to Waltz embodied in Morgenthau; see critically in this regard also the use of the term amateurish in Kahler, 1997) or not useful (according to the criterion of ‘usefulness’; see above). This epistemology and, even more, its inherent theoretical consequences concluded from ‘anarchy’ are bound to a theoretical and political worldview in which conflict and actual war are not only inevitable, but also appear to be the norm and ordinary elements of politics, as does preparation for war, such as armament, applying all means possible, such as nuclear armament. Here, not only is the Clausewitzian theorem of

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‘war as a continuation of politics’ fully realized, but also the particularization of inter-national politics in both ontological (as seen above) and epistemological terms could not be more stark – and problematic.165 This problematic with regard to neo-realism consists of three aspects: the inevitability of conflict and war is one aspect (see Chapter IV.1.2); the criterion of the usefulness of the assumption of anarchy and the respective theoretical constructs following from this assumption, which can, and have been, utilized ideologically, is another (see Chapter IV.1.2); and what is called the reification problem is a third problematic aspect involved in this kind of theorizing. Although I will discuss the reification problem as a second rationale explaining misreadings in IR (see also below in IV.1.2), I will also discuss the reification problem here. Waltz developed his theory of structural realism in Theory of International Politics (1979) and confirmed his main thoughts, now under the rubric of neo-realism in ‘Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory’ (1990), emphasizing in this article that he modelled his approach after rationalist economic theory. His attempt to rationalize international politics according to the positivist ontology and epistemology of economy falls in line with the general climate in social sciences and political science after World War II, which aimed to overcome – according to these beliefs – the shortfalls of normative and ‘unsystematic’ theorizing, which had been widely declared responsible for the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century and discredited as arbitrary due to the nonverifiability of norms. With respect to political science, the most prominent attempts beyond IR to erect academia on scientific pillars have been undertaken probably by Gabriel A. Almond and Sydney Verba and David Easton in the context of comparative political research and the political culture approach, respectively.166 Whatever might be the merits and shortfalls of positivist theory drafted after a rationalistic philosophy of science (as manifest in economy and as largely derived from a Popperian epistemology and a Weberian idea, though narrowly construed [see Ringer, 1997], of value-freeness, or neutrality, and the application of these ideas to social science), it appears that the deliberate exclusion of normative theorizing, or the belief to do so and to be able to do so at all, produced not only the (ostensible) elimination of norms from ‘own’, in our case, neo-realist, thinking, but also generated a kind of blindness towards, or a likewise deliberate exclusion of, normative thinking in reading and receiving other theories. Consequently, the normative dimensions in the history of political thought, foremost in the writings of those selected heroic figures of a ‘realist’ tradition – namely, Thucydides, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and finally Morgenthau – not only did not, and could not, appear on the radar of neo-realist theory reception, but the normativeness of neo-realists’ own assumption of anarchy itself was not acknowledged. ‘Anarchy’ was seen by Waltz as ‘just’ an assumption and as such as normatively ‘innocent’ in three ways. First, it was seen as innocent in the

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sense explained above with reference to the creation of an inclusionary and exclusionary divide of and within academia along the line of buying into, or not, this assumption. Second, it was seen as innocent in epistemological terms as being a value-neutral starting point for theorizing, and because it was construed as such a value-neutral and nonfactual assumption, the belief was that it restrained itself from any kind of judgment about reality. Third, it was seen as politically neutral because the political consequences and imperatives from the assumption of anarchy were regarded as merely logical and nonnormative conclusions while, however, they are highly politicized by both depicting a system of inter-national politics in which conflict is inevitable and concluding the necessity, and hence imperatives and norms, for states to constantly prepare and be prepared for conflict and war. All three beliefs seem, however, inappropriate and somewhat naïve. The divide of academia and the immunization of neo-realist theory against criticism have been discussed above; the belief in its own value-neutrality and the naivety towards its own political conclusions reason another argument which targets the problem of reification.167 The problem of reification arises in neo-realism, as it arises in all kind of theorizing when and because the analytical vocabulary – which in Waltz is his assumption of anarchy – is equated and not set apart from the normative vocabulary – which in Waltz relates to the logic of self-help, power politics, and the theorem of balance of power. The analytical – and it is of minor importance whether this is an assumption or based upon empirical analysis – namely, anarchy, is used in Waltz to derive directly conclusions about what must and ought to be done, namely, politics of self-help, accumulating, if necessary, power, and proceeding balance-of-power politics against the perennial risks of being attacked in a system of anarchy. Thus, the analytical is becoming reified as, and with, the normative. The normative, however, does not appear as such. It even has been explicitly excluded, and therefore, what is indeed normative appears as mere ‘logical’ conclusions.168 The analytical assumption of anarchy thus generates highly politicized and normative tenets about what is to be done to act in a political reality, which itself is nothing but the product and result of the analytical and of an assumption. The reifying problem describes and consists of exactly this cycle of equation which, in addition to this, constructs a self-fulfilling prophecy: when acting according to the imperatives of anarchy which are derived from the assumption that the international system is anarchical, anarchy and with it the problem of particularism are reproduced again and again. The unanswerable quandary in neo-realism (as well as of the so-called ‘agent-structure’ problem in IR in general; see Wendt, 1987; for a critical perspective of this theory-practice problem, see also Bourdieu, 1977, 1990) about the question of whether the ‘structure’ of international politics precedes states’ behaviour or whether the structure of international politics is produced and reproduced by states’ behaviour, is emblematic of the

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reification problem and the self-fulfilling prophetic character of neo-realism and its epistemology (see more on this in Chapter IV.2.2).

2. The inevitability of conflict As mentioned above, the assumption of anarchy, embedded in rationalistic epistemology, initiates a chain reaction of ostensible ‘logical’ consequences. As shown, the assumption itself is not value-free and neutral because it sits on a certain, namely, particularistic vision of the inter-national. Much less, however, are these consequences politically neutral because they are not only seen and operated as practical guidelines and imperatives for foreign policy, but they also constitute a substantial view of the inter-national according to which conflict is inevitable, war is ever-possible, and the preparation and eventual conduct of war is existential. The inevitability of conflict thus expands into an inevitability of violence through the permanent (necessities of) self-affirmation and ‘defence’ inherent in the statist logic of particularity. The logical consequences initiated by the assumption of anarchy include the neo-realist theorems of survival, the international system as a self-help system, mutual mistrust, security maximization and balance of power. The latter can, but need not, encompass policies of power maximization. Paradoxically, this chain, which has an incremental power legitimizing inclination, is regarded as something objective because it emerges, and seems to be derivable logically and free of contradictions according to economist rationality, from an ostensibly neutral starting point, namely, that of the assumption of anarchy. The paradigm of scientific theorizing – valuefree assumptions, their logical consequences, and contradiction-free conclusions – leads to the chimera of innocent theorizing, which is innocent because it offers ‘objective’ policy advice. This belief as well as the development of the theorems of survival, self-help, power maximization if necessary, and balance of power are the main topics in chapters V and VI of Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, and his support of these theorems as essential, general, and ubiquitously applicable characteristics of any kind of politics and political actors, and not just for modern states as functionally similar units, is communicated in (one of) his retrospective explanations of his Theory of International Politics as follows: Neorealists see states like units; each state is like all other states in being an autonomous political unit ... The logic of anarchy obtains whether the system is composed of tribes, nations, oligopolistic firms, or street gangs. (1990, p. 37) This logic, as we see here, is believed to be resistant against spatiotemporal shifts and transformations, a logic which again corresponds to, and results

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from, the (erroneous) idea that an assumption, even if thought of and intended as nonfactual, would and could operate without an ontology, or at least an ontological underpinning. Waltz posits: ‘Changes in the industrial and military technology available to states, for example, may change the character of systems but do not change the theory by which their operation is explained’ (ibid.). It can be summarized that the scientification of international political theory in structural (or neo-) realism, including its particularistic ontology and epistemology, caused an outlook in the twentieth-century mainstream of the discipline of IR for which conflict, war, the permanent preparation for war, and violence have become the normal and the norm (very interesting and instructive here the early criticism of von Elbe, 1939).169 Any other imagination of the inter-national appeared to be scientifically illogical, at times nonacademic, amateurish, and naïve, and proponents talking about alternative imaginations such as peace and nonviolence degenerated into becoming stigmatized as ‘idealistic’. Withal, the category ‘idealistic’ is nothing else but a result of academic identity politics constructing a residual category of intellectual opposition and otherness into which everything else that does not abide by the same forms of knowledge construction can be marginalized and pushed aside. Interestingly, and this aspect will be taken up again below when discussing neo-realism from an ideology- critical perspective, the ‘spiritual brother in arms’ of neo-realism, namely, neoliberalism, accepted the ontology and epistemology of neo-realism while merely emphasizing an additional set of actors and institutionalized possibilities of inter-national cooperation. The emergence of IR theory, at least during the second half of the twentieth century, is hence to be understood not only as situated in (as Walker rightfully observes; 1993), but as an immediate practice of the modern sovereign state and the manifestation of its particularistic ideology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.170 In this sense of sharing neo-realist ontology and epistemology, it is further instructive for our understanding of the discipline of IR in the twentieth century and its intellectual style that the misreadings of international political thought identified in Waltz have been unanimously carried on by the subsequent schools of IR, represented by Robert O. Keohane, Stephen Nye, Stephen Krasner, and others, including Alexander Wendt. Talking of misreadings requires, at this point, some further methodological clarifications. First, the remark already noted in the Introduction applies here, too, namely, that by revealing misreadings, I do not claim to present the only valid interpretation of those authors nor do I claim to know what they ‘really’ meant. The notion of misreading is rather based on a compare-and-contrast approach that carefully analyzes original texts and identifies obvious discrepancies and contradictions. As such, this approach puts forward a slightly different understanding than the one expressed by Linklater (1990). Whereas Linklater seems to see the alternative of (the claim

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of) authenticity primarily in exploring the normative potentials of a text, and thereby to assume the existence of a much wider variety of appropriate interpretations of a text which were, at the same time, much ‘closer’ to the text than narrow claims of authenticity, my approach of identifying misreadings is less direct about what the meanings and normative potentials of a text are (which again limits the multiplicity of meanings). At the same time, I am more definite in denying the validity of certain inter pretations by methods of cautious reading, historical and philosophical contextualization, terminological and linguistic comparison (where possible), application of interdisciplinary knowledge, and cross-referencing within an author’s oeuvre whereby a certain interpretation/certain interpretations can be exhibited as incomplete, superficial, false, selective, misstated, idiosyncratic, and/or ideological. In this regard, an important differentiation has to be made in the case of Morgenthau (which shall be considered in the next chapter) between his thinking and the effects of his thinking on the discipline of IR: the latter focuses on his reception in IR and his reading by IR scholars, and thus emphasizes what has been made of him; the first concentrates on the elaboration of his thinking according to careful hermeneutic text interpretation. Concentrating on ‘misreadings’ draws together both aspects by comparing ‘what has been made of him’ (or his effects on the discipline) with the elaboration of his thinking, displaying discrepancies and contradictions between both – which does not claim authenticity, but compares clear statements, implications, and (somewhat according to Linklater’s meaning) normative consequences of his writings with how they have been received, used by, and affected the discipline’s mainstream.

IV.2 ‘Misreadings’ in IR: Reassessing Morgenthau, Ideology Critique, and the Reification Problem

Mainstream IR teaches not only that Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes had established a realist tradition in international political thought, but, too, that Hans J. Morgenthau plays a role as a distinctive precursor of neorealism. These identifications are not only supposed to ensure the positions of neo-realism by referencing ‘heroic figures’ of the discipline (in a wider sense), but they serve for the deduction and explanation of central neo-realist theorems. I will argue that Waltz and the emerging neo-realist mainstream misread Morgenthau and not only constructed a long-standing ‘realist’ tradition by ‘rewriting history’ (according to Kahler, 1997, p. 23), but further to this posited an immediate ‘realist’ – neo-realist unity by declaring neo-realism to be the scientific successor of realist thought amounted and represented in Morgenthau (see foremost Waltz, 1990). This section identifies the statement of a ‘realist’ – neo-realist unity as a misreading of Morgenthau by the IR mainstream and attempts to reassess the work of Morgenthau and identify this misreading as one contemporary example of the same types of misreadings discussed in Parts I and II with regard to the history of international political thought. The reassessment of Morgenthau in the light of Waltzian and IR mainstream constructions holds that, contrary to the assumption that both Morgenthau’s ‘realism’ and neo-realism could be understood as grand theories, they are deeply rooted in the historical context of twentieth-century inter-national politics. According to this understanding, the following perspective develops: ‘realism’ in Morgenthau and neo-realism reflect a certain conception of international politics, both in practical and disciplinary terms, during a certain historical phase and are therefore transient modes of thinking (on this point see also Guzzini, 1998, p. ix).171 Although this interpretation corresponds with Morgenthau’s self-understanding of theory in general and of his ‘realism’ in particular (see below), this interpretation contradicts neo-realism’s self-understanding172 (see more on this topic in Chapter IV.2.2). 210

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This argument of misreadings will now be examined based on two considerations which try to provide explanations of why the misreadings occurred. These explanations will put forward the argument that the reasons for neo-realist and neo-liberalist misreadings can be found in an ideological rationalization of the discipline of IR as well as in the epistemological problem of the reification of the political. The first consideration shall focus on an examination of processes and conditions of knowledge production that have led to the hegemony of neo-realist and neo-liberalist tenets in IR, that is, an ideology-critical approach. I shall hypothesize that these misreadings are purposefully created ideological constructions173 to provide concepts for and to legitimize US power politics during the Cold War.174 The second consideration relates back to epistemological discussions above (in Chapter IV.1.1) on the scientification of international political theory and identifies the neglect of the normative dimension in those authors who are said to embody a ‘realist’ tradition. This neglect, which is due to the neorealist scientific reification of the political – or, to put it differently, due to the identification of the analytical with the normative – and which again explains why the normative dimension of the authors captured and misread (Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Morgenthau) is not just an ideologically motivated neglect but, in addition to this, an epistemologically reasoned inability to see and recognize normativity in one’s own theorizing as well as in other theories. This circumstance has massive impacts on the question of universal/universalistic and particularistic thinking.

1. The ‘realism’ – neo-realism ‘unity’ In the centre of an ostensible ‘realism’ – neo-realism unity, as put forward by neo-realism irrespective of neo-realism’s attempt to overcome and at the same time improve particularly the ‘political thought’ of Morgenthau (see Waltz, 1990), we identify the neo-realist and IR mainstream understanding of Morgenthau’s ‘realism’ as a grand theory of IR, based on the erroneous assumption that he advocates anarchy as a general pattern of international politics. Both tenets of IR mainstream – that Morgenthau proposes and advocates international politics as anarchic and that his realism represents a grand theory of IR – can be traced as dubitable interpretations of his theory. Against these assumptions, I notice an ideological reduction of Morgenthau’s positions, generalizing his views mainly from Politics Among Nations to general statements about theory. What we know from Morgenthau himself, however, is that he understood Politics Among Nations as a temporary and historically caused counter-ideology to the ideologies of the twentieth century (see Preface, Politics Among Nations, several editions). He did not at all understand it as a theory of international politics. With regard to Morgenthau, the ‘misreading’ interpretation is complex because his arguments relevant for this discussion are spread throughout

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his oeuvre. Furthermore, eventual contradictions, or at least debatable complexities, seem to exist in his thoughts which require careful interpretation and cross-referenced reading. Morgenthau appears to be a problem-oriented author (whereas Waltz tried to depict himself as a systematic and stringent thinker, which becomes most evident in Waltz, 1990). This problem-oriented way of Morgenthau’s thinking and the resulting complexities of his writing might have contributed to the misreadings in that some of his statements provoke idiosyncratic interpretations of his ‘realism’ when not understood in light of the bigger picture of all his theorizing. However, because this kind of contextualization appears to be absent in the IR mainstream, a canonized knowledge solidified in the discipline regarding the understanding of Morgenthau – which interestingly is not only accepted by those who call themselves realists (or neo-realists), but ironically also by most of those who oppose ‘realism’. Although this canon emerged and became anchored in the discipline, crucial writings of Morgenthau were marginalized,175 selective reading and quoting of his work became the academic standard, and his protests against being misunderstood were widely ignored.176 Taking Morgenthau’s overall oeuvre into account, however, it seems very clear that he understood his own writings as historically contingent, a standpoint which does not allow any sort of canonization and generalizations of his thoughts. Additionally, he revised major parts of his early writings during the 1970s due to transformations in world politics – another example of his problem-oriented thinking – while the revisions of major arguments from Politics Among Nations were again widely neglected in IR. As the most prominent example of these misreading, it seems to have become a matter of course that anarchy would be a basic assumption of Morgenthau’s ‘realist’ theory to characterize international politics. Robert Jervis may serve as just one example in the IR debate in the United States; the most widely read and credited example in this regard might be, however, Keohane (Keohane, 1983; see Jervis, 1976). Both authors associate the metaphor of anarchy unrestrictedly with Morgenthau. According to these common and powerful interpretations, anarchy appears to be a basic concept of Morgenthau’s ‘realism’. Although this may be true for Waltz, it is not the case for Morgenthau. As far as I see, the term anarchy is mentioned in Politics Among Nations only three times; and when Morgenthau refers to it, it is in a critical disassociation. What is more, as we read in Politics Among Nations: If the motivations behind the struggle for power and the mechanisms through which it operates were all that needed to be known about international politics, the international scene would indeed resemble the state of nature described by Hobbes as a ‘war of every man against every man’ ... In such a world the weak would be at the mercy of the strong. (Morgenthau, 1954, p. 205)

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And: Writers have put forward moral precepts that statesmen and diplomats ought to take to heart in order to make relations between nations more peaceful and less anarchic, such as the keeping of promises, trust in the other’s word, fair dealing, respect for international law, protection of minorities, repudiation of war as an instrument of national policy ... If we ask ourselves what statesmen and diplomats are capable of doing to further the power objectives of their respective nations and what they actually do, we realize that they do less than they probably could and less than they actually did in other periods of history. (ibid., p. 210) These statements indicate that international politics could be more pernicious than it actually is, were it not for the moral restrictions and precepts that are at work (see especially chapter 5 in the 1973 edition of Politics Among Nations). Apart from that, the term anarchy is neither to be found as an empirical feature of international politics in Morgenthau nor as a theorem in his ‘Six principles of political realism’. Therefore, it is unclear why these misperceptions came into being and have been accepted as canonical narratives. However, there is no doubt that anarchy is the basic assumption of neo-realism. This becomes clear in Waltz’s 1954 edition of Man, the State and War, where he interprets Rousseau and Hobbes, an interpretation for which he received heavy criticism by Morgenthau (1962a). Furthermore, as Morgenthau noted, a ‘thorough misunderstanding of the nature of political theory and its relationship to empirical research’ would exist with regard to any anarchical interpretation of international politics referring to the history of political thought (1962a, p. 29). Referring to the question how, if at all, the metaphor of anarchy features in Morgenthau’s thinking, it should be recognized that he views morality and international law as regulatives of international/inter-national politics, though both are less developed and weaker than he thinks they should be. Although it is not to be doubted that Morgenthau assumes that nation-states are power-oriented actors (‘power understood as interests’), he argues for the grounding of foreign policy and international politics in morality, international law, and respective universal ethics. This indicates a clear rejection of anarchy (as a historical-empirical and analytical metaphor); a rejection which is founded on historical studies and on normative grounds. Not only does Morgenthau demand that restraints of national politics through ethics and international law are necessary for the conduct of any kind of cooperative, diplomatic, and peaceable international and foreign policy, but he also argues against empirical positivism and deductive-nomological reasoning, contrary to the method advanced by Waltz.177 According to Morgenthau, empirical positivism and deductive-nomological reasoning are insensitive to historical contextualization and normative theory (Morgenthau, 1962a).

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Indeed, Morgenthau supports a method of historic-political hermeneutics. We read: I have argued ... against the analogy between the social and the natural sciences ... I ... must state ... dogmatically that the object of the social sciences is man, not as product of nature but as both the creature and the creator of history in and through which his individuality and freedom of choice manifest themselves. To make susceptibility to quantitative measurement the yardstick of the scientific character of the social sciences ... is to deprive these sciences of that very orientation which is adequate to the understanding of their subject matter. (1962b, p. 27)178 And some pages later in the same article, Morgenthau unmistakably argues for the normative formation and grounding of any (international) political theory: ‘It is only within ... a philosophical framework that an empirical framework of political inquiry can have meaning and that empirical inquiry can become fruitful’ (1962b, pp. 31, 64). But what, according to Morgenthau, characterizes a theory of international politics based on a ‘philosophical framework’? He explains his theoretical outlook in an essay first published in 1959 (here 1962c), in which he outlines a variety of topics of a theory of international politics. This essay is a much more appropriate source for his theoretical view on international politics than Politics Among Nations. Morgenthau explains his view on what an international theory must provide, namely, answers to concerns such as morality in inter-national politics, the decentralization of international law, the acceptance/nonacceptance of international organizations, democratic control of external politics, and the prospects of diplomacy (1962c, p. 56). It would be an oversimplification to admit and accept, and for Morgenthau himself too positivistic and too superficial to profess, that morality is weak; that international law is simply not strong enough; that international organizations play a minor role; that foreign policy is just not democratically controlled; and that all this is because of the dominance of the nation-state and the real-political (realpolitische) pursuit of its interests. On the contrary, he incisively criticizes national power politics and supports international law, exactly in order to overcome a world divided into nation-states.179 In the 1954 edition of Politics Among Nations, he emphasizes the importance of the United Nations with a distinct normative tendency for a world-state model and states: The deterioration of international morality which has occurred in recent years with regard to the protection of life is only a special instance of a general and ... much more far reaching dissolution of an ethical system that in the past imposed its restraints upon the day-by-day operations of foreign policy but does so no longer. Two factors have brought about this

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dissolution: the substitution of democratic for aristocratic responsibility in foreign affairs and the substitution of nationalistic standards of action for universal ones.180 Morgenthau’s second argument regarding these ‘two factors’ criticizes the nation-state and perceives this mode of political order as a historical and geographical contingent and transient pattern that has emerged from European modernity as a distinct organization of politics. In a world of nation-states in which morality became particularized and universal ethics became supplanted by national mores, an effective system of international ethics, he argues, would no longer be possible. Such national mores would paradoxically be accompanied by the claim of each nation-state, which is indeed nothing more than a particular historical entity, to represent universal values. Thus, ideological competition and warfare of these particularized units about their moral standards would constitute a genuine conflict pattern of inter-national politics in modernity.181 He writes that Instead of the universality of an ethics to which all nations adhere, we end up with the particularity of national ethics which claims the right to ... universal recognition. There are then as many ethical codes claiming universality as there are politically dynamic nations ... The moral code of one nation flings the challenge of its universal claim into the face of another, which reciprocates in kind ... ; for the mutual accommodation of conflicting claims, possible or legitimate within a common framework of moral standards, amounts to surrender when the moral standards themselves are the stakes of the conflict. Thus the stage is set for a contest among nations. (1954, p. 230)182 Because Morgenthau also suggests practical imperatives for national power politics (see Politics Among Nations, chapters I to III), the question arises of what constitutes his ‘realism’. To answer this question, we have to refer to his fundamental assessment of the status of theory: The practical function of a theory of international relations has this in common with all political theory that it depends very much upon the political environment within which the theory operates. In other words, political thinking is ... standortgebunden, that is to say, it is tied to a particular social situation ... It is developed out of the concrete political problems of the day.183 If we apply this fundamental epistemological position of Morgenthau to his own oeuvre, there is only one possible conclusion, namely, to understand Morgenthau’s own writings as also standortgebunden, that is, politically and historically contingent.184 Consequently, there are no assumptions in Morgenthau about permanent, unchangeable structures or patterns of

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international politics besides the general assumption that politics is a struggle for power. Apart from that, however, theory according to Morgenthau depends on historic-political conditions and practical orientations185 and must therefore always be perceived as a concession to the current political and social circumstances in which the author writes. Applied to Morgenthau, this means that his theory and his practical postulates are concessions towards ‘his’ reality. His ‘realism’ is therefore to be considered as standortgebunden in the historical and political context of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century world of nation-states and not to be mistaken for his theoretical outlook on international politics per se. As such, the meaning of the term realism in Morgenthau implies epistemologically nothing more than the theoretical acknowledgement of the socio-politically contingent character of history, and the practical recognition of certain, if temporary, historical conditions and subsequent ways of acting under these conditions.186 ‘Realism’ and its practical imperatives are a concession towards the specific historic reality of a world made up by nation-states. Thus, claiming general theoretical validity based on the assumption of some eternal, unchangeable structure of international politics is for Morgenthau not only an epistemological anathema, but furthermore would represent academic hubris and simplification. The only ‘realist’ element in Morgenthau is the recognition of certain historical realities that qualify theorems and practical imperatives as standortgebunden (and thus as incongruent with any kind of ‘dogma’), and that might eventually turn power politics into a necessary, if temporary, means of international politics (as fighting National Socialism and Stalinism and the necessity to develop respective counter-ideologies as mentioned in his Preface to several editions of Politics Among Nations). In addition to this, the following quotation from ‘The Limits of Historical Justice’ (reprinted in Power and Truth, 1970a, pp. 68–83) is very instructive in exactly that sense: Like the balance of power, alliances, arms race, political and military rivalries and conflicts, and the rest of ‘power politics’, spheres of influence are the ineluctable byproduct of the interplay of interests in a society of sovereign nations. If you want to rid the world of ... ‘power politics’, you must transform that society of sovereign nations into a supranational one, whose sovereign government can set effective limits to the expansionism of the nations composing it. Spheres of influence is one of the symptoms of the disease ... and it is at best futile and at worst mischievous to try to extirpate the symptom while leaving the cause unattended. (p. 80)187 I cannot agree, therefore, with IR mainstream views, which might be exemplified by Robert Gilpin’s categorization of Morgenthau’s theory as a ‘grand’ or ‘general theory of international politics’ (Gilpin, 1981, pp. 39–40). The sort of narratives told about Morgenthau should therefore be identified as simplifications of, and superficialities towards, Morgenthau’s historically

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sensitive, hermeneutical, and normative theorizing. In his article ‘Common Sense and Theories’, Morgenthau expresses his criticism of what he calls ‘new theories’, a criticism which can be read as a disapproval of his reception by then-mainstream IR. He writes: The new theories, insofar as they are new in more than terminology, are in truth not so much theories as dogmas. They do not so much try to reflect reality as it actually is as to superimpose upon a recalcitrant reality a theoretical scheme that satisfies the desire for thorough rationalization ... This rational model is a utopia that reflects the desires of theoreticians but not the real physical world, dominated as that world is by the principle of indeterminacy, and predictable as it is ... only by way of statistical probability. (1970a, pp. 242, 243, 245)188 In practical terms, Standortgebundenheit means that Morgenthau’s historic view is directed towards the nation-state of the nineteenth century, the two World Wars of the twentieth century – both caused by bellicose, imperialistic, and hubristic nationalism – and the emergence of the Cold War. As he stated, ‘(all) political phenomena [of this period of history] can be reduced to one of the three basic types ... either to keep power, to increase power, or to demonstrate power’ (1954, p. 36; also p. 41). If one considers these historical disasters on the basis of his analysis and criticism of the nation-state and of its conflict-enforcing endogenous dynamics, then this statement appears to be a ‘realist’ and real-political concession to the historically contingent conflict structures of nineteenth- and twentieth-century inter-national politics. Morgenthau notes: The contemporary connection between interest and the national state is a product of history, and is therefore bound to disappear in the course of history. The same observations apply to the concept of power. Its content and the manner of its use are determined by the political and cultural environment ... The realist is persuaded that this transformation can be achieved only through the workmanlike manipulation of the perennial forces that have shaped the past as they will the future. (1954, pp. 8–9) Such a contingent and context-specific concession, however, is the core of Morgenthau’s (understanding of) ‘realism’ – and the only reason, why it can be called ‘realist’ at all. What is more, this concession ‘requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible’ (1954, p. 7). The rationality of foreign policy is hence only to be found in a supplementary concession, namely, to try everything possible ‘under contemporary conditions’ (1954, p. 52) to acknowledge the opposing powers between nation-states and to conduct an inter-national balance of power politics. In addition to his epistemological credo that political theory and theoretically derived imperatives for

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political agency are qualified by transient historical contexts, he declines the applicability of the concept of balance of power for the Cold War, given new historical circumstances caused by nuclear weapons and the possibility of an endless nuclear arms race (see Morgenthau 1952, 1970a, 1970b). We learn that political, legal, and ethical principles can and should prevail over power politics and are not at all, as neo-realists argue, marginal in inter-national politics, although these principles have to be ‘filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place’ (Morgenthau, 1954, p. 9). The results from this discussion can be summarized and further developed as follows: Morgenthau’s theory of international politics cannot be understood as a general or ‘grand’ theory. This outlook would require some form of structuralist theorizing which is, however, foreign to Morgenthau; indeed, he criticizes such an understanding of social science theory in general and IR in particular. And very opposite to any notion of anarchy, Morgenthau sees politics and conflicts among nations as a historical contingent and transient phenomenon and generally promotes a normative framework for (international/inter-national) political theory and practice, which transcends the particular nation-state and which should assemble and socialize nationstates under a common supranational framework. His conceptualization of morality/ethics and international law is a clear manifestation in this regard. Furthermore, it remains an open question why neo-realists (and their critics) hold the link of Morgenthau with anarchy and with what are supposed to be ‘realist’ tenets. Opposite to these tenets, ‘realism’ in Morgenthau has to be understood as a historically contingent way of thinking which intends to provide answers to distinct historical circumstances of world politics. The time of Morgenthau was a time of ideologies and of hubristic and apocalyptic national power politics. Reacting to these challenges creates, and perpetuates, his support of power politics. Apart from that, however, Morgenthau’s normative demands aim at the creation of international law and organizations as well at the strengthening of supranational ethics. Thus, according to Morgenthau, any conduct of international politics is and has to be ‘realist’ (only) insofar as it acknowledges contingent historical circumstances and develops respective practical imperatives. He explicitly expressed this political ambition in the editions of Politics Among Nations published after 1948. Considering the notion of ideology, he writes: The nation that dispensed with ideologies and frankly stated that it wanted power and would, therefore, oppose similar aspirations of other nations, would at once find itself at a great, perhaps decisive, disadvantage in the struggle for power. That frank admission would, on the other hand, unite the other nations in fierce resistance to a foreign policy so unequivocally stated and would thereby compel the nation pursuing it to employ more power than would otherwise be necessary. (1963, p. 82)

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Ideology, or counter-ideology, is therefore necessary and justified against the horrors of totalitarianism and fascism as well as against the naïve policies of appeasement. This book was indeed, and could be nothing else but, a frontal attack ... [Morgenthau addresses here the appeasement policy towards Hitler and the ‘democratic-peace’-vision of Woodrow Wilson as well as the Fascist and Stalinist ideologies]. It had to be as radical on the side of its philosophy as had been the errors on the other side. With that battle largely won, the polemical purpose can give way to the consolidation of a position that no longer needs to be attained, but only to be defended and adapted to new experiences. (ibid., vii)

2. Explaining misreadings: Ideology critique and the reification of ‘the’ political The following discussion on the question of why those misreadings and the manipulation of Morgenthau (and others) occurred finds two answers: the first answer draws on the theory of ideology critique by Karl Mannheim and hypothesizes the reason for misreadings in mechanisms of ideological knowledge production; the second answer refers to the epistemology of twentieth-century mainstream IR as discussed above (Chapter IV.1.1) and relates to the problem of an identification of the analytical with the normative. The first answer will be discussed now, the second thereafter. Mannheim speaks of ideology as both a product of a distorted Weltanschauung and the process of distortion itself.189 To Mannheim, ideology represents a process of epistemological enquiry and identity interpretation that leads to the eventual formation of more than just individual views of the world, but to the world view of an entire social group (totalizing world view). Therefore, ideology in a Mannheimian sense is a dialectic process as it is constructed at individual levels but also reflects the worldview of a whole group. Accordingly, the process of ideology, intertwined with epistemology, becomes distorted as it shifts from a particular to a total conception. This dialectical cycle of knowledge and knowledge production, where particular ideas come to dominate an entire social group, might lead eventually to the replacement of formerly dominant epistemologies within society by a new epistemology.190 The Mannheimian definition used here is that of a totalizing worldview which is formed and perpetuated both consciously and unconsciously as part of a process of knowledge formation. This definition is crucial to this attempt to explain the reasons for diverse IR misreading and consists of the two tasks of identifying elements of neorealist thought that can be illustrated as an ideological worldview (which typologically corresponds to a pejorative ideology critique191) and to consider hegemonic (ideological) processes that have led to the dominance of

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neo-realism during the Cold War and post-Cold War era (which represents a morpholog ical study of ideology or of ‘processes of distortion’; on this typology see Freeden, 1996; Freeden et al., 2006). Although the concept of ideology is widely and controversially debated,192 I think that the Mannheimian notion is most suitable to this study for four reasons: first, it allows us to draw upon Morgenthau’s arguments that the praxis of politics is a process of ideology and counter-ideology formation (as can most clearly be seen in his Politics Among Nations). Second, the use of the ‘classical’ definition of ideology locates this attempt within the context of an existing critical body of IR literature. Authors such as Justin Rosenberg also argue that neo-realism, as a ‘deterministic construction of political reality which entails a series of hidden propositions and symptomatic silences’ is an ideology (Rosenberg, 1994, p. 30; also Kahler, 1997). Third, a Mannheimian understanding of ideology conceptually clarifies the argument that the formation of ‘paradigms’ in academia (as neo-realism in IR is widely understood) can be conceived as an ideological process. Thomas Kuhn coined the term paradigm to refer to a process of meta-theoretical positivist refinements within academia similar to the process described by Mannheim as ideology. Olé Waever, reflecting Kuhn’s definition, writes that a ‘paradigm contains within it a fundamental view of the world, and its assumptions act as lenses through which that world is perceived ... paradigms are intrinsic to the social functioning of a scientific community’ (Waever, 1996, p. 159). Like Mannheim’s ideology, paradigms are created out of conflicts between individuals with different epistemological beliefs, especially in times of crisis. This process sets up a cycle of knowledge production and protection. The particular elements of theory elaborated by individuals are eventually generalized, distorted, adopted, and reified by an entire group (or the mainstream of a discipline) to form a totalizing Weltanschauung. Similarly, as Waever maintains in reference to ‘paradigm’, ‘participants can only be brought to accept such a framework by a process similar to conversion, not by rational argument’ (ibid., pp. 159–60). The distinction between ‘ideology’ and ‘paradigm’ is not just a (unnecessary) terminological sham (i.e., if one might think they are conceptually identical). The dismissal of the term ideology as an introspective analytical concept for a genealogical study of an academic discipline and its replacement by the concept of paradigm (see, for example, Buzan, 1996; Mansbach and Vasquez, 1981), borrowed and incorporated into IR from the natural sciences, occurs simultaneously with the scientific and positivistic transformation of IR in the context of the so-called second debate, that is, when the misreadings analyzed here occur. Thereby a substantive loss of innerdisciplinary self-criticism occurs because ‘paradigms’ – including their production and protection of knowledge through its canonization and dogmatization as well as including their leaning towards political power and their overemphasis on practicable and problem-solving knowledge – have

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become received as something necessary, desirable, and value-neutral for a ‘proper’ academic discipline. Contributing to (reviving) self-criticism in IR, I emphasize, and intend to tackle, the self-reflexivity shortfall of the concept of ‘paradigm’. Finally, the use of Mannheim’s definition of ideology is complementary to a historicist tradition of political thought which I deem necessary to the study of IR, especially because this tradition contests the positivistic methodology of the IR mainstream that provides the intellectual framework for the misreadings analyzed here. It is my contention that the historicist tradition, including many authors labelled ‘classical realists’ by neo-realism and IR mainstream (such as Morgenthau; but also E. H. Carr), represents a school of thought that considers worldviews to be a product of specific historical, social, and political circumstances rather than putting forward structuralist postulates regarding an objective ‘reality’ of the world. Hence, a historicist tradition of international political theory is, in a Mannheimian sense, an ideology critique in itself. Morgenthau perceived the 1940s as a time of ideological battle and power politics between liberal, democratic politics, represented foremost by the United States and the United Kingdom, and National Socialism and Stalinism. With the advent of nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, he revised the position he held during the Second World War and advocated the strengthening of the United Nations and international law, which was exactly his position in his early writings. But the battle continued, and the neo-realist production of ideologies relied upon misunderstood ‘realist’ assumptions in order to conceptualize, promote, and strengthen national power politics, now with new targets and against a new enemy (the Soviet Union and communism). The gravity and idiosyncrasy of the above analyzed misreadings, including the biased selectivity of their readings of other authors, seem comprehensible only as an attempt to formulate and justify a new political ideology, namely that of US foreign policy during the Cold War. This effort is accompanied by an ideologization of political thought, which seems to have become so influential and manifest in the disciplinary canon that – with a few exceptions – even the critics of neo-realism have not uncovered these misreadings, but instead have perpetuated them. This is probably the reason why some of those misreadings have found their way into most of our up-to-date textbooks and introductions.193 Indeed, a plethora of neo-realists became cooks in the ‘kitchen of power’ (Hoffmann, 1977). The initial Morgenthauian idea of a temporary polit ical counter-ideology against the apocalypses of nationalism and fascist and Stalinist ideology (from his Politics Among Nations) has been developed into a self-contained ideology of ‘national interest’, which has separated the theorems of (Morgenthau’s) ‘realism’ from its original understanding of histor ical contingency. In an emerging epoch of

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scientism when political science in general and IR in particular have borrowed their epistemologies from positivistic natural sciences and economy (Waltz is an outstanding example of this; see above in Chapter IV.1), ‘realist’ (though falsely) and neo-realist theorems have became perceived as scientific laws in order to deduce axioms for political conduct as well as strategic predictions of future developments. Waltz’s perception of patriotism complements this observation: The rationality of the state, which domestically acts in case of doubt as an authoritarian power state and homogenizes political differences, dictates to oppress opinions, movements and individuals opposing the national interest. Foreign policy elites have come to define political rationality in their interest and to protect those interests as some objective raison d’état. The domestic production of political homogeneity occurs through instruments of the power state, like media control. An apt example can be seen in the historical defence of national interests in maintaining the Cold War rationale or the run up to a specific war.194 This background is described and criticized by Miles Kahler when he argues that since the Cold War, neo-realism had the tendency to take the ideological coloration of its political (American) environment. According to Kahler, there was a veritable infrastructural explosion of IR under the paradigm of realism in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1960s as well as of neorealism during the Cold War, especially in the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. Governments announced an increased demand for foreign and security policy concepts. Kahler additionally observes the tendency that ‘realist’ and neo-realist approaches gained (and continue to gain) importance during times of international crises and the perception of instabilities. He calls these ‘events-driven’ and ‘demands-driven periods’ (1997, pp. 22–3) which influenced the development of the discipline in the United States to a great extent.195 The institutional, political, and departmental links between the development of IR and ‘demands’ and ‘eventsdriven’ factors of that development can be further examined from the perspective of an ideology critique by scrutinizing processes of knowledge production and protection.196 According to Mannheim (and Morgenthau), each theory/ideology is characterized and influenced by the political, historical, and cultural context of its author. A proper understanding of each theory can only be accomplished when elaborating its Standortgebundenheit by investigating its historic and cultural location (see above in this chapter). Mannheim further argues that such an elaboration has to be a critical historiographic study of political thoughts affecting the author as well as an historical analysis of the author’s structural context, that is, his or her institutional (including professional bodies, universities, and publishers) and biographical circumstances. A historiographic study of political thought related to neo-realism and IR mainstream was presented here in Parts I, II, and III; an additional

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ideology-critical analysis in Mannheim’s sense can be connected hereto. This analysis would explore the structural contexts of ‘realism’ and neorealism and emphasize the ‘systematic centers’ (Mannheim, 1984, p. 205) of these schools of thought and their research agendas (very interesting here Oren, 2003). Mannheim writes: ‘Assuming a dynamic conception of truth, a sociology of knowledge focuses on the ontological and epistemological modes of thought and knowledge typical for a certain era and emphasizes on their genealogical and transient character’.197 Mannheim further argues that the intellectual ‘locations’ of theories/ideologies have to be related to the authors’ sociopolitical ‘locations’ in order to understand and to disclose not only different antagonistic interests, but even entire political worldviews and their normative implications (totalizing Weltanschauungen, also, Weltwollungen). Such an analysis would elaborate ‘the original and systematic centers of thoughts, including their emergence and the way they have been excavated, used and eventually newly contextualized by posterity. Thus, only when the history of thought is substituted by an historical analysis of the dynamics and transience of the socio-political and epistemological structures in which certain modes of knowledge and thought are embedded, a critical analysis and survey of political world views can be accomplished’ (Mannheim, 1984, p. 205; translation mine). Such an approach would involve biographical studies on the intellectual and sociopolitical environment of representatives of ‘realism’ and neo-realism as well as their disciples. This would further include uncovering their peer relations within universities as well as cross-relations to funding bodies, governments, and publishers (or, as Mannheim notes, ‘to mutually related world views and their ontological and epistemological underpinnings with the socio-political environment of their representatives’; Mannheim, 1984, p. 209 [translation mine]).198 A second answer to the question why the IR mainstream misreadings and consequently the neo-realist/neo-liberal ‘rewriting of the history’ of political thought occurred can be found in the reification problem as discussed above (in Chapter IV.1.1). The possible identification and equation of the analytical and the normative not only caused a great deal of naivety and blindness towards the (normative) construction and consequences of IR’s own theories, but also a disregard of the normative dimensions in other theories. In addition to this, through the collapse of the normative and the analytical into one undistinguished package and vision, two epistemolog ical lines of theory and theorizing, which are at least heuristically different, merge into one definans of what the political nature of the international (as the definandum) is supposed to be. This essentializing view of the political/the international cannot distinguish (anymore) between an analysis of what is seen as reality, a hypothesis about it, or some form of hypothetical images of it, and a (normative) theoretical construction, which intends to manage or to overcome these images, which would aim to establish and negotiate

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some form of alternative imagination or which would be able to criticize these images. All it can do is to affirm and reaffirm a perpetual identity between definans and definandum (or explanans and explanandum), including respective political strategies of affirmation and reaffirmation, like a sweatmill reiteration that anarchy is the structure is anarchy is the structure is anarchy is self-help is power is the structure is anarchy – and to declare this perpetuum mobile of security dilemmas and fear production as something fragile and precious with which to accommodate, however, we are said to have no choice. This reification likewise depoliticizes the international by essentially foreclosing alternative imaginations and optionality – at least as long as we are inclined to understand (and I tend to do so) politics as the creation of alternatives and the attempt to guarantee, and eventually to stabilize, conditions which allow such possibility for alternatives and optionalities. With regard to the history of international political thought, the problem of misreadings and the creation of IR as a Cold War academic discipline, including the production of IR-‘relevant’ knowledge, the reification problem means that some authors of this history have become (unjustifiably) included while others have (likewise unjustifiably) been excluded. This inclusion and exclusion occurred on two levels. The first and most obvious one is due to a superficial selection and expedient simplification of single sentences and paragraphs of seemingly appropriate texts in order to bolster, depending on the reified interest, neo-realist tenets of power politics or neoliberal tenets of international cooperation (like Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Morgenthau from a neo-realist perspective, or Grotius and Kant from a more liberal perspective) while others, where such modular components cannot be found, were excluded from the canon of ‘IR theorists’, again depending on the reified interest (like Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, and las Casas from a neo-realist perspective, and Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes as ‘bad guys’ from a more liberal perspective). The second level representing why and ‘where’ these inclusions/exclusions occurred makes the first level possible because this kind of selection seems workable from the view of both neo-realism and neo-liberalism. This level is related to the (self-induced) invisibility (or intangibility) and consequent neglect of the normative theorizing of authors like Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Morgenthau or of the very ambivalent character of authors such as Kant (but also Augustine, Aquinas, and las Casas) – normative dimensions and ambivalences in which each of the cherry-picked sentences and thoughts as well as the oeuvre of respective authors in general have to be contextualized and situated. By such an interpretive practice of contextualization and situation, the canonizations and confinement of single authors into familiar categories of IR and streamlined readings of international political thought – foremost into the categories of ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’, but also into anachronistic subcategories of the inter-national (see my initial

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doubts in endnote 3) – appear to be unsustainable and reveal themselves to be selective readings and ideologically motivated misreadings. Reminiscing about the heroic figures of ‘realism’/neo-realism – Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Morgenthau – and the necessity of shifting them out of the category of a realism, the reification problem precludes the tangibility of the influences of Aristotelian ethics and of universal law as well as cultural sensibility in Thucydides; the emphasis on virtu republicanism in Machiavelli; the sensitively constructed relation between legitimacy, security, and sovereignty/authority in Hobbes; and the aspects of normative legal philosophy as well as of the sensitive relation between morality/ethics and power in Morgenthau (not alone of his incisive criticism of positivist political science). Last but not least, it removes the sense of the significance of some kind of universal and/or universalistic conceptualizations of international politics and foreign policy orientation which exists in all these philosophies alongside contingent affirmations of interest politics. With regard to Grotius and Kant (but Cicero and the Christian authors also could be included here and indeed appear sometimes in the background), the reification problem precludes the view for at least ambivalences in their affirmation of interest and principled power politics which exist alongside clear visions of universalisms and universalities operating as the unifying assumption in a field of cultural, religious, and political diversity.199 In such a perspective, it seems as if the differentiation and establishment of the discipline of IR from neighbouring disciplines in the humanities and social sciences in the first half of the last century was itself an ideological undertaking which relates to nineteenth-century national imperialisms and the genesis of the modern nation-state as a powerful concept of political order which holds its ground martially. Contrary to that impact of the nation-state and nationalism on IR, external relations of political entities stretching from antiquity through to the end of the eighteenth century were thought of in the context of a comprehensive understanding of political order, justifying (or condemning) foreign politics on ethical grounds and in the context of universal and/or universalistic legal and political principles.200

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Part V Instead of A Conclusion – Towards Renewed Ontology(ies)

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V.1 Universal, Universalistic – Universalized

The previous chapters and subchapters discussed authors and schools of thought from the history of international political thought and IR theory with respect to a historio-temporal differentiation of basically two (universal/universalistic and particularistic), however, at a closer look indeed three ontological levels and used these levels for the characterization of their conceptualization of international/inter-national politics. These three levels were universal, universalistic, and particularistic thinking. We reviewed the following authors and schools of thought: Thucydides, Cicero, Aurelius Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas under the first rubric of universal thinking from Greek and Roman antiquity into scholasticism; and Bartolomé de las Casas, Francisco de Vitoria, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Immanuel Kant under the second rubric of universalistic thinking from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. International political thought in all these authors has been informed by and composed of universal and universalistic principles of ethics, law, human reason, and political order. Each of these components contributed to a normative envisioning of the existence of, and consequently the possibility to maintain and create, some higher good of general mankind as the referential framework for international politics. This higher good typically consisted of peace, or at least the justification of an ius ad bellum in cases of ‘just war’ only. Under the third rubric of particularistic thinking, this study engaged with GWF Hegel, national monumental historiography, geopolitical thought, the English School, and neo-realism (and neo-liberalism) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition to this, the term universalization was used from time to time. These rubrics as well as the term universalization and its relation to these rubrics need more explanation. The discussions of authors and schools of thought in this study as well as of secondary literature identified a major shift in international political thought around the beginning of the nineteenth century, represented most influentially by the German philosopher Hegel, when the ontology of international theory changed from universal and universalistic to particularistic 229

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frames of reference. Both universal and universalistic ontologies have been characterized by an ultimate reference to some kind of humanity, some common good of mankind, universal reason, natural law and general legal principles, and some kind of transcendental ethics which operate or should operate across all political bodies while at the same time acknowledging and recognizing, to different degrees, cultural, religious, and political diversity and plurality. In contrast, inter-national political theory in the nineteenth century and even more so the neo-realist mainstream of IR in the twentieth century abandoned universal and/or universalistic notions and developed their theories and theorems around the particularistic principle of a/the national interest, the power and well-being of the nation, and its distinguished morality as the paramount references – with the discussed consequences and implications of self-perpetuating dualisms and perennial inevitabilities of violence. To put it differently: Political theorists until the beginning of the nineteenth century, while recognizing the diversity and plurality among peoples and their political organizations in cultural, religious, and political matters, nevertheless engaged in ontological and epistemological questions about the dynamics, interrelations, and lines between general principles of order transcending individual political organizations and the constitutive principles of individual politics. The answers to those questions were rarely clear-cut in favour of unrestricted universalisms or universalities and rather more than not ambivalent – as could be seen in Thucydides’s narrative about the first reason of the Peloponnesian War; in Cicero’s patriotic and anything but cosmopolitan justification of warfare on behalf of the Roman empire; in Augustine’s and Aquinas’s political pragmatism; in las Casas’s aporia to conceptualize the other, the Indian, only in terms of the European self; in Machiavelli’s sometimes utilitarian obsession with stability; in Hobbes’s strong affirmation of sovereignty; and in Kant’s finally ambivalent suggestions of how to overcome statist sovereignties in order to establish conditions for possibly peaceable interstate relations. However, despite these ambivalences, or exactly because of them, they all share, in all their differences but yet with certainty, visions of cultural, religious, and political sociability, of humanity, and of transcendental principles among all human beings, peoples, and political organizations – which have been as different as poleis; more or less independent peoples under imperial orders; republics; city-states; and even modern states under the Westphalian system of mutual recognition from 1648 to the beginning of the nineteenth century (i.e., not yet nation-states). Of course, not all political theories discussed in the previous chapters from Greek and Roman antiquity to the end of the eighteenth century show the same perception and construction of universality during this history of political philosophy of some two thousand years and more. It would be misleading and overly simplified to assume that the history of universalism(s)

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in (Western) international political thought was uniform throughout the centuries. What we observe, in addition to individual emphases on different universal/universalistic principles, are different degrees of universalism. No author is naively ignoring the diversity of mankind. What they nevertheless share is the perception and notion of some unifying (ethical, legal, anthropological, rational, and political) principles among the multitude of political bodies. Although international political thought during this period thus evinces a basically shared ontology (of the existence) of some metaphysical principles which apply to all politics and all human beings, which operate within and across all political organizations, and which integrate, or should integrate, political communities into a common framework of humanity, yet another thought compared to the ontological break from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century a minor shift can be observed within this huge period: a shift between universal (Thucydides, Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas may be subsumed under this rubric) and universalistic (las Casas, de Vitoria, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Kant may be subsumed under that rubric) thinking. The line between both rubrics of nonetheless holistic ontologies – between universal and universalistic – is obviously more fluid and less straightforward than this typology (as is the case with all typologies) might suggest, but it nevertheless points to a divergent and, throughout the history of Western political philosophy, increasingly critically seen and hence declining degree of envisioning some holistic metaphysics as either a substance in its own right or as something constructed due to an act of human will and agency. Augustine’s critical interrogation of the existence of ‘God’ (and religious practices in the wider sense) as being either an eternal substance or a product of human imagination due to human finiteness and imperfection may be the most pointed and ambivalent example in this regard; it comes close to las Casas’s recognition of different (Christian and non-Christian alike) spiritual practices as equally religious, though both are here subsumed under the variant rubrics of universal and universalistic thinking, respectively. As Anthony Padgen observes, ‘The crucial difference between them [i.e., what is described here as universal and universalistic] was that whereas for Aristotle and Aquinas and their followers [i.e., the universal rubric of holistic thinking], human sociability was prior to the individual and thus, to a very large degree independent of human will ... for Grotius and Hobbes [and others subsumed here under the universalistic rubric] civil ... society was solely the creation of an act of will’ (Padgen, 2003, p. 180). What hence is new and stands behind this alteration – which is a shift within the same paradigm of universality – is a change in the notion and idea of an intrinsic bond among human societies which embraces all diversities together as either one genus by universal reason and law and by their politico-anthropological nature (Thucydides and Cicero) or as descendants in the divine order of creation (Augustine and Aquinas). From the fifteenth

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and sixteenth centuries to the eighteenth century, these ideas become obscured and increasingly criticized by a stronger acknowledgement of separation and diversity, while there is still, however, a profound ontological notion of unifying principles. The new character of these principles though – as noted also by Padgen – is that ontological thoughts are less reasoned and generated by human nature or prescribed by creation (and/ or what has been politically envisioned as the consequences, or telos, of this nature and creation, respectively) and are instead of a rationalistic and voluntaristic character due to political agency, that is, due to men’s imagination and responsibility. Withal, this kind of agency is nevertheless conceptualized as embedded and possible only due to the pertinent metaphysical notions of ‘God’, ‘virtue’, and political contingency, and hence it becomes ambivalent at some points (as seen above with regard to the categorization of Augustine and las Casas). However, the world has not yet fallen apart into the entities of the nation-state and the paradox of a metaphysics of ‘national interest’, guided by a modern ontology of national particularism. To repeat: The reason why the pre-nineteenth-century authors discussed here can be seen together – despite their two ‘brands of universalism’ (Padgen, 2003), that is, of universal and universalistic thinking – in contrast to nineteenth and (most) twentieth-century authors, is because of their vision and imagination of some metaphysical principles (in the form of natural substances and natural laws; in the form of general principles and natural rights, even if they are minimalist; and/or as operating principles) that are shared, or are to be shared, by all human beings and which are operating, or are to be operating, in and across all societies. Part of these imaginations is their engagement in the dynamics between the recognition of cultural, religious, and political diversity and the imagination of holistic concepts which attempt to bring this diversity together in visions of mankind and general humanity – a recognition and imagination for which Francisco de Suárez’s dictum genus humanum, in varios populos et regna divisium is emblematic. With the arrival of Hegelian philosophy, the emergence of the idea of the ‘the nation as a state’ (the nation-state), and positivism at the beginning of the nineteenth century, we observe in very sharp contrast an ontological shift towards particularistic affirmations of national-statism, accompanied and backed up by positivist epistemologies – standing for ‘the predominance of the [nation] state, for the dualistic construction [of “self” and “otherness” as the dominant and only way to think diversity], for the will of the state as the only basis for international law, for the unquestionable right of every sovereign state to go to war’ (Kunz, 1961, p. 957) on behalf of its national interest. We also notice the failure to engage at all in the idea of the possibilities of a ‘fundamental unity of the human race’ as it has been famously expressed in the sixteenth century by de Vitoria’s Totus orbis, qui aliquot modo est una res publica (see also Weil, 1983). This failure is also to

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be seen as a failure to engage in the dynamics between, on the one hand, the real possibilities and especially the conditions of the possibilities of universalities and, on the other hand, diversity. This failure which is due to an ontological essentialism of national particularism and which cannot but establish and assert the particularity of nation-state sovereignty as the only think- and imaginable norm and the normative (as most clearly seen in the chapters on national historiography and geopolitical thought) and therewith the endless violence necessary to draw and reaffirm the line between such sovereignties, may this be with regard to territorial, identity related, or legal questions and their subordinated policies. This failure of engagement in dynamics is perhaps worse and a greater loss of imaginative capacities to think and conceptualize the international as a world in which all people(s) can live together than the arrival of particularism itself. The authors discussed in the chapters on universal and universalistic thinking recognized diversity while at the same time imagining possibilities for the world (as in the case of universal thinking) or conditions of such possibility (as in the case of universalistic thinking); particularism itself destroys such holistic visions. However, the abandonment of the engagement in the dynamics between diversities and universalities due to increasing and steadily solidifying political and academic celebrations of particularity, particular sovereignties, and statist solipsism as norm and as the normative during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries destroyed holistic imaginations of a/the world or humanity or mankind or the possibilities for such imaginations. It also made the conditions of the possibilities for such imaginations impossible by strategies of both physical and intellectual marginalization, exclusion, and violence which buried visions of politics other than those arrayed by national and nationalistic interests and of humanity under politics of canonizations, standardizations, and homogenizations on behalf of national (particularistic) sovereignties. This can be seen by the history of endless and apocalyptic wars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which were waged on behalf of nationalism and the ‘defense’ of national interest; this can also be seen by manifestations of statist rationalities, often analyzed as ‘structural violence’ executed through concrete policies (such as on immigration and asylum; see, for example, Behr, 1998, 2005), but also through modern bureaucratic machineries, as brought to light by critical theory in the traditions of the Frankfurt School. This can be seen by many analyses of knowledge-power relations in the legacies of Michel Foucault and his seminal works on Madness and Civilization (1965), The Birth of the Clinic (1973), Discipline and Punish (1977) – paradigmatic less because of the accuracy of his historical research, but more so because of his elaboration and awareness of standardizing forms of knowledge and their respective political, social, and legal practices of power, which both endorse the development of those forms of knowledge and support their sustainability.

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All that remains under the paradigm of particularistic ontology and statist solipsism is either the conflictive and violent affirmation, tenacity, and ‘defense’ of national interest and national identity (as seen in national historiography, geopolitical thought, and finally neo-realism, including the universalizations/hegemonization/imperialism of both its particularistic ontology [i.e., the nation-state as the paradigm of modernity and development201] and its spatiotemporally insensitive epistemology) or attempts to construct and erect a world of inter-national society out of particularistic entities. One might argue (as above in Chapter III.2) that the latter (as symbolized in the ‘standards of civilization’, a Wilsonian inter-nationalism, or the English School) would represent approaches to overcome nineteenthcentury particularism in opposition to its nationalisms. Indeed, however, what we observe, and this becomes clear especially in contrast to prenineteenth-century imaginations of possibilities of universal order or of the universalistic conditions of the possibilities of such order, are universalizations of particularistic images of the statist (European) self on the basis of affirming exactly the kind of ontology which founds and enables these images; are proactive imperial policies by Western nation-states exporting images of their cultural, political, and civilizational self and forcing those images upon others while at the time being situated in and confirming a world (‘international society’) of particularistic entities as well as, hypocritically and paradoxically one must say, promoting this kind of politics as ‘universal’ standards. This is exemplified not only by the lack of some kind of holistic visions and metavocabulary in nineteenth- and twentieth-century approaches to inter-national cooperation (as discussed above in Part III and as foreshadowed in the Introduction), but in three further instances: First, as Padgen notes with regard to the foundation and justification of human rights from the nineteenth century up to the end of the twentieth century, ‘advocates of human rights have worked backwards. Whereas both the scholastics and their Hobbesian and Grotian opponents had begun with a notion of humanity from which they had deduced what ... natural rights might be, the human rights charters [of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries] begin with the notion of rights in order to arrive at the notion of what a person might be’ (Padgen, 2003, p. 192). Second, and relating to this, we have to understand the charter of the United Nations, as the United Nations itself, as an attempt to construct inter-national cooperation from the springboard of particularistically situated entities while accepting, confirming, and (re)affirming national sovereignties, their solipsistic rule, and the paramount reference of national interest-politics.202 This is not to decry the relevance of the United Nations as a whole, and international politics may be much poorer without this organization; this is, however, to emphasize that the United Nations is not an institution based upon universalism/universalities but rather on the political ontology of particularity and the promotion of, though well intended,

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universalizations (see hereto the same kind of criticism by Morgenthau, 1954, pp. 8–9; 1962a). The observation of the legal character of the charter as not a ‘kind of higher formal source of law’, but just as an inter-national treaty (so Weil, 1983, p. 435), with legal norms enshrined as lex ferenda or conventional rules (in opposition to lex lata), complements the previous observations. And finally, we see the sharp contrast between universal/universalistic and universalized (but indeed particularistic) international/inter-national politics when we recollect the idea of recognition before and after the nineteenth century – or before and after (or with) Hegel. From the writings of Thucydides to Kant we notice some commonality with regard to the idea of recognition, even if it is based upon different notions of ethical, legal, anthropological, political, and rational universalities and with varying rationales for granting or declining acknowledgement. This commonality exists with regard to both the reason (the foundation of) and the rationale (the purpose) for recognition. The reason for recognition was seen in something ethically, legally, anthropologically, politically, and/or rationally shared on common ontological ground, some commonality, something universally or universalistically held – that is, some general recognans – among diverse poleis, peoples, city-states, and states – that is, the recognandii. Therefore, the rationale for recognition was seen in the creation and establishment of some collective and unifying in-between diverse political orders, of some common space, which conjuncts diversities before the background of substances or principles that are held in common and equally shared, and enabling cooperation.203 Neither this form of recognans nor this rationale for recognition exists anymore in Hegel. The reason for recognition in Hegel is the essentially particularized entity of the nationstate and the rationale for recognition is solely the affirmation of its subjectivity, particularity, and diversity in and for itself.204 Thus, the idea of recognition in Hegel has no consequences for cooperation of any kind; it does have, however, massive impacts on the relations among states in that this relation can be thought of and imagined in no other way than as dualistic, exclusivist, delimiting, opportunistic, and functional at best – in brief: as the image of anarchy suggests. Empirically, the sharp contrast between these two modes of recognition stands out in relation to either universal/universalistic thinking, that is, acknowledging others on the basis of some commonality, or the theory of self-affirmation, that is, excluding others from standards of the self or universalizing and enforcing those standards upon the other/others, when we compare the recognition that Cicero or las Casas meted out to nonRoman peoples or to the Indians, regardless of their paternalism or embrace of Christian rationality, and the Westphalian system of recognition with the politics of the so-called ‘standards of civilization’ and the construction of inter-national society which in the legacies of the former, is genuinely exclusionist and based on the (re)affirmation of particularity.

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It is not just a question of style and rhetoric but profound differences in, and a shift of, the respective political imaginations about the international/ inter-national when we consider the solipsistically self-affirming ideas of the ‘nation as a state’, ‘national interest’, and Hegelian recognition. We note the same profound differences with regard to respective mottos of a ‘Family of Nations’ (as Hegel and Henry Wheaton construed as substantially European); ‘circles of civilization’ (and consequently non-civilization); the ‘emergence of international society’ (based on European/Western criteria of territorial statehood); and even the recognition and accession politics of the European Union (see Behr, 2007). Compare these mottos with de Vitoria’s Totus orbis, qui aliquot modo est una res publica or Suárez’s genus humanum, in varios populos et regna divisiu and also with the dictum of the Peace Treaties of Westphalia Pax sit christiana, universalis, perpetua veraque et sincera amicitia ... fida vicinitas et secura studiorum pacis atque amicitiae cultura revirescant ac reflorescant, and we can see that that there is no straightforward continuity from ‘1648’ into international relations/IR of the twentieth century and no continuous thing such as the Westphalian system of states. Instead we see that the shift from universal/universalistic to particularistic thinking also encompasses a shift of the idea and concept of recognition. Indeed – and this is again more than just rhetoric or some linguistic sham – the Westphalian Peace Treaties do not speak of ‘territorial integrity’, which would indeed emphasize a hermetic solipsism in and for itself as it became typical for inter-national theory during and after the nineteenth century. Instead, the treaties speak of territorial respect and a right of territory (respectu territorii; iure territorii205) which, in contrast, underlines the estimation of mutual acknowledgement on the basis of shared ethics and a commonly perceived political nature of their communities. The same observation is expressed by Walker, although I have the impression that he seems to overlook the shift in international political thought from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century and instead assumes a consecutive history of international thought from 1648 into the twentieth century up to the present day. Nevertheless, his argument and the observation here complement one another in the most important point. As he formulates it, ‘[Sovereignty] may be the highest authority within a particular territory, but any particular authority depends on the even higher authority of the principle that the states system itself must survive in order to enable sovereigns to claim the highest authority. In this sense, the states system affirms a unity, even a universality, first and a plurality, or anarchy, only second’ (2002, p. 21). This universality existed in international political thought until the eighteenth century, including the Treaties of Westphalia and their accompanying international thought of mutual recognition (indeed this mutuality necessitates the ‘even higher authority of [a] principle’ of which Walker talks as the condition of the possibility that this whole system of states worked) and ceased to exist from the nineteenth

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century onwards when particularism and indeed anarchy triumphed and the concept of anarchy actually entered the stage of international political thought and later IR – that is, at the same time the ‘higher principle’ which conditioned the working of the system of states in the first place ceased to exist and international politics really looked into the naked face of anarchy (empirically, in terms of so many frozen conflicts and acts of violence, and theoretically, in terms of IR mainstream). It will be important to conduct further research into the operating principle of the system of states during the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries under the condition that universality ceased. I dare to hypothesize that no such a principle existed next to anarchy and Hegelian recognition, and international politics in these centuries evinced a ‘casino’ logic, that is, it was either contained in the potentially, though inevitably violence- and war-producing system of ‘balance of power’ (including the export and externalization of the permanently potential outbreak of violence in the ‘Concert of Europe’ from Europe into colonialism and translating it into imperialism), was temporarily euphoric (though always at the cost of others through national wars and jingoisms) or was immediately apocalyptic (World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, including its so-called proxy wars). The missing higher principle and the ‘casino’ logic of nineteenth-, twentieth-, and early twenty-first-century IR might further be able to explain the elusive, sometimes confusing and ambiguous ideologies; the desperate need to posit such principle(s); the sometimes deep worries and serious quests in the field of IR theory; and the contemporary need to reinvent IR theory from the very bottom up, rethinking its ontological and epistemological foundations. To summarize, the idea of mutuality in the political thinking of the Westphalian Treaties and in pre-nineteenth-century international political theory was not restricted to recognition of self-ness and ‘territorial integrity’ of (other) sovereign states (or, to put it differently, to a let-aloneand-don’t-interfere politics) as it would be in later documents such as the UN Charter, the Instructions to the International Peace Conference at the Hague 1899,206 and the Covenant of the League of Nations 1924.207 It was indicated through the notion of respect, and promoted the ideas ‘to procure the Benefit, Honour and Advantage of the other’ and ‘Universal Peace and Amity’.208 Also of interest is here that, in an anonymous English translation of 1732,209 both respectu territorii and iure territorii are reproduced verbatim while their meaning has been changed to refer to territorial integrity only in nineteenth- and twentieth-century translations.210 Indeed, what in the discipline of IR is being received as the Westphalian idea of ‘mutual recognition’ seems to be phrased as ‘amity’ (amicitiae211) in the treaties. This idea of recognition in the treaties is very different from Hegelian and postHegelian notions of recognition in that it is, amongst others (as seen above), more comprehensive and universalistic because it encompasses dimensions of respect, amity, and mutual promotion of well-being.212

V.2 A Loss of Ethics, or the Reinvention of Universal Thinking in Global Politics?

This study and its problematization of universalism and particularism in international political thought and IR theory have demonstrated a major shift in ontologies from ‘humanity’ to the ‘nation-state’. In addition to the main argument, which is about this shift and its ontological, epistemological, and methodological implications and consequences (particularly about the inevitability of conflict and violence of particularistic ontologies), the preceding discussions examined a set of side arguments. The most important relate to the lore of a ‘realist’ tradition and the ideological rewriting, misreading, and simplification of the intellectual and disciplinary history of IR and a subsequent need to recontextualize and reassess this fiction (including the reception of Morgenthau in IR) contrary to mainstream IR, but also to poststructuralist notions. We also examined the roots of neo-realism in Hegelian political philosophy as well as in national historiography and geopolitical thought and an ontological, epistemological, and ideology-critical disapproval of Waltzian IR theory (including its construction of a ‘realist’ tradition); a differentiation between universal, universalistic, and universalized theories and approaches to international politics; the misleading picture of a deterministic and linear progression of a history of international relations and a respective state system from 1648 to the present day; the universalizing, but particularistic character of nineteenth- and twentieth-century inter-nationalisms; and last, but not least, the understanding of the necessity of universalism/universality in order to recognize plurality and diversity. The nonlinearity and non-progressivity of the history of international relations from the Westphalian Peace Treaties to the present day is not to be confused, nor is it identical, with Stephen Krasner’s argument about an ‘organized hypocrisy’ with regard to sovereignty, its history, and legacies since 1648 (see Krasner, 1999, 2001); Krasner notes: ‘Conventions, contracts, coercion, and imposition have all been enduring patterns of behaviour in the international system. Every major peace treaty since 1648 – Westphalia, Utrecht, Vienna, 238

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Helsinki, and Dayton – has violated the sovereign state model in one way or another. Compromising the sovereign state model is always available as a policy option because there is no authority structure to prevent: nothing can preclude rulers from transgressing against the domestic autonomy of other states or recognizing entities that are not juridically autonomous ... The sovereign state model is a cognitive script characterized by organized hypocrisy’ (2001, pp. 18, 19). As a typical representative of the neo-realist IR mainstream – though sometimes in disguise of regime theory – Krasner affirms and reinforces the particularistic pattern/idea/assumption of ‘anarchy’ as a structure of international politics; and even if critical towards a linear (hi)story from 1648 into the twentieth- century system of states, his statement that ‘nothing can preclude rulers from transgressing against the domestic autonomy from other states’ because there were no authority structure(s) to prevent such transgression misses the point that this is so not because there would be something like anarchy, but because in post-eighteenth-century international political theory – a theoretical notion which reinforces political practice – the underlying ethics of recognition changed from ‘1648’ to ‘Vienna, Helsinki, and Dayton’ from universalistic to particularistic frameworks. These different threads – of which each can be seen as a different perspective on, and angle of, the main problematique and argument – shall now be woven together in a final question: do we observe a loss of ethics in international political thought and IR which occurred parallel to the shift from universal/ universalistic theories of international politics to theories of inter-national relations and IR and its particularistic ontologies? To put it differently: Is the epistemological condition of an international ethics – and an ethics of global or world politics alike – related to some form of universal/universalistic ontology? Can such epistemological condition be retrieved under the currently dominating influences of particularistic ontology and its universalizations? And do present-day theories of globalization evince ontological features of universal thinking, a question which seems pressing because globalization theories and studies explicitly focus on some kind of polities ‘beyond’ the national and the international political and social realm? Because it is beyond the scope of a concluding chapter to consider these questions at length, I want to suggest some conceptual avenues only for their further discussion and research.213 In order to do so, although I am aware of the hegemonic and imperial inclinations of universal and universalistic thinking, I come back to the proposition noted in the Introduction that some form of universal notions in international politics seems to be necessary not only in order to overcome the cruel dualisms of particularistic, national, and nationalistic thinking and their perennial affirmations through statist politics of conflict, war, and violence, but also in order to approach new ways and solutions with regard to questions of how to live together and how to act upon all kind of economic, religious, cultural, environmental, and other problems. The metaphor by Henry David Thoreau that I quoted at the very beginning

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of this study may serve as an example for this proposition and for the kind of universal epistemological position I envision. This proposition is underpinned by an understanding of ethics – and consequently of its necessity – which sees ethics, in opposition to morality, not as a set of more or less definite assertions and statements about ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘upright’ and ‘false’ behaviour, political order, habits, and so on. Rather, it views ethics as the intellectual operation of reflecting upon and deliberating about the legitimization and responsibility of our actions; developing the highest possible forms of such legitimization as an attitude (ethos); and considering such legitimization and responsibility with regard to both the intentions of the action and the consequences of these actions for other human beings. This understanding of ethics is informed by Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (2009). Though Aristotle’s concept of politics and deliberation is certainly not indiscriminate, because it excludes women, slaves, and ‘barbarians’ from the sphere of politics and thus cannot and does not serve here as a model for a universal ontology and ethics which can avoid the aporia of dualistic metaphysics, his idea and understanding of ethics as the reflection upon, and deliberation of, the legitimization and responsibility of political action is nevertheless of guiding value, especially in contrast to what we usually call ‘morality’. Although ethics is perceived as the reflection and consideration of the conditions of the possibility of moral action and morality (for example, ‘good’ and ‘bad’), morality itself essentially defines and determines the categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ action and behaviour (see more on this in the excellent discussion in Düring, 1966). Such kind of ethics seems possible only on the basis of ontological and epistemological universalisms, not, however, on the basis of particularistic and/or universalized thinking. I thus conclude that the shift from universal/ universalistic to particularistic thinking wrought a simultaneous loss of ethics: ethics became replaced by particularistic, national mores and moral teachings. The ontological shift from universalism to particularism made the reflection and deliberation of human agency according to the highest possible (universal) forms of legitimization and responsibility both impossible and irrelevant. As long as political action (here, foreign policies) seemed in accordance with the morality of the nation and ‘the’ national interest, the need for legitimization was deemed as sufficiently granted. This truncation of ethics and its replacement by national morality can be seen by juxtaposing examples of legitimizing war (by resorting to the idea of ‘just war’) in pre-nineteenth-century theories with the pattern of legitimizing war in the name of the ‘national interest’ in nineteenth- and twentieth-century theories of inter-national relations and by contrasting Hobbes, where the question of the legitimization of the sovereign plays so prominent a role in his triangular relation between security, sovereignty, and legitimization and where it is conceptualized within the referential framework of universal natural law and natural right, with Hegel’s and the neo-realists’ paradigm of legitimizing a nation’s foreign politics with the promotion of the public weal of and for the nation itself.

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Efforts to further develop an ethics for and of international politics should not, however, try to replace pre-nineteenth-century historic patterns of universal thought – which seems impossible, because respective ontologies are intellectually lost, and which is not desirable, due to the potential risk of imperial politics and hegemonic knowledge claims. New efforts should rather consider how to bridge national and cultural pluralities and diversities under the conditions of twenty-first-century politics and must on behalf of such bridging engage with the dynamics between present-day universal and particularistic patterns of international and global politics. This engagement, however, can well be learned from prenineteenth-century patterns of universal thought. Thus, even if it is not about reactivating those patterns, pre-nineteenth-century thought can be an example of and provide orientation for the kind of required engagement with the dynamics of acknowledging diversity and plurality and at the same time trying to find and to create ties, which bind diversity and plurality together in order to at least live up theoretically to the necessity of universal ontologies focusing on humanity, mankind, common good, and so on. Their purpose should be not only to overcome and avoid particularistic politics of dualisms, violence and conflict, and exclusions, but also to develop an ethics of nonexclusionary outlooks. Any nonuniversal or nonuniversalistic ontology is per se exclusionary (and even more so all those under the banner of universalized particularisms) because it cannot but focus only on cultural, geographic, social, ‘civilizational’ (whatever may be defined as such) parts of mankind, and hence leaves other parts outside those areas and circles which are not part of the ontological focus. But what about epistemological universalism, which seems to be a more problematic and controversial part and condition of universal ethics than ontological universalism; thus, what about the categories, their application and validity, which we use to think and imagine ontological universalism; and how can and should epistemological universality be envisioned which avoids the always looming imperialism of knowledge claims and essentialism of policies? Because it appears that universalism is also epistemologically necessary for reasons of nonexclusionary perceptions and policies of international, global, and/or world politics and respective ethics – a necessity which shall become more clear by the considerations in the following section about epistemological aporias of nonuniversal/nonuniversalistic thinking – there seem to be epistemological reasons next to an ontological necessity of universal thinking.

1. Outline of an ethics of humanity in the international/world/global The demands for such an ethics are foremost that it overcomes the dualisms, which are inherent in particularistic thinking, especially when it is about

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thinking and approaching the category of the ‘other’, whether this might be on an interpersonal level or with regard to another state. This kind of dualism manifests in two ways: first, as an inside/outside-divide which draws a sharp line between politics within and politics beyond the state. As it became apparent throughout the discussions, in nineteenth- and twentieth-century international political theory and IR, the realm of domestic politics was perceived as ordered and arrayed by laws, governmental policies, and national mores, while the realm of the international was conceived as ‘anarchic’. This divide was foreign to pre-nineteenth-century international political thought where all politics was perceived to be the subject of, and to be influenced by, the same political principles and, therefore, was perceived as either in order or in chaos en tous. In addition to this, the inside/outside divide functions as a pattern of in- or exclusion with regard to circles of ‘civilization’ and ‘noncivilization’, which are likewise construed as spheres of ‘order’ or ‘anarchy’, respectively (or ‘progress’ and ‘backwardness’, ‘development’ and ‘under-development’, and so on). One might argue that in the context of authors discussed here, this outlook could also be found in, for example, Cicero, who would have divided the world into Romans and non-Romans (‘barbarians’) and thus exclude the largest part of mankind from civilization. This argument is, however, only partly true in Cicero because, even if on a political level we observe paternalism and bellicose forms of imperialism, we also see the epistemological condition for acknowledgement, recognition, mutual integration, and the building of a common world due to his fundamental concept of universal human reason. The particularistic ontology and epistemology of nationalism, with the nation being the eternal, structural, self-contained and highest reasonable unit and identity-provider, principally forecloses such patterns of acknowledgment, recognition, integration, and mutual building up of commonalities. Thus, we have to (learn to) distinguish politics with relation to (their) different ontological and epistemological foundations and consequences to identify fundamental differences among what might look like similar political concepts at first glance. A following key question for political and social theory in general and for an ethical theory of international/global politics in particular addresses the theoretical and practical problem of thinking and approaching the ‘other’ (as individual[s] or state[s]) without assumptions about her, his, or their identity. Put differently, how can we act and think of the ‘other’ (and finally oneself) without picturing categories of ‘nationality’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘culture’, and/or ‘national interest’? A first step might lie in the attempt not to think of the other, but towards the other. A second step might then be to avoid completely the concept of the/one ‘other’ as an opposition which structurally lies outside the ‘self’– an opposition which is finally a result of dualistic, particularistic theorizing and their sociopolitical constructions – by leaving dualistic epistemologies and, with them, particularistic ontologies behind

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while at the same time being aware of diversity and plurality. An awareness of diversity and plurality, which, if it shall have a chance to overcome the aporias of dualism and particularism, needs to build upon ontological and epistemological universalism so that all humanity can be in common and can be thought of in commonality.214 This is exactly not an e pluribus unum, but a fateri/fatemini pluribus pluribum: to allow and to acknowledge plurality in order to reveal and to make known its diversities – or ‘to teach the Indian my religion would be his promise to teach me his’, to recall Thoreau’s words from the Introduction. This acknowledgment in order of, and for the benefit of, a mutual building up of plurality in acknowledged diversity needs a foundation in some universal relationship which pluralities hold towards each other. As David Campbell points out, there has to be an underpinning of a universal notion of humanity only on whose basis plural and diverse ‘narratives’ about humanity and politics can be regarded as equal to each other (see Campbell, 1996). The abstractness of these considerations is owed to the circumstance in which we find ourselves today as theorists of the international/global/world, namely, that traditions of serious engagement in the dynamics between universality and plurality/diversity broke away some two hundred years ago. Therefore, we have to rethink and revise our disciplinary legacies of particularistic and universalizing dogmas – a rethinking which has to engage with questions at the very foundations of a political theory of the international and with questions about its ontological and epistemological bases, their metaphysical conditions, and their relations to political ethics.215 A promising approach to this kind of rethinking of international theory on a universal ontology, which enables an epistemology of universal ethical recognition of diversities and pluralities, avoids the aporias of particularism, and at the same time is not suppressive of, and imperialistic towards, plurality and diversity, can be found in the ideas put forward by the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas that the ‘other’ or, better, diversity and plurality are not something outside the ‘self’ but a dimension categorically inherent in the ‘self’ (see 1985, 1994a, 1994b, 1998a, 1998b, 2003).216 Whether this dimension might exist in the form of a construction of reality or as a lived experience of and within the self is of lesser relevance. Important in this notion is the acknowledgment of diversity and plurality as genuine parts of the processuality of the constitution of the ‘self’. This notion speaks decisively against any idea of the ‘self’ as a homogeneous and self-contained unit and that in both regards of the ‘self’ as an individual or a state. Applied to the idea of ‘the’ state, this notion results in a vision of ‘the’ state always as a pluralistic and diversified assembly of people(s), cultures, and identities. Applied to international politics, this means that the plurality of nationstates and the diversity represented by them with regard to cultures, identities, and political systems is always and already part of every polity and political organization. For international politics, this also means that the

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international (or global and the world) is an assembly of endless pluralities and diversities. Whatever we may encounter and experience is a constitutional and procedural part of our own constitution and its conditionality, by Lévinas metaphorically depicted as the naked face of the ‘other’. This has to be specified with regard to how this inherency is imagined: how should the is (in italics) be understood? It would be misleading, according to Lévinas, to understand the inherency of the ‘other’ in the ‘self’ as something which is in the self as a structurally and fixed given. Rather, the hermeneutic alternative is the case, namely, that as soon as plurality and diversity become part of lived experience, they contribute to the process of the constitution of the ‘self’. Thus, the ‘self’ is never in a finite state of identity, but in an infinite process of experiencing a world of pluralities and diversities which become part of the self’s identity processes and constantly transcend each moment of giveness of any particular individual person or state. Hence, Lévinas can say that the ‘other’ is potentially always in the ‘self’ because the ‘self’ experiences ‘itself’ in no other forms than in plurality and diversity, that is, in ‘othernesses’, not of ‘otherness’. Thinking the ‘other’ is thus foremost a critical investigation in the processes of identity construction and an epistemological movement of the ‘self’ towards the pluralities and diversities it encounters in the processuality of its own being, and vice versa. In this attempt to rescue humanity from the aporias of particularistic dualisms (including their universalizations), potential imperialisms of universal and universalistic politics – both described by Lévinas as ‘exploitation’ and ‘violence’ – as well as from the lack of normativeness of poststructuralist deconstructivism, Lévinas develops a concept of human dignity, responsibility, humility, and compromise.217 Because dignity, humility, responsibility, and compromise grant antecedence to the ‘other’ as soon as plurality and diversity are experienced, they lead to an ethics of self-containment (selfconstraint), which can be seen as an option for international/global politics which is based on an ethics of self criticality and communication, dialogue, and mutual responsibilities among diverse pluralities. The practical realization of such an ethics in international politics responds to a universalistic claim that both legacies of particularistic theorizing fail to offer. The humanism of the ‘other’, found in Levinas’s work, offers a reconstructed narrative of an ethics that denies the violence of particularistic dualisms, binary logocentrisms, and their universalizations. This narrative propagates the conditions for dialogue with ‘others’ with an integral respect for difference and plurality without a totalizing claim to know them, to know what kind of political order is good for them, and how they should organize their polities. Most importantly, such an ethics contains an element of self-constraint which has become lost in international political theory and IR under the paradigm of ‘national interest’ which legitimizes every politics, even war, in the name of securitizing the national self, or which, at least, does not constrain the national self from exerting any kind of politics on behalf of

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the nation. Remembering in contrast pre-nineteenth-century international thought, we recall that their ontologies and epistemologies produced some form of binding universal principles for sovereigns which in one form or another, constrained them from certain politics, guiding to, and hoping for, peaceable relations among all polities. In all authors, we found the claim that foreign politics has to be drafted and legitimized in the name of some higher, universal principles – such as reason, law, justice, and peace – transcending the singularity of their own nation(s). Because it is impossible (and also not necessarily desirable) to simply restore the old universalities, however pressingly important to overcome the legacies of particularistic and universalizing theorizing, a Lévinasian ethics seems to provide the conditions offering the possibility of overcoming those legacies and providing the ontological and epistemological basis for a new engagement with the dynamics between plurality, diversity, and universality and their metaphysical principles under the conditions of twenty-first-century international and global politics.218 Finally, I want to discuss the question whether such an ethics seems achievable under – or if it is compatible with – paradigms of current discourses on global politics. What are the possibilities for such an ethics in the context of global theories and their more or less explicit claim to theorize a/ the world after and beyond the inter-national? I will engage with two observations on globalization theory and leave them as hypotheses for further investigation.

2. Questions towards discourses on/of global politics Current discourses on global politics are characterized by a plethora of terminologies which all indicate some ‘beyond’ the nation-state and the inter-national order. These terminologies arose in the early 1990s, thus immediately after the end of the Cold War, pointing towards the existence of new patterns of politics which are different from the Cold War order as well as from what is/was called the stability of the Westphalian state system. I argued elsewhere (Behr, 2004, 2009) that these new discourses were characterized by both the search for new patterns of global order as well as a lack of appropriate ontology and epistemology to theorize and to envision normatively what exactly it was they were talking about. It was indeed an ‘elusive quest’ and a continuing one, as Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach termed it (1988, 2003; others who are engaged in this quest include Rosenau, 1997; Ruggie, 1993). Has this situation changed and have global theories meanwhile developed an ontology of the global (which one would expect from scholarship using a terminology of ‘the global’)? To put it differently, have they developed a more profound image of what this ‘beyond’ the nationstate and the inter-national order are supposed to be, including its universal and/or universalistic principles of (global) togetherness?

246

A History of International Political Theory

I shall propose the argument that discourses on global politics in IR can be divided into two basic patterns: representatives of the first pattern seem to assume an existence of global politics as something which exists ‘out there’ in more or less the same manner as the inter-national has been seen as existing ‘out there’ under the neo-realist paradigm of twentieth-century IR. This pattern might be called ‘structuralist global theories’ because the global is being viewed as a structure which exists outside, or beyond, the state and the international. These structuralist global theories seem to lack serious consideration and investigation in the ontology of ‘the’ global, a trend which David Held has rightfully termed ‘hyper globalization’ (Held et al., 1999, p. 226). Representatives of the second pattern problematize the emergence of new patterns, which would not follow and are not tangible with particularistic ontologies of the inter-national in relation to the international system of states, to states, and to nonstate international organizations. The second pattern seems to (re)engage in the dynamics between the particular and the universal, and I would argue that promising approaches can be found here. In general, however, it seems that, even in those theories, which investigate global politics in relation to the inter-national system of states, states, and nonstate international organizations, there is still a lack of universal (global) ontologies as well as some reluctance to engage in (new) ontologies and their metaphysics at all. This appears paradoxical because there seems to be a critical awareness of the deficits of the ontological legacies in and of IR at the same time. The challenges and requirements for a theory of the international under the conditions of twenty-first-century politics might therefore lie in the study of the ontological and epistemological dynamics between particularism(s) and universalism/universality, a groundwork which has to overcome and to think beyond the cemented frameworks and aporias of particularism to establish renewed ontology(ies) and respective epistemologies for contemporary and future politics and ethics. Attempts to do so can receive inspiration for – no blueprints – and lessons on the ontological and epistemological conditions, consequences, and possibilities of universal and universalistic theories, or at least from their ambivalences, which finally reflect their intellectual engagement and the scholarly seriousness of their engagement with the dynamics and interrelations between particularism and universalism/universality. The guiding question for these attempts might be formulated as follows: how should we (re)create the transcendental principle/principles that recognize and socialize plurality and diversity while not expecting ‘the other’ to assimilate and/ or not violating ‘the other’ through logo- and egocentric epistemologies?

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 typology 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 distinction 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 specific 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 politics, 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

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

Notes to pre-nineteenth-century authors and ideas even if historiographical correctness 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). I use the terms International Politics and International Relations synonymously here; differences will be addressed in Chapters III.2 and IV. 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. For this argument, see also Ruggie, 1993. The concept of genealogy is borrowed from Michel Foucault (especially 1972) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1990). A comprehensive 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). 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. 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 genealogical perspective. See, for example, R. B. J. Walker, Andrew Linklater, Graham Evans, Edward Keenes, Miles Kahler, William Scheuerman, and Michael C. Williams. 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 philosophies. 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. 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 methodological 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. A comparison between the nineteenth-century ‘standards of civilization’ and, for example, Thomas Aquinas’s approach to ‘inter-religious’ and intercultural

Notes 249

13. 14.

15. 16.

I.1

dialogue (according to his Summa contra Gentiles) – the former based on universalizations 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 dividing 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 (constructed) 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. References here are, for example, Waltz, 1954, 1979; Keohane, 1983, 1986; Gilpin, 1984; Kaplan, 1966, 1979. 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. For this term, see Richard Rorty, 1984, p. 56, in his reflections about different approaches to the historiography of philosophy. 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 is a “Realist” tradition is a key component of claims about the continuing salience and wisdom of Realism itself’ (Williams, 2005, p. 3). In Chapter IV, I will come back to the question of who exactly represents these claims and how upholding these claims can be explained. Although I widely agree with Williams in his criticism of these claims and with regard to individual anti-‘realist’ readings, of single authors (such as Thomas Hobbes), I am less definite in determining how to understand single authors and what they might have ‘really meant’ (although my approach emphasizes pointing to and elaborating on differences in their oeuvre from ‘realist’ readings); I am more radical in my conclusions, however, suggesting that we completely renounce the terminology of ‘realist’ and/or ‘Realism’ for pre-nineteenth-century thought.

Greek and Roman antiquity

17. For an overwhelming majority in IR, see Kaplan, 1966; Keohane, 1983; Gilpin, 1984; Haas, 1995; also Waltz, 1954, pp. 12, 159, 211. 18. A fourth assumption might be added stating that Thucydides’s narration of the war is amoral and declines moral codes and ethical considerations to favour power politics and individual advantage.

250 Notes 19. The plague, which is referred to here (The Peloponnesian War, II.47–54), is another example demonstrating that, according to Thucydides, anarchy is not something a priori which reasons war among states, but that anarchy is a consequence of war, which itself may be fought for different reasons; see more on this in Cochrane, 1961, p. 472. 20. The principle of ‘pacta sunt servanda’ will be important throughout this study; for now, the following definition will suffice, namely, that ‘pacta sunt servanda’ ‘is (rather than consent) the real source of the treaty obligation [as] the fundamental international law norm ... According to this norm, a state that becomes a party to a treaty is bound to carry out the duties established by this treaty ... even if the government changes ... Pacta sunt servanda is binding on all states in their treaty relations regardless of whether or not they currently consent to it’ (Charney, 1993, p. 534). 21. See in this regard also the interpretation by David Boucher (Boucher, 1998, pp. 72–4). As much as I agree with Boucher emphasizing the relevance of universal legal principles in Thucydides, it strikes me that, when he interprets Thucydides regarding the reason for war, he deems the motive of fear to be the only one for the outbreak of the war, whereas we could see that the breach of legal standards and agreements counts also in Thucydides. Boucher’s interpretation of Thucydides becomes incomprehensible, however, when he further argues that Thucydides would assume that ‘individuals are utility maximizers making rational choices in accordance with their interests’ (p. 74), that ‘questions of morality in international politics are subordinate to the idea of raison d’état’ (p. 75), and that ‘justice and injustice are ... inapplicable to the interstate sphere’ (p. 76). It is correct that Thucydides makes these observations empirically; they do not, however, reflect his own normative judgments. 22. This further aspect does not overtly suit neo-realists’ use of Thucydides because, as Waltz stresses, there would be no linkage between external and internal politics of a state; see more on this topic in Chapters IV.1 and IV.2. 23. See in this regard P. A. Brunt, 1986, where he describes Cicero’s support and admiration of republican Rome and describes his enmity with Gaius Julius Caesar. 24. Cicero will be quoted here with reference to the 1887 edition of De officiis by Little Brown, Boston, and 1841/1842 editions of De legibus and De republica by Edmund Spettigue. These editions may be perceived as Christianized translations in the legacies of Augustinian and Thomist while the Oxford World’s Classics editions, for example, appear to interpret Cicero more in an Aristotelian and Platonist terminology. When reading both English translations against the Latin original, none of these English versions is to be preferred; they all seem from time to time critical. I tend to go with the Little Brown and Edmund Spettigue editions for reasons of accessibility because the documents are available online. 25. See, in this regard, in Treatise on the Laws (De Legibus) where Cicero notes: ‘(Whatever) definition we give to men, it must include the whole human race ... (No) portion of mankind can be heterogeneous or dissimilar from the rest; because, if this were the case, one definition could not include all men’ (Book I.30). It can easily be seen that this explanation is tautological and demonstrates that Cicero is sometimes more of a political writer at the burden of logical argumentation. 26. See also Nederman, 1993, p. 505: ‘The Ciceronian doctrine of natural law codifies and authorizes the obligation stemming from justice to value social fellowship above all else ... The function of political institutions is to impose the dictates of justice on every member of the community without regard for their wealth, status or other extraneous considerations.’

Notes 251 27. When Cicero speaks of ‘nations’ (nationes), it is obvious that this cannot be identified with our modern understanding of the nation state, which underlies the concept of inter-national relations. Nevertheless, what Cicero has in mind seems to at least partly coincide with the modern understanding, namely, ethnic criteria which apply to a collective of people. For Cicero, these criteria are most of all constituted by language. When he speaks of nations, he refers to the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, and different ethnic tribes in ‘Gallia cisalpina’ and ‘Gallia transalpina’. 28. In more general terms, Cicero’s ethical considerations centre around the relation between expedience and candour (or self-love and common good). Here, his argument is ambivalent, because even if ethically straightforward requiring unequivocal support for the universal common good and candour behaviour, he knows about the human tendencies to pursue their individual interests. Consequently, we observe a tension between universalism and particularism in Cicero. Generally speaking, however, his ethical position can be exemplified by the following two paragraphs from On Moral Duties: ‘(It) is clear, since nature is the fountain of law, that it is in accordance with nature that no one should act so as to prey upon another’s ignorance’ (Book III.17); and: ‘But whatever is right, springs from one of four sources. It consists either in perception and skilful treatment of truth; or in maintaining good-fellowship with men, giving to everyone his due, and keeping good faith in contracts and promises; or in the greatness and strength of a lofty and unconquered mind; or in order and measure that constitute moderation and temperance’ (Book I.5). 29. Thucydides, compared to Cicero, was not less decisive. However, he was less explicit on this aspect; see further Brunt, 1986. 30. The occurrences Cicero is referring to are explained in detail by Cowell, 1972; Lacey, 1978; Ruebel, 1994; Jiménez, 2000; Forsyth, 2003; Garland, 2005; Shotter, 2005. 31. And thus outlines paradigmatically the difference between patriotism and ‘nationalism’ as it developed in the nineteenth century; see more in Chapters II and III; with regard to Cicero, see Nederman, 1993. 32. Cicero writes in this regard in Treatise on the Laws, Book II.8: ‘(That) [the Roman] law was neither excogitated by the genius of men, nor is it anything in the progress of society; but a certain eternal principle, which governs the entire universe; wisely commanding what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong’. 33. For further details, see Treatise on the Commonwealth, Book VI, and On Moral Duties, Book I.

I.2 Christian Political Pragmatism and Ethical Universalism – Aurelius Augustine and Thomas Aquinas 34. It might be interesting to note that, in Summa Theologica, Aquinas refers to Aristotle by name 183 times and in an indirect way – as The Philosopher – 1,902 times; to Augustine he refers 3,157 times. For the discussion of Aristotle’s influence on Augustine and especially Aquinas, see O’Connor, 1967. 35. What I describe as ‘pragmatic’ – in reference to Niebuhr (see below) – corresponds with what Cochrane, 1961, terms ‘realistic’ political outlooks in Augustine, which explicitly means not ‘realist’. 36. The term narrative as it is used here refers to Augustine himself (De Doctrina Christiana, 1995, Book II). It reveals a nearly ‘post-modern’ side in Augustine

252

37.

38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

Notes consisting of a subtle substructure in his writings which recommends understanding the story of creation (and consequently God, his power, and almightiness) as a huge symbolic cosmos (and not as historical ‘truth’ or ‘reality’) which symbolizes men’s temporality and natural and moral deficiencies, but that also tells men about their potential to develop their lives and to create social, political, and ethical order which can retrieve human life from permanent mutability; and that finally proposes and prescribes a normative framework for not abandoning human existence to the perils of its bare material, fleshly, and passionate conduct. Finally, God even appears as a creation of men’s rationality and selfreflexivity and, according to individual capacities, allows men to transcend the temporal ‘here’ and ‘now’ (more on that in Section 3). With regard to Augustine’s understanding of ‘narrative’, see also his Soliloquies and Immortality of the Soul (Augustine, 1990), De Doctrina Christiana (1995, Book II), and his lengthy discussions of linguistic concerns interpreting the Holy Scriptures throughout his City of God. See in this regard especially in Augustine, 1998, City of God, Book XI and XII; in the latter we read: ‘Of the creation of the one first man, and of the human race in him ... God therefore created only one single man ... that the unity of human society and the bond of concord might be commended to him more forcefully, mankind being bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by the affection of kinship’ (p. 533). See also Book XVI, Chapter 18, on Abraham as the father of all nations. Regarding the diversity of mankind, see also Augustine in Enchiridion (1955), Chapter XXVII; in The City of God (1995), see Book XVI, Chapter 23. The metaphor of Babylon or of the civitas terrena may also be understood as an acknowledgement, though not positive recognition, of social and political diversity and plurality; for a further discussion of this, see Cochrane, 1961. Further historic examples of earthly kingdoms and ungodly cities would be Egypt, Assyria, and Sicyoni; see Augustine, The City of God, Book XVI, Chapter 18. See more on this distinction in Section 3. On God’s order of creation, see The City of God, Book XI, Chapter 16: ‘In the case of rational natures ... a good will and a rightly ordered love have ... such great weight that, even though angels rank above men in the natural order, good men are nonetheless placed above the wicked angels according to the law of righteousness’ (p. 471). See also Augustine, 1995, in De Doctrina Christiana, about the love of God (Book I, pp. 59–60) who would even have created and loves his critics who, despite their criticism, retain their dignity as human beings (Book I, pp. 20–1). The almightiness and omnipresence of God – ‘God is incorporeal and the creator of all natures that are not himself’ (Augustine, The City of God, 1998, p. 455) – is best symbolized in the discussions about the existence and ‘nature’ of the evil. Augustine’s – and also Aquinas’s – understanding conceptualize the evil as not evil by nature, but as misguided by the bad use of their free will (p. 501; see also Augustine, Enchiridion, 1955, Chapter IV). The belief that God even created his (and consequently rightful peoples’) enemies and that, therefore, conflict and war are inevitable parts of the natural order of things, can be seen as the ultimate reference for Augustine’s and Aquinas’s pragmatism. About the loss of immortality because of men’s misuse of free will, see Augustine, 1955, p. 402. Augustine describes men’s longing for complete security as an illusion which can lead to paranoid behaviour, exemplified in the Roman Empire (1998, p. 146).

Notes 253 46. For this narrative and Augustine’s interpretation, see City of God, 1998, Book XII, Chapter 28. 47. The tension between passion and reason, or ‘love of the flesh’ and ‘love of God’, is symbolized in Augustine by the metaphor of a pilgrimage through this world (City of God; for example, Book XV, Chapter 1). Interesting in this regard is also his discussion of the immortality of the soul (Augustine, 1986; 1990) where he derives the necessary hope and comfort for the conduct of life from (the ideas of) God and immortality. One cannot escape the impression in Augustine of a quite rational construction of God in order to make life in this world comforting and meaningful. Niebuhr speaks in this regard of a ‘deification of self-consciousness’ in Augustine (Niebuhr, 1941, p. 168). 48. Both an orthodox and a naïve Christian view would raise their voice against this political understanding and interpretation of Augustine as too secular and as missing the spiritual dimension in Augustine. I agree with Niebuhr who argues that both directions (in his terminology ‘orthodox’ and ‘liberal’) were either a-political or, what is more, proved historically as failures in organizing politics or at least in providing organizing principle for political order, and who consequently suggests a metaphorical and ‘secular’ analysis of Augustine and also Aquinas; see Niebuhr (1935 [1963]). 49. For an excellent explanation of the concept of telos in Aristotle, see Marx, 1961. 50. See foremost in De Doctrina Christiana, 1995, Book I, as well as throughout The City of God. 51. The small linguistic difference between ‘For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? and ‘what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?’ is caused by different English translations; whereas I am using the edition by Cambridge University Press (Augustine 1992), Loriaux is basing his interpretation on The City of God (1969), ed. by William Chase Greene et al., Cambridge: Harvard University Press. This difference relates only to the English translation from the Latin, not, however, to the very beginning of this sentence, which, in both editions, acknowledges the addition of ‘Justice removed’. 52. Augustine defines war as conflict between different peoples and nations from which he separates conflict as strife between individuals or in the domestic realm (see throughout the City of God). 53. For this discussion, see The City of God, Book II, Chapter 21. 54. See Augustine, Enchiridion, 1955, Chapter XXVII specifically p. 401. 55. Aquinas distinguishes between four realms of law; the other three concern the people’s sovereign to its subjects such as ‘the institution of the sovereign relating to his office’ (2007, p. 1460; i.e., ‘public law’ in modern terms); the subjects among themselves such as ‘about buying and selling, judgments and penalties’ (ibid., i.e., ‘private law’); members of one household towards each other. 56. As such a war in modern times, one could consider the third Gulf War (2003) led by the United States against Iraq. 57. Here again, Augustine reveals his ambivalence about just war, and it could be asked how this can be observed when the reason for war is for religious reasons to unify foreign nations under Christianity – a kind of war, as outlined above, which Augustine deems to be just. 58. It is not part of my discussion here, however, it seems worth mentioning that we see a clear example that the request for the nationalization of violence and war is not a phenomenon of the seventeenth century and onwards (beginning with the modern theories of the state, i.e., Jean Bodin and Hobbes), but started much earlier.

254 Notes

II.1 Universalistic thinking in Christian legal philosophy – Bartholomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria 59. This is the reason why Grotius is not discussed here in a separate chapter. However, Grotius will surface in the context of the discussions of the English School; see Chapter III.2. 60. See the narratives by las Casas himself (1965, 1971), which may be regarded as exaggerations and which have been criticized for oversimplifying cultural differences among Indian peoples. Nevertheless, they provide some impressions of the Spaniards’ cruelties as well as of the exploitative systems of ‘encomenderos’ and ‘encomienda’; they also convey las Casas’s outrage over the Spaniards’ behaviour. See also de Vitoria: ‘But then, when we hear of so many massacres, so many plunderings of otherwise innocent men, so many princes evicted from their possessions and stripped of their rule, there is certainly ground for doubting whether this is rightly or wrongly done’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 119). 61. It has to be recognized that it was not only las Casas who raised his voice against the Spanish genocide in the Americas, but with him many others, mainly Dominican theologians, such as Juan Hurtado, Bernadino de Minaya, and Julian Garces. 62. Interesting here is Tzvetan Todorov’s description of las Casas’s intellectual and political development in three stages from ‘conquistador’ to a ‘caring colonist’ to an ‘intercultural communicator’; see Todorov, 1982. 63. As Lewis Hanke delineates, many conquistadores indeed believed that the Indians were animals and ‘unworthy of the name of rational beings’ (Hanke, 1937, pp. 69, 70). 64. Sublimus Dei; www.papalencyclicals.net/Paulo3/p2subli.htm (8 October 2007). 65. With regard to this epistemological problem, see Chapter V.1. This criticism also applies to de Vitoria: ‘Therefore, if any one admonishes them to hear and deliberate upon religious matters, they are bound at least to hear and to enter into consultation. Further, it is needful for their salvation that they believe in Christ and be baptized ... It is not sufficient clear to me that the Christian faith has yet been so put before the aborigines and announced to them that they are bound to believe it or commit fresh sin ... on the other hand, I hear of many scandals and cruel crimes and acts of impiety ... Although the Christian faith may have been announced to the Indians with adequate demonstration and they have refused to receive it, yet this is not a reason which justifies making war on them and depriving them of their property’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 144). 66. Las Casas refers here to Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, Book VII, 1145a, 15–33, in which Aristotle indeed argues that human beings with an animal character are very seldom. 67. Las Casas argues that these spheres of jurisdiction are demarcated and limited by either territorial borders in case of nations’ relations and by spiritual borders in case of the Catholic Church. What is important here is that las Casas contributes to the development of the territorial state, which happens to become the guiding principle for international relations for the following centuries. As far as I can see, he seems even to be the first author in the history of political thought who with great explicitness binds political agency back to jurisdiction, defining jurisdiction in strictly territorial terms; more on the political principle of territoriality and its foundation in early modern state theory in Behr, 2004. 68. The most important of these is the bull Inter Caetera, promulgated by Pope Alexander VI on 4 May 1493, about the division of the ‘undiscovered’ world

Notes 255

69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

74.

75. 76.

between Spain and Portugal and most importantly about the, if necessary violent, spread of Christianity to the ‘barbarous nations’ (www.catholic-forum.com/ saints/pope0214a.htm; 16 October 2007). See in this regard my critique of Augustine and Aquinas and the problematic concept of just war, which opens the door for this kind of interpretation promoted by Sepulveda. We read the very clear statement in Chapter IV of the Defence of the Indians that ‘it is wrong for one nation to attack another under the pretext of being superior in wisdom or to overthrow other kingdoms’ (1992, p. 47). There is some discussion in the history of law on the influences of Aquinas on las Casas, and some hold that las Casas’s position is consequently Thomistic. Against this understanding speaks the interpretation presented here as well as the elaboration of Pennington (1970) on las Casas and the tradition of medieval law. Pennington states that las Casas argued as a Christian, and his ideas were based on medieval jurist theory. Pennington continues, however, that las Casas developed ‘original and interesting ways’ applying them to a novel historical situation (the overseas expansion; Pennington, 1970, p. 151). Las Casas, though developing principles of equal recognition, of right of defence, and of equality of peoples and nations on the basis of his notion of universal (Christian) anthropology and reason, seems to further believe in a hierarchy of civilization(s) and a dichotomy of ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ which, however – and this is politically important – does not affect these principles. As an alternative formulation of this, we read ‘Hence a refusal to be converted is no reason for making war on the Indians’ (de Vitoria quoted in Hamilton, 1963, p. 124). In addition to this he asks ‘whether it be enough for a just war that the prince believes himself to have a just cause’ and clearly states that ‘this belief is not always enough’ (de Vitoria, 1917, p. 173). Chapter XXX, In Defense of the Indians; on this similar topic see also de Vitoria, On the Law of War, ‘Second Relectio’, De Indis. Las Casas emphasizes in these chapters, however, that it is a different case with heretics because they are subject to Christian rulers by dwelling, birth, contract, and, most importantly, baptism. Whereas ‘unbelievers who have never accepted the faith of Christ are not actually subject to Christ and therefore not to the Church and its authority’ (1992, p. 55), heretics are subject to the church.

II.2 Universalistic frameworks in early modern political theory 77. In this tradition, see also Meinecke, 1984, whose work on modern raison d’etat substantially contributed to the modern orthodox understanding of Machiavelli. 78. Very instructive on this point Colish, 1978; also Ball, 1984; both are crit ical towards the remarkable study of Pocock, 1975, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition; explicitly on this critique see Sullivan, 1992. 79. There are also interpretations which read The Prince as a piece of intentional deception directed toward Lorenzo di Medici in order to weaken his reign and to facilitate the road to republican government in Florence (see Dietz, 1986). 80. For a rich overview over the diverging spectrum of interpretations, see Berlin, 1980. 81. And much more could be added. With these quotations I intend to point to a specific ambivalence in Machiavelli. All quotations are from The Prince to show

256 Notes

82.

83.

84.

85.

86. 87.

88.

89. 90.

that this ambivalence yet exists in a single work, and even in one that is usually interpreted as reflecting Machiavellism. For an excellent overview over the respective chapters and paragraphs in which Machiavelli deals with such questions, Leslie Walker’s edition and the comprehensive analytic table of content of The Discourses is of great value (Walker, 1950 (ed.); with regard to The Prince, see, for example, chapters V, VIII, IX, X, XI, XVIII, and XXI. It is probably not accidental that it is Bernard Crick, who wrote a comprehensive biography on George Orwell and who shares that view, arguing for a differentiated understanding of Machiavelli as a political analyst on the one side and, in normative terms, as a strong supporter of republican government on the other side. It is striking, however, that Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., in his illuminating article on ‘Machiavelli’s Political Science’, does not see this fundamental invention in Machiavelli, especially because he explicitly thematizes ‘modernity’ in Machiavelli’s approach (Mansfield, 1981). Crick notes: ‘(He) is absolutely clear that men should support republican government and should not, although it is possible, subvert it ... He never shows the slightest wish to reinterpret morality so as to be subordinate to a theory of the state (as did Hobbes and Hegel in their different ways); and nor is he simply taking politics out of morality or putting it above morality. The sense in which ... he advocates a political morality is not in terms of a divorce between ethics and politics, but in terms of the prime and heroic dignity given to politics and political action in classical pagan morality’ (Crick, 2003, p. 67). Regarding Machiavelli’s (ostensible) ambivalence, see also Quentin T. Taylor who speaks, when terming Machiavelli the ‘father’ of modern political science, of his ‘duplicity’ (1998, p. viii). See, for instance, paragraphs in which ‘ought’ and ‘is’ become clearly juxtaposed by Machiavelli, as in Chapter XV (quoted above) or in Chapter XVIII (both in The Prince). See Crick’s short, but concise, explanation of necessita (Crick, 2003, pp. 55–7). See here also Terence Ball’s interpretation of Machiavelli’s virtù (Ball, 1984) as a ‘role-related specific excellence’ (p. 526) in the legacies of the Greek areté. It could be added that virtu is not only role-related but also situation-related, depending on what necessita dictates in a specific context. See paradigmatically for such mainstream perception, Steven Forde (1995), who wants us to believe that it is the assumption of structural anarchy of the international arena which Machiavelli (and also Thucydides) and neo-realism have in common (p. 145). Forde notes: ‘The goal of [Machiavelli’s] science ... is to guarantee the survival of the state ... And this can be accomplished, according to Machiavelli, only by the accumulation of power and the practice of “preemptive imperialism” ... (This) is what the logic of a science that aspires to guarantee security requires’ (Forde, 1995, p. 152; see also Forde, 1992). We will see below that it is not universal imperialism what Machiavelli projects, but – at least when we base our interpretation on textual evidence, and not on some derivative logic which is said to follow from his ‘realist science’ – rather an international order of regional integration. Machiavelli often cites Switzerland as a positive example of such an organization. We can apply this normative standpoint also to Machiavelli as a political advisor. Subsequent to his differentiation between an analytical and a normative outlook on politics, he would suggest different strategies. If he were advising a founder of a state, he would probably argue (normatively) in favour of setting up

Notes 257

91.

92.

93.

94.

95.

96.

small republics cooperating together in order of common security (see also The Discourses, p. 122). If he, however, were advising a state-leader in place, he would suggest that he deals most pragmatically to achieve political stability for his community (this might be more the Machiavelli communicating from The Prince). As it is reflected in the constitutional rank of the US president and the idea of ‘mixed government’ which featured prominently in the US constitutional debate of the eighteenth century. It should be added here that Machiavelli, in The Discourses, interweaves another argument in that chapter which is about analyzing methods of expansion. In this regard, a league of republics does not perform as the most effective mode, even if it is to be seen as best guaranteeing stability and peaceful cooperation. The best method for expansion (which is, however, not his normatively preferred form of international agency) would be ‘forming alliances in which you reserve to yourself headship, the seat in which the authority resides, and the right of initiative’ (p. 284), as applied by the Roman republic. A third, but in Machiavelli’s view worst, method is ‘to make other states subjects instead of allies’ (p. 284). I will not discuss the question of why Machiavelli thinks there is conflict. There is much speculation about this question: it is human nature and states’ obsession with fame and might that cause conflict, or conflict might arise due to states’ efforts to survive in the cosmic circle of rise and decline of political units (Machiavelli’s idea borrowed from Polybius), or conflict is due to class interests in a state. Indeed we read multiple statements by Machiavelli about the nature and reason of political conflicts. I rather want to point to the relevance of conflict(s) from an international politics perspective. See hereto also Crick discussing the relationship between necessita, virtù, and fortuna under the topics of Machiavelli’s ‘Theory and Method’ and ‘Politics and Morality’ (2003, pp. 47–69) as well as Mann’s interpretation of Machiavelli’s virtù as areté (1984). See, for example, Haftendorn (1991, p. 6) who represents this widely unchallenged commonplace: ‘Hobbes prepared the ground for the realist tradition in political theory’; also Michael Walzer, 1977, and Charles R. Beitz, 1979, who both present Hobbes’s work as the paradigmatic case for the realist doctrines in international political theory. See critically towards this common sense, Walker who notes: ‘Hobbes has been the subject of a rather large recent literature in international political theory, and there is a commonly identified “Hobbesian tradition” in this field, even though Hobbes himself wrote very little explicitly on international politics as such’ (Walker, 1987, p. 73 also Smith, 1983, especially p. 13). Instead of further systematically reviewing literature referring to Hobbes as a ‘realist’, I would like to point to nearly each Introductory text in International Relations as well as to other writers such as E. H. Carr, Waltz, Keohane, John Herz, and Bull, which all appear to share this picture; see also Boucher (1998, pp. 146–9). Interestingly in this context are the writings of Morgenthau, who is often said to positively refer to Hobbes in terms of a ‘negative anthropology’, but indeed only rarely refers to Hobbes, and that critically. Interesting in the light of my argument are the discussions of Stefano Guzzini (1998, p. 24). It is an open question, however, how we are to understand the term outside when Hobbes writes: ‘The condition of men outside civil society (the condition one may call the state of nature) is no other than a war of all men against all men’. Does the term outside relate to the international sphere as external and territorially beyond the nationally constituted civil society? Or does it relate in a temporal sense to the time before men constituted the Leviathan and are still outside the

258

97.

98.

99.

100.

101. 102.

Notes protection granted under civil society and by his sovereignty later on? I tend to understand the term outside in a temporal sense because there are many more indications throughout Hobbes’s writings which point to this understanding, and no clear indication which would allow us unequivocally to understand the term outside as applying to inter-national politics beyond the domestic sphere of the state. We will see in the following discussions, however, that the Leviathan is less oppressive than is usually stated. Nevertheless, ‘we must be aware of not “Lockean-izing” Hobbes’ (see Carmichael, 1990, p. 3). This ‘observation’ is perhaps most prominently promoted by Hedley Bull who reiterates the idea that we could ‘infer that all what Hobbes says about the life of individual men in the state of nature may be read as a description of the condition of states in relation to one another’ (Bull, 1981, pp. 720–1). Bull, however, is ambivalent in his statements about Hobbes because, on the one hand, he fails to see the temporal structure in Hobbes’s argument which emphasizes change for and after the social contract has been agreed. This change brings about a (new) mechanism for international order which is far from being similar to a ‘state of nature’ (about the mechanism of sovereignty and legitimacy). The same critique relates also to Murphy, 1982. On the other hand, however, Bull also argues that Hobbes would slide out of the ‘realist camp’ and ‘becomes a prime example of a theorist of the international system as a kind of society, rather than anarchy’, as Walker observes (Walker, 1987, p. 73; more on that in II.2.2); on this aspect of Bull’s ambivalence also Williams, 1996, pp. 214, 226–8. As stated, for instance, by Boucher, 1998, p. 151; see also Stanley Hoffmann who declares man’s nature as the cause of conflict (Hoffmann, 1963, p. 319; also 1981, pp. 11, 14). Ashcroft writes, highlighting the same correlation: ‘Both our expectations of the future and our ordering of the present are thus dependent upon our remembrance of what is past, and, in particular, upon our cognizance of what powers produce or cause which effects’ (1978, p. 38). See on this point also Dana Chabot (1995, p. 402) who describes judgement in Hobbes ‘as the ability to exercise self-restraint’. I here disagree on three points with Hoffmann (1963). First, Hoffmann assumes that men sacrifice their ‘right of nature’ under the conditions of the civil society (and under the rule of the Leviathan; 1963, p. 320). This assumption is, as we see, obviously wrong because the ‘right of nature’ is an unalienable right of men and, contrary to Hoffmann’s understanding, constantly guarantees man’s right to preserve his or her individual security, even under the rule of the Leviathan when the Leviathan fails to do so. Second, whereas Hoffmann concludes that Hobbes would assume that interstate war ‘does not affect the daily lives of all men’ (1963, p. 320), we learn that, on the contrary, Hobbes has a very clear view about the rights of individuals in wartime – a view that would be unnecessary to explain if Hobbes had thought individuals were not affected by interstate war. And, finally, Hoffmann sees indications of an international law in Hobbes, based on the reciprocity of interests, however, developed very weakly due to the lack of a world sovereign, why at the end anarchy would prevail. Hoffmann here misses the central point – as does Hedley Bull; see Chapter III.2 – that international law and the question of its enforcement (or a world Leviathan) is neither Hobbes’s main concern nor relevant to understand the Hobbesian mechanism of sovereignty and legitimacy as it operates in international politics.

Notes 259 103. Kaplan, 1956, pp. 390, 391; for a comprehensive discussion on the rights and liberties of men, which, even under the social contract, can not be renounced and are unalienable, see Carmichael, 1990, especially pp. 4–15. 104. According to Jean Hampton, such decision and judgement can be termed, based on Hobbes’s definition of reason, an ‘expected-utility calculation’ (Hampton, 1986, p. 221). Gauthier (1979, p. 549) speaks in this regard of ‘the instrumental role of practical reason’. 105. Cornelius F. Murphy, Jr., describes this view, relating to Grotius, as follows: ‘Wars undertaken for purposes of expediency were unjust ... Anticipatory selfdefense was forbidden’ (Murphy, 1982, p. 481). 106. The view of ‘amorality’ in Hobbes seems nevertheless deeply rooted in international politics/international relations; see, for example, Hoffmann who writes: ‘In Hobbes’s case, the problem of ethical action in politics can hardly be called important: it is a pure matter of definition ... Moral action in the Leviathan consists simply of obeying the sovereign’s law’ (Hoffmann, 1963, p. 322). It is very striking and an important question (which will be further discussed in Chapter IV.2) how, and why, such simplified statements could become firmly established in our discipline, and that with the ‘support’ of an otherwise theoretically sophisticated author like Hoffmann. Contrary to the compacted orthodoxy in our discipline, the question in disciplines like political philosophy and history of political thought seems to be what kind of morality Hobbes is representing (utilitarian, divine, functional, deontological, and so on), not whether, or not, Hobbes’s theory is informed by moral and ethical views. See, for example, Gauthier, 1979; Chabot, 1995; Nagel, 1959; Warrender, 1957; Taylor, 1938; Kavka, 1986. 107. In 1795, Kant’s Zum ewigen Frieden was published. However, his preoccupation with the conditions and possibilities of peace can be traced throughout many previous writings so that Zum ewigen Frieden can be perceived as a late summary of his thoughts on this topic; for more on this, see A. C. Armstrong (1931), ‘Kant’s Philosophy on War and Peace’. 108. Quoted here Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Essay (Facsimile 1795). 109. See on this also Kant (1963 [1784]) Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View; as well as Arendt, 1982, pp. 73–6; Axinn, 1958, pp. 286–91. 110. There is another, less explicit, ‘hidden’ condition for the creation of peace, additionally to those three so far discussed. Although none of these (four) is reducible to the other, the fourth condition is epistemological and relates to the intellectual context of creating peace. Apart from the three universal conditions (republican, legal, ethical), Kant emphasizes that the road to peace is also a learning process (of good habits in the peaceful coexistence of societies) as well as a product of imagination, both linked to his notion of history as a normative concept. Roger Hancock, in his discussion of the relationship of ethics and history in Kant, lifts one of the three question of Kant, namely, ‘What ought I to do?’ to a more general, historically oriented question, namely, ‘What ought to happen?’ and thus points to the role of imagination ‘which enables men artificially to multiply natural needs and hence causes concerns and preparation for the future. In particular, it is the cause of social and political relations’ (Hancock, 1957, p. 57). On peace as a learning process, see also Cederman, 2001. 111. ‘Practical pure reason’ in opposition to ‘pure reason’ is to be seen as the imperative of pure reason which would, in relation to peace, manifest in the foundation

260 Notes of a real Universal Republic contrary to a Federation of States. Kant perceives such a universal republic, however, as practically impossible because states and men in general have a tendency to reject in fact (in thesi) what is right in theory (in hypothesi). Thus, in theory, due to ‘pure reason’, a Universal Republic would be the really best solution. Kant’s Federation of States consequently has to be understood as a concession to reality and to the factual constitution of states and nations, which were naturally different in regards to religion and language. Practical pure reason thus symbolizes this concession in terms of political practicability (hereto On Perpetual Peace, Second Section, Second Definitive Article, and Appendix. 112. See, for instance, James Rosenau, who refers to Kant’s conception in ‘Citizenship in a Changing World Order’ (1992). 113. The idea of a cosmopolitan society is unfolded by Kant also, and at greater length, in his Anthropology (last section), which was published in 1798 (see Kant, 1974). 114. Unfortunately, this also applies to the translation used here, which is otherwise, however, very appropriately related to the German original.

III.1 Philosophies of ‘national interest’ 115. Further readings on such historical circumstances are represented by the comprehensive literature on the nation-state; its social, political, and economic history; and on nationalism. 116. I here quote the translation by S. W. Dyde (2001) because, for example, the probably more frequently used edition of Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Rights by Allen W. Wood, translated by H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, shows many more divergences and inconsistencies in this paragraph (and others) compared to the original German version. For example, this first sentence states in German ‘Das äussere Staatsrecht geht von dem Verhältnisse selbständiger Staaten aus’ (Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Band 5, Hauptwerke in sechs Baenden, Felix Meiner Verlag Hamburg 1999, §330). The edition by Wood translates this as ‘International Law applies to the relations between ...’, which implies a very different meaning than the German “geht aus von”. Opposite to Wood’s edition, the translation by Dyde notes ‘International law arises out of the relation of independent states’ (as quoted in the text), which is an appropriate interpretation of the original meaning. For further quotations, I will use whichever English translation best communicates the original German version. To emphasize translation differences (and sometimes errors) seems important here because Hegel reveals himself as a much more statist and ‘realist’ thinker when we refer to his original texts than when we refer to the English translation(s). 117. §332 is very topical in this regard, too. We read: ‘The immediate actuality in which states coexist is particularized into various relations which are determined by the independent arbitrary wills of both parties’ (quoted after the Cambridge edition). 118. See as an example of this in Hegel’s time Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s jingoistic Addresses to the German Nation (Fichte, 1979) and with regard to future developments in and their trajectories into twentieth-century International Relations Theory in Part IV.

Notes 261 119. See in this regard Voegelin’s gnosis-thesis and his verbalization of the ‘immanentization of the echaton’, which can be found in several of his writings; see Voegelin’s Political Religions as well as Science, Politics and Gnosticism: Two Essays. 120. Interesting and informing in this regard is also Fichte’s conception of the ‘Self’, his idea of the nation, and his ideology of nationalism; see Fichte, 1979, 2000, 2005. 121. In this regard it is informative to look at Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy in which he criticizes Kant’s concept of the ‘categorical imperative’ and the notion of the universality of reason underlying this concept, according to Hegel, ‘without content’. 122. See also in §336, Philosophy of Rights: ‘Each ... state has the standing of a particular will; and it is on this alone that the validity of treaties depends’ (quoted after the Dyde translation). Thus, it remains within good reason and legitimate behaviour when a state breaches its formerly concluded treaty agreements and obligations as long as such a breach would correspond with a state’s will – or in more familiar current (IR) terms, with its ‘national interest’. See also §333 for further relevance in this regard. 123. The only condition is that this very nation fulfils the criteria of a state, that it has a constitution, has a system of rights, and performs as a unified moral body. Hegel can be said to have, in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right, preshaped, if not preformulated in its basics, the notions of ‘standards of civilization’ as they became more elaborated in the second half of the nineteenth century by international lawyers; for further discussion see Chapter III.2. 124. As in Kant when we remember his definition of peace as a ‘true peace’. 125. See, for example, authors such as Heinrich von Treitscke, Heinrich Luden, Heinrich von Sybel, and Gustav Droysen (in Germany), Adolphe Thiers, Jules Michelet, Taine Hippolyte, and Augustin Thierry (in France), Thomas Babington Macaulay, James Bryce, and Henry Thomas Buckle (in Great Britain), and William Archibald Dunning and George Bancroft (in the United States), as well as many more; for excellent overviews, see Storia della Storiografia, 2006; Berger/Donovan/ Passmore, 1999; Berger, 2004; Klose, 2003; Robbins, 1998). Those authors in italics will be discussed in greater detail. 126. Exceptions are rare, such as Jakob Burckhardt, 1948, 1972, and the political thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche. 127. See Comte, 1865, 1875–7, 1975; Kramer, 2001; Mann, 1973; Rachwal/Slawek, 2000. 128. In this sense, Treitschke writes about and ‘describes’ a permanent interest of Prussia throughout history (1916, pp. 46–8). 129. For guilt and sacrifice as religious ideas in relation to national historiography and nationalism, see Abbt, 1915; Berger, 1988; Citron, 1987; Choron, 1967; Ebeling, 1984; Nassehi/Weber, 1989; O’Brian, 1988. 130. See, for example, Michelet, 1973, ‘The Superiority of France, as Both Dogma and Legend. France is a Religion’ (p. 190). 131. See Fichte, 1979; this aspect is brilliantly analyzed by Voegelin, 1986; see also Berghoff, 1997; Behr, 1998, Chapter V. 132. An incisive criticism of the nation-state with particular reference to this conflict pattern will be formulated by Morgenthau in the 1950s (see also Niebuhr, 1932). This will be discussed later in greater detail; see Chapter IV.2. 133. The development of political geography as an academic discipline can be dated back for Europe and the United States to the end of the nineteenth century; for a historical account, see Unstead, 1949.

262

Notes

134. The most influential and prominent figures of late nineteenth- and twentiethcentury geopolitics are probably Alfred Thayer Mahan, Sir Halford Mackinder, Friedrich Ratzel, Rudolf Kjellén, Karl Haushofer, and Nicholas J. Spykman. 135. The assumption of geographical reinforcements of politics, such as climate, topography, and territoriality, can be found prior to the establishment of political geography as an academic discipline in, for example, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Bodin, Samuel von Pufendorf, and many more; for an instructive problematization of modernity and territoriality, see Ruggie, 1993; also Behr, 2004. 136. For the critical adaptation of Geopolitik in the United States, see Jones, 1959; Thorndike, 1942. Key authors involved in this discourse were Andrew Gyorgy, Johannes Mattern, Robert Strausz-Hupe, Edmund Walsh, Hans Werner Weigert, and Derwent Whittlesey. 137. See critically, for example, Dalby/O’Tuathail, 1998; Toft, 2003; affirmatively, Brzezinski, 1997; Kennan, 1947, 1991. 138. See, as an early example, Gottmann, 1951; for an overview, see Dalby/O’Tuathail, 2006; O’Tuathail, 1994, 1996, 2000; Agnew, 2001; Albert/Jacobsen/Lapid, 2001; Harvey, 1989; Henrikson, 1994. 139. With regard to Mackinder, see, for example, Semmel, 1958; also Minghi, 1963; with regard to geopolitics as ‘grand strategy’, see, critically, Fettweiss, 2000; Blouet, 2005; Slater, 2004. 140. This perception appears to be crucial in nearly all modern theories of the nation-state; see, for example, Weber, 1971, 1972; critically, Simmel, 1992; also Behr, 2004, 2008; Walker, 1993; Agnew, 1987. 141. See, for example, Grayson, 2008; Kuus, 2007; Debrix, 2007; Razack, 2005; Graham, 2004; Falk, 2004; Brunn, 2004; Slater, 2004; Action Against Hunger, 2000; Jameson, 1995. 142. For the impact of Mackinder’s vision of a Eurasian ‘heartland’ on twenty-firstcentury power politics in the Caspian Sea region, see Mitchell, 1996. 143. A strong Mackinderian moment in Samuel Huntington’s construction of a ‘clash of civilization’ is unmistakable here; see Huntington, 1993, 1996. 144. For further details, see with regard to the European Union amongst others Behr, 2007; Mouritzen, 2005; Boeroecz/Kovacs, 2001; Diez, 1999; with general focus on the notion of civilization in European political thought, see Wolff, 1994; Gong, 1984. 145. Spykman positions his own approach in the middle ground between the ‘strict geographic determinism’ of Friedrich Ratzel and German Geopolitik and ‘possibilism’ of French geopolitics by Vidal de la Blanche, Jacques Brunhes, Camille Vallaux, and Lucien Febvre; see Spykman, 1938a, p. 30 (therein footnote 3). 146. Amongst the huge critical body of literature on German Geopolitik, see Murphy, 1997; O’Loughlin/Heske, 1991; also Spykman, 1938a. 147. On this, see Kramer, 2001; Rachwal/Slawek, 2000; Bierstedt, 1997; Mann, 1973; Simon, 1963.

III.2 Manufacturing inter-national cooperation: The English School 148. For this position of a third way, see, amongst others, Buzan, 1993, under the heading ‘Structural Realism and Regime Theory Meet the English School’. 149. The description of the ontology of the English School as Hegelian stems primarily from the Hegelian notions of independent and particularistic states.

Notes 263

150.

151.

152.

153.

154.

155. 156.

It has to be noted that we find also influences of geopolitical thought in English School thinking, as, for example, in Wight, 1946, and Buzan, 1993. The same contradiction is pointed out by Alan James, who concludes that there is no viable distinction between ‘international system’ and ‘international society’; see James, 1993. It has to be asked why Wight and others carry on with this ontology, because they clearly see its deficits and problems and do not, as do neo-realists, normatively subscribe to it. The motive hypothesized with regard to neo-realism, namely, that this ontology and its ‘support’ serve ideological purposes and are ‘policy-driven’ (see Part IV), seems to be an invalid explanation for the English School, given Wight’s, Bull’s, and others’ deliberate absence from political consultancy and their primacy of academia. Interesting with regard to the ontological prioritization of a state-centric view by the English School is Martin Shaw, 1992, who concludes that the English School would reinforce Cold War ideology. I would not go so far because there are clear normative principles in the English School literature, which are supposed to overcome the ontology of the international system of sovereign states. However, I share Shaw’s observation on the ontological priorities of the English School. Here, we read: ‘The rules of coexistence also include those which prescribe behavior that sustains the goal of the stabilization of each state’s control over its own persons and territory. At the heart of this complex of rules is the principle that each state accepts the duty to respect the sovereignty or supreme jurisdiction of every other state over its own citizens and domain, in return for the right to expect similar respect for its own sovereignty from other states’ (Bull, 1977, p. 67). See in this regard also Hoffmann who notes that for Bull ‘the balancing of power was a necessity for the survival of international society’ (Hoffmann, 1986, p. 193), which reveals the paradox discussed here. This observation, too, is shared by Linklater and Suganami who concede that ‘this is not an area that the English School has investigated in any detail ... Were the English School to set out to create a general theory of the transformation of past systems of states into societies of states, it would start with historical inquiry’ (2006, p. 124). Because it is conjecturable, however, that historical (or empirical) inquiry conceptually does not suffice for developing an ontology of international society – which, again, would be required in order to overcome its Hegelian legacies – additional conceptual questions have to be asked. This critique receives further evidence in Wight’s discussions in chapter 24 ‘Beyond Power Politics’ (especially p. 289). See also Linklater and Suganami who engage with the same argument (2006, pp. 135, 136). This seems not to have changed from the days of Bull and Wight into attempts to revitalize the English School. It is indicative for the problem when Buzan in ‘From International System to International Society’ (1993) always then, when it comes to specifying the very principles of transition from system to society, which would allow to conceptualize international society more precisely and thus would finally enable an ontology of international society, refers to rather vague formulations which indicate some kind of automatism, however, nothing precise, such as ‘at some point’ (p. 334) and ‘virtually’ (ibid.), refers to a ‘raison de système’ (p. 335), assumes the existence of ‘facts on

264 Notes the ground’ which would ‘create incentives for the parties to recognize at least the existence of each other’s existence’ (p. 342), and finally escapes into mere functionalism when affirming that ‘units have no choice’ (p. 343). 157. Bull’s rehearsals of the ontological significance of the international system can also be found throughout Part 3 and in chapter 12 of Anarchical Society where he declines all concepts and visions of ‘Alternative Paths to World Order’ as containing ‘more ubiquitous and continuous violence and insecurity that does the modern states-system’ (p. 246), a decline which includes most explicitly Richard Falk’s This Engendered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival.

IV.1 Neo-realism and the ‘scientification’ of international political theory 158. The term scientification is to be understood in contrast to the more usual term scientization in that it shall both emphasize the neo-realist/neo-liberal attempt to establish international political theory as a (positivist, empiricist) ‘science’ and express my criticism that this attempt is not only inadequate for the study of politics (whether ‘domestic’ or ‘international’), which is always an her meneutic investigation of, and an interpretative engagement with, texts, representations, ideas, imaginations, worldviews, and so on, but that this attempt also led (and leads) to epistemologies of ostensibly objective worldviews and respective foreign policy claims, inclusions and exclusions, and ‘real’ world reifications (as discussed below). 159. The same problem exists in Marxist and Wilsonean forms of inter-nationalism; very interesting readings in this regard are Cox, 1987, 1996 and Ninkovich, 1994. 160. Because the focus of this discussion is on Waltz’s reading of Rousseau, I will not discuss the problematic with Rousseau’s concept itself, on which there is a huge body of literature in political theory and political thought. 161. See more on this in this chapter under the reification problem. 162. Here we find the main epistemological differences from Morgenthau; see more on that in Chapter IV.1.2. 163. This is misunderstood by many, for example, Hedley Bull, who attempts to criticize Waltz with an empirical, historical argument (see Chapter III.2.1). 164. This becomes most obvious in Realism and its Critics, edited by Keohane, 1986, where Waltz has a chance to review, and reply to, his critics in a final chapter of this edition. In this reply he again and again retreats to exactly this position of scientist theory and defends his theory and its consequences as a construct which proved to be ‘useful’. On behalf of fairness, however, it has to be admitted that, on the other side, most of his critics took anarchy actually as some form of empirical figure and focused their criticism on it. The only contributor in this volume who appears to attack Waltz on an epistemological level and thus aims at the right direction is Richard Ashley (1986). An instructive criticism of this immunization is also from Guzzini (1998), who terms Waltz’s strategy ‘moving the goalposts’ (p. 126); also Mouritzen, 1997. 165. Interesting for our understanding of twentieth-century IR and particularly for the position of Morgenthau in relation to ‘realism’ and neo-realism is that he critically analyzed the problematic of a dualistic construction in international politics in his early writing La notion du politique (1933), discussing

Notes 265

166.

167.

168.

169.

170.

Carl Schmitt’s distinction between friend and foe (Schmitt, 1976) as well as Hegel’s sections on ‘international law’ in his Philosophy of Rights. Morgenthau notes a ‘metaphysics of dualism’ and the construction of ‘perpetual oppositions’ (1933, pp. 44–64) in Hegel and Schmitt, both of which would mean a depolitization of the political which, indeed, would be changing and in permanent transformation (ibid., p. 50). Further to this, Morgenthau argues that this kind of dualistic construction would perceive ‘the other’ (both the individual and the other state) as a ‘genuine obstacle’ (ibid., p. 56; also p. 57), a position which would result in national foreign politics informed by a permanent affirmation of a state vis-à-vis other states as the necessary requirement of its existence (ibid., pp. 62, 63); on this aspect, see also Kleinschmidt, 2004b. There is a huge body of literature from these streams as well as critical literature about this development (see, for example, Almond, 1974, 2001; Almond/Verba, 1965; Almond/Powell, 1978; Easton, 1953, 1965a, 1965b, 1990; Kaplan, 1975, 1969, 1970, 1979; very illuminating is Almond’s retrospective self-criticism regarding the developments of system theory and corresponding behaviouralist approaches (see Almond, 1990; from a critical perspective see, for example, Groff, 2004; Siltala, 2000; Prasad, 2005; Taylor, 1964, 1983, 1985a, 1985b; Sjolander/Cox, 1994; Smith/Booth/Zalewski, 1996). I, therefore, do not intend to review those and to repeat the broad range of arguments for and against this way of theorizing, rather I want to elaborate on the specific problematic of reification inherent in this kind of theorizing and what it means for our discussion. The problem of the ostensible value-freeness of neo-realism is (in a highly abstract and sometimes overcomplex way, as I think) also discussed by Ashley (1986), who emphasizes the epistemological problem that Waltz’s structural explanation presupposes the existence of actors’ preferences. For further instructive discussions of the reification problem as a philosophy of science problem, see Höffe, 1980; Gabel, 1975; Palmer, 1990; Linder, 1975; Honneth, 2008. ‘The majority of writers during the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, who following the positivistic school, rejected the distinction between just and unjust wars and considered war as an act entirely within the uncontrolled sovereignty of the individual state. By applying armed forces as the ultima ratio in international politics, a state creates a factual situation where the rules governing the peaceful intercourse among nations are replaced by the law of war ... War is the exercise of the international right of action’ (Elbe, 1939, pp. 684, 685). For purposes of illustrating this point, I want to reference an interview by the author with a now-retired IR scholar (whose name shall be kept anonymous here) who was acting at the forefront of the neo-realist/neo-liberal IR mainstream from the 1960s until the end of the Cold War. Overtly frank, critical, and very instructive for our discussion, it was admitted that ‘they’ had ‘given a ...’ about theoretical rectitude, interpretative righteousness, and scholarly integrity as long as ‘they’ could deliver concepts for power politics in line with the US administrations’ definitions of ‘national interest’ and received professional recognition (and research funding) from the US State Department and the Pentagon.

266

Notes

IV.2 ‘Misreadings’ in IR: Reassessing Morgenthau, ideology critique, and the reification problem 171. I mostly agree with Guzzini’s interpretations of realism(s) and find it particularly satisfying that he refers to largely marginalized (though not marginal!) writings of Morgenthau. I also understand his main argument about the increasing attempts of realist authors ‘to turn the rules of international society [particularly of the nineteenth-century international society] into scientific theory’ (1998, p. xi and throughout the book), and also I tend to fully endorse this thesis with regard to neo-realism and also Keohane’s authoritarian distinction between ‘rationalist’ and ‘reflectivist’ theories (Keohane, 1988). However, I cannot see an attempt, or even an inclination, by or in Morgenthau to develop (a) scientific theory. Rather I see his decisive opposition against such attempts. Also, I would put much less emphasis on the importance of anthropology in Morgenthau than Guzzini does. 172. See also Hoffmann, 1977; Holsti, 1985. Hoffmann characterized ‘International Relations’, especially of the 1950s and 1960s, as an ‘American Social Science’. IR would at the same time depend on, and utilize, the United States as an international super power in order to find its conditions for disciplinary development and existence. 173. As an example of ‘misreadings’ as intentional, see Gilbert, 1999; Behr, 2002. 174. An ideologically critical reading of realism is explicitly put forward by Morgenthau himself in the Prefaces of Politics Among Nations (1948, 1954, and 1960). 175. Most important here are his German Ph.D. thesis, his postdoctoral monograph, that is, his Geneva habilitation, written in French, and his monograph on the concept of the political, 1933, also written in French. No English translation yet exists for either of these; see, however, forthcoming Morgenthau, International Judicature and The Concept of the Political, ed. by Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch, Leiden: Brill Publishers. One might also include in this body of marginalized writings the two volumes of his important Politics in the 20th Century, Vol. I and II (1962). 176. Very instructive in this regard is a letter from Morgenthau to the editor of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science from 1947 (Morgenthau, 1947). 177. According to Paul Viotti and Mark Knauppi, the misjudgement of an indeed normative and value-oriented origin of realism applies not only to Waltz, but also to the entirety of neo-realism and neo-liberalism. Furthermore, this misjudgement can also be found in critics of (neo-) realism, who, especially if they represent new qualitative approaches, mistakenly criticize realism and disassociate from it needlessly. Viotti and Knauppi speak of a ‘violation of the realist tradition, particularly by ignoring the value sensitivity of the realist legacy as represented by E. H. Carr and Hans J. Morgenthau’ (1993, p. 66; also Williams, 2006). Another powerful academic, who holds responsibility for this ‘violation’, in addition to Waltz, is Keohane. He describes Morgenthau as a representative of a rationalistic theory which would have become systematized through Waltz (Keohane, 1983, p. 192). These ‘violations’ may be traced back to attempts to canonize and construct a homogenous tradition of realism and neo-realism, which is due not only to the ideologization of the discipline, but also to the ‘scientification’ of the social sciences, including international relations since the

Notes 267

178.

179.

180.

181.

182.

183.

184.

185. 186.

Second World War. From such a perspective, any normative and hermeneutic base of realism has been decried as nonscientific, nonacademic, and amateurish (for this notion of ‘amateurism’, see critically Kahler, 1997, pp. 27–9). This antipositivistic position of Morgenthau, which develops more and more clearly from his early writings into his later oeuvre, already appears in his 1933 monograph La notion du politique when he argues that there are no eternal structures and fixed laws as well as there was no objectivity in politics (pp. 34–6). This already comes across from Morgenthau’s habilitation (1934, pp. 211–43) as well as from his Ph.D. thesis (1929). Following the legal-philosophical tradition of pacta sunt servanda, he advocates the normative regulation of international politics through norms and institutions of international law. Morgenthau, 1954, pp. 220–1; he further explains this statement: ‘Moral rules operate within the consciences of individual men. Government by clearly identifiable men, who can be held personally accountable for their acts, is ... the precondition for ... an effective system of international ethics. Where responsibility government is widely distributed among a great number of individuals with different conceptions as to what is morally required in international affairs, or with no such conceptions at all, international morality as an effective system of restraints upon international policy becomes impossible’ (ibid., p. 226). Morgenthau was influenced in this point by the work of Niebuhr, who speaks of, and condemns, the sanctimony of the modern nation-state. The moral condemnation of national politics is traced back by Niebuhr – as it is with Morgenthau – to the conflict between the claim of uniqueness of the nation-state and its idea of the embodiment of universal values (Niebuhr, 1960; also Voegelin, 1986). One of the few IR scholars who acknowledges Morgenthau’s criticism of the nation-state as well as the normative framework which Morgenthau advocates against the bellicose and conflictive consequences of national power politics is Guzzini (1998, p. 27), even though it seems that he cannot completely resist the mainstream narrative of Morgenthau’s theory as a grand theory and as an attempt to develop scientific theory (1998, for example, pp. 29, 30). Morgenthau, 1962a, pp. 72, 65–6. His perception of the historic continuity of certain assumptions and political principles, which were based on the nature of man and political agency (Politics Among Nations, 1948, as well the editions of 1960, p. 34, and 1963, p. 76), is in this case no counterargument. Morgenthau holds only one assumption as historically universal: politics as a conflict of power. His concept of power, however, is to be understood in sharp contrast to the neo-realist notion. Morgenthau very explicitly criticized neo-realist notions of power; see on power as an ‘interpersonal’, nonquantifiable relation among ‘spiritual and moral beings’, his article ‘Common Sense and Theories’, published in 1967 and reprinted in Truth and Power 1970a, pp. 241–8. Morgenthau adopts here the German term ‘standortgebunden’ according to Karl Mannheim’s work on ideology critique (1929). Mannheim uses the term in order to explain the historical and cultural standpoint of social and political modes of thought and theories (see very instructive Nelson, 1992). ‘All great political theory ... has been practical theory (Morgenthau, 1962b, p. 73). The same understanding communicates from Williams when he describes Morgenthau’s notion of ‘national interest’ as a ‘self-reflective concept’ (2005, p. 11).

268 Notes 187. This contingent character of power politics is also seen in his assessments of the relation between ‘intervention’ and ‘morality’ in ‘The Impotence of American Power’, in Morgenthau, 1970a, pp. 325–31; interesting here is also his complete revision of any promotion of power politics in the face of nuclear armament (see 1970b). 188. Morgenthau’s antiscientific position, or his criticism of the historically insensitive rationalization of politics according to economic modelling, is also clearly articulated in Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946). 189. The conception of ideology used here is drawn from the classical tradition of ideology study, which seeks to elaborate the concept of ideology as a false consciousness or misled Weltanschauung (worldview), and which posits objective conditions and ‘realities’ by status quo powers in order to manipulate certain social and political situations. This understanding separates ideology from implications of material condition and/or class structure intrinsic to Marxist theories. Furthermore, it does not claim to represent another ‘correct’ Weltanschauung against the one declared as ‘false’ or misleading, rather it seeks to pluralistically open up a field of possible interpretations arguing against confinements of such pluralism by reifications of certain worldviews or by internal contradictions and/or manipulations of their construction. Such Weltanschauungen or ideologies are then and for those reasons identified as ‘false’ and misleading. 190. For Mannheim, this also includes the collective unconsciousness; Mannheim, 1936, pp. 57–62. 191. According to conceptualizations from the Frankfurt School by Horkheimer, 1982; Adorno, 1976; Marcuse, 1991; Habermas, 1978; instructive on this typology is Geuss, 1981. 192. In addition to the literature referenced above, see important books by Lichtheim, 1967; McLellan, 1986; Eagleton, 1991; Cassels, 1996; Althusser, 1976; Bracher, 1984. 193. For example, Evans/Newnham, 1998; Williams/Goldstein/Shafritz, 1999; Chaigenau, 1998; also quite uncritical towards these narratives is Baylis and Smith, 2001; further examples are Jackson/Sorensen, 1999; Knutsen, 1992; Nye, 2000. 194. Examples for this are rich and reach from, just to name a few, McCarthy’s anticommunist ‘witch hunt’, oppression and surveillance of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements to the more general patterns of the ‘production of fear’ (see, for example, Buzan, 1983; Massumi, 1993; Weldes et al., 1999) and strategies of ‘securitization’ (Oren, 2000; Buzan/Waever/de Wilde, 1998; Campbell, 1998), which are not at all new phenomena. 195. Kahler’s events and demands-driven factors can indeed be paralleled to what Morgenthau described as politics driven by a ‘preoccupation with practical concerns’, which manifests itself in empirical methodology of positivist social sciences – a methodology that further contributes to what Morgenthau considers the complete obfuscation of purpose, or lack thereof, in twentieth-century political ‘science’ (Morgenthau, 1962a, pp. 20–7). 196. Such a sociology of knowledge study cannot be undertaken here, but studies which point in this direction – though all with regard to Morgenthau and IR – are Rösch, 2008; Tjalve, 2008; Mollov, 2002; Frei, 2001; Korhonen, 1983. 197. Ibid., 205; translation mine. The meaning of the term genealogical in Mannheim is quite similar to its understanding in Nietzsche and can be perceived as the methodology to investigate contingent perspectives in political thought which is crucial in Nietzsche’s writings from which immediate influences can be traced to Mannheim’s concept of Standortgebundenheit; see also Dollinger, 2006;

Notes 269 Goldmann, 1995; regarding the concept of genealogy in (critical) IR see, for example, Der Derian, 1987; Der Derian and Shapiro, 1989. 198. It seems that the same intellectual, academic, and social mechanisms of ideology formation as discussed here with regard to neo-realism and neo-liberalism (meanwhile) also apply to poststructuralism in IR; at least the same misreadings about ‘realism’, a realist tradition in international political thought and IR, and a ‘realist’-neorealist unity exist here and seem to be carried on while poststructuralism seems to increasingly develop into a school of thought, showing the same mechanisms of knowledge production and knowledge protection; of in-group rhetoric, jargon, and set pieces of knowledge; of standardization and canonization of knowledge; of social inclusion and exclusion; and all this paradoxically irrespective of the poststructuralist self-obligation of criticality. One might conclude that Lyotard’s early warning (1979) of the production of new narratives while deconstructing old ones has not been taken seriously enough and returns to poststructuralist theorizing itself, not without some sense of irony. A most striking example of these mechanisms of ideology-building of poststructuralist theorizing is probably Jim George’s Discourses of Global Politics (1994). A highly interesting and, in this regard of furthering poststructuralist self-criticality, elucidating new book is Walker, After the Globe, before the World (2009). 199. See also Luke, who speaks with regard to diversities of the ‘unboun-d(ed)aries’ of ‘astatist spaces’ and ‘astatist texts’, which realists and neo-realists ‘cannot read’ (1993, p. 255). 200. Interestingly, this is an outlook also shared by Morgenthau, but one which seems lost under the auspices of the IR mainstream.

V.1

Universal, universalistic – universalized

201. See on this point very instructive discussions in van der Veer, 1998. 202. This is affirmed several times throughout the charter; see Art. 2.1, 2.4, and 2.7. 203. It is interesting to note that the Latin roots of the word ‘recognition’, recognitio and recognosco, bear the meanings ‘inspection’, ‘investigation’, and ‘getting to know something’ with a clear sense of discovering something familiar, typical, tangible, yet recognizable in the synonymous meaning of realizing and making out something in common and of agnizing a shared participation in something which is revealing to both/all parties; see also the Latin agnosco and English ‘acknowledgement’. 204. This construction, which communicates from Hegel’s last paragraphs of his Philosophy of Rights (as discussed in Chapter III.1.1), seems to be similar to his metaphysics of the subject and the affirmation of the individual self; see Pippin, 1989; Taylor, 1989. In this context, see also Bull’s definition of recognition discussed in Chapter III.2.1 and its Hegelian legacies when he asserts that ‘what is recognized determines the act of recognition’. 205. See Die Westphälischen Friedensverträge vom 24. Oktober 1648. Texte und Übersetzungen (Acta Pacis Westphalicae. Supplementa eletronica, 1, publiziert im Internet 2004, Lateinischer Text des IPO (1648 Oktober 24)); http://www. pax-westphalica.de/ipmipo/pdf/o_1648lt-orig.pdf (1 January, 2009). 206. See http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/hag99–03.asp (1 January, 2009). 207. See http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp (1 January, 2009). 208. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/westphal.asp (1 January, 2009).

270

Notes

209. See Die Westphälischen Friedensverträge vom 24. Oktober 1648. Texte und Übersetzungen (Acta Pacis Westphalicae. Supplementa eletronica, publiziert im Internet 2004, Englische anonyme Übersetzung des IPO (1713)); http://www. pax-westphalica.de/ipmipo/pdf/o_1732en-treatys.pdf (January 1, 2009). 210. Such as the English edition published by the Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library; http:// avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/westphal.asp (1 January, 2009). 211. http://www.pax-westphalica.de/ipmipo/pdf/o_1648lt-orig.pdf (1 January, 2009). 212. These comments may be seen as an approach to develop and to contextualize a genealogy of the problem of recognition in international politics within the history of universalism and particularism and a respective topology. To some extent, the examples referenced here support and complement my argument about universal/universalistic and particularistic ontologies, their history and their shifts; on the other hand, this contextualization needs more elaboration and represents topics for further research.

V.2 A loss of ethics, or the reinvention of universal thinking in global politics? 213. Two future projects of the author point in this direction, one on ‘Changing patterns of violence and power in international society’ and one on ‘Compromise, Conflict Management and International Negotiation’. 214. Jean Paul Sartre’s discussion of the problematic of ontological solipsism which, as he argues, cannot ‘justify’ the existence of the other and can only deal with ‘otherness’, which it itself produced in suppressive ways, is very elucidating in this regard (Sartre, 1956). 215. Efforts of this kind of rethinking do not yet represent a coherent body of literature and can be found in works which are interdisciplinary in character and come from different directions within the social sciences and humanities. Amongst others, Hoffmann, 1981; Bonanate, 1995; Mapel and Nardin, 1998; Campbell/Shapiro, 1999; Benhabib, 2002; Lebow, 2003; Linklater, 2007; and Walker, 2009, seem to represent such attempts, which show many overlapping points of interest as well as connections to the main concern and issues of this study, even if diverging in single arguments and interpretations. 216. Lévinas seems particularly interesting in his attempts to think beyond poststructrualism. In this attempt, he shares a common notion with Francois Lyotard (1979) about the inner contradictions of poststructuralist theorizing, which seems silent on the problem of evaluating its own narratives which emerge while deconstructing others as well as about the problem of relativism, that is, the normative assessment of different forms of speech and agency as more or less tolerable. He thus tries to rescue humanity from the aporias of poststructuralist deconstruction while taking seriously poststructuralist criticism and actually having been at the forefront of French poststructuralism in the 1970s and 1980s. 217. As briefly sketched out above; for further discussions, see Boer, 1997; Eaglestone, 1997; Beavers, 1995; Llewelyn, 1995; Hanus, 2007. 218. An ethics of self-constraint, which also emphasizes humility and responsibility, as well as an approach to rethink its legacies for rebuilding IR in the twentyfirst century, can also be found in Niebuhr’s and Morgenthau’s criticisms of

Notes 271 US foreign policy during the Cold War and as argued convincingly by Schou Tjalve (2008). According to Schou Tjalve, both Niebuhr and Morgenthau have criticized US foreign policy, which they charge has represented many of its decisions during the Cold War as inevitable according to a neo-realist logic of ‘survival’ and its subsequent dogmas of manifestation of US national interest in its ideological fight against communism and the Soviet Union. Indeed, however, US foreign policy would also have been based on the belief of its own greatness and exceptionality as well as on its ambitions for glory. The aspect of self-constraint, as Schou Tjalve further argues, can be found in Niebuhr’s and Morgenthau’s emphasis on the importance of critical self-reflection contrary to US administrations’ ideological presentations of their policies as political inevitabilities and ‘laws’; see also Rösch, 2009.

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Name Index Alexander VI. (Pope) 256 Alker, Hayward R. 84, 85, 87, 106 Almond, Gabriel A. 205, 267 Aquinas, Thomas 9, 11, 13, 18, 50–60, 62, 64–71, 77, 79, 80, 85, 89, 91, 103, 112, 149, 224, 229, 230–2, 248 Arendt, Hannah 104, 188, 261 Aristotle 31, 35, 36, 38, 51, 59, 80, 84, 85, 101, 113, 118, 119, 163, 231, 240, 251, 253, 255, 256 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 156 Aron, Raymond 136 Ashcraft, Richard 120, 121 Ashley, Richard 266, 267 Augustine, Aurelius 9, 11, 13, 18, 50–71, 77, 80, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 95, 98, 103, 112, 149, 224, 229, 230–2, 253–7

Clausewitz, Carl von 4, 197 Colish, Marcia 257 Crick, Bernhard 101, 107, 109, 258, 259

Bagby, Laura M. 23, 24, 30, 33 Bancroft, George 156, 263 Bartelson, Jens 8, 15, 16 Boucher, David 252, 259, 260 Brown, Chris 250 Brunt, P. A. 252, 253 Bull, Hedley 178–86, 188, 189–93, 259, 260, 265, 266, 271 Butterfield, Herbert 178, 185 Buzan, Barry 183, 189, 190, 264, 265

Gauthier, David 117, 129, 261 George, Jim 271 Gilpin, Robert 216, 251 Gottmann, Jean 163, 175, 176, 264 Grotius, Hugo 13, 39, 40, 76, 78, 79, 127, 180, 224, 225, 231, 256, 261 Guzzini, Stefano 210, 259, 268, 269

Cahnman, Werner 174, 175 Campbell, David 82, 243 Carmichael, D. J. C. 120, 124, 261 Carr, E. H. 178, 221, 259, 268 Casas, Bartolomé de las 7, 9, 11, 13, 18, 75–99, 103, 149, 158, 224, 229, 231, 232, 235, 256–7 Chabot, Dana 260 Charles II. (King of England) 119 Charles V. (King of Spain and Emperor) 75, 81, 82, 91 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 9, 11, 13, 25, 35–49, 51, 52, 63, 77, 88, 89, 91, 95, 118, 119, 149, 224, 225, 229, 231, 235, 242, 252, 253

Dunne, Tim 178 Edmunds, Lowell 31 Elbe, Joachim von 78, 208, 267 Ferdinand I. (King of Spain) 75 Ferguson, Yale 245 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 156, 262, 263 Fliess, Peter 35 Forde, Steven 258 Foucault, Michel 233, 250 Frederick II. (Prussian King) 100 Friedrich, Carl Joachim 104

Haftendorn, Helga 269 Hamilton, Alexander 111 Hamilton, Bernice 76, 87, 96, 97, 99 Hampton, Jean 129, 261 Hancock, Roger 261 Hanson, Donald W. 128 Hartigan, Richard 76, 92 Hartman, Nicolai 187 Hassner, Pierre 144 Haushofer, Karl 173, 264 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1, 2, 7, 12, 130, 135, 141–51, 178, 179, 184, 185, 188, 229, 235, 236, 258, 262, 263, 267 Held, David 246 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 142, 251 Herodotus 25, 251 Herz, John 259 293

294

Name Index

Hindness, Barry 137 Hobbes, Thomas 7, 8, 9, 11–15, 18, 61, 77, 101, 115–29, 149, 181, 184, 205, 210, 211–13, 224, 225, 229, 231, 240, 251, 255, 258, 259–61 Hoffmann, Stanley 11, 177, 201, 260, 261, 265, 268, 272 Hume, David 101, 179 James II. (King of England) 156 James, Alan 265 Kahler, Miles 11, 204, 210, 222, 250, 269 Kant, Immanuel 1, 2, 7, 9, 15, 18, 85, 101, 103, 130–8, 141, 142, 143, 148, 149, 158, 181, 184, 224, 225, 229, 231, 235, 249, 261 Kaplan, Morton 124, 251, 261–2, 263 Keene, Edward 6 Keohane, Robert O. 208, 212, 268 Krasner, Stephen 208, 238, 239 Kuhn, Thomas 220 Lévinas, Emmanuel 243, 244, 272 Linklater, Andrew 10, 15, 16, 178, 186, 209, 250, 265, 272 Lipsius, Justus 13 Little, Richard 178, 192 Loriaux, Michael 60, 61, 62, 255 Luschnat, Otto 33 Lyotard, Francois 272 Macaulay, Thomas B. 13, 154, 156, 263 Machiavelli, Niccolo 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 77, 85, 100–15, 118, 149, 163, 181, 184, 205, 210, 211, 224, 225, 229, 231, 257–9 Mackinder, Halford 13, 163–9, 173, 174, 262 Macpherson, C. B. 120 Madison, James 110, 133 Mannheim, Karl 219–23, 269, 270, 271 Michelet, Jules 13, 154–7, 263 Morgenthau, Hans J. 3, 181, 204, 205, 209, 210–19, 221, 222, 224, 225, 235, 238, 259, 263, 266–71, 273 Murphy, Cornelius F. 260, 261

Napoleon Bonaparte 151, 156, 163, 185 Nardin, Terry 250, 272 Nederman, Cary J. 252, 253 Niebuhr, Reinhold 50, 51, 53, 60, 65, 253, 255, 269, 273 Nietzsche, Friedrich 250, 263, 271 Nye, Stephen 208 O’ Tuathail, Gerard 171, 264 O’Connor, D. J. 59 Onuf, Nicholas G. 249 Orwell, George 105, 258 Padgen, Anthony 78, 80, 231, 232, 234 Pangle, Thomas 39, 40 Patomaeki, Heikki 250 Paul III. (Pope) 81 Pennington, Kenneth 96, 257 Phillip II (King of Spain) 75 Plato 31, 34, 35, 36, 70, 118, 163, 252 Pocock, John G.A. 85, 257 Polybius 107, 259 Ratzel, Friedrich 13, 264 Rorty, Richard 251 Rosenau, James 245, 262 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 101, 109, 150, 191, 198, 199–201, 213, 251, 266 Sartre, Jean Paul 272 Schroeder, Paul 160, 161 Schütz, Alfred 250, 271 Sealey, Raphael 25 Semple, Ellen Churchill 167, 169, 174 Sepulveda, Juan Gines de 78, 82, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 95, 97, 257 Shaw, Martin 265 Simmel, Georg 264, 271 Smethurst, S. E. 44, 47 Southern, R. W. 51, 52 Spykman, Nicholas 13, 169–76, 264 Steinberger, Peter 124 Stern, Robert 146 Suárez, Francesco 13, 75, 99 Taylor, A. J. P. 161, 172 Thoreau, Henry David 5, 240

Name Index Thucydides 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 23–35, 36, 52, 58, 61, 77, 88, 101, 103, 118, 149, 202, 205, 210, 211, 224, 225, 229, 231, 235, 252–3, 258 Todorov, Tzvetan 256 Tönnies, Ferdinand 190 Treitschke, Heinrich von 13, 154, 156, 263 Unstead, J. F. 164, 263 Vitoria, Francisco de 7, 11, 13, 18, 75–99, 103, 143, 149, 229, 231, 256–7 Vlastos, Gregory 35 Voegelin, Eric 34, 104, 148, 250, 263

295

Waever, Ole 220 Walker, R. B. J. 5, 122, 187, 208, 236, 250, 259, 260, 271, 272 Walker, Thomas A. 76 Waltz, Kenneth 150, 188, 197, 198–209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 222, 251, 252, 259, 266, 268 Watson, Adam 178 Weber, Max 264 Wendt, Alexander 208 Wight, Martin 6, 178, 182, 183, 184, 185, 189, 190, 265 Wilkinson, Spencer 174 Williams, Michael C. 125, 126, 132, 134, 179, 250, 251, 268, 269 Wilson, Woodrow 9, 165, 219

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Subject Index America, Central and South 76, 77, 98 Anarchy (anarchical) 2, 7, 8, 16, 36, 110, 116, 118, 127, 153, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 185, 187, 188, 191, 197, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 211, 212, 213, 218, 224, 235, 236, 237, 239, 242, 252, 258, 260, 266 Animal Farm 106 Anthropology (anthropological) 2, 18, 37, 38, 41, 45, 49, 53, 58, 59, 65, 76, 86, 88, 90, 96, 131, 231, 235, 251, 257, 259, 262, 268 Arms Race 216, 218, 221 Äusseres Staatsrecht [external law of states] (see also International Law; Law; Natural Law; Law of Nations; Civil Law; jus gentium; lex naturalis) 143, 262 Austria 160, 161, 165 Babylon 54, 55, 254 Balance of power 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 176, 180, 185, 186, 191, 193, 206, 207, 216, 217, 218, 237 Bedingung der Möglichkeit 131, 132, 135 Biologism 163, 173 Border (see also Territory; Frontier) 173 British Committee on International Relations 178 Categorical Imperative 63, 129, 135, 136, 261 Catholic Church 75, 81, 89, 90, 98, 256 Catholicism 75 Chaos 7, 69, 121, 122, 242 Christendom (Christianity) 52, 65, 69, 83, 85, 86, 90, 92, 94, 95, 120, 167, 255 civitas terrena 52, 254 City of God 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 64, 65, 66, 98 city state 6, 12, 25, 102, 230, 235

Civil Law (see also International Law; Law; äusseres Staatsrecht [external law of states]; Law of Nations; Divine Law; Natural Law; jus gentium; lex naturalis) 39, 55, 89 Civilization (see also Standards of Civilization) 16, 35, 114, 128, 162, 167, 168, 172, 189, 190, 198, 236, 242, 257, 264 civitas Dei 52 Cold War 11, 164, 169, 211, 217, 218, 220, 221, 222, 224, 237, 245, 265, 267, 273 Colonialism 93, 237 Common Good 3, 31, 43, 91, 92, 109, 113, 121, 159, 230, 241, 247, 253 Common Sense (see also sensus communis) 38, 42, 149, 259 Commonwealth (Christian; Roman; British; International) 37, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 60, 63, 64, 65, 116, 119, 124, 126, 127, 128 Concert of Europe 160, 161, 237 Conflict 4, 45, 47, 51, 54, 57, 68, 102, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 141, 153, 157, 158, 159, 161, 165, 166, 175, 176, 180, 197, 200, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 215, 216, 217, 218, 220, 234, 237, 238, 239, 241, 254, 255, 259, 260, 263, 269, 272 Congress of Vienna 160, 161 Conquest 26, 41, 60, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 96, 97 Conscience 38, 39, 82, 116, 117, 118, 269 Constructivist 126, 148, 175 Cosmopolis 15, 16 Critical Geopolitics 162 Cuba 78 Culture 5, 15, 16, 34, 38, 47, 50, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 86, 87, 127, 168, 175, 189, 190, 192, 205, 242, 243 Deconstructivism 244 Defence (Self-defence) 30, 42, 43, 44, 45, 68, 69, 78, 83, 89, 90, 91, 93, 96,

297

298

Subject Index

Defence (Self-defence) – continued 98, 110, 123, 125, 127, 128, 129, 171, 207, 222, 233, 234, 257, 261 Deliberation 80, 240 Determinism (deterministic) 2, 159, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 264 Dichotomy 6, 8, 174, 257 Diplomacy (diplomatic) 35, 42, 102, 114, 161, 180, 182, 183, 186, 188, 189, 191, 213, 214, 272 Divine Law (see also Law; International Law; äusseres Staatsrecht [external law of states]; Natural Law; Law of Nations; Civil Law; jus gentium; lex naturalis) 10, 52, 58, 59, 60, 66, 76, 77, 88, 99, 114 Drang nach Osten 173 Dualism (dualistic) 2, 112, 120, 127, 138, 204, 230, 239, 241, 242, 243, 244, 251, 267 Empire 6, 12, 25, 36, 37, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 54, 60, 69, 71, 80, 81, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 99, 102, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, 160, 165, 167, 174, 230, 254 Encomendia 82, 83, 254 England 100, 116, 118, 119, 154, 156, 163 Enlightenment 76 Epistemology (epistemological) 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 82, 99, 106, 107, 138, 141, 148, 161, 169, 171, 173, 176, 177, 179, 181, 183, 187, 188, 197, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 211, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220, 223, 230, 234, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 250, 251, 256, 261, 266, 267 Erfahrungswissenschaften 203 Ethics (see also Loss of Ethics) 2, 4, 5, 10, 16, 18, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 40, 41, 51, 58, 61, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 77, 86, 95, 96, 100, 103, 106, 113, 114, 115, 141, 142, 146, 148, 159, 162, 213, 215, 218, 225, 229, 230, 236, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 258, 261, 269, 273 Ethical 2, 7, 14, 15, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 48, 50, 51, 55, 57, 58, 60,

63, 66, 70, 71, 76, 77, 79, 80, 85, 88, 95, 96, 99, 102, 103, 104, 114, 115, 118, 129, 131, 141, 143, 145, 147, 148, 149, 151, 185, 190, 214, 215, 218, 225, 231, 235, 242, 243, 251, 253, 254, 261 Eurocentrism (Eurocentric) 80, 82 Europe (European) 12, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 99, 104, 152, 155, 159, 160, 161, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 174, 180, 183, 188, 189, 215, 230, 234, 236, 237, 263, 264 European Union 168, 236, 264 Expansion 25, 48, 75, 76, 80, 85, 91, 93, 107, 109, 112, 178, 186, 189, 216, 257, 259 Factualism 27, 33 Fear 24, 26, 46, 57, 68, 71, 109, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 185, 191, 193, 224, 252, 270 Federalist Papers 110, 156 Federation of States (see also League of Republics) 132, 134, 136, 137, 148, 262 Fortuna 115, 149, 259 Fragmentation 15, 18 France 99, 118, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 163, 167, 185, 263 Frontier (see also Territory; Border) 171 Gemeinschaft 190 Genealogy (genealogical) 6, 9, 11, 16, 17, 160, 161, 220, 223, 250, 271, 272 Geopolitical Thought (see also Geopolitics) 13, 18, 150, 153, 159, 161, 162, 167, 169, 170, 175, 229, 233, 234, 238, 265 Geopolitics (see also Geopolitical Thought) 153, 161, 162, 163, 169, 171, 173, 175, 264 Geopolitik 162, 173, 264 Germany 163, 164, 165, 168, 263 Gesellschaft 190 Heartland 165, 166, 167, 168, 174, 264 Hegemony (hegemonic) 10, 14, 24, 25, 29, 47, 60, 69, 114, 126, 127, 129, 211, 219, 239, 241 Hemisphere 170 Hermeneutics 214

Subject Index Historiography (historiographical) 3, 13, 18, 33, 150, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 169, 202, 222, 229, 233, 234, 238, 250, 251, 263 Holy Scriptures 51, 52, 57, 63, 254 Hospitality 132, 134, 135, 136 Hubris 31, 33, 34, 54, 58, 65, 71, 114, 141, 216 Human Rights 9, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 87, 88, 95, 98, 99, 149, 234 Humanism 52, 56, 58, 77, 81, 85, 106, 244 Humanities 12, 169, 203, 225, 272 Humanity (see also Mankind) 2, 15, 16, 17, 44, 45, 48, 86, 96, 130, 131, 137, 138, 168, 176, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 238, 241, 243, 244, 249, 272 Idealism (idealist) 6, 65, 138, 176, 177, 224 Identity 4, 77, 144, 145, 152, 153, 154, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163, 167, 172, 176, 190, 199, 208, 219, 224, 233, 234, 242, 244 Ideology (ideological) 11, 44, 100, 120, 141, 155, 158, 173, 175, 200, 201, 204, 209, 211, 215, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225, 238, 263, 265, 269, 270, 271, 273 Ideology Critique (ideologycritical) 208, 211, 219, 221, 222, 223, 238, 269 Idolatry 97 Immunity 92 Immunization 204, 206, 266 Imperialism (imperialistic) 43, 45, 47, 48, 109, 217, 234, 237, 241, 242, 243, 258 inclinatio naturalis 59 Insecurity (see also Security) 120, 122, 123, 266 Inside and Outside 7, 8, 76, 111, 112, 127, 242, 249, 251 International Law (see also äusseres Staatsrecht [external law of states]; Law; Natural Law; Law of Nations; Civil Law; Divine Law; jus gentium; lex naturalis) 14, 16, 40, 42, 66, 76, 78, 79, 96, 99, 110, 116, 131, 134, 142, 143, 144, 147, 150, 168, 180, 182, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 213, 214, 218, 221, 232,

299

250, 252, 260, 262, 263, 267, 269 International Peace Conference at the Hague 237 International Political Economy 17 International Society 108, 128, 129, 131, 150, 168, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 197, 234, 236, 265, 268, 272 International System 15, 138, 160, 179–93, 206, 207, 238, 246, 260, 265, 266 Isonomia 35 ius ad bellum 229 Jerusalem 69 Jurisdiction 76, 77, 81, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 149, 185, 256, 265 Justice 3, 9, 13, 18, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 51, 52, 55, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 79, 80, 116, 117, 125, 129, 135, 150, 162, 185, 192, 245, 252, 255 jus gentium (see also Natural Law; International Law; Law; äusseres Staatsrecht [external law of states]; Law of Nations; Civil Law; Divine Law; lex naturalis) 78, 96, 97, 99 Kingdom of God 52 Kingdom of Heaven (see also City of God) 56, 57, 67 Knowledge (Ideologization of; Canonization of; see also Sociology of Knowledge) 13, 52, 53, 54, 56, 86, 107, 113, 114, 169, 179, 187, 192, 193, 208, 209, 211, 212, 219, 220, 222, 223, 224, 233, 241, 271 Law of Nations (see also Natural Law; International Law; Law; äusseres Staatsrecht [external law of states]; Civil Law; Divine Law; jus gentium; lex naturalis) 36, 39, 40, 78, 116 League of Nations 9, 165, 180, 237 League of Republics (see also Federation of States) 114, 115, 259 Legitimacy 8, 15, 24, 75, 93, 117, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 144, 225, 260

300 Subject Index Legitimization 11, 42, 69, 87, 90, 149, 240, 251 lex naturalis (see also Natural Law; International Law; Law; äusseres Staatsrecht [external law of states]; Law of Nations; Civil Law; Divine Law; jus gentium) 124 Liberalism (Neo-liberalism) 159, 179, 197, 208, 224, 229, 249, 268, 271 Logocentrism 82, 83 Loss of Ethics (see also Ethics) 2, 18, 61, 141, 239, 240 Machiavellism 100, 101, 103, 104, 115, 258 Mankind (see also Humanity) 41, 45, 54, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 92, 96, 97, 99, 131, 132, 136, 138, 141, 147, 159, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 241, 242, 249, 251, 252, 254 Materialism 61 Melian Dialogue 25, 32, 33, 34 Metaphysics (metaphysical) 3, 112, 118, 119, 132, 145, 152, 175, 231, 232, 240, 246, 267, 271 Morality 76, 95, 96, 102, 103, 105, 129, 136, 149, 155, 213, 214, 215, 218, 225, 230, 240, 252, 258, 259, 261, 269, 270 Mores 104, 141, 145, 159, 215, 240, 242 Narration 5, 23, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 53, 155, 251 Narrative 16, 17, 29, 53, 54, 58, 65, 71, 83, 94, 152, 155, 156, 169, 170, 180, 191, 230, 244, 253, 254, 255, 269 National Interest 2, 13, 18, 28, 111, 126, 135, 149, 151, 153, 158, 159, 176, 181, 183, 197, 198, 221, 222, 230, 232, 233, 234, 236, 240, 242, 244, 263, 267, 273 National Spirit (see also World Spirit; Universal Spirit) 175 Nationalism 3, 5, 137, 138, 144, 147, 157, 160, 188, 197, 198, 200, 217, 221, 225, 233, 234, 242, 249, 251, 253, 262, 263, 266 Natural Law (see also International Law; Law; äusseres Staatsrecht [external law of states]; Law of Nations; Civil Law; Divine Law; jus gentium; lex naturalis) 36, 37, 38, 39,

40, 47, 49, 51, 52, 58, 59, 66, 75, 76, 77, 78, 82, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 96, 137, 141, 148, 188, 230, 232, 251, 252 Natural Right(s) 48, 80, 90, 118, 134, 137, 232, 234, 240 Necessita 106, 107, 149, 258, 259 Neo-Realism (neo-realist) 2, 7, 11, 18, 24, 106, 107, 153, 159, 177, 179, 188, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 234, 238, 258, 265, 266, 267, 268, 271 New Testament 60, 70, 94 New World 9, 79, 83, 96 Nominalism 77 Ontology (ontological) 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 63, 82, 112, 131, 132, 138, 141, 147, 152, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172–88, 191, 192, 193, 197, 198, 201, 202, 204, 205, 208, 223, 229–35, 237, 238–43, 245–51, 261, 264, 265, 266, 272 Organism (organismic) 153, 162, 163, 172, 173, 174 Otherness 80, 82, 163, 167, 172, 208, 232, 244, 272 Ottoman Empire 160 pacta sunt servanda 27, 28, 143, 149, 252, 269 Particularity 1, 10, 18, 27, 141, 144–50, 207, 215, 233, 234, 235, 251 Particularism (particularistic) 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 23, 24, 45, 46, 63, 130, 141, 144, 145, 147, 150, 152, 162, 175, 180, 197, 198, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206, 232, 233, 234, 237, 238, 240, 241, 243, 246, 249, 250, 251, 253, 272 Passion 25, 31, 42, 43, 54, 56, 58, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 254, 255 Paternalism (paternalistic) 44, 45, 47, 149, 235, 242 Patriotism 37, 44, 46, 47, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 222, 251 Patronage 44, 46, 47 pax Romana 43, 44 Peace of Campo Formio 151 Philanthropy 46, 47, 136, 149

Subject Index polis (poleis) 5, 6, 12, 29, 31, 34, 35, 163, 230, 235, 249 Positivism (positivist) 2, 3, 153, 169, 171, 177, 205, 220, 225, 213, 232, 266, 270 Poststructuralism (poststructuralist) 17, 162, 238, 244, 271, 272, 273 Protestant 50, 76 Prussia 160, 161, 165, 263 Racism 80, 163 raison d’état 222, 252, 257 rationalist (see also realist; revolutionist) 6, 80, 85, 86, 179, 180, 181, 205, 268 Realism (realist; Realist; see also rationalist; revolutionist) 6, 14, 23, 116, 138, 141, 178, 179, 181, 185, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 251, 266, 268, 269 Recognition 46, 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84–9, 90, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 144, 149, 150, 151, 158, 168, 178, 180, 182, 184, 185, 186, 188, 193, 215, 216, 230, 231, 232, 235, 236, 237, 239, 242, 243, 254, 257, 267, 271, 272 Reconciliation 29, 43, 130, 150 Reformation 75 Relativism 63, 85, 98, 272 Renaissance 77, 85, 106 Republic 46, 47, 49, 63, 102, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 113, 132, 134, 151, 259, 262 Republicanism (republican) 46, 47, 106, 112, 132, 133, 134, 135, 225, 249 revolutionist (see also realist; rationalist) 6, 179, 181 Rome 36, 37, 40, 44, 45–50, 55, 60, 63, 69, 70, 108, 252 Russia 160, 162 Sacrifice 56, 155, 156, 157, 158, 201, 260, 263 Scholasticism 77, 229 Securitization 270 Security (see also Insecurity) 5, 15, 24, 25, 46, 55, 57, 58, 69, 82, 92, 108, 110, 111, 117, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 159, 162, 163, 169, 174, 207, 222, 224, 225, 240, 254, 258, 259, 260

301

Self (and Other) 2, 4, 188, 230, 232, 234, 235, 242, 243, 244, 265, 271 Self-Constraint (self-restraint) 31, 70, 115, 118, 141, 149, 244, 260, 273 Self-help 23, 24, 185, 206, 207, 224 sensus communis (see also Common Sense) 38, 149 Sermon on the Mount 50, 57, 60, 86 Sociability 5, 6, 141, 181, 187, 230, 231 Sociology of Knowledge (see also Knowledge) 223, 250, 270 Sophrosyne 31 Sovereignty 2, 15, 17, 44, 46, 76, 89, 93, 96, 97, 116, 117, 118, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 134, 150, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182, 184, 186, 193, 198, 200, 225, 230, 233, 236, 238, 240, 249, 260, 265, 267 Soviet Union 221, 273 Spain 75, 76, 80, 81, 82, 83, 88, 89, 97, 98, 99, 257 Spirituality 48, 86, 99 Staat 144 Stability 100, 106, 107, 110–14, 160, 169, 170, 230, 245, 259 Standards of Civilization (see also Civilization) 9, 186, 234, 235, 250, 265 Standortgebundenheit (standortgebunden) 215, 216, 217, 222, 269, 271 Structuralism (structuralist) 2, 3, 218, 221, 246 Sublimus Dei (Bull by Pope Paul III) 81, 82, 89, 256 Techne 113 Teleology (teleological) 37, 38, 41, 138, 154 Temporality (temporal) 53, 57, 59, 66, 79, 94, 152, 157, 168, 207, 229, 254, 259, 260 Territory (territorial; see also Border; Frontier) 41, 79, 97, 98, 99, 109, 136, 154, 159, 162, 163, 171, 172, 174, 175, 182, 185, 186, 233, 236, 237, 256, 265 Third Reich 173 Togetherness 54, 141, 190, 245

302

Subject Index

Toleration 35, 84 Topography (topographical) 163, 172, 175, 264 Transcendence (transcendental) 9, 35, 52, 53, 54, 56, 58, 60, 76, 132, 135, 141, 142, 148, 184, 186, 187, 188, 230, 246 Treaties of Westphalia (Westphälische Friedensverträge; see also Thirty Years War) 129, 185, 236, 274 United Nations 9, 99, 180, 214, 221, 234 United States (US) 11, 17, 52, 156, 162, 163, 164, 165, 169, 204, 211, 212, 221, 222, 255, 257, 263, 264, 267, 268, 273 Universalism (universal, universalistic) 1–5, 7, 9, 10–18, 23, 24, 36, 38, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 51–3, 55, 57, 59, 63, 75, 76, 77, 82, 86–8, 96, 97, 99, 102, 103, 126, 127, 130–5, 137, 138, 141, 142, 146–8, 149, 161, 162, 175, 179–81, 184, 186, 188,

211, 225, 229–41, 243, 244–6, 249, 250, 251, 253, 272 Universalization 9, 10, 47, 229, 234, 235, 239, 244, 251 Valladolid 79, 81, 82, 84, 85, 88, 90 Violence 26, 30, 38, 43, 44, 83, 84, 90, 96, 103, 122, 123, 184, 193, 202, 207, 208, 230, 233, 237, 238, 239, 241, 244, 255, 266, 272 Virtue (virtù) 27, 30, 31, 38, 40, 43, 47, 48, 53, 59, 65, 68, 70, 71, 91 ,102, 103, 113, 114, 115, 141, 149, 171, 225, 232, 256, 257 Volk 144, 145, 147 Volksgeist 145, 147 volonté general 198, 199 Weltanschauung 219, 220, 223, 270 Weltgeist (World Spirit) 147 Westphalian State System 99, 245 World War I 160, 165, 174, 237 World War II 183, 205, 237 World-State 116, 117, 133, 142, 214