Abstract
“We have become completely determinists,” wrote Henri Poincaré polemically.1 It must be stated from the beginning that Wight had not become so. His is, first, a position against a certain kind of determinism, the belief that politics is governed by linear processes of causes and effects, susceptible to formal specification, which one would only have to reveal. Politics, of course, is determined by causes that are in principle ascertainable. But the belief that historical material could ever satisfy the nomothetic ambitions of a social science or a scientific politics is opposed to Wight’s view. Contrary to the idea, he argues that the occurrence of social phenomena can not be determined following variously formulated political schemes; he is opposed to the idea that such infallible schemes are detectable thanks to knowledge and its advancement. He is therefore a critic of those linear conceptions of progress or regress of politics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Henri Poincaré, “Chance,” in Science and Method, trans. Francis Maitland (London: Thomas Nelson, 1914), p. 64.
According to Vigezzi, Wight had an eclectic position on this tradition of studies, even among the members of the British Committee where “the imprint of ‘historicism’, at times understood in the broader sense, elsewhere with a more marked reference to German school … is evident”; Brunello Vigezzi, The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (1954–1985): The Rediscovery of History, trans. Ian Harvey (Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2005), pp. 133–4 and note 39.
Martin Wight, “An Anatomy of International Thought,” Review of International Studies 13, no. 3 (1987): 224. “Professor Popper ignores the classical Historismus whose history Meinecke wrote. The complexities of its development into ‘historicism’ perhaps themselves need historical treatment if sense is to be made of them”; Martin Wight, review of The Poverty of Historicism by K. Popper, International Affairs 34, no. 3 (1958): 335. Cf. Friedrich Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus (Berlin: Oldenburg, 1937).
Hans J. Morgenthau, review of Diplomatic Investigations by H. Butterfield and M. Wight, eds., Political Science Quarterly 82, no. 3 (1967): 462.
James Der Derian, Critical Practices in International Theory. Selected Essays (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 200.
Yanis Varoufakis, more recently than others, has proposed an explicit analysis of this issue in economic affairs in his Economic Indeterminacy (London: Routledge, 2014). Obviously, the charge of ideologism does not demonstrate anything by itself. Scientific theories must be criticized in terms of their logical coherence and empirical relevance.
Martin Wight, “Some Reflections on the Historical Antichrist,” undated paper, MWP 43, p. 4. Carr would call “mysticism” the view that the meaning of history lies somewhere outside (secular) history. Cf. Edward H. Carr, What Is History? (London: Macmillan, 1961), p. 103.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 167–8.
Niccolò Machiavelli, Clizia, in The Comedies of Machiavelli, ed., David Sices and James B. Atkinson, bilingual ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2007), p. 279. In the famous chapter 43, book 3, of his Discourses, Machiavelli writes, “That men born in one province display almost the same nature in every age” (“Che gli uomini, che nascono in una provincia osservino per tutti i tempi quasi quella medesima natura”); Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), emphasis added. What could lie behind this “almost,” or “quasi”? Perhaps, it could be the absence of absolute uniformity of human nature. After all, if men were the same by nature in every age, what could be the reason for them to become so different in Machiavelli’s time, posing the urgent need of their emulation of an ancient human model—a return to antiquity? Gennaro Sasso has commented on Machiavelli’s aporias in Machiavelli: Enciclopedia Machiavelliana (Rome: Treccani, 2014), 1:502–10, 3:xlviii–xlix. However, in his view, as I understood Sasso’s conclusions, there is nothing behind that “quasi” that is incompatible with Machiavelli’s theoretical stance.
Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History (London, G. Bell, 1949), pp. 67, 109.
Recently, Wendt has argued that “a world state is inevitable. Its cause is the teleological logic of anarchy” and “it will emerge whether or not anyone intends to bring it about”; Alexander Wendt, “Why a World State Is Inevitable,” European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003): 528–9.
Martin Wight, “The Church, Russia and the West,” Ecumenical Review: A Quarterly 1, Autumn-Summer (1948–49): 38.
Quoted in Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991), p. 29.
Discussing Wight’s “pessimism,” Bull opened the way for a historiographical vulgate based on this view; Hedley Bull, “Introduction: Martin Wight and the Study of International Relations,” in Martin Wight, Systems of States, ed. Hedley Bull (London: Leicester University Press, 1977), pp. 11–12.
Interestingly, it has been authoritatively noted that in Systems of States—a posthumous collection of papers written by Wight in the last eight years of his life—he gives prominence to those institutional features arose in the Hellenic states-system to sustain peaceful coexistence; see Giovanna Rocchi Daverio, Trent’anni di Studi sulle Relazioni Interstatali della Grecia di V e IV secolo a.C.: Indirizzi di Ricerca e Percorsi Tematici, in Daniele Foraboschi, ed., Storiografia ed Erudizione. Scritti in Onore di Ida Calabi Limentani (Milan: Cisalpino, 1999), p. 33.
Jules Renard, Journal 1887–1910, 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions Garnier, 2011), 2:403.
Later on, for the British it was also a period of specific crisis deriving from the decline of the Empire; see Ian Hall, Dilemmas of Decline. British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945–1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). See also Vigezzi, The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, pp. 41ff. A passage from a Wight’s 1958 conference, two years after the Suez crisis, is significant: “The dynamic character of the Commonwealth leads to false prediction, as its indefinite character leads to false description … The radical vice of writings about the Commonwealth has been emotional commitment. Like the greater part of the writing on International Relations between the Wars, it has been confident instead of prudent, commendatory instead of detached. It has sought to communicate a faith rather than to deepen understanding”; Martin Wight, “Is the Commonwealth a Non-Hobbesian Institution?,” The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Studies 16, no. 1 (1978): 124, 126.
Norberto Bobbio, Profilo Ideologico del Novecento (Milan: Garzanti, 1990), p. 197. English ed., Ideological Profile of Twentieth Century Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Norberto Bobbio, Teoria Generale della Politica, ed. Michelangelo Bovero (Turin: Einaudi, 1999), p. 636.
For example, this is Hans J. Morgenthau in 1950: “War is no longer, as it once was, a rational instrument for foreign policy, the continuation of diplomacy with other means”; quoted in William E. Scheuerman, Morgenthau. Realism and Beyond (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009), p. 72.
Martin Wight, review of Diplomacy in a Changing World by S. D. Kertesz and M. A. Fitzsimons, eds., International Affairs 36, no. 4 (1960): 497.
Martin Wight, review of International Politics in the Atomic Age by J. Herz, American Political Science Review 54, no. 4 (1960): 1057.
Ibid.
Martin Wight, review of The Use of History by A. L. Rowse and The Idea of History by R. G. Collingwood, International Affairs 23, no. 4 (1947): 576.
Of course, this ambition could be realized in the future. “We make no claim to be able to foretell the balancing dynamics of the coming decades. We do claim, however, that realist scholars will have to prepare for this analytic challenge.” Meanwhile, “by complicating the specification of the state’s position in the international system … determinate predictions [i.e., probabilistic predictions] can be made”; Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organizations 44, no. 2 (1990): 139, 168. The triad of explanation, prediction, and prescription appears at page 138. The last page seems to confirm that the base for these predictions should be, essentially, an elaboration of historical analogies: “A nuclear-armed multipolarity may resemble the stable 1880s more than it will the chain-ganging 1910s or buck passing 1930s.” Morgenthau wrote that “nobody with any sense of responsibility can predict what the future will bring” on the basis of historical analogies. “Fifty years from now, historians will point either to the similarities or to the dissimilarities and prove that what happened was bound to happen”; Hans J. Morgenthau, “Remarks on the Validity of Historical Analogies,” Social Research 39, no. 2 (1972): 364.
Cf. Miroslav Nincic and Joseph Lepgold, eds., Being Useful: Policy Relevance and International Relations Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), p. 28. Jervis has succinctly discussed some reasons why prediction is so difficult in world politics: “Multiple factors are usually at work, actors learn, small events can affect the course of history … many well-established generalizations … may no longer hold”; Robert Jervis, “The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past?,” International Security 16, no. 3 (1991–92): 39.
Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: Whittlesey House, 1936).
Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Modern Library, 1998), p. xv. Holbrooke recalls that “the [Bosnia] negotiations were simultaneously cerebral and physical, abstract and personal, something like a combination of chess and mountain climbing … In August 1995, when they began, it was almost universally believed that they would fail, as all previous efforts had. And we knew that if we failed, the war would continue” (pp. xv, xvii). For a brief reflection on the siege of Sarajevo see Michele Chiaruzzi, “The Siege Wall and Its After-Effects: Sarajevo,” Global Change, Pace & Security 26, no. 3 (2014): 315–23.
Hedley Bull, “Systematic Innovation and Social Philosophy,” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 3, no. 1–4 (1960): 202.
Martin Wight, “Interests of States,” paper presented to the British Committee, p. 20, quoted in Vigezzi, The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, p. 50. Of course, on the national interest opinions diverge: “National interests seem quite stable, in some cases over centuries”; Alexander Wendt, “Social Theory as Cartesian Science: An Auto-Critique from a Quantum Perspective,” in Stefano Guzzini and Anna Leander, eds., Constructivism and International Relations: Alexander Wendt and His Critics (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 211. After his landmark decision to meet Castro in Cuba, President Obama said, “The United States will not be imprisoned by the past—we’re looking to the future … I’m not interested in having battles that frankly started before I was born”; quoted in Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Randal C. Archibold, “Obama Meets Raúl Castro, Making History,” International New York Times, April 11, 2015, digital ed.
Dennis H. Wrong, “Some Problems in Defining Power,” American Journal of Sociology 73, no. 6 (1968): 675–6.
Copyright information
© 2016 Michele Chiaruzzi
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chiaruzzi, M. (2016). The Wind of Politics: Disputing Determinism. In: Martin Wight on Fortune and Irony in Politics. Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52873-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52873-5_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-70797-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52873-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)