Introduction

Abstract

In his famous essay on the poverty of international theory Martin Wight referred to the tension between the language of Western political thought and the actual world of international relations. Wight argued that the vocabulary of political theory and law had been impregnated with the belief that human beings could perfect their social and political arrangements. The Marxist tradition developed this theme in the statement that history was a process in which human beings acquired increasing mastery of their social and political environment. The relevance of this language for the international system was clearly problematical in Wight’s view. In an oft-quoted passage, Wight maintained that international politics was “the realm of recurrence and repetition”, or the sphere of politics in which human “action is most regularly necessitous”. For this reason, the history of international thought had been concerned simply with the goal of state survival. The attempt to construct philosophical visions of the good society had been the exclusive preserve of political theories of the state.¹