Abstract
The task now is to relate Oakeshott’s analysis of human conduct to that of international society so as to arrive at an idea of world politics. The classical approach, while enlisting the support of Oakeshott for the defence of its version of international society against the international system of rationalism, also distances itself from the ‘critical’ investigations of world society. In so doing, it appeals to Oakeshott’s rejection of cosmopolitanism. However, cosmopolitan options are not exhausted by the idea of a global state. An idea of tradition compatible with Oakeshott’s analysis may be, first, much more ‘critical’ than the classics would have it, and second, may be interpreted as a kind of world society.
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Notes
Cf.: S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) and Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale University Press, 1968).
Cf.: A. Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London: Routledge, 1992); H. Bull and A. Watson, (eds) The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); B. Buzan and R. Little, ‘Reconceptualizing Anarchy: Structural Realism Meets History’, European Journal of International Relations, 1996, 4: 403–38; J. Charvet, ‘The Idea of an International Ethical Order’, Studies in Political Thought, 1992, 1: 59–72. All these ‘concentric’ images of world order are conceptualized on the margins of the English School by J. Der Derian in his On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (London: Blackwell, 1987) and R. Epp, ‘The English School on the Frontiers of International Society: A Hermeneutic Recollection’, Review of International Studies, 1998, Special Issue: 47–63.
R. Cox, ‘Thinking about civilizations’, Review of International Studies, 2000: 217–34.
R. Lipschutz, ‘Politics Among People: Global Civil Society Reconsidered’, in H.H. Hobbs (ed.) Pondering Postinternationalism: A Paradigm for the Twenty-First Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000): 94.
K. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979): 80.
Cf.: J. Grieco, ‘Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism’, International Organization, 1988, 42: 485–507.
Cf.: R. Keohane, ‘Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond’ in his edn, Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
Cf.: A. Wendt, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, 1992, 46: 391–425.
O. O’Neill, ‘Bounded and Cosmopolitan Justice’, Review of International Studies, 2000, 26: 45–6.
J. Charvet, ‘International Society from a Contractarian Perspective’, in D. Mapel and T. Nardin (eds) International Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998): 130.
J. Charvet, The Idea of an Ethical Community (London: Cornell University Press, 1995): 5–6. The Realism Charvet has in mind here is philosophical rather than political.
Ibid.: 119.
Ibid.: 118–20.
Ibid.: 122.
A. Linklater, ‘Men and Citizens in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 1981, 7: 37.
Bull, Anarchical Society: 24–7; ‘The Importance of Grotius in the Study of International Relations’, in H. Bull, B. Kingsbury and A. Roberts (eds) Hugo Grotius and International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, in Diplomatic Investigations.
E. Ringmar, ‘On the Ontological Status of the State’, European Journal of International Relations, 1996, 2: 448.
E. Ringmar, ‘The relevance of international law: a Hegelian interpretation of a peculiar seventeenth-century preoccupation’, Review of International Studies, 1995, 21: 97.
R. Ashley, ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’, International Studies Quarterly, 1981, 2: 211.
Ibid.: 234.
R. Ashley, ‘The poverty of neorealism’, International Organization, 1984, 38: 225–61.
R. Ashley, ‘The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward a critical Social Theory of International Politics’, Alternatives, 1987, XII: 429.
Ibid.: 406.
Ibid.: 408.
R. Ashley, ‘Living on Border Lines: Man, Post-structuralism and War’, in J. Der Derian and M. Shapiro (eds) International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (New York: Lexington, 1989): 309.
G. Santayana, ‘The Philosophy of Travel’, The Virginia Quarterly Review, 1964, 40: 7–8.
C. Taylor, ‘The hermeneutics of conflict’, in J. Tully (ed.) Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988): 225–8.
J. Shklar, ‘Rethinking the Past’, Social Research, 1977, 44: 80.
Cf.: M. Donelan, ‘Political Theorists and International Relations’, in his The Reason of States: A Study in International Political Theory (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978) and Elements of International Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
H.-G. Gadamer, ‘The Continuity of History and the Existential Moment’, Philosophy Today, 1972, 16: 237.
Ibid.: 234–9.
For MacIntyre’s argument see After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1985); Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988); Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy and Tradition (London: Duckworth, 1990).
A. MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues? (Chicago: Open Court, 1999): 142. In this work, MacIntyre does not use the word ‘tradition’. However, the one he does use, ‘the network of giving and receiving’, accords well both with the etymology of traditio and his earlier writings on ‘tradition’.
Ibid.: 132–3.
Ibid.: 143.
Gadamer, ‘Notes on Planning for the Future’, Dcedatus, 1966: 589.
Ibid.: 589.
Ibid.: 587.
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© 2005 Alexander Astrov
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Astrov, A. (2005). Tradition. In: On World Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508033_6
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