The English School: modes of society

Abstract

This chapter evaluates the English School theory of international relations, the resulting possibilities of integrating religion into international politics and their theoretical framework. However, it should be noted that there is not an intellectually or geographically homogenous English School. Rather, the English School can be described as a ‘research enterprise’.¹ This chapter, therefore, evaluates various approaches of this ‘research enterprise’ and its most important scholars by analysing both the similarities and the differences within this theory.² Prominent agents of the English School, like Hedley Bull, were not attracted to religion as such. Others, like Martin Wight and Herbert Butterfield, were heavily affected by religion, but in a very personal manner and due to ‘biographical’ reasons.³ However, Hedley Bull’s seminal approach in Anarchical Society offers Just War theory, a theoretical approach with (Christian) religious roots. Martin Wight, on the other hand, an Anglican Christian and pacifist, even condemned Roman Catholic thoughts (i.e. concerning approaches of Ethical Realism in the tradition of St Augustine) and therefore also disposed himself, to some degree, against Realism.⁴