Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T04:52:13.486Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Revisiting Rengger’s Anti-Pelagianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

Vassilios Paipais
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Get access

Summary

Introduction

According to Nicholas Rengger, the study of modern political theory and international relations (IR) is divided between two conflicting views. He terms the more optimistic ‘Pelagian’ and the more sceptical ‘anti-Pelagian’. It will be suggested that although Rengger succeeds in clarifying the assumptions underlying Pelagianism, he is less successful in identifying a coherent form of non-realist anti-Pelagianism. In this chapter we will examine in particular the version of non-realist anti-Pelagianism he claimed to find in Oakeshott. Since Oakeshott has been accused of an idealist methodology which yields a model of civil association open to the charge of being itself Pelagian, Rengger’s reliance on him exposes Rengger’s own anti-Pelagian project to the charge of succumbing to the ‘faint but bewitching glow of ideal theory’ of which he accuses Rawls and other modern idealists and rationalists. Rengger’s project, we conclude, might have been more coherent if he had instead linked it to a theory of prudence and the contemporary debate about the political. First, however, we begin with a discussion of Rengger’s chosen terminology.

The Pelagian and anti-Pelagian imagination in political and international theory

During the last two centuries, Rengger observes, ‘the chief highways of European political thought have been dominated by traffic following directions marked by words such as progress, science and reason’. During the present century, he continues, ‘Alongside such familiar vehicles as liberalism, socialism, Marxism and the like we might now add various forms of critical theory, various forms of environmentalism and perhaps especially cosmopolitanism.’ Perhaps the best-known manifestation of the Enlightenment rationalist heritage to which Rengger points in contemporary Anglophone political philosophy is ‘ideal theory’ represented above all by John Rawls and his followers.

Despite the disasters of the 20th century, Rengger notes, even IR theorizing has succumbed during the past 50 years to the ‘bewitching glow’ of idealist theorizing, in the form of a ‘broadly progressive’ orthodoxy ‘focused on notions such as rights, law, governance, justice and so on’. According to Rengger IR progressivism is manifested in cosmopolitan approaches which see transnational institutions as vehicles for rebuilding the global order as well as in liberal internationalism and radical approaches.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Civil Condition in World Politics
Beyond Tragedy and Utopianism
, pp. 29 - 52
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×