The relevance of history

Nick Rengger had a vision of the practice of international relations (IR) transformed by engagement with intellectual historians and political philosophers. What this entailed in full never became clear because of his early death. That there was a mission and a vision is clear from the chapters here collected. How would Rengger have responded to them? ‘My goodness,’ he can be heard saying, ‘I had no idea I was so interesting.’ Unquestionably, he would have been delighted, honoured, and stimulated, the latter especially because of the critical tone taken by so many of the engagements with his work. He might well have asserted, in response to negative commentary upon his last book The Anti-Pelagian Imagination, that it needed to be seen in the same way that Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw his Contrat social of 1762, which is to say that it was altogether unfinished, part of a longer work entitled Institutions politiques, and that therefore readers needed to wait for the culminating volume tying everything together. The tragedy of course, in the case of both Rousseau and Rengger, is that neither work will ever be completed.

What would Rengger most have appreciated? First, the engagement with his own claims with a view to their refinement through the work of fellowtravelling luminaries, such as Gillian Rose; texts Rengger was committed to but rarely cited, such as Max Weber’s ‘Politics as a vocation’; and work he would have drawn much from, such as the New Right theorist Alain de Benoist. Second, the attempts to work out how far perceived holes in his argument were due to a mis-reading of the greatest influence upon him, Michael Oakeshott, or indeed mistaken evaluations of the work of those he ultimately termed Pelagians and anti-Pelagians alike. Third, the making of his own philosophy and its practical implications both plainer and sharper as a potential research tool, specifically by developing Rengger’s ideas about prudence and judgement. Finally, working out more clearly what he was actually arguing and what the implications of his arguments might be.

If Rengger would have acknowledged these chapters as a fitting tribute to the work he had undertaken, admired the scholarship in evidence and the eminence of the commentators, he would part-jokingly have asked what a mere intellectual historian was doing in their midst.