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On the idealist origins of the realist theory of international relations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Extract

A theory, writes Anthony Wilden, like any other adaptive system, must have a survival value. It is impossible, he continues, ‘for a theory not to have a referent or a goal outside itself, since “pure truth” not only does not exist, it has no survival value whatsoever.’ Wilden's reference to the ‘external’ goal of a theory suggests that theories carry subliminal messages which exceed the strict boundary of their textual content. An effective technique for identifying the political and normative undertones communicated by theories is an inquiry into those areas which supposedly of peripheral significance to them.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1993

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References

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11 Bull, The Anarchical Society; Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis; Morgenthau Politics Among Nations;Waltz, Man, the State and War.

12 The word ‘Modern’ has, by even the most conservative standards, obviously become problematic in itself; however, for our own purposes, we shall use it loosely to suggest a cluster of images ranging from the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic-an expanse leading from the radicalization of the idea of the Nation-State to the transcendental aspects of Reason.

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18 History here grasped both as an objective work in itself and also as the necessary and concrete preconditions for human activity as a whole.

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24 Hegel recognized that the nation itself was not an operative entity: ‘world history’, he asserts, ‘takes account only of nations that constituted themselves into states.’ Hegel, Philosophy and World History, p. 95. For Hegel, the development of a state out of the ethical community of the nation is part of the process of gainin g self-consciousness insofar as the nation objectifies itself in a rational system of laws and institutions. The state is not merely a protective shield for the nation, but it is rather the system of social relations which allows the nation to realize itself in history. The nation may therefore be the underlying social organization of human life. But this remains an unfulfilled potential unless it is organized in a state.

25 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, p. 76.

26 Fichte, Discourse a la Nation p. 83.

27 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, p. 209.

28 Hegel was thinking about the experience of Napoleon, the experience of seeing a mass society mobilized in a rational manner before which the archaic regimes of Europe simply crumbled. Hegel saw the potential positive effects of the French conquest in dissolving the old Germanic system, and furthermore, and this was sweet music to German ears, he foresaw that the rationalization of the German state based upon liberal principles would represent a more formidable political format for the development of the German people.

29 Halliday, Fred, ‘Theorizing the International’, Economy & Society, 18 (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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35 Quoted in Sabin and Shepard, Translators’ Introduction’, p. xxxii.

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37 Bluntschili, Theory of the Stale, p.22

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40 Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, p. 486.

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42 Hobhouse, The World in Conflict, as quoted in Barnes (ed.) History of Sociology, p. 647.

43 Landherr in Barnes (ed.), History of Sociology, p. 388.

44 Easton, David, The Political System (Chicago and London, 1953), p. 160.Google Scholar