Platonic metaphysics and the ontology of international relations: A sketch
| DOI | 10.1177/00471178211021493 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Author | King-Ho Leung |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211021493
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(2) 176 –191
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178211021493
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Platonic metaphysics and
the ontology of international
relations: A sketch
King-Ho Leung
University of St Andrews
Abstract
This article offers a reading of Plato in light of the recent debates concerning the unique ‘ontology’
of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline. In particular, this article suggests that
Plato’s metaphysical account of the integral connection between human individual, the domestic
state and world order can offer IR an alternative outlook to the ‘political scientific’ schema
of ‘levels of analysis’. This article argues that Plato’s metaphysical conception of world order
can not only provide IR theory with a way to re-imagine the relation between the human, the
state and world order, but also Plato’s outlook can highlight or even call into question the
post-metaphysical presuppositions of contemporary IR theory in its ‘borrowed ontology’ from
modern social science, which can in turn facilitate IR’s re-interpretation of its own ‘ontology’ as
well as its distinct contributions to the understanding of the various aspects of the social world
and human life.
Keywords
international relations, international theory, metaphysics, ontology, Plato, political philosophy
In an important and much-debated 2016 article, Justin Rosenberg calls for the study of
International Relations (IR) to stop relying on ‘an ontology borrowed from Political
Science’, and to identify (and develop) its own unique ‘ontological premise’ of ‘the inter-
national’ as to ‘reground’ itself in its ‘own ontology’.1 In Rosenberg’s view, the most
promising candidate for IR’s own unique ‘ontological premise’ is what he calls ‘societal
multiplicity’: ‘the multiplicity of coexisting societies’.2 While Rosenberg’s account of
IR’s ontology of ‘societal multiplicity’ has generated much debate and discussion, the
question of the ‘ontology’ of IR is, of course, not new to IR theory.3 Since the turn of the
Corresponding author:
King-Ho Leung, School of Divinity, St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews, South Street, St Andrews,
Fife KY16 9JU, UK.
Email: kl322@st-andrews.ac.uk
1021493IRE0010.1177/00471178211021493International RelationsLeung
research-article2021
Article
Leung 177
century, IR theory has witnessed a series of interesting and important works that reflect
on the ontological and epistemological foundations of IR.4 Indeed, one may even trace
this quest for ontology back to one of the foundational texts of IR as a discipline: Martin
Wight’s ‘Why is there no International Theory?’, first published in this journal in 1960.5
In this classic essay, Wight argues that although the study of the order and nature of
the political state known as ‘political theory’ has existed ‘from Plato onwards’, there
have been scarcely any accounts of ‘international theory’ which concern the relation
between states in the western intellectual tradition let alone the classical world. For
according to Wight, ‘while the acknowledged classics of political study are the political
philosophers, the only acknowledged counterpart in the study of international relations is
Thucydides’.6 There is undoubtedly much truth in this picture of the history of thought.
However, against Wight’s claim, this article seeks to derive or even uncover an ‘interna-
tional theory’ or what Wight’s fellow ‘English School’ colleague Charles Manning would
call a ‘social cosmology’ from Plato’s philosophy.7 Instead of (re)reading Plato as a
‘political theorist’ of the domestic state along the lines of conventional reception,8 this
article presents an experimental if speculative interpretation of Plato as an ‘international
theorist’ or even a ‘social cosmologist’,9 whose insights are particularly of interest for
IR’s reflections on its own ontology for two reasons.10
First, as Rosenberg notes in his aforementioned article on the unique ontology of IR,
the post-Enlightenment idea of the international system – ‘the nation-state, let alone a
global sovereign state system’ – is ‘a very recent development in world history’.11 As
opposed to modern (post-)Enlightenment ‘disenchanted’ accounts of the global order, the
pre-modern world often assumed there is a metaphysical connection between the order
of the cosmos and the order of polities – what Jens Bartelson describes as ‘a very inti-
mate relationship between cosmology and the nature of human community’.12 As a
thinker whose work postulates – or indeed exemplifies – such a conjunction between
cosmology and politics or ethics, Plato can give us a sense of the pre-modern and indeed
metaphysical conception of world order as an alternative to the ‘post-metaphysical’ pre-
sumptions about the international order that we find in contemporary IR theory.13
Second, following the metaphysical conjunction he posits between cosmology and
ethics, Plato’s understanding of the world or cosmos may be said to be first and foremost
philosophical (or metaphysical) and only then secondarily political. In Plato’s pre-mod-
ern outlook, what we have is an ontological account of the ‘world’ or cosmos which
grounds one’s ethical or indeed ‘political’ conception of the state or polis. As opposed to
an ‘ontology of political power’ which defines the ‘international’ in terms of the ‘politi-
cal’, Plato’s philosophy presents us with a directly opposite theoretical framework:
Formally speaking, the ‘political’ is not that which grounds the ‘international’ or ‘supra-
national’; to the contrary, it is precisely the ontology of the ‘world’ or the ‘cosmic’ which
grounds our understanding of the ‘political’.14 In this regard, for Plato, the ‘international’
or ‘supra-national’ world order may be said to be ‘supra-political’ both in the sense that
it exists at a level above the domestic political state (polis) and in the sense that such an
order is not one that is confined to the analysis of politics.15
This article begins with a review of Richard Ned Lebow’s engagement with Plato in
his endeavour to construct ‘a new ontology’ to ‘develop a theory of international rela-
tions’ in A Cultural Theory of International Relations.16 While Lebow’s impressive book
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