‘The battle is all there is’: philosophy and history in International Relations theory
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Author | Richard Devetak |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117817723063 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117817723063
International Relations
2017, Vol. 31(3) 261 –281
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117817723063
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‘The battle is all there is’:
philosophy and history in
International Relations
theory
Richard Devetak
University of Queensland
Abstract
There is an expectation today that International Relations (IR) theory ought to engage with
philosophy as a meta-knowledge capable of grounding and legitimizing knowledge claims in the
discipline. Two assumptions seem to lie behind this expectation: first, that only philosophy can
supply the necessary meta-theoretical grounding needed; second, that theory is inherently a
philosophical register of knowledge. This article treats these assumptions with scepticism. While
not denying philosophy’s contribution to IR theory, the article makes the case for contextual
intellectual history as an alternative mode of political and international theory. It seeks to
shed light on the ‘philosophization of IR’ by depicting the broad contours of the historical and
continuing rivalry between philosophy and history in the humanities and social sciences and, by
reference to Machiavelli and Renaissance humanism, reminding the discipline of IR of the value of
studying politics and international relations in a historical mode.
Keywords
Cambridge School, contextualism, historiography, humanism, international intellectual
history, International Relations theory, Niccolò Machiavelli, philosophy, Quentin Skinner, the
Renaissance
What the historical record strongly suggests is that no one is above the battle, because the
battle is all there is.
Quentin Skinner1
Corresponding author:
Richard Devetak, School of Political Science & International Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane,
QLD 4072, Australia.
Email: r.devetak@uq.edu.au
723063IRE0010.1177/0047117817723063International RelationsDevetak
research-article2017
Article
262 International Relations 31(3)
Socrates and Thucydides were contemporaries.
J. G. A. Pocock2
The discipline of International Relations (IR) has fallen under philosophy’s spell. From
textbooks to the most influential monographs, there seems to be an emerging, if unwit-
ting, consensus that IR theory must engage with philosophy as a kind of meta-knowledge
capable of grounding and legitimizing knowledge claims in the discipline.3 Journals oth-
erwise as different as Millennium and International Organization now expect IR to pub-
lish research based on abstract theories of epistemology and ontology, esoteric
rationalities, recondite methodologies and deontological and deconstructive discourses;
major scholarly collections do the same.4
The assumption seems to be that IR is in need of meta-theoretical grounding that only
philosophy can supply by virtue of its presumed capacity to rise above the conflict of the
faculties and perform an adjudicatory or legislative role. As a pure expression of reason
– whether scientific, phenomenological, hermeneutic or critical – philosophy is assumed
to provide empirical domains of knowledge, such as international relations, with the
theoretical validation they crave but are apparently unable to produce out of themselves.
Philosophy is, thus, called upon to enable and justify theory and the methods with which
the research is conducted. This is as true for those social scientific approaches conducted
in accordance with ‘a well-established structure of scientific inquiry’ as those conducted
in accordance with post-positivist logics of enquiry.5
There is nothing inherently wrong with individual attempts to ground IR philosophi-
cally, but IR theory should resist the presumption that philosophy alone can ground the
discipline or its theories by providing meta-theoretical legitimation.6 Insofar as there are
rival claims to ground IR and its theories, philosophy’s claim to rise above and resolve it
should be treated with scepticism; it is but one claim among many, for as Quentin Skinner
reminds us, ‘no one is above the battle’, neither philosophers nor proponents of IR theo-
ry’s various ‘-isms’. Even eminent philosophers have reached the same conclusion.
Former Vera List Professor of Philosophy at New York’s New School for Social Research,
Richard J. Bernstein, contended that ‘While [philosophy] may dream of jumping out of
the fighting line and achieving the position of a neutral umpire, it is an illusory dream’.7
That said, whether viewed as a social science in need of a sound epistemological or onto-
logical grounding or a normative discipline in search of moral grounding, it is important
to contextualize this powerful and largely unquestioned trend in IR – which I call ‘the
‘philosophization of IR’ – to regard theory as principally a philosophical register and to
understand its implications.8
First, it is worth recalling, the discipline’s current receptiveness to philosophy’s
authority itself has a history that can be retold.9 Second, there is no need for the discipline
to accede to the notion that theory is the exclusive provenance of philosophy or that phi-
losophy (or any other disciplinary formation, including history for that matter) has a
special claim to superintend, determine and evaluate IR theory. Third, the handling and
attendant marginalization of history and historiography creates problems for how the
past is used, abused and understood in IR theory.10 Because even as the philosophization
of IR theory occurs, history is still invoked. Many contemporary debates in IR either
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