Past Masters and Modern Inventions: Intellectual History as Critical Theory

Vigneswaran, Darshan; Quirk, Joel

doi:10.1177/0047117809366192

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…14 In these works and others, there are often overlapping concerns with critical theory and social constructivism. 15 But scholars using these approaches are now outnumbered by the contextualists, a group that includes prominent scholars of HIT and HPT such as David 16 It is this group that is justifiably credited with doing most to heal what Armitage calls the 'fifty years' rift' between IR and the history of ideas, and with providing important new interpretations of disciplinary and pre-disciplinary history. 17…”

Section: A Brief History Of Hitmentioning

confidence: 99%

The history of international thought and International Relations theory: from context to interpretation

Hall

2017

International Relations

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Over the past two decades, historians of international thought have markedly improved our understanding of the disciplinary history of International Relations (IR) and its wider intellectual history. During that period, ‘contextualism’ has become a leading approach in the field, as it has been for half a century in the history of political thought. This article argues that while the application of contextualism in IR has improved our understanding of its disciplinary history, its assumptions about the proper relationship between historians and theorists threaten to marginalise the history of international thought within IR. It argues that unless the inherent weaknesses in contextualism are recognised, the progress made in the field will go unrecognised by a discipline that sees little reason to engage with its history. It suggests that historians of international thought adopt an extensively modified version of contextualism that would allow them to rebuild bridges back into IR, especially IR theory.

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Section: A Brief History Of Hitmentioning

confidence: 99%

The history of international thought and International Relations theory: from context to interpretation

Hall

2017

International Relations

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“…This contextualist form of intellectual history is today most closely associated with the so-called 'Cambridge School' historians of political thought: John Dunne, J. G. A. Pocock, and Quentin Skinner;but in IR Duncan Bell (2002) and Darshan Vigneswaran and Joel Quirk (2010) have outlined the potential of such an approach to contribute to critical international theory. 3 Though it deviates from the post-Cartesian, post-Kantian and post-Marxist forms of philosophically informed theory that predominate in IR today, the historical or historiographical approach should be considered a legitimate form of theory.…”

Section: Revisiting the Sources Of Critical International Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

A rival Enlightenment? Critical international theory in historical mode

Devetak

2014

Int. Theory

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This article proposes an understanding of critical international theory (CIT) as an historical rather than philosophical mode of knowledge. To excavate this historical mode of theorizing it offers an alternative account of CIT’s intellectual sources. While most accounts of critical international theory tend to focus on inheritances from Kant, Marx and Gramsci, or allude in general terms to debts to the Frankfurt School and the Enlightenment, this is not always the case. Robert Cox, for example, has repeatedly professed intellectual debts to realism and historicism. The argument advanced here builds on Cox by situating CIT in a longer intellectual heritage that extends from Renaissance humanism and passes through Absolutist historiography before reaching Enlightenment civil histories, including Vico’s history of civil institutions. The critical element in this intellectual heritage was the formation of a secular political historicism critically disposed to metaphysical claims based on moral philosophies. By recovering this neglected inheritance of criticism, we can articulate not only a critical theory to rival problem-solving theories, but propose a conception of theory as a historical mode of knowledge that rivals philosophical modes yet remains critical by questioning prevailing intellectual assumptions in International Relations theory.

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“…26 ancient times where Aristotle is similarly aligned to this said eternal conversation on law's enduring and inevitable progression. 27 Yet, the interesting part, which appears reflected in both the specific cases of Kant (modern) and Aristotle (ancient), is the selectivity and essentialism of how alleged theoretical 'ancestors' 28 are recalled to forge a transhistorical narrative on law's eventual and desirable rule. In the case of Aristotle, the omission involves the lifting of choice phrases, as most are familiar with the statement, 'it is preferable that law should rule rather than any single one of the citizens', 29 while fewer are acquainted with Aristotle's subsequent admonition that the rule of (good) law was dependent upon the rule of (good) men.…”

Section: Kant and His Enigmatic Rule-appliermentioning

confidence: 99%

Rules, Lawyering, and the Politics of Legality: Critical Sociology and International Law's Rule

Rajkovic¹

2014

Leiden Journal of International Law

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After decades of rule-of-law promotion in world affairs, international law and legality have regained scholarly imperative. Yet this has not dissolved disciplinarity between international law (IL) and relations (IR), but furthered a priori theorizing and the unilateral extension of disciplinary research agendas. A prime example is the influential ‘legalization agenda’ of IR scholarship, where an institutionalist doctrine has renarrated the ‘L word’ through a fetishizing of rules and a managerial focus on rule compliance. However, this approach confronts a problem of relevance as international struggles increasingly involve contests over how to legally characterize issues, actions, and events, and this engages juridical and normative dimensions of rule application which are beyond the managerialism of compliance. This article argues for greater sociological and critical engagement with the way in which the concept of law operates through juridico-political practices of legality, and the aim is to provide a theoretical and empirical discussion that revives the significance of the juridico-political world for scholarships which have habitually underplayed the constitutive significance of lawyering for rule application. To do so, this article, first, addresses the profundity of Kant's work and concern over law's application by a rule-applier and, second, claims this has long invited a more critical sociology. To initiate that social exploration, the paper draws on both Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the ‘juridical effect’ and the Foucauldian notion of ‘normative law’ to theorize the significance of juridical and normative practices in the making of international law's rule. In the final section, I introduce the empirical benefit of these critical sociologies by turning to the law of armed conflict (LOAC), and the ways juridical and normative power have enabled sophisticated militaries of the developed world to constrain the application of the LOAC in contemporary wars of asymmetric combat.

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Past Masters and Modern Inventions: Intellectual History as Critical Theory

Cited by 13 publications

References 11 publications

The history of international thought and International Relations theory: from context to interpretation

The history of international thought and International Relations theory: from context to interpretation

A rival Enlightenment? Critical international theory in historical mode

Rules, Lawyering, and the Politics of Legality: Critical Sociology and International Law's Rule

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