2

EMPIRICAL REALISM, UNIVERSAL MORAL

ORDER, AND HISTORICAL REASON

Having looked at the general position of the political theory of international rela- tions and
explored the alternatives available for characterizing its history, I want in this chapter to
offer the organizing framework that provides the structure of this book. Without going into
the complexities of methodological debate I want simply to State some of the principles
that have informed my approach.1 One of the important insights of Gestalt psychology is
the realization that the brain is constantly working to group series of electrical impulses
generated by retinal stimulation into simple objects based on a whole series of factors,
including pre- vious experience. Quite simply, in severe cases we feel uncomfortable and
disori- ented when the stimuli are confusing and render us incapable of clear imagery. The
concept of a Gestalt switch and the illusions of perception are familiar to us all. In the realm
of philosophy Hegel offered comparable insights. The mind must rest dissatisfied with a
confusing mass of detail which exhibits no intelligible pat- tern. Thought thinking about
thought seeks to render it intelligible or rational. In other words, we try to make sense out
of masses of detail over long time frames by discerning in it some intelligible pattterns, if
only to see it as the continuation of an argument or a shared way of thinking. For those
who look at the world rationally, the world looks rational in return. This is not to say that
irrationality. contingency, and randomness are ignored, but all these factors somehow have
to be explained or understood not merely as disconnected incidents, but in theif relations
with the broader stream of thought. Every concrete affirmation of a position is at the same
time a denial of something else, and to relate it to this something else is to add a dimensión
of intelligibility that the author may not himself or herself have provided. Despite the
endless disputes over the period and geography covered by the historical concept of the
Renaissance, only some liter- ary and artistic figures perceived themselves as living
through and making a con- tribution to it. The lack of self-perception of the Renaissance
does not render those other souls who lived through it (wherever and whenever it may
have been) non-participants. Methodological discussions largely revolve around the ques*
tion of what appropriate constraints ought to regúlate and even constitute the intelligibility
sought in historical studies.
 The Three Traditions 29

In what follows I lay out three ways of thinking discernible in discussions of philosophical
and ethical issues in the political theory of international relations. They are what Oakeshott
calls ‘ideal characterizations’ because they are never found in their pure form articulated by
any one thinker or having an independent and autonomous existence at any particular time
or place. Each tradition is related dialectically to the others as thesis the first, antithesis the
second, and synthesis the third. Elements of each may be found in particular thinkers, and
genuine attempts may be discerned to resolve the opposed tendencies, or to accommodate
them as coexisting. What follows is not a formula to be applied to the various thinkers to
produce a contrived and stylized comparative study. Instead the framework acts as a
reference point which sometimes comes to the fore, but which is never meant to dominate
the discussions.

Empirical Realism

The first tradition may be termed Empirical Realism. Those philosophers who fall within
its compass view human beings as discrete, autonomous, sensing individuals. These
individuáis have their own needs, desires, interests, and aspirations. The springs of action
are radically subjective. The criterion of goodness is pleas- ure, and that of badness,
aversión. In so far as we desire the same things our interests come into conflict. Right
conduct is dictated by our desires and interests. Hobbes, of course, has given the most
sophisticated rendition of this view, in which he argues that Natural Rights are dictated by
right reason, and their justification for use is merely the fact that we have them. They are,
in fact, rules of prudence, and not moral imperatives. Whereas Machiavelli had uneasily
divorced political expediency from morality, in Hobbes expediency becomes equivalent to
morality. There is no ultimate moral law which guides our will, ñor any ultimate moral end
to which our actions must be directed. The satisfaction of desires is temporary, and we are
condemned never to experience fulfilment, because the attainment of one satisfaction leads
to the desire for another. Machiavelli puts this view admirably when he says: ‘human
appetites are insatiable, for by nature we are so constituted that there is nothing we cannot
long for. At its most pessimistic points, exponents of the ideas associated with this tradition
contend that men are more naturally inclined to do evil than they are to do good. Diodotus,
as reported by Thucydides, suggests that ‘Cities and individuáis alike, all are by nature
disposed to do wrong, and there is no law that will prevent it’.3 Everything and veryone is
a means to an end, and has to be justified in terms of its, or his, Usefulness.
The implications of this view of human nature, as self-interested and unconstrained by
any universal higher moral laws, are profound for civil society. .Thucydides, Machiavelli,
and Hobbes, the archetypal exemplars of this tradition
In the history of the political theory of international relations, all assume a permanent
human nature which can be modified and constrained by human laws and conventions.
Without a strong authority capable of enforcing a code of rules which minimize the conflict
inherent in human relations, no commodious living would be possible. Strong government
is necessary to modify human nature, but such modifications are fragile, and civil society
is perpetually threatened by the probability, even inevitability, that human interests, driven
by ambition or impelled by crisis, will triumph over convention and revert to a situation
30 Introduction

where self-interest and chaos reign. This, of course, is the condition which Hobbes is both
warning against and constructing a set of political arrangements to prevent, but it is most
forcefully portrayed by Thucydides in his description of the plague in Athens, during
which time there was a complete breakdown of civil society.4 Furthermore, all three see
chance, or fortune, as an important factor in human affairs, although they all differ in their
beliefs about the degree to which it can be tamed. Thucydides is totally pessimistic in this
respect; Machiavelli believes that those who possess virtú have some chance of harnessing
fortune, but his optimism fades as the malice of fortune makes his own circumstances
irredeemable; Hobbes is the most optimistic of the three in believing that this element of
chance, so destructive when unconstrained, can almost be completely eliminated from
politics by the great Leviathan.
In international relations, where no ultimate authority possesses the requisite power to
enforce compliance with rules of conduct, states pursue their own interests in a sphere
devoid of justice. Friedrich Meinecke articulates this element in the tradition when he
argues that in domestic politics it is both possible and desirable that morality, justice, and
power to be in harmony with each other, but in international relations such a harmony is
unachievable in the absence of an ultimate power capable of upholding justice.5 Fear and
distrust of other states provide the motive for increasing one’s power by prosecuting wars
to subdue those who when the scales change will seek to subdue you. The paradox is,
however, that having gained power, the fear of losing it impels the State to acquire more.
For Hobbes, states, like individuals, are constantly seeking power, not simply because of
the delight one gets from exercising it, but because power cannot be maintained ‘without
the acquisition of more’.6 This echoes Alcibiades’ justification of Athens’s Sicilian
expedition, in which he warns: ‘The fact is that we have reached a stage where we are
forced to plan new conquests and forced to hold on to what we have got, because there is
a danger that we ourselves may fall under the power of others unless others are in our
power.’7 States must always be in a condition of readiness for war, being, as Hobbes
suggested, both forewarned and forearmed, by which he meant that they must maintain
an extensive intelligence network in addition to a well-armed militia.8
In this tradition national interest is paramount. Disagreements between states are
viewed as conflicts of interest.9 Alliances are entered into in order to furtheir national
interests in enhancing one’s security against potentially hostile powers. Underlying this
view is the notion that states in the international sphere are predatory, and that each has
to look out for itself or suffer the humility of being dominated by others. International
relations take place in a competitive and hostile environment in which there are winners
and Iosers. Necessity, the desire for
security, and the fear of being dominated force states to act in ways which attempt to
maximize their interests, but which do not necessarily accord with conventional morality.
The doctrine of raison d'état is central to this tradition and dictates the course a State must
take, often in defiance of considerations of ethics or justice, to preserve its vitality and
strength. In Meinecke’s view the essence of those acts motivated by raison d’état is ‘a high
degree of causal necessity, which the agent himself is accustomed to conceive as absolute
and inescapable’.
Talk of the Laws of Nature and Natural Rights is not absent from this tradition, but these
are conceived naturalistically, rather than ethically. It is a Law of Nature, for example, that
the strong domínate the weak, and that we have a Natural Right to acquire everything that
 The Three Traditions 31

it is in our power to do. These are not ethical imperatives in that no one is obliged to let
themselves be dominated, or to allow another unlimited acquisition at the expense of
others without a moral justificaron.
This tradition does not exclusively sustain a commitment to either communitarianism
or cosmopolitanism. Hobbes, for example, maintains that there is no justice or injustice
independent of the sovereign. The will of the sovereign is equated with law and justice.
Each society has its moral code recognized and sustained by its sovereign power. The
principles of human nature are universal, but the moral code by which subjects are
constrained is particularistic. There is no justice or injustice in the international sphere in
the absence of a sovereign power to establish and enforce a code of ethics. Whereas
individuals are the ultimate unit of value, he posits neither a universal community of
humanity, nor an institutional cosmopolitanism through which universal notions of justice
can be promoted. On the other hand, utilitarianism, which puts a similar emphasis to
Hobbes upon pleasure and pain as the subjective springs of action, is cosmopolitan. In
ethics it posits a form of consequentialism in which right and wrong are determined by
consequences, the criterion of good and bad consequences being the utility principle of the
greatest happiness of the greatest number. For Bentham, values are not generated by a
sovereign and do not emanate from a political community; instead they have their basis in
the principles of pleasure and pain. In Bentham’s view each person has a duty to promote
the happiness of umanity, and this is usually most efficiently attained through institutions
such as the family and states which have no intrinsic value as such, but have a claim on us
in so far as they promote the general happiness. The principle of the greatest happiness
for Bentham is at once universal and cosmopolitan. He was not, however, a proponent of
world government, but had the consequences of such a form government contributed more
to the general happiness it is something he would have had to advocate. On the principle
of the greatest happiness of the ‘citizens of the world’ Bentham opposed both war and
colonization because of their “inutily”.

Universal Moral Order

The second tradition, sometimes referred to as Idealist, Utopian, or Rationalist, is perhaps

better described as that of a Universal Moral Order, to avoid confusion with the distinctive
philosophical concepts associated with the other terms. The basic idea at the heart of this
tradition is perhaps best summed up in the words of a contemporary political theorist of
international relations. The universalism to which this tradition refers is of the ‘covering-
law’ type which ‘holds that there is one God, so there is one law, one justice, one correct
understanding of the good life or the good society or the good regime, one salvation, one
messiah, one millennium for all humanity’.12 It is a tradition which, in Onora O’Neill’s
words, allied justice with virtue. It was universal in form in that it posited that there are
certain ethical principles which are applicable to all and not merely some cases. It is also
theoretically universal in scope in that certain fundamental principles were deemed to be
cosmopolitan, but often in reality it fell far below being universal in scope in disregarding
women, slaves, barbarians, and heathens.13
This tradition of a Universal Moral Order is able to encompass cosmopolitan and
communitarian theories which posit fundamental moral laws, and thus Plato, Aristotle,
32 Introduction

and the Stoics are accommodated. What it exeludes is naturalistic universal ethical theories
which argue that human nature, red in tooth and claw, should override conventional
morality and our obligations to states, uniting us in a common humanity. Morality was
often taken to be a product of convention by Greek sophists, and in many instances it was
related more explicitly to self-interest. Sometimes morality is opposed to nature and
deemed unnatural, and at others it is viewed as continuous with human nature, facilitating
the realization of human potential. Conventional morality in many instances was rejected,
and a universal naturalistic ethic replaced by an emphasis upon natural equality and a
denial of primary loyalty to the polis along with the rejection of familial and social
obligations. The divisions between social groups within the polis, and more generally
between Greeks and barbarians, were deemed unnatural. Democritus and Hippias posit
something very like this. Antiphon, however, is a perfect exemplar. These views will be
looked at more fully in Chapter 3. A universal naturalist ethic belongs in the tradition of
Empirical Realism.
There is no necessary connection between universal rights and foundationalist ethics,
ñor are they necessarily justified deontologically, as Kant suggests. Utilitarians justify
universal human rights with consequentialist arguments, but subscribers to the tradition
of Universal Moral Order do not wish to equate ethics with expedieney or usefulness. That
is not to say that they do not revert to consequentialist arguments from time to time to
justify moral conduct. There are certainly elements of consequentialism in Grotius,
Pufendorf, and Vattel, which have led some interpreters to mistake the part for the whole
and see them as veiled utilitarians.
Those whose views contribute to this tradition do not deny that the selfish interests and
passions of individuais are strong. They maintain that thcy should,
33
however, in no way act as a guide to personal conduct. The base animal appetites are to
be fought against and renounced. There are ideals, higher laws, or natural and universal
ethical rights, which are independent of human artifice, and with which positive laws and
conventions must be consistent. This ethical sphere is not the creation of human beings: it
is something to be apprehended or discovered by the exercise of pure reason.
Alternatively, in the Natural Rights thinkers the tradition was secularized and the rights
deduced (rom innate and self-evident human attributes, such as natural sociality. Having
said that, the religious element is rarely absent.
Natural Rights theorists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while emphasizing
the individual, do not lose sight of the community and of the moral constraints upon
individual and State actions. Furthermore, the collectivist consciousness implied by the
Natural Law and early Natural Rights theorists gives way to a more radical individualism
in the later Natural Rights theories.14 D. M. Mackinnon encapsulates this later shift in
emphasis effected by Natural Rights theories when he argues that their exponents are ‘no
longer concerned with constraints and limitations, but rather with demands and
permissions’.15 Basil Wiley expresses a similar sentiment when he contends that the older
conception of Natural Law emphasized its regulative character, whereas Natural Rights
theorists extol the liberating character of nature.16 At the heart of this idea of human rights
lies the idea that man has inherent virtues which give rise to reciprocal moral claims. We
are inherently moral prior to the emergence of any civil society, and we possess our moral
 FLACSG ■ BiDlioleca

rights not by virtue of being a citizen, but by the very fact of our humanity. Civil society
is the creature of man, or of God expressing Himself through man.
Many modern conceptions of human rights that are universalist, such as the European
Convention on Human Rights (1953) and the American Convention on Human Rights
(1978), clearly have their source in agreement. Hedley Bull’s subscription to the idea of
human rights is not grounded in an absolutist transcendental ethic, but instead rests upon
convention. On a philosophical level Rex
Martin’s A System of Rights argues against the prevalent idea that a right is a valid claim,
proposing instead that it is an established way of being treated or of acting, and that
whatever valid claim one wishes to present as a putative human right simply dissolves if
it is not acknowledged as a civil right by given communities.17
In the Realist tradition the view of human nature was pessimistic (‘men are always more
ready for evil than for good’),18 but in the tradition of a Universal Moral Order the
conception of human nature is much more optimistic. St Thomas Aquinas, for example,
contends that ‘it is clear that there is in man a natural aptitude to virtuous action’,19 and
that we must all help each other to achieve the virtue potential within us. Right action is
not action motivated by selfinterest, or raison d’état, but that which is in conformity with
law or innate moral principles. Relations between states are seen to be regulated by moral
or transcendental principles, which may find expression in international law. Justice, then,
is not dependent upon a secular power for its enforcement; it exists independently of
states, and acts as a standard by which their actions may be judged,
 34 Introduction
as well as a moral constraint upon the pursuit of blatant national interest. Whereas Hobbes
equates the will of the sovereign with right and wrong, justice and injustice, Pufendorf,
for example, contends that it is ‘no more possible for a civil sovereignty to create goodness
and justice by precept, than it is for it to command that poison lose the power to waste the
human body’.20 Within this tradition political society is continuous with, and not a radical
departure from, the state of nature. The pre-civil condition, unlike in the Empirical Realist
tradition, is generally viewed as social.
In the Realist tradition the possession of power was justification enough for its use to
acquire more. The Laws of Nature, devoid of ethical content in Thucydides, both justify
and explain state aggression. Athens, with the power and ability to acquire an empire, was
compelled to do so by the Laws of Nature, which díctate that the powerful rule the weak;
that one must rule wherever one can; that selfinterest overrides considerations of justice;
and that others will rule over you if you do not rule over them. Fear and the need for
security, and the dictates of selfinterest, compel both the acquisition of an empire and the
reluctance to let it go. The Athenians justified their imperialism by claiming that they were
doing noth- ing against the Laws of Nature. They were doing no more, the Athenians
claimed, than any other state would do in their position. All this is anathema to the Laws
of Nature postulated in the second tradition. Cicero is responsible for the quintessential
statement of the character of Natural Law in this tradition. In his most famous statement
he argues that

there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the
future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and for all times,
and there will be one master and one ruler, that is, God, over all, for He is the author of
this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge.21
War is not wholeheartedly condemned in Christian ethics. It is regarded as an evil to
which we may have to revert to uphold justice in the international sphere. But such wars
have to be prosecuted with the purest of motives. Aquinas is quite clear that three
stringent conditions have to be met before war can be justified. First, the body which
declares war must have vested in it the authority to do so. Secondly, the reason for going
to war must be that of a just cause. The state which is subject to attack must deserve such
action being taken against it. And, thirdly» those who embark upon war must do so with
the proper and right intent. Wars must be entered into only to achieve some good object,
or to avoid an evil being done to one’s own or someone else’s state. If the three conditions
are not met, then war is not just. Aquinas argues that ‘it can happen that even when war
,is declared by legitimate authority and there is just cause, it is, nevertheless, made unjust

through evil intention’.22 Even when the basis of such Natural Law becomes secularized
there is no question of its moral imperative being weakened. Hugo Grotius, who is
frequently invoked as the leading figure in severing the connection between Natural and
Divine Law, nevertheless maintained its immutability. The absoluteness and self-evidence
of the Natural Law, Grotius claimed, such that it can not even be altered by God. Just as
mathematics deais with figures in abstraction, the Law of Nature can be discovered by
reason in abstraction from any particular circumstances.23 For Grotius the Law of Nations,
or jus gentium voluntarium inter civitates, arose from the relationships which develop and
pertain between states. Through consensus, grounded in experience, the Law of Nations
developed. The function of Natural Law in relation to the Law of Nations was to constrain
the acts of rulers to ensure that they remained within certain bounds.24 For Grotius, war
 The Three Traditions 35
can only be legitimate if there is just cause, which requires an injury to be received by one’s
own State, or a perception of excessive violation of the Laws of Nature and of Nations
perpetrated against other states.25 Even when a state acts with just cause against another,
moderation should always be practised.26 In the theories of Grotius the Law of Nature
becomes the assertion of the principle of having respect for one another’s rights; that is,
having rights implies a certain duty on the part of others to respect them. The Law of
Nations is restrained by the rights and duties embodied in the Natural Law. It is a
distinctly ethical doctrine, which views moral action in terms of obedience to law .27 Right
action is that which conforms to law, and conflict between nations constitutes a conflict of
rights. Natural Rights theories reach their zenith, of course, in Locke and during the
American and French revolutions, in which the rationalistic element in the tradition
becomes excessive, society becomes subordínate to individual rights, and the doctrines
become more radical, or subversive, in opposing any authority which appeared to
transgress, or deny, such rights.
A number of qualifications need to be made at this point. Within this tradition reference
is made to Natural Law and the Law of Nations, but the relation between the two is by no
means constant, ñor is it necessarily always apparent. The Law of Nations may sometimes
be equated with the Natural Law, and at other times viewed as the result of general
consent, or agreement, but nevertheless as consistent with Natural Law. The Natural Law
is not always posited as superior, and mdeed the Román Stoics did not view it as a
constraint or measure of positive law. It is the Christian adoption of Natural Law that
injects a much more actively judgemental element into it. We must also remember that to
postúlate the universality ofthe Natural Law and the Law of Nations meant in practice the
universalization of Christian ethics, which are imposed upon the infidel. For example,
Vitoria’s arguments relating to the American Indians are based upon universal rights
which take priority over those of the communities he discusses, and to be in breach of
these constitutes legitimate grounds for intervention. Vitoria was convinced that not only
Christians but also the American Indians, by the exercise of right reason, could apprehend
tor themselves the Natural Law. Given that the Pariish had to act in conformity with the
Natural Law, they had every right to expect the American Indians also to do so.
Grotius, Pufendorf, and Vattel, in seeking to put Natural Law and Natural Rights on a
scientific foundation, liberated discussions about politics and international relations
from theology without severing entirely the religious connecnation. Kant, however,
went even further. It was not knowledge of man’s anthropology which yielded moral
principles, but the a priori concepts of pure reason. Kant’s categorical imperative is the
criterion of right action: if something
is right for me to do, then it must be right for everyone else to do. Moral categories are
imperative directives to act, and are good in themselves and not for their consequences.
Ends are not for Kant the basis of morality.
It is clear from what has been said that the two traditions of Empirical Realism and
Universal Moral Order in the political theory of international relations are antithetical;
they are polar opposites. Realism postulates interest and expediency as criteria of state
action, while the tradition of a Universal Moral Order postulates conformity to rule or
principle: the former is a finite, empirical, and prag- matic criterion; and the latter
universal, generalized, and abstract. Each is one-sided in that it cannot accommodate the
insights of the other, yet each has a positive valué in over-emphasizing an aspect of what
motivates the actions of states. The Realist tradition is of value because it emphasizes how
 36 Introduction
radically subjective action is. Action is self-propelled; the springs of action are internal to
the actor. No general law or principle which stands outside the actor is the source of any
action. A state never acts for the sake of conforming to a rule or principle, but at least in
some sense, however weak, acts to fulfil an interest, or satisfy a desire. Similarly, the
tradition of a Universal Moral Order emphasizes something of valué: that no action is so
capricious that it is entirely subjective, and that desire without a regulative principle of
reason is an impossibility.
The Realist tradition is defective, however, in that its criterion of state action can be
used to justify any form of expediency which gives one state advan tage over another; the
advantages to be gained from co-operation are perpetually overshadowed and threatened
by the ever-present danger of the conflict inherent in human relations breaking down
what is, for the Realist, always nothing more than a frague peace. Morality in international
relations, for the Realist, is expediency. Expediency rooted in experience is a transitory
and inconsistent guide to conduct: friends become enemies, enemies become friends,
depending upon what relative advantage is to be gained from adopting such a stance. It
is a criterion, to paraphrase Hegel, immersed in finite matter, totally one-sided, and
inadequate as a guide to conduct.
The tradition of a Universal Moral Order emphasizes the general principles or rightness
of state action at the expense of interest. Its general principles are abstract and have to be
translated to apply to specific situations. Which principles apply to what situations is often
a matter of expedient choice. Abstract principles are also notorious for conflicting with
each other when applied to concrete situations, and the choice of what principle to apply
depends very much upon wha typeof self-image a state projects of itself to the world. If,
for example, it sees itself as the upholder of the moral principle of freedom, it will initiate,
or intervene in, interstate conflicts which it sees as necessary to preserve the value of
freedom. If is the kind of state that views war as inherently evil, then considerations of
freedom become secondary concerns in its deliberations about interstate relations.
The fundamental premise of this tradition appears to be this: irrespective of what states
do and what leaders of states think, there is a right course of action independent of the
individual interests and desire of the state. In relation to the action of individuals,
Collingwood has expressed the absurdity of the
37
onesidedness of the tradition well. He argues that rationalists, or intellectualists, maintain
that ‘there is a right thing to do, whose rightness is independent both of its being done and
of its being thought or imagined. It is not merely the case, on this theory, that right is right
though nobody does it: we must add that right is right though nobody thinks it’.28

Historical Reason
What was needed, then, in the history of the political theory of international relations, was
a criterion of state action which explained more adequately what characterized interstate
relations, and which also provided a standard of conduct in terms of which the rationality
of the actions of states could be judged. The problem was to overcome the deficiencies of
the two antithetical traditions by creating a real unity, or synthesis, in which the positive
elements of both became incorp- orated into a new and more adequate viewpoint. Stated
 FLACSO ■ Biblioteca

simply, the problem that had to be resolved was this: how could rational state action
escape the mere immediacy of self-interest and expediency, and at the same time avoid
conform- ing to abstract principles which appear to stand above, and fail to reflect, national
interests and aspirations? The answer was to formúlate a criterion that was not immersed
in immediate state interests, nor at the same time entirely divorced from them. It was to
be found in the historical process itself and in the traditions of states’ associations with
others: a criterion, to paraphrase Rousseau, which would unite utility and justice. The
criterion would have to be general in that it was not rooted in the immediacy of the present
and, indeed, was still in the process of formation as history unfolded, but it would not be
so general and abstract as to postulate a pre-existing set of principles to which international
law must conform. Morality would cease to be seen as mere prudence or expediency or,
indeed, as the expression of the divine voice in our souls. Morality, as Rorty suggests, must
be seen as ‘the voice of ourselves as members of a community, speakers of a common
language’.29 Here, instead of conflating morality and prudence, as Hobbes did, a distinction
may be maintained between morality, which is equated with community interests, and
prudence, which is equated with pernal interests and may sometimes conflirt with
community interests. Within this third tradition, which may be termed Historical Reason,
we find human nature is not a fixed entity. Human beings have developed their characters
and natures over time, and within the context of historical societies. To put in Hegel´s
terms, every man is a child of his times, and for Marx also, the individual was what he was
because of what he did, and how he did it, and those modes of behaviour were inextricably
linked with changing modes of production and the social relations generated by them.
Relations between nations were similarly a reflection of the productive process, the former
of which change as the modes
of production follow their historical course. Hegel and Marx have typically been seen as
representatives of opposed views of international relations. Hegel is
 38 Introduction
seen to be a communitarian holding the view that such relations as the family, civil society,
and the State are constitutive of our selves. The community generates what Walzer calis
the ‘thick morality’ that gives meaning and guidance in our lives. On the other hand, Marx
is seen as a cosmopolitan thinker who posits a universal human essence from which
individuáis have become alienated through exploitation and to which communities have
been prevented from aspiring because of estrangements from each other. It is clear on
closer analysis, however, that for both thinkers recognition within the context of social
relations is constitutive of our selves as persons. The historical process gives a content to
human capacities which can only develop in social relations in a historical process.
Individuais and states alike are what they are because of their relations with others of
their kind. The relations themselves give rise to the conventions and perceptions in terms
of which the associations are continued and valued. In the case of individuáis, Dilthey
argues that they stand at the centre of systems of interaction, within each of what he calis
the cultural systems, or external organizations of society; ‘values, rules and purposes are
developed, and made conscious and Consolidated by reflection’. Each of the systems
possesses ‘an inner regularity which conditions its structure and this structure in turn
reciprocally determines its development. Earlier, this idea had been extended from the
internal organization of the state to its relations with other states, by, for example,
Rousseau, Burke, Hegel, and the British Idealists.
Hegel, of course, has been vilified from all quarters for glorifying war and exalting the
state. He has been held responsible for both world wars, for Fascism and Nazism, and for
totalitarianism.33 He has always had his defenders, however, against such a crude Realist
interpretaron.31 What can be said unequivocally against his detractors is that he was not
purporting to recommend a state of affairs, and always maintained that in the realm of
Spirit, as opposed to nature, one could not predict what human ingenuity might bring
about.35 Philosophy, Hegel argues, cannot give instruction because ‘it always comes on the
scene too late to give it’.36 The Philosophy of Right is principally concerned to show the
historical process by which a state comes to develop its customs, laws, institutions, and
constitution, but it also shows that states in the current world system are autonomous and
the arbiters of their own wills. Individuality, Hegel argues, is the awareness of oneself as
distinct from other selves,37 but just as a person can never be an actual person without
rapport with others, so the ‘state is as little an actual individual without relations to other
states’.38 Whereas contracts between individuáis within states are much more extensive,
because of mutual interdependence, than those conducted between states, there is
nevertheless a sense of identity

between the European states which has modified aggressive behaviour.-

Relations between states, Hegel argues, ‘depend principally upon the customs of
nations’.40 Although Hegel’s logic precludes the possibility of a universal state and
the total elimination of war, it nevertheless implies a movement beyond the condition
about which he theorized. Indeed, it is implied that groupings of states may
have sufficient traditions in common to live harmoniously with each other. He
says, for example, that ‘The European peoples form a family in accordance with the
universal principle underlying their legal codes, their customs, and their civilization. This
principle has modified their international conduct accordingly in a State of affairs [i.e. war]
otherwise dominated by the mutual infliction of evils.’41
Bernard Bosanquet argued early in this century that patriotism and humanitarianism
 The Three Traditions 39
are compatible. Patriotism has in fact given rise to all that we now consider general
principles of humanity. Following T. H. Green’s example he believed human progress
consisted in consciousness of a common good in which the well being of others is closely
tied-up with one’s own. My duties to humanity come about by a gradual extension of those
I regard as included in the common good. To put it in contemporary terms, the tradition
of Historical Reason posits a thick conception of morality deeply embedded in the
practices of a living developing society. This thick morality gives rise to a thin universalism
rather than vice versa. This universal moral minimalism is crucial for the purposes of
transnational criticism and solidarity, but it is no substitute for the values thickly
conceived in the context of the practices of a society.42 The universalism that eminates from
this tradition to different degrees is what Walzer calis reiterative. It differs from covering-
law universalism in focusing upon the particularistic and pluralizing aspects of morality .43
In the work of T. H. Green it is the recognition of a wider and wider range of people we
regard as our neighbours and are prepared to include in the moral community that gives
rise to our obligations to each other. As Green says, ‘It is not the sense of duty to a
neighbour, but the practical answer to the question Who is my neighbour? that has
varied.’44 This differs from the Natural Law foundation to the community of humankind
in positing a historical identity to the moral obligations incurred, first to the family, then
to the tribe, the nation, and the State, and finally to humanity. The broadening of the
community within which the common good prevails brings with it an extensión of the
obligations owed to a larger number of people and eventually to humanity as a whole.
From the Natural Law perspective this sentiment to treat everyone as part of a world moral
community is there from the outset, and the obligations to humanity, far from having a
historical basis, are innate, and whether we recognize and act upon them or not rnakes no
difference to the fact that they exist. And if we come to acknowledge them at a later time
it does not alter the fact that they were there from the beginning.45
The emphasis upon a historically emerging criterion of conduct immediately ppens
itself up to the charge of relativism and subjectivism. The code of conduct is strictly
speaking relational, rather than relative. Exponents of this third criterion are historicist in
that they relate the ethical code to prevailing circumstances, but they are not necessarily
relativists in that they do not generally suggest that one code is as good as another. Hegel
and Marx both contend that the prevailing code of morality is a function of the times which
gave rise to it, but both provide criteria in terms of which one moral code can be said to be
better than or preferable to another. Bradley’s position best exemplifies the response to the
charge of relativism. He argues in good communitarian fashion that the idea that moral
rules fell full-fledged from heaven is preposterous. Human nature evolves in the historical
process, beginning with a base animal nature and gradually reaching higher degrees of
‘specification and systemization’ in the context of a community. Every person is a child of
the times and must realize himself or herself as such. Morality at any given stage is an
established fact passed on to the individual as an objective accomplishment of past and
present generations, expressing the power of the law and the truth of my own nature in a
higher self above the caprice of my own opinions. He goes on to contend that
Here (as we have seen) all morality is and must be ‘relative’, because the essence of real-
ization is evolution through stages, and henee existence in some one stage which is not
final; here, on the other hand, all morality is ‘absolute’, because in every stage the essence
of man is realized, however imperfectly: and yet again the distinction of right in itself
against relative morality is not banished, because from the point of view of the higher
 40 Introduction
stage, we can see that lower stages failed to realize the truth completely enough, and also,
mixed and one with their realization, did present features contrary to the true nature of
man as we now see it. Yet herein the morality of every stage is justified for that stage; and
the demand for a code of right in itself, apart from any stage, is seen to be the asking for an
impossibility.46
The tradition of Historical Realism continues into the twentieth century through the
British Idealists and the contemporary ethical doctrines of Terry Nardin and Mervyn Frost.
The Marxist variant has found expression in the structuralism of Gunder Frank and Johan
Galtung, the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas, Robert Cox, and Andrew Linklater, and
the historical materialism of Justin Rosenberg. Postmodernism has affinities with this
tradition in contending the historical conditionality of our social standards but, unlike the
school of Historical Reason, asks us to suspend our epistemic and moral judgement.
I have suggested that there are three traditions, dialectically related and offering
different criteria for state action. They are related to individual thinkers in that elements
from each appear in any one, or body of, work, with one of the traditions dominating the
other two. In subsequent chapters the details of these traditions will be explored in relation
to specific thinkers.

Notes

1. 1 have elsewhere given extended consideration to the methodology of studying the

history of ideas. After finding serious flaws in the proposals of Greenleaf, Pocock, and
Skinner I argued for a methodological pluralism, the main benefit of which, to bor-
row one of J. S. Mill’s insights, is the need constantly for self-justification in the face of
competing ideas. Furthermore, different approaches bring to the surface of inter-
pretation different, and not always incompatible, images and insights. See my Texts in
Context: Revisionist Methods for Studying the History of Ideas (Dordrecht, Martinus
Nijhoff, 1985). For reasons of consistency, I have capitalized such terms as Natural
Law, Law of Nature and Natural Rights, even though in the texts underdiscussion this
may not always be done.
The Three Traditions 41
2. Machiavelli, The Discourses, ed. Bernard Crick, trans. Father Leslie Walker
(Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1970), 268.
3. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner, rev. edn.
(Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972), 3. 45.
4. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 2. 53.
5. Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and its Place in Modern
History (London, Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1962; first pub. 1924), 14.
6. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1981), 161.
7. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 6. 18. Cf. Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull
(Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974), 135, and Discourses, 442.
8. Thomas Hobbes, Man and Citizen, ed. Bernard Gert (London, Harvester, 1978), 261. Cf.
Machiavelli, [The prince] ‘should never take things easy in times of peace, rather use
the latter assiduously, in order to be able to reap the profit in times of adversity’
(The Prince, 90).
9. See Joseph Frankel, National Interest (London, Macmillan, 1970).
10. See Meinecke, Machiavellism, 6. The conception of the three traditions in relation to the
internal affairs of states owes a great deal to W. Dilthey, M. Oakeshott, R. G.
 FLACSO ■ Biblioteca

Collingwood, W. H. Greenleaf, D. Germino, and David Cameron.

11. See Jeremy Bentham, ‘A Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace’, in Howard P.
Kainz (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives on Peace (London, Macmillan, 1987), 128-36. For a
discussion of Bentham’s ideas on international relations see Stephen Conway,
‘Bentham on Peace and War’, Utilitas, 1 (1989), 82-101. Bentham, along with Adam
Smith and James Mili, articulated the general liberal opposition to imperialism. They
rejected it on the grounds that colonization brought little or no economic benefit to
Britain; that the view that colonies provided relief for England’s surplus population
was fallacious; and that England gained no political advantage from holding colonies.
J. S. Mili dissented from these views and justified a British Empire comprising colonies
settled by whites, and dependencies populated by non-settlers in Asia and Africa. See
Eileen P. Sullivan, ‘Liberalism and Imperialism: J. S. Mill’s Defence of the British
Empire’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 44 (1983), 599-617.
12. Michael Walzer, ‘Nation and Universe’, The Tanner Lectures on Human Valúes, 11, ed.
G. B. Peterson (Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1990), 510.
13. Onora O’Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11.
14. See David Cameron, The Social Thought of Rousseau and Burke: A Comparative Study
(London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson for London School of Economics, 1973), 41-60; A.
P. d’Entréves, Natural Law, rev. edn. (London, Hutchinson, 1972), chap. 4; R. I. Vincent,
‘Western Conceptions of a Universal Moral Order’, British Journal of International
Studies, 4 (1978), 20—46; R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986), 4-37; and F. Parkinson, The Philosophy
of International Relations: A Study in the History of Thought (Beverly Hills, Calif., and
London, Sage, 1977), 9-26.
5- D. M. Mackinnon, ‘Natural Law’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplornatic
Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London, Alien and Unwin,
1966), 79.
Basil Wiley, The Eighteenth Century Backgrourid (London, Penguin, 1965)„23.
Rex Martin, A System of Rights (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993), 2 and 9Í.
*8. Machiavelli, The Florentine History, trans. W. K. Marriot (London, J. M. Dent, 1976), 306.
42 Introduction
19. Aquinas, Selected Political Writings, ed. A. P. d’Entréves (Oxford, Blackwell, 1974), 127.
20. Samuel Pufendorf, On The Law of Nature and Nations: Eight Books (1672), trans. of the
1688 edn. by C. H. Oldfather and W. A. Oldfather (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1934), bk.
ii. iii. 5. Also see David Boucher, ‘Reconciling Ethics and Interests in the Person of the
State: The International Dimensión’, in Paul Keale (ed.), Ethics and Foreign Policy
(Sydney, Alien and Unwin, 1992), 53.
21. Cited by d’Entréves, Natural Law, 25.
22. Aquinas, Political Writings, 161.
23. Hugo Grotius, On the Law ofWar and Peace, in M. G. Forsyth, H. M. A. Keens-Soper,
and P. Savigear (eds.), The Theory of International Relations: Selected Texts from Gentili to
Treitschke (London, George Alien and Unwin, 1970), 66.
24. Cf. Parkinson, Philosophy of International Relations, 36.
25. Hugo Grotius, On the Law ofWar and Peace, in M. G. Forsyth, H. M. A. Keens-Soper,
and P. Savigear (eds.), The Theory of International Relations: Selected Texts from Gentili to
Treitschke (london, Alien and Unwin, 1970), 70 and 71.
26. Hedley Bull, ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, in Herbert Butterfield
and Martin Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International
Politics (London, Alien and Unwin, 1966), 60. Also see H. Lauterpacht, ‘The Grotian
Tradition in International Law’, British Yearbook of International Law, 27 (1946), and
Grotius, Law o f W a r and Peace, 78.
27. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations, 25. Other philosophers of importance
in this tradition would be Pufendorf, Vattel, and Kant.
28. R. G. Collingwood, ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy for M-T 1921’, MS, Collingwood
Papers, DEP 4, Bodleian Library, Oxford, fo. 16.
29. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 59.
30. G. VV. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Chicago, Benton, 1952),
preface, 6.
31. W. Dilthey, Selected Writings, ed. and trans. H. P. Rickman (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1976), 236.
32. Cited by Michael Ermath, Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1978), 123.
33. See e.g. L. T. Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (London, Alien and Unwin,
1951; first pub. 1918), 26—43 and 138—49; D. A. Routh, ‘The Philosophy of
International Relations: T. H. Green versus Hegel’, Política, 3 (1938), 224-5; E. F- Carritt,
Moráis and Politics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1935), 107 and 114; E. F. Carritt,
‘Hegel and Prussianism’, Journal of Philosophy, 15 (1940), 315-17; Karl Popper, The Open
Society and its Enemies, (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 197"; first pub. 1945), vol.
ii. For an interesting account of the debate regarding Hegel s responsibility for the
First World War, see John Morrow, ‘British Idealism, “Germán Philosophy” and the
First World War’, Australian Journal of Philosophy and History, 28(1982), 380-90.
34. See e.g. Henry Jones,‘WhyWe are Fighting’, Hibbert Journal, 13 (1 9 1 4 -1 5 ), 6 1 -5 ; and
Henry Jones, The Principies of Citizenship (London, Macmillan, 1919), 100-3; T. M. Knox,
‘Hegel and Prussianism’, Journal of Philosophy, 15 (1940), 51—63; and the cxchange
between Knox and Carritt and Spender in the same volume, pp. 219-20 and 313-17;
Shlomo Avineri, ‘The Problem of War in Hegel’s Thought’, Journal of the History of
Ideas, 22 (1961), 462-74; Shlomo Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Moderti
State (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972), chap. 10; Peter P. Nicholson,
‘Philosophical Idealism and International Politics: A Reply to Dr Savigear’, British
Journal of International Studies, 2 (1976), 76-7; Andrew Vincent, ‘The Hegelian State and
 The Three Traditions 43
International Politics’, Review of International Studies, 9 (1983), 191-205; and Steven B.
Smith, ‘Hegel’s Views on War, the State, and International Relations’, American Political
Science Review, 77 (1983), 624-32.
35. G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History, trans. Robert S. Hartman (Indianapolis, Bobbs-
Merrill, 1953), 68-70.
36. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, preface, 7.
37. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §322.
38. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §331.
39. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §333 and Zusatz to §339.
40. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §339.
41. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Zusatz to §339.
42. Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin (Notre Dame, Ind., University of Notre Dame Press,
1994).
43. Walzer, ‘Nation and Universe’, 513.
4 4 . T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 4th edn. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1899), 247.
45. Michael Donelan, Elernents of International Political Theory (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1990), 10-11.
46. F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 2nd edn. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1927), 192.