I describe the key substantive and theoretical assumptions of positivism and interpretivism.

Introduction

What rules govern the conduct of warfare? Do state and non-state actors conduct themselves in accordance with rules? These are long-standing questions in the study and practice of war. There are, however, some underlying questions that may also be worthy of investigation. How stable are those rules? What foundations do they have? Even more provocatively, are rules the best way to govern the conduct of warfare? Many areas of public life are conducted in terms of rules, yet rules and rule following can become fetishized. Judith Skhlar’s famous critique of law and international criminal law introduced the idea of ‘legalism’, or the use of rules and laws to cover over ideological or political conflicts. Rules guide us through complex situations; at the same time, rules can constrain and limit our ability to respond when those situations change or when a rule simply does not work. In fact, rules can even generate their own forms of violence, especially when yoked to ideas like the national interest.

Nicholas Rengger did not address rules directly in his scholarship. Instead, the idea of rules and law formed a backdrop to many of his critical interventions in world politics. From his studies of order to just war, Rengger engaged with and contested the idea that law and rules alone could structure our political lives. At the same time, as I will argue in this chapter, Rengger did not set aside rules in their entirety, for he understood the necessity of rules in both domestic and international political order more broadly. Instead, Rengger argued for a more casuistic approach to political life. Drawn from ancient and medieval moral and political theory, this idea highlights the importance of the contexts within which rules operate. Rules and laws still play a role, but they cannot be seen as the only way to approach political conflict. As such, the focus of this chapter will be on Rengger as a reluctant rule follower.

The chapter will use Rengger’s writing on just war and violence to orient the argument. The first section sets out his understanding of rules and their relation to political order. Following this, and building upon it, the next section explores his reading of the Just War tradition as found in his book Just War and International Order.

Nicholas Rengger introduced me to the British philosopher Gillian Rose in 2004, and in so doing opened a door to a way of thinking and an ethos that continues to capture my imagination nearly two decades on. It is fitting that I return to Rose in this chapter honouring Rengger’s work on anti-Pelagianism, as I have no doubt that part of what attracted me to Rose’s thought was her resolute refusal of the Pelagian heresy of seeking a ‘short cut to heaven’ twinned with a rejection of the politics of tragedy. My years studying with Rengger imbued in me a profound mistrust of theories that refuse to ‘deal in darkness’; Rose’s work emphatically does, enjoining us to ‘keep [our] mind[s] in hell’ but– crucially– to ‘despair not’.

This chapter has two parts. In Part One, I briefly sketch modern anti-Pelagianism, drawing primarily on Rengger’s collected essays on the Anti-Pelagian Imagination: Dealing in Darkness. I highlight four elements of Rengger’s anti-Pelagianism: a sceptical relation to knowledge; a disconnect between theory and practice; a refusal of tragic visions of politics; and a particular orientation to ‘the world’. In Part Two, I argue that Rose’s speculative philosophy can rightly be understood as anti-Pelagian – she, too, refuses Pelagian heresies that would ‘mend diremption in heaven or on earth’; instead, she cultivates equivocation in relation to knowledge and exchanges blueprints for action for aporia, or pathlessness. Like Rengger, Rose also refuses the temptation of tragedy in response to the ‘darkness’ of modern politics. However, I argue that Rose’s work commits more fully to the project of dealing in darkness. While Rengger (following Oakeshott) cultivates a certain distance from the world, exemplified by his meditations on the relationship between theory and practice, Rose calls us to a dogged and risk-filled engagement (and re-engagement) with everyday practical politics.

Modern anti-Pelagianism

In early Christianity, the Pelagian heresy refers to the idea promulgated by Pelagius, contra Augustine, that human beings are essentially good and can work unaided towards salvation.

Introduction

It is becoming increasingly interesting to write about Nick Rengger and what I term the business of war. Reading his manuscripts inevitably reveals his (much commented upon) preoccupation with just war theory and his anti-Pelagianism. A careful scrutiny of the written words and a recall (perhaps mistaken) from memories of many conversations, however, yield very little insight into his view of the business of war. This absence is quite remarkable given that Rengger would have agreed that war was both the curse of the international system but also the very stuff from which International Relations (IR) had been created. In this chapter, I want to explore why Rengger had little if nothing to say about the actual conduct of war and how this silence weakens his position as a scholar of war if not, of course, his status as a political theorist of some note. The omission I highlight though is especially puzzling given that towards the end of his life he had grown somewhat impatient with the subject area (he never considered it a discipline) as both too ‘critical’ in methodology and too wedded to a highly partisan view of democracy as a ‘cure all’. Many scholars were for him far removed from appreciating the essential ‘darkness’ of the human condition in all its guises and how the aftermath of 9/11 with its multiple consequences had in his view further darkened politics. In this sense he was infuriated with the ideas, for example, of Stephen Pinker and any claims that the world had become and was becoming more peaceable. But in typical Renggerian fashion, he had no real evidence to oppose that thesis, no facts, no data but merely the conviction, perhaps the hope, that Pinker was quite simply wrong.

Gathering empirical evidence or doing fieldwork was not in the Rengger canon. It did not need to be perhaps, but I think there is in general a problem with discussing war simply in abstraction. So I end this chapter with the thought, perhaps a harsh one, that Rengger often evaded the hard realities of looking at the business of war in favour of a position which seemed to accept that politics ended when the fighting began; that there was little that could be done apart from a reliance on the power of conversation to raise if not resolve the points of contention.

Dark times require that we peer deeply into the darkness, and we seem to live in times where the will and ability to peer into the darkness is increasingly vital. Much that has been taken as progress in politics both domestic and international seems at risk of unravelling. Most strikingly, across the globe radical conservative and avowedly ‘neo-reactionary’ movements are challenging the principles, practices, and institutions of the liberal world order that (for better or worse) for at least a quarter of a century seemed firmly ‘embedded’ as the dominant international order – with often worrying success. Autocracy, illiberal democracy, racial exclusion, and extreme nationalism – to name but a few – are today powerful forces in world politics. Democracy, human rights, toleration, and even civility are on the back foot in many places, and in rapid retreat in others.

Despite these pressing challenges, the main traditions of thought in IR and international political theory (IPT) seem largely ill-equipped to respond to them. Most liberal-rationalist theories have lost their ability to understand the ideas, interests, and emotions associated with today’s right wing and other ‘populist’ movements, never mind to address them. Conventional constructivists and postmodernists might well be able to trace and record the contours of reactionary ‘populisms’, but it is far from clear that they have the tools for assessing their claims, not to mention confronting them. In the face of radically reactionary strategies that take as their foundation the claim that ‘nothing is true and everything is possible’, the unspoken optimism that has often accompanied these views looks suspiciously thin. Realism, with its focus on the gloomier prospects of politics, its stress on nations and their clashes of interest and power, seems on the surface better attuned to the shifting geopolitical landscape – but, at least in its ‘structural’ forms, it has (and can have) little to say about the deeper political questions involved and the challenges they raise, including their extreme nationalism and alternative visions of international order. And while ‘classical’ realism may be more well equipped to provide a basis for such an engagement, few of its recent proponents have shown much inclination to do so.

Introduction

N.J. (Nick) Rengger was one of the most influential figures in British International Relations (IR), and in the global discourse of international political theory (IPT) of the last 40 years, partly through his writings, but equally through his outsize personality and riveting conversation. This last point is important because, now that he is no longer with us, future scholars will only have recourse to reading him, and, as a result, will get a very limited and imperfect impression of the impact he had on those of us who actually knew him and were fully exposed to the Rengger experience in all its Falstaffian dimensions. In this chapter I will, of course, refer to his publications, but I also want to get across some of the impact of talking to him, arguing with him, sometimes being infuriated by him, but always realizing that you were privileged to be interacting with a quite extraordinary man and scholar.

In the first section, I will examine the way Nick Rengger exploded on the scene in the 1980s at a time when the discourse of IPT was forming, a discourse which he helped to form. His position then was supportive of, to use Richard Rorty’s terminology, an ‘edifying’ rather than a ‘systematising’ account of the role of theory. The second section fast-forwards by three decades to a period when Rengger’s theme was anti-Pelagianism and opposition to teleocracy. Here I set out some of the, in my view, undesirable implications of these themes, and challenge his employment of Augustinian theology to support his espousal of a very conservative account of the possibilities of political theory. In the third and final section I look at some of the practical problems posed by the positions he adopted, in particular his opposition to progressivism and to what he saw as the perversions of modern just war thinking.

As will already be apparent, this will be a critical chapter; I shall have some harsh words to say about his writings in his final years and about the rhetorical language he employed. All I can say in my defence, if I need a defence, is that there is nothing here that I have not said to his face, and I can assure those readers who did not know Nick, that he would not have had it any other way.

Introduction

The late Professor Nicholas John Hugh Rengger (1959– 2018) was a scholar of extraordinary range and voracious intellectual appetite. Rengger may have formally carried the title of Professor of Political Theory and International Relations at the University of St Andrews but, beyond Political Theory and International Relations (IR), his work and research interests spanned the fields of Intellectual History, Philosophy, Classics, Theology, Literature, and the broader Human Sciences. His unusual scholarly breadth and ability to converse across disciplines marked him out as one of the last of an eclipsing species of academics who used to embody the Renaissance ideal of the homo universalis within academia and the world of the intellect, in general. This book is inspired by Rengger’s enduring legacy and impact as a teacher and scholar, and by the way he put his cross- disciplinary talents in the service of bringing the broader social and political theory but also more humanist disciplines, such as philosophy, theology, and the history of ideas, into the study of international politics.

The various chapters in this volume assess the many aspects of Rengger’s work and legacy but focus on three main areas that constitute the driving ideas behind his contribution to the political theory of IR and the problem of world order: his Augustine-inspired idea of an ‘anti-Pelagian imagination’ favouring a sceptical, non-utopian, anti-perfectionist response to the ethico-political dilemmas of the contemporary liberal world order; his Oakeshottian argument for a pluralist ‘conversation of mankind’ that could sustain an ethos of civility in world politics; and his ruminations on war as the uncivil condition in world politics coupled with his critical engagement with the just war tradition as an institution of civil world order. Civility and anti-Pelagianism, two central concepts in Rengger’s work that will be the focus of this chapter, express a poetic re-imagining of world order that transcends both tragic realism and liberal utopianism, denying neither the fragility of the civilizing impulse in world politics nor the resourcefulness and the creativity of the human spirit in inventing new, imaginative ways to contain the modern world’s destructive tendencies.

Introduction

Nicholas Rengger’s just war thought defies simple classification. His work clearly stands as a critique of both the legalist and revisionist approaches, which he deems overly optimistic about human nature and human capacities, and thus ultimately overly optimistic about the possibility that human institutions could work effectively to ‘solve’ the problem of war. Nor can Rengger be easily categorized as a just war thinker in the classical vein – while he clearly appreciates theological approaches both past and present, it would be a stretch to say that his work is primarily grounded in theology. Even contemporary neo-classical approaches to just war thinking face Rengger’s critique as rather too state-centric in their approach. In Rengger’s thinking, questions of just war are part and parcel of the broader project of international relations (IR). Rengger’s broader approach to thinking about IR also transcends the usual paradigmatic pigeon-holes. Despite his deep scepticism about the robustness of international order, Rengger nonetheless calls contemporary realism to task for its insufficient interest in the problem of order. Likewise, he finds classical realists to be kindred spirits in many respects, but cautions against accepting their view of politics as tragedy.

Rengger’s fundamental scepticism takes nothing for granted, questioning everything. For some, this might leave the impression that Rengger is perhaps better at asking questions than answering them, better at pointing out the pitfalls in others’ arguments about the ethics of war than at mapping out a way around them. I would argue, however, that this is precisely Rengger’s point. We begin to go astray the moment we think ourselves to be standing on firm ground. Those of us asking questions about what is right and wrong in war are certainly seeking a kind of Truth. We want to know what is Just. Rengger’s relentless scepticism is unsettling because it demands that we accept that none of us will ever quite get to such an understanding. But this isn’t a blank cheque to succumb to nihilism, or to relativism, or even to some sort of tragic acceptance of our imperfectability. Instead, Rengger sees scepticism as opening opportunities for dialogue and deliberative discussions with others in which we leave open the possibility that our own original position may be incorrect and thus in need of modification.

Introduction

According to Nicholas Rengger, the study of modern political theory and international relations (IR) is divided between two conflicting views. He terms the more optimistic ‘Pelagian’ and the more sceptical ‘anti-Pelagian’. It will be suggested that although Rengger succeeds in clarifying the assumptions underlying Pelagianism, he is less successful in identifying a coherent form of non-realist anti-Pelagianism. In this chapter we will examine in particular the version of non-realist anti-Pelagianism he claimed to find in Oakeshott. Since Oakeshott has been accused of an idealist methodology which yields a model of civil association open to the charge of being itself Pelagian, Rengger’s reliance on him exposes Rengger’s own anti-Pelagian project to the charge of succumbing to the ‘faint but bewitching glow of ideal theory’ of which he accuses Rawls and other modern idealists and rationalists. Rengger’s project, we conclude, might have been more coherent if he had instead linked it to a theory of prudence and the contemporary debate about the political. First, however, we begin with a discussion of Rengger’s chosen terminology.

The Pelagian and anti-Pelagian imagination in political and international theory

During the last two centuries, Rengger observes, ‘the chief highways of European political thought have been dominated by traffic following directions marked by words such as progress, science and reason’. During the present century, he continues, ‘Alongside such familiar vehicles as liberalism, socialism, Marxism and the like we might now add various forms of critical theory, various forms of environmentalism and perhaps especially cosmopolitanism.’ Perhaps the best-known manifestation of the Enlightenment rationalist heritage to which Rengger points in contemporary Anglophone political philosophy is ‘ideal theory’ represented above all by John Rawls and his followers.

Despite the disasters of the 20th century, Rengger notes, even IR theorizing has succumbed during the past 50 years to the ‘bewitching glow’ of idealist theorizing, in the form of a ‘broadly progressive’ orthodoxy ‘focused on notions such as rights, law, governance, justice and so on’. According to Rengger IR progressivism is manifested in cosmopolitan approaches which see transnational institutions as vehicles for rebuilding the global order as well as in liberal internationalism and radical approaches.

Introduction

Nicholas J. Rengger came to International Relations (IR) relatively late, by a circuitous route, and with unorthodox intellectual baggage. His PhD juggled aspects of Enlightenment political philosophy and approaches to the history of ideas. Only afterwards, as a freshly minted political theorist, did he begin to address IR, as he searched for a niche in the unforgiving British higher education system of late 1980s. In various places, he encountered the ‘English school of international relations’ – or at least representatives of what was left of it – not so much in Bristol, perhaps, where he spent most of his early career prior to the move to St Andrews, but certainly in Aberystwyth, Leicester, and the London School of Economics (LSE), during stints as a visiting fellow, and at BISA conferences. At that time, in those places, the English School’s (ES) influence was still clear in curricula and concepts employed. Scholars who had known figures like Charles Manning, Martin Wight, and Hedley Bull still lectured, roamed corridors, or held forth in staff clubs and local pubs. They included people like Maurice Keens-Soper and Phillip Windsor, as well as younger scholars whose work was shaped by the tradition, like James Mayall and Hidemi Suganami. Convivial to a fault, Rengger’s introduction to IR – and to the ES, in particular – was in no small part a result of conversations with all of these people and more.

Rengger’s approach to the field – especially to IR theory – was marked by these early experiences and by the texts to which they led him. He never became a card-carrying member of the ES, of course – he enjoyed buzzing about the field as a Socratic gadfly far too much for that. But the lop-sided dialogue that he started with the ES in the late 1980s continued, on and off, for the rest of his life, shaping the ways in which he framed and engaged with major issues in the field. And from the start, he found the historicist and interpretivist commitments of the early school congenial. He was manifestly impressed with Martin Wight’s byzantine essays on the history of international theory. He was also intrigued by the ways in which the early school handled the apparent tensions between the need for order in international relations (IR) and demands for justice.