¹ The muse of history.

² Aristotle's view, of course.

³ A (brief) sample list might include, ‘positivist’ versus ‘post-positivist’, ‘modern’ versus ‘postmodern’, ‘critical’ versus ‘traditional’, ‘rationalist’ versus ‘reflectivist’, ‘neorealist’ versus ‘neoliberaP. Endless are the arguments of sages!

⁴ The two most obvious being Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler.

⁵ To cite just two very well-known (and very different) influential texts, Taylor's, A. J. P.The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918 (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar and McNeil's, WilliamThe Rise of the West (Chicago, 1963)Google Scholar.

⁶ See his recent The Evolution of International Society (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁷ For the opening statement of this project see Buzan, Barry, Little, Richard and Jones, Charles, The Logic of Anarchy (New York, 1994)Google Scholar, section 2. Fuller developments of this position wait upon Barry Buzan and Richard Little, The International System: Theory Meets History (Oxford, forthcoming). For a general indication, see Buzan, Barry and Little, Richard, ‘The Idea of International System: Theory Meets History’ in International Political Science Review, 15, 3 (1994), pp. 23–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ See for example, Wallerstein, Itnmanuel, Historical Capitalism (London, 1983)Google Scholar, and The Modern World System, 3 vols., so far (Cambridge, 1974, 1979, 1986).

⁹ See, especially, Linklater, Andrew, Beyond Realism and Marxism (London, 1982, 1992)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Our muse has also been increasingly influential more generally, or perhaps I should say more narrowly, for example, within the increasingly constrained orbit of contemporary ‘International Relations theory’ in the United States. Robert Keohane's ‘reflective’ (as opposed to rationalist) school of thought within ‘International Relations theory’ is seen as ‘sociologically’ inspired rather than deriving inspiration from economic models, and therefore more sensitive to ‘history'. Keohane is thus clear that th e ‘reflectivists’ are driven by an interest in (amongst other things) historical sociology, though his list of who counts as ‘reflectivist’ is quite bewildering in its variety. See Keohane, Robert, ‘International Institutions: Two Approaches’, International Studies Quarterly (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of course, there are many so-called ‘reflective’ (and even one or two ‘rationalist') theorists who share in the veneration of this muse and whose work is correspondingly rich and varied. Here, I have in mind especially the work of John Gerard Ruggie and Friedrich Kratochwil among the ‘reflectivists’ and Stephen Krasner, who would I suppose be seen as a ‘rationalist'.

¹¹ This phrase, in this context, is borrowed from Justin Rosenberg.

¹² For general discussions of the rise and character of historical sociology, see Abrams, Philip, ‘History, Sociology, Historical Sociology’, Past and Present, 87, (1980), pp. 3–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burke, Peter, History and Social Theory (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar; Smith, D., The Rise of Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar; and Skocpol, Theda (ed.), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ See, famously, Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1963)Google Scholar. Other writers to discuss this include Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation-states, 1760–1914 (Cambridge, 1992Google Scholar; Poggi, Gianfranco, The State: Its Nature and Development (Stanford, 1990)Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital and European States (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; and Giddens, Anthony, The Nation State and Violence (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See Mann, , Sources of Social Power, vol. 2, pp. 254–96Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Empire, 1870-1914 (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Unquestionably the most influential general work of this kind has been carried on by the Annales. The locus classicus is Braudel, Ferdinand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, 1972–1973Google Scholar (French 2nd edn, 1966]). A similar argument applied t o a very different setting is Braudel, Ferdinand, Civilisation and Capitalism, 3 vols. (London, 1980–1982)Google Scholar. See also, Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, The Peasants of Languedoc (Urbana, 1974 [1966])Google Scholar, and for a brilliant and very individualistic (non-Annalistes) treatment, McNeil, William H., Plagues and Peoples (London, 1976)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ See Mann, , Sources of Social Power, vol. 2, pp. 44–213Google Scholar; Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar; Tilly, Coercion; Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See the editor's introduction to Navari, Cornelia (ed.), The Condition of States (Buckingham, 1990)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ For a discussion of this that is good on the background to game theory and its military applications see Poundstone, William, Prisoners Dilemma (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar. Another book looking mainly at the narrower theme of nuclear strategy but also good on this theme is Kaplan's, FredThe Wizards of Armaggedon (New York, 1983)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ This is made unambiguous in the work that Alastair Murray is currently pursuing. See, for example, his ‘The Moral Politics of Hans Morgenthau’, Review of Politics (Jan. 1996).

²⁰ For example, among the ‘postmoderns’, Heidegger would, I think, certainly deny the first and arguably the second, as would the likes of John Caputo and even (at least in some senses) William Connolly; among the non-postmoderns, Alasdair Maclntyre would accept both, at least in a qualified form, and Leo Strauss, Eric Voeglin and Hannah Arendt would certainly accept the second.

²¹ I try to provide such a context in Rengger, N. J., Political Theory, Modernity and Postmodernity: Beyond Enlightenment and Critique (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar.

²² Derian, James Der, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar.

²³ Derian, James Der, Anti-Diplomacy: Spies, Terror. Speed and War (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Walker, R. B. J., Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ See R. E. Jones, ‘The Responsibility to Educate’, and Walker, R. B. J., ‘On Pedagogical Responsibility: A Response to Roy Jones’, in Review of International Studies, 20, 3 (July 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My assessment of the outcome of the contest is based on Walker's rebuttal of Jones at pp. 320–1.

²⁶ The muse of epic poetry, with whom it seems fair to ally the postmodern mood.

²⁷ See Gilbert, Felix, Machiavelli and Guicciardini (Princeton, 1965)Google Scholar; Berlin, Isaiah, ‘The Originality of Machiavelli’, in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar; Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago, 1958)Google Scholar. For other influential readings of Machiavelli, see Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Political Thought, vol. I (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar; Pitkin, Hannah Fenichel, Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli (Los Angeles, 1984)Google Scholar.

²⁸ See De Grazia, Sebastion, Machiavelli in Hell (Princeton, 1990)Google Scholar; JrMansfield, Harvey, Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders (Ithaca, 1979)Google Scholar; Smith, Bruce James, Politics and Remembrance: Republican Themes in Machiavelli, Burke and Tocqueville (Princeton, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ See Connolly, William, Identity!'Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, 1991)Google Scholar; Honig, Bonnie, Political Theory and The Displacement of Politics (Ithaca, 1993)Google Scholar; and Bauman, Zygmunt, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar. I discuss this theme in Rengger, Political Theory, chs. 2 and 3.

³⁰ I shall not contest it here. For a proper contestation see Murray, ‘Moral Polities'.

³¹ An earlier version of this chapter was published under the same title in Review of International Studies.

³² I am aware, of course, that in saying this I am touching on an enormous body of scholarly literature, as varied as it is controversial, about the ways we can or should appropriate the thought and experience of past thinkers, societies or practices. I obviously cannot go into any details here, but I simply emphasize that whatever view is ultimately taken on the issue one is, of necessity, drawn into the ‘hermeneutic circle’ in discussing it (this does not imply, a la Gadamer, that one cannot get out). In doing so, however, I would argue-I accept that it is a controversial position-that one drains the ‘materialism’ out of ‘history’ at least in the sense that Rosenberg (and any Marxist) would require.

³³ See Orwin, Clifford, The Humanity of Thucydides (Princeton, 1994)Google Scholar. I have also addressed the questions raised by interpreting Thucydides in ‘Thucydides, Injustice and Judging the Good Regime’, in Polis: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought, 14, 1 (Spring 1996Google Scholar, forthcoming).

³⁴ A lazy abbreviation for ‘International Relations’ which is, alas, becoming all too frequent these days and is used in both books discussed here.

³⁵ See Gellner, Ernest, ‘A Blobologist in Vodkabuzia’, in Culture, Identity and Politics (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar.

³⁶ By which, of course, I do not mean to exclude such specialists. Generals are, after all, necessary for the successful prosecution of wars!

³⁷ ‘The International Imagination: IR Theory and Classic Social Analysis’, Millennium, 23, 1 (Spring 1994), pp. 85–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Oxford, 1959.

³⁹ An original response was Mervyn Frost's characteristically excellent ‘The Role of Normative Theory in IR’ in the same issue of Millennium as Rosenberg's article. Subsequently, Chris Boyle, David Campbell, Fred Halliday, Mark Neufeld and Steve Smith all responded in a discussion session in Millennium, 23, 2 (Summer 1994)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ See Halliday, ‘Theory and Ethics in International Relations: The Contradictions of C. Wright Mills’, Millennium, 23, 2 (Summer 1994), p. 378Google Scholar.

⁴¹ As I indicated above, this term covers a multitude of sins. In broad terms, for the purposes of this paper, I shall assume that there are two general movements within critical theory, critical theory ‘proper’ (as it were), i.e. theory influenced by the Frankfurt school and especially at the moment by Habermas, and theory which is post-structural in orientation, such as the work of Der Derian and Walker. A more general defence of seeing critical theory in international studies in this way can be found in N. J. Rengger and Mark Hoffman, ‘Modernity, Postmodernism and International Relations’, in Doherty, Joeet al., Postmodernism and the Social Sciences (London, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² A good collection containing many of the best papers from this alleged debate is Baldwin, David (ed.), Neo-realism and Neo-liberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁴³ A phrase used by Jorge Luis Borges about the Falklands/Malvinas conflict.

⁴⁴ I should, in fairness, add that the problem is not all one way. Rob Walker's hostile review of The Empire of Civil Society in Millennium, is at least equally wilful, and it, too, passes up the opportunity for a genuine exchange. I must say, the sound of grinding political axes becomes rather wearying after a time!

⁴⁵ I have discussed this point, though in a slightly different context, in ‘From Konigsberg to Alexandria (and Back?): Classical Thought, Global Ethics and World Polities’, Paradigms, 8, 1 (Summer 1994)Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ See Rawls, , A Theory of Justice (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar. See also his redevelopment and elaboration of the theory in his more recent Political Liberalism (New York, 1993)Google Scholar, where the idea of an overlapping consensus takes on an even more pivotal role.

⁴⁷ See for discussions of discourse ethics Habermas, Jurgen, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA, 1990)Google Scholar, tr. Lenhardt, Christian and Nicholson, Shierry Weber, and Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar, tr.Ciaran Cronin. The structure of the ideal speech situation is made clear in The Theory of Communicative Action, vol 1: Reason and Rationalization of Society (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar and vol 2: The Critique of Functionalist Reason (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar, both tr. Thomas McArthy.

⁴⁸ Although I obviously cannot go into this here, this is precisely where both Rawls and Habermas have come under attack of late.

⁴⁹ Rorty, Richard, Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge, 1991), p. 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁰ Also, ironically, a powerful influence on realism, of course.

⁵¹ This is the hallmark of the so called ‘post-metaphysical turn’ in contemporary ethics, made much of by Habermas and others and to which Rawls also appeals. I have criticized it in the introductory chapter of Rengger, Political Theory.

⁵² The discussion in the following few paragraphs is based upon, and elaborated far more fully in, N. J. Rengger, ‘The Cave of Knowledge: Practical Reason and the Public Sphere in Republic 514a-540c’, in Ursula Vogel and Maurizio Passerein D'Entereves (eds.), The Public!'Private Debate in Political Theory (forthcoming).

⁵³ See the Republic 514a–540c.

⁵⁴ In international studies the writers I am thinking of would include Andrew Linklater, Mark Hoffman and perhaps Ronnie Lipschutz. See, for example, Linklater, , Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London, 1982CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 2nd edn, 1990); Hoffman, , ‘Critical Theory and the Inter-paradigm Debate’, Millennium, 16, 3 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lipschutz, , ‘Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Civil Society’, Millennium, 21, 3 (1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ Culminating in, and especially, the Theorie des kommunikatives Handelns.

⁵⁶ As developed, for example, though, of course in very different ways, in Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer's, MaxThe Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York, 1972)Google Scholar and Maclntyre's, AlasdairAfter Virtue (London, 1981; 2nd edn, 1987)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ And like the critical theorists, of course.

⁵⁸ For a more thorough discussion of this claim and its implications see Rengger, Political Theory, ch. 3.