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Political Realism and the Remembrance of Relativism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Roger D. Spegele
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Extract

With the precipitate and well-deserved demise of positivism as the only theory of knowledge backstopping international relations, a large number of ethical issues, emasculated by positivism's non-cognitivist views of morality, are emerging for philosophical reflection and analysis. One of the most important of these is relativism. Despite its obvious (and increasing) significance, however, few international theorists have specifically addressed the issues it raises. One of the main reasons for this neglect, this article argues, lies in the conspicuous failure on the part of the newer normative approaches to international relations even to acknowledge that a relativist interpretation is a plausible construal of their position. In the next section, three examples of such failure will be described. It is no accident that these examples derive from anti-realist positions. A perspicuous feature of anti-realism has been its evident incapacity to give sufficient weight to the fact that the world is divided into antagonistic groups which have serious, perhaps even irreconcilable, moral and political conflicts with one another. But whatever may be the case for anti-realists, revisionary political realism is in no position to obscure its relation to relativism. The possibility of relativism, for the revisionary political realist, arises from simple reflection on the realist tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 1995 , pp. 211 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1995

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References

1 A notable exception is Terry Nardin. See his article ‘The Problem of Relativism in International Ethics’, Millennium, vol. 18 (1989), pp. 149–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his perceptive book, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York, 1992)Google Scholar, Chris Brown ‘mentions’ moral relativism, but there is no discussion of it as an issue for international relations theory. Neither ‘relativism’ nor any cognate term appears in the index.

2 For the phrase ‘new normative approaches to international relations’, I am indebted to Brown, International Relations Theory, passim. Although there are many such approaches, I will focus on intertextualism, communitarianism, and feminist international relations theory.

3 By revisionary political realism, I am referring to the sort of realism which I have described elsewhere as Evaluative Political Realism. See my ‘On Evaluative Political Realism’, Millennium, vol. 14 (1985), pp. 39–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I mean to include under the rubric of revisionary political realism those versions of political realism which attempt to carve out a place for the inextricable connection between ethics and politics.

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