The purpose of this book is to identify the implications of Michael Oakeshottâs political philosophy for international political theory and for normative international theory. It argues that the philosophy of civil association provides the grounds for an understanding of international society as a rule-based form of moral association in which international law reflects evolving moral practices.
Already, Oakeshottâs thought has been considered from a rich variety of perspectives and has been interpreted in many, often divergent, ways. For example, scholars have placed his works in the context of the history of philosophy and they have highlighted their relation with British and German idealism (Boucher 2001, 2012a, b; Nardin 2001; Orsi 2012; Podoksik 2003, 2012). His critique of Rationalism and the contraposition between civil association and enterprise association has also been considered as a contribution to contemporary liberalism (Gray 1989, 1993; Franco 1990, 2004; Haddock 2005; Galston 2012; Gamble 2012; Giorgini 1999), conservatism (Abel 2010; Devigne 2012), and republicanism (Boucher 2005a; Callahan 2012; Coats 1992). However, little attention has been devoted to the influence of Oakeshottâs thought on the study of international relations, 1 even though his work has occasionally been considered relevant to contemporary theory of international politicsâespecially through the works of neo-English School thinkers such as Terry Nardin (1983), Nicholas Rengger (2013), and Robert Jackson (2000), as well as to constitutive theorists such as Mervyn Frost (2002). In many cases, even these theorists, who are all indebted to his thought, have failed to consider the broader implications of those of Oakeshottâs concepts they apply to their own field.
The intention of this book is to consider Oakeshottâs thought from both these perspectives. It shows that in Oakeshottâs works there are systematic considerations for world politics. At the same time, the book will take Oakeshottâs theory as a background and will develop its implications for international theory, with particular reference to the nature of international practices, international society, and to the relations between international law and morality.
The distinction between political philosophy and International Relations, in both its behaviourist and anti-behaviourist forms, started to collapse at the end of the twentieth century, when the critique of the positivist paradigm that had dominated International Relations gained momentum (Brown 1992, 1â19). Between the 1980s and the 1990s, the so-called normative turn, with its emphasis on the moral nature of international politics, and the constructivist turn (which similarly focused on its ideational and interpretative nature) have indeed re-introduced philosophical reflection into the field of International Relations (Brown 2013, 485).
Political theorists have extended their considerations to the international realm. An exemplar in this respect is of course John Rawlsâ The Law of Peoples (199 9 ), as are the works of Onora OâNeill, Charles Beitz, Michael Walzer, David Miller, Simon Caney, Terry Nardin, and others, who acknowledged that issues in International Relations are interconnected with those of political theory.
An increasing number of work, for example, presents and discusses the importance not only of classical thinkers, such as Plato, Hobbes and Rousseau (Brown et al. 2002; Prokhovnik and Slomp 2011; Lebow et al. 2016), but also of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Wittgenstein, Gramsci, and Habermas (among others). Even though some of them might have said little of direct relevance to the conduct of states, they have exerted a considerable influence on contemporary theories of international relations. Nietzscheâs notion of genealogy, Gramsciâs concept of hegemony, or Habermasâs theory of communicative actionâto mention just some among themâhave had, for example, a profound impact on critical theory and constructivism (for example, Farrands and Moore 2010).
David Boucherâs Political Theories of International Relations (1998) is of particular importance to the argument of the book, since it applies the Oakeshottian conception of the history of political philosophy to the identification of a tradition of texts in the political philosophical reflection on the conduct of states. Even though conceived as a unity, this history is regarded as animated by the dialectical relationship between three traditions of thought: Empirical Realism, Universal Moral Order, and Historical Reason. As part of this, contemporary reflection on International Relations was eventually reconnected to âthe intellectual heritage of the political theory of international relationsâ (Boucher 1998, 11, 375â405).
Also influenced by academic politics (Vincent 2015), International Relations as a discipline now seems much less concerned with theoretical problems and more with action-guiding issues (Brown 2013; Dunne et al. 2013 ). It also seems that there is a vague consensus among scholars advocating a certain methodological eclecticism, which merges positivist and post-positivist approaches, without much concern for the great historical metatheoretical debates (Lake 2013). However, as Christian Reus-Smit has pointed out, the solution of epistemological, methodological, and ontological questions, addressed through a self-conscious theoretical approach, is still essential to the discipline, and also to its quest for significance. What occasionally makes International Relations, and other disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, less-than-relevant is, Reus Smit argues, not just the lack of authoritative and charismatic public intellectual figures, or the loss of practical intents, but also the unawareness of the nature of practical reasoning and political action (Reus-Smit 2012).
If regarded in the light of this debate, Oakeshottâs philosophy may appear idiosyncratic. The style of his writings and the intellectual heritage to which he refers are certainly very different from those dominating current debates in International Relations. However, as I will argue, his ideas about the nature of normative reasoning and of political life, as well as his legal theory, may contribute to our understanding of world politics and international law.
The Structure of the Book
This study reveals that Oakeshottâs theory of civil association offers an original analysis of the historical, social, and moral dimension of international society. It argues that international society is constituted by an international rule of law, conceived as the codification of existing international âmoral practices.â
In his âIntroduction to Leviathan,â Oakeshott states that, to fully understand a philosophical text, one should consider it in the context of the whole history of political philosophy (Oakeshott 1991, 223â28). Following this methodology, I delineate Oakeshottâs ideas through the identification of their relations with the history of the political theory of international relations, as it has been presented by David Boucher, elaborating on Oakeshottâs triadic conception of the history of political philosophy (1998).
The argument of the book is as follows: Chap. 2 aims at identifying the meaning of Oakeshottâs philosophy, focusing on epistemological and metatheoretical questions. To investigate Oakeshottâs ideas, these are related to the philosophical tradition from which he developed his thought. Chapter 2 considers the widely debated issues of the consistency between Oakeshott and British idealism, exploring the relations that he identifies between different kinds of knowledge, and discussing his methodological holism. The chapter presents Oakeshottâs conception of philosophical method, again in relation to the British idealist debates on dialectic and th...