Journal of International Political Theory最新文献

{"title":"‘The cruelty of righteous people’: Niebuhr on the urgency of cruelty","authors":"B. Steele","doi":"10.1177/1755088221989745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088221989745","url":null,"abstract":"This paper responds to critics of Reinhold Niebuhr by exploring two themes important for locating his views on cruelty’s emergence in modern society. The first relates to his basic insight into the relationship between individual morality and group loyalty and solidarity. Niebuhr provides a sophisticated argument for such group dynamics in his work, issued in Moral Man, Immoral Society, as well as his essays on race. These also form the basis for his second thematic argument regarding cruelty, the role of ‘righteousness’ as it relates to security and insecurity. Niebuhr’s views on race, I argue, need to be considered more broadly as an example of his views on groups, power, and cruelty. The paper concludes with some modest proposals for thinking about combatting cruelty via Niebuhr’s counsel.","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088221989745","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49114533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reinhold Niebuhr: The law of love and the omnipresence of power","authors":"D. Clinton","doi":"10.1177/1755088220985881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220985881","url":null,"abstract":"The twentieth-century theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr frequently employed a formulation confounding to his readers, simultaneously appealing to the loftiest altruism as summed up in his identification of the “law of love” and compelling attention to the grittiest realism as encapsulated in his recognition of a universal struggle for power. This sharp contrast was no careless error on Niebuhr’s part, but rather an insistence on describing in the most sharply contrasting tones the paradoxical character of human nature. In his Christian Realist view fear and a consequent desire for power over others to protect oneself are inescapable components of human existence within history. The human need for community and refusal to be satisfied with anything less than devotion to the wellbeing of others unsullied by self-love are nevertheless also implanted in the human heart, which recognizes that reality extends beyond human history. Niebuhr demanded attention to both.","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220985881","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41511986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cosmopolitan Global Politics","authors":"Richard Beardsworth","doi":"10.1177/1755088220969717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220969717","url":null,"abstract":"I met Patrick in the summer of 2008 in St Andrews at the opening conference of the Journal of International Political Theory, which he and Tony Lang organized: “Thinking (With)Out Borders: International Political Theory in the 21st Century.” The conference, as with succeeding ones, brought together many theorists engaged in making International Relations theory more sophisticated by bringing to it the traditions of Political Theory and Political Philosophy. I will always recall Patrick’s disposition at the conference: welcoming, sincere, critical, cosmopolitan-minded. It was after that conference that I read Hayden’s (2005) book Cosmopolitan Global Politics. I was, at the time, framing my own book on cosmopolitanism and international politics, and his book was important for me. Its argument concerning the relevance of the philosophy and morality of cosmopolitanism to international relations was exemplary, with its trained focus on the emergence of global governance mechanisms, the pressures of global civil society on national governments, and his rehearsal of the meaning of world citizenship within these processes. Patrick’s book moved very purposefully between moral cosmopolitanism and political ways of implementing this moral engagement. The book confirmed, for me, the disposition that I had met in St Andrews in 2008. I did not agree with Patrick’s interpretation of realism in the book, nor his understanding of state sovereignty as an obstacle to cosmopolitan governance, but his refusal to compromise with duties of global justice made the book’s cosmopolitan political project both morally clear and politically consistent. That clarity and consistency has, I believe, underpinned the way he edited the Journal of International Political Theory over the last 10 years. I am particularly grateful to him for not only his editorial steering of two special issues with which I was concerned, but also for sustaining and promoting the space of academic engagement with Political Theory and International Relations. I was surprised to learn of his early retirement, although I was aware that he was finding the rhythms of UK academic life increasingly incompatible with intellectual life. I should not have been surprised, I suppose: his clarity and consistency had won through again! Given recent events and the present historical conjuncture, the cosmopolitan political project is to be rethought. Greater focus on the state is necessary, not only as a site of motivation for collective endeavor, but also as the place from which collective political projects are made possible, including global challenges. Patrick’s book ended with an","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220969717","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42171174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The international politics of amour propre: Revisiting Rousseau’s place in international relations theory","authors":"J. King","doi":"10.1177/1755088220983832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220983832","url":null,"abstract":"Realism, constructivism, and liberal institutionalism share the assumption that states are rational and self-maximizing actors. While these theories disagree as to whether states prioritize military power or economic wealth, they converge around the notion that states pursue these goods rationally and predictably. Complaints against and threats of defection from prominent international security and trade regimes, including NATO and the EU, raise doubts about states’ rationality and predictability. Perhaps these theories’ shared assumption about rational action has become an impediment to understanding state behavior and institutional cooperation. To enrich and to expand the conversation within international political theory, my article turns to Rousseau’s international political thought. Rousseau anticipates central arguments in each of the major traditions of IR theory but locates political self-interest in the sub-rational passion amour propre rather than in reason itself. Rousseau exemplifies a more nuanced way to understand the irrational roots of political motivation and the limits of international order. My paper traces the international implications of amour propre through Rousseau’s key texts on international politics and turns to his “Letter to Philopolis” as a way to re-frame Rousseau’s account of political responsibility.","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220983832","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48185842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Asking the fox to guard the chicken coop: In defense of minimalism in the ethics of war and peace","authors":"Elisabeth Forster, Isaac Taylor","doi":"10.1177/1755088220985882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220985882","url":null,"abstract":"Dominant normative theories of armed conflict orientate themselves around the ultimate goal of peace. Yet the deployment of these theories in the international sphere appears to have failed in advancing toward this goal. In this paper, we argue that one major reason for this failure is these theories’ use of essentially contested concepts—that is, concepts whose internally complex character results in no principled way of adjudicating between rival interpretations of them. This renders the theories susceptible to manipulation by international actors who are able to pursue bellicose policies under the cover of nominally pacific frameworks, and we show how this happened historically in a case study of the Korean War of 1950–1953. In order to better serve the goals of peace, we suggest, the rules of war should be reframed to simpler, but more restrictive, normative principles.","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220985882","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44626598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Why read Reinhold Niebuhr now?","authors":"Liane Hartnett, Lucian M. Ashworth","doi":"10.1177/1755088220981093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220981093","url":null,"abstract":"Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) is perhaps the best known North American theologian of the twentieth century. Over the course of his life he was a Christian socialist, pacifist, a staunch anti-communist, and an architect of vital-centre liberalism. Niebuhr wrote on themes as diverse as war, democracy, world order, political economy and race. So significant was Niebuhr’s intellectual influence that George Kennan once described him as ‘the father of us all’. Indeed, from the thought of Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King Jr. to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Hans Morgenthau to Kenneth Waltz, E.H. Carr to Jean Bethke Elshtain, Niebuhr has helped shape International Relations. Bringing together intellectual historians and international political theorists, this special issue asks whether Niebuhr’s thought remains relevant to our times? Can he help us think about democracy, power, race, the use of force, and cruelty in a moment when ethnonationalism appears ascendant and democracy in decline?","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220981093","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42920192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Re-reading Niebuhr’s The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: The crisis of democracy in an interdependent world then and now","authors":"Lucian M. Ashworth","doi":"10.1177/1755088220979728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220979728","url":null,"abstract":"Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness is one of the key English-language texts in the post-war settlement literature of the early 1940s. This article analyses the book on three interconnected levels: the nature of the argument made by Niebuhr in the book, its place in the broader post-war settlement literature of the early 1940s, and its relevance to the current problems of right-wing populism and the climate crisis. While the main theme of the book is the necessity and impossibility of democracy, it shares with the work of Isaiah Bowman and David Mitrany a concern for the tension between the state and interdependence. The deepening of this tension since has helped keep Niebuhr relevant, although his initial distinction between the children of light and the children of darkness has been complicated by both populism and the climate crisis.","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220979728","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45034080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From revolutionary Paris to Nootka Sound to Saint-Domingue: The international politics and prejudice behind Wollstonecraft’s theory of the rights of humanity, 1789–91","authors":"E. Botting","doi":"10.1177/1755088220978432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220978432","url":null,"abstract":"Against the background of the international political crises generated by the early phase of the French Revolution at Nootka Sound in 1790 and in Saint-Domingue in 1791, Mary Wollstonecraft developed a capacious political theory of the “rights of humanity.” She pushed beyond narrow post-revolutionary European constructions of “the rights of man” which ignored or excluded “the poor,” “Indians,” “African slaves,” and “women.” While closely following the international politics of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft developed the core arguments of A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Her key philosophical innovation was to publicly universalize the conceptual scope of rights, such that rights were no longer—implicitly or explicitly—solely the legal entitlement of propertied white European men, but rather the moral and political entitlement of the whole of humanity across nations. Yet she rhetorically contradicted and philosophically limited the cross-cultural universalism of her theory of equal rights by punctuating her arguments with Western Protestant and Orientalist stereotypes of Eastern despotism. Consequently, international politics and international prejudice shaped Wollstonecraft’s theory of equal rights and her application of it to peoples and cultures beyond those of Western Protestant Europe.","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220978432","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49251943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘The Impossible Possibility of Love’: Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought on racial justice","authors":"Liane Hartnett","doi":"10.1177/1755088220979003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220979003","url":null,"abstract":"Love has been long lauded for its salvific potential in U.S. anti-racist rhetoric. Yet, what does it mean to speak or act in love’s name to redress racism? Turning to the work of the North American public intellectual and theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), this essay explores his contribution to normative theory on love’s role in the work of racial justice. Niebuhr was a staunch supporter of civil rights, and many prominent figures of the movement such as James Cone, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., J. Deotis Roberts and Cornel West drew on his theology. Indeed, Niebuhr underscores love’s promise and perils in politics, and its potential to respond to racism via the work of critique, compassion, and coercion. Engaging with Niebuhr’s theology on love and justice, then, not only helps us recover a rich realist resource on racism, but also an ethic of realism as antiracism.","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220979003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41939890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian realist pendulum","authors":"Vassilios Paipais","doi":"10.1177/1755088220979001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220979001","url":null,"abstract":"Reinhold Niebuhr is widely acknowledged as the father of Christian realism and a staunch critic of pacifism. In a famous exchange with his brother H. Richard in The Christian Century, Niebuhr defended the necessity of entering the fray of battle to combat evil as opposed to opting for non-violent detachment that ultimately usurps God’s authority to decide on final matters. Niebuhr, however, never endorsed an aggressive Just War doctrine. Striving to reconcile the Christian command of love with the harsh realities of power resulting from universal sinfulness, Niebuhr emphasised the necessity of negotiating the distance between the two extremes of a pendulum swinging from Christian pacifism to the endorsement of interventionist policies. Rather than this being an expression of the ambiguity of his moral convictions, this paper argues that it is a product of his sensitivity to applying contextual moral and political judgement as an exercise of theological responsibility.","PeriodicalId":44237,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Political Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1755088220979001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43366682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}