Contemporary theory of international politics faces a twofold problem: the critical engagement with legacies of national power politics in connection to 20th Century International Relations and the regeneration of notions of humanity. This book contributes to this engagement by a genealogy of thoughts on war, peace, and ethics.
This is the first book in international relations theory entirely devoted to the political thought of Reinhold Niebuhr. Focusing on the existential theology which lies at the basis of Reinhold Niebuhr’s theory of international politics, it highlights the ways in which Niebuhrian realism was not only profoundly theological, but also constituted a powerful existentialist reconfiguration of the Realist tradition going back to Saint Augustine. Guilherme Marques Pedro offers an innovative account of Reinhold Niebuhr’s eclectic thought, branching out into politics, ethics, history, society and religion and laying out a conceptual framework through which his work, as much as the realist tradition of international political thought as a whole, can be read. The book calls for the need to revisit classic thinkers within IR theory with an eye to their interdisciplinary background and as a way to remind ourselves of the issues that were at stake within the field as it was growing in autonomy and diversity – issues which remain, regardless of its disciplinary development, at the core of IR’s concerns. This book offers an important contribution to IR scholarship, revealing the great historical wealth, intellectual originality but also the limitations and paradoxes of one of the greatest American political thinkers of the twentieth century.
The idea of international political theory after Hobbes is a timely and lively focus through which to raise key questions about international politics, and to set up dialogues between historical political theory and contemporary theories of international relations about the legacy of Hobbes in international politics. The move by political theorists towards consideration of the international realm and the consequent blurring of the distinction between domestic and international politics over recent years has been marked. In the light of these changes, the role of Hobbes in the dominant realist theory of International Relations requires urgent re-examination. This book makes an important and distinctive contribution to the argument that international political theory is moving beyond the reading of Hobbes as a founding theorist of the modern state in an inter-state system perpetuated by orthodox International Relations. The volume brings together a set of internationally-respected researchers with an expertise on Hobbes’ views on international relations in the context of the history of political thought, Hobbesian realism, and on Hobbes and contemporary international political theory.
This book sets out to re-examine the foundations of Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy, and to develop a Hobbesian normative theory of international relations. Its central thesis is that two concepts – anarchy and authority – constitute the core of Hobbes's political philosophy whose aim is to justify the state. The Hobbesian state is a type of authority (juridical, public, coercive, and supreme) which emerges under conditions of anarchy ('state of nature'). A state-of-nature argument makes a difference because it justifies authority without appeal to moral obligation. The book shows that the closest analogue of a Hobbesian authority in international relations is Kant's confederation of free states, where states enjoy 'anarchical' (equal) freedom. At present, this crucial form of freedom is being threatened by economic processes of globalisation, and by the resurgence of private authority across state borders.
Against the twentieth-century 'Hobbesian anarchy', Before Anarchy reconsiders the originality and reception of Hobbes's interpersonal and international state of nature.
This insightful and wide-ranging volume traces the genesis of international intellectual thought, connecting international and global history with intellectual history.
Yves Charles Zarka shows you how Hobbes established the framework for modern political thought. Discover the origin of liberalism in the Hobbesian theory of negative liberty; that Hobbesian interest and contract are essential to contemporary discussions of the comportment of economic actors; and how state sovereignty returns anew in the form of the servility of the state. At the same time, Zarka controversially argues against received readings claiming that Hobbes is a thinker of a state monopoly on legitimate violence.
An exciting English-language edition which for the first time presents Thomas Hobbes's masterpiece Leviathan alongside two earlier works, The Elements of Law and De Cive. By arranging the three texts side by side, Baumgold offers readers an enhanced understanding of Hobbes's political theory and addresses an important need within Hobbes scholarship. The parallel presentation highlights substantive connections between the texts and makes it easy to trace the development of Hobbes's thinking. Readers can follow developments both at the 'micro' level of specific arguments and at the 'macro' level of the overall scope and organization of the theory. The volume also includes parallel presentations of Hobbes's chapter outlines, which serve as a key to the texts and are collected in a précis appendix.
This book explores Hobbes’s ideas about the internal pacification of states, the prospect of a peaceful international order, and the connections between civil and international peace. It questions the notion of a negative Hobbesian peace, which is based on the mere suppression of violence, and emphasises his positive vision of everlasting peace in a well-governed commonwealth. The book also highlights Hobbes’s ideas about international coexistence and cooperation, which he considers integral to good government. In examining Hobbes’s conception of peace, it provides a fresh perspective on his international political thought. The findings also have wider implications for the ways in which we think about Hobbes’s relationship to the realist and liberal traditions of international thought, and will appeal to students and scholars of political theory and international relations.