This article defends a sentimentalist cosmopolitan approach to international ethics against the rationalist cosmopolitan claim that emotions ought to be subjugated by their master, reason, and in processes of ethical deliberation. It argues that emotions play an indispensable role in making moral judgements and help to motivate ethical actions. Drawing on elements of 18th century moral sentiment theory and recent advances in neuroscience and psychology, the article demonstrates that reason and emotion are intimately linked forms of reflective thought, that emotion is central to reason and, far from disrupting processes of ethical deliberation, may actually enhance our ability to make moral judgements. Focusing on the problem of global poverty, the article shows that a sentimentalist cosmopolitan ethic provides a holistic approach to moral dilemmas in world politics that is capable of identifying injustices, prescribing how we ought to respond to them, and motivating ethical action in response to the injustices we observe.

Although they have been a central feature of the disciplinary history of International Relations, little attention has been paid to the historical and epistemological implications of designating certain sets of writers and their ideas as belonging to particular `traditions of thought'. In light of this, this article is concerned with the theoretical conceptualisation of the term `tradition', its historical connotations, and its specific application to the history of IR scholarship. Relying heavily on Michael Oakeshott's philosophy of history, it argues not only that traditions are inherently `invented' phenomena but that the purposes for which they are invented — that is, whether they are historical or practical in orientation — is central to the analysis of their contents. Having established a theoretical understanding of `tradition', the article discusses the works of John G. Gunnell and Brian C. Schmidt as providing a number of useful ways in which traditions, thus conceived, might be analysed before demonstrating how this might be done in IR scholarship using the works of Martin Wight and Hedley Bull as a pertinent example. In doing so, the article also seeks to make a more general claim about the need for greater historical awareness in contemporary IR scholarship.

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