Pragmatism, Realism and the ethics of crisis and transformation in international relations

Abstract

This article examines Carr’s work in The Twenty Years’ Crisis and Conditions of Peace in the light of an analogy that Carr draws between his work and that of the American pragmatist philosopher, William James. The article argues that one gains a greater understanding of the internal workings of Carr’s most important IR works if one understands him as operating within the pragmatist tradition (as James understood it). A further aim of the paper is to investigate the evolution in Carr’s ethical commitment to peace in The Twenty Years' Crisis and Conditions of Peace as a product of a pragmatist perspective on global politics. The article concludes with a section on how pragmatist Realist ethics complements existing theories of Realist ethics in IR by reference to Richard Ned Lebow’s The Tragic Vision of Politics and Michael C. Williams’ The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations.

Debating global justice with Carr: The crisis of laissez faire and the legitimacy problem in the twenty-first century

“…4 Despite this, there is an emerging consensus today that Morgenthau’s (1948) famous dismissal of Carr as a ‘utopian of power’ was simplistic (Molloy, 2013: 270; Scheuerman, 2011: 26). Instead, an important aspect of Carr’s morality has been consistently developed: A context-specific morality that draws on his analysis of historical change (Germain, 2000; Heath, 2010; Kostagiannis, 2017; Molloy, 2014; Williams, 2013). As Peter Wilson (2013) argued, Carr’s critique of utopianism cannot be understood separately from his analysis of the changing conditions under which the nineteenth century order survived.…”

“…Carr’s critique was thus not the harmony of interests per se , but its breakdown in the twentieth century given the changing conditions from the nineteenth-century (Evans 1975: 84). 5 Carr’s ethics in this case, as Sean Molloy (2014) argued, proceed in pragmatic terms to provide contextual and concrete solutions within these changing conditions.…”

“…Furthermore, Carr’s adherence to socialism and the cause of the lesser privileged is far from ‘uncritical’ (Johnston, 2007: 158). Rather, it is, as Molloy (2014) argues, a pragmatic response to real-world problems that recent events have shown to be enduring and in need of concrete solutions. This is not to say that there has been no change in world politics since Carr’s writing.…”

“…Building on existing literature that examined the theme of morality in Carr (among others, see Johnston, 2007; Kostagiannis, 2017; Molloy, 2009; Molloy, 2014; Pashakhanlou, 2018; Rich, 2000; Scheuerman, 2011), this article situates Carr’s ethics in the context of the rise of the socialised nation – what Carr also refers to as ‘social nationalism’ – in the twentieth century. 2 It specifically focuses on the link Carr draws between the latter development and the crisis of laissez faire due to its loss of legitimacy among the lesser privileged.…”

A pessimistic liberalism: Jacob Talmon’s suspicion and the birth of contemporary political thought

“… 1. There is excellent work on post-WWII international theory, though much of this is focused on an analysis of realist international relations. See, inter alia, Molloy (2014); Bell (2017); Guilhot (2017). …”