ABSTRACT
Readers of the contemporary literature in international relations (IR) increasingly find calls for a pragmatic reorientation in theorising the field. Some scholars, for instance, advocate a more pragmatic version of constructivism and a greater concern with the relevance of academic knowledge to our political life (Bernstein et al. 2000). Others interpret the increasingly scholastic debates as a “flight from reality” (Shapiro 2005) and call for a more decisive “pragmatic turn” (Bohman 2002; Owen 2002). It is no accident that the former argument is made predominantly by students of foreign policy and diplomacy. They traditionally have been ill at ease with the project of a general “theory” of international politics, particularly after the dissolution of the bipolarity that gave some prima facie legitimacy to “systemic” approaches.1 [. . .]
The more principled calls for a pragmatic approach, however, come from some IR specialists who have participated in previous “great debates”. Here the present anthology, as well as the recent contributions by P.J. Katzenstein and R. Sil (forthcoming), or my Tartu lecture (Kratochwil 2007) resulting in a symposium, could be mentioned. These calls usually not only entail a move away from some of the foundationalist criteria of classical positivist science – be it those of empiricism, logical positivism or scientific realism – but they also invite us to give up on the universal suspicion of critical theory, or the endless deconstructions of some postmodern attempts of “theory construction”. Instead, the actual problem that such a pragmatic turn identifies is the mistaken attempt of reducing issues of praxis, and of the knowledge appropriate for it, to “philosophical” or even metaphysical questions. Here the postulated primacy of ontology over epistemology (or vice versa), of “rump materialism” over “idealism” debates, come to mind (Wendt 1999).
