ABSTRACT
Ethical problems are the product of historical development. Nuclear weapons or drones, for example, had to be invented before they could be perceived as raising particular ethical challenges. This chapter presents a history of the discipline in terms of its ethical concerns and approaches, focusing particularly on institutions, law, and rights. It details this disciplinary history in the broader context of the development of the modern sciences and the political context. The chapter briefly describes the intellectual and political beginnings and the early years of the discipline. It also describes the development of international thought and its ethical concerns from Second World War to the Cold War. The chapter looks at stock of the current state of the discipline and its implications for ethics. Ethical concerns are embedded within the very constitution of international relations as an independent field of study and constitute an integral element of all its theoretical approaches, methodologies, and epistemologies as well as its substantive studies.
