ABSTRACT
In IR ‘there are always two stories to tell’, remarked Hollis and Smith (1991): one inside and
the other outside. These two, they claimed, were unbridgeable. We argue, on the contrary, that
there are as many stories to tell as there are agents. For stories are but one-sided representations.
There are always other sides to stories. However, the concrete content of the field is not
exhausted no matter how many stories are told. These reflect merely how the world appears
to singular agents and how that agent ‘ex-plains’ the world external to itself. This can only be
the starting point of the investigation. If reality is inter-subjective, in order to mentally reproduce
reality we need to take into account the ‘ex-planations’ and ‘understandings’ of other subjects so
that we arrive at a fuller picture. We come to an understanding of reality only by identifying the
relations connecting ‘ex-planations’. Praxis, as the unity of thinking and action, as purposive
activity, is the most crucial aspect of this reconstruction. For it is not the contemplative ego,
but real, flesh, and blood individuals who act in reproducing themselves.
