ABSTRACT
For Aristotle, every part is a whole, every whole is a part of some larger whole, every whole-part is defined by its purpose, nature is purposive. Aristotle was hardly alone in thinking this way. The world experienced the devastating collision of two nations convinced of their superiority by Enlightenment standards and locked together in the carapace of a single state, a ‘more perfect union’ called the United States. These nations, North and South, were no longer two parts of one whole, but two wholes where there could only be one. Harry Gould took the first graduate class in international relations (IR) theory and Alex Barder took the last such class a decade later. As Alex observes, the book had had no discernible impact in IR or, for that matter, in any other field. It was never likely to reach a sizable audience, and not just because it falls between established fields of study.
