ABSTRACT
Modern theories of international relations have taken ample advantage of the opportunity Max Weber provided. But Weber's reading of the limits of a modern spatial politics as simultaneously a reading of the limits of a modern temporal politics also retains a capacity to destabilize the benign accounts of an abstract state that have enabled theories of international relations to naturalize and legitimize the violence of the modern world. Visions of reason and progress have indeed found material expression in a political economy of abundance, at least for some peoples, in some places. Yet we also live in a world capable of unleashing violence, even species extermination, on an unprecedented scale. Versions of the contradiction between Enlightenment and despair have inspired influential currents of critical social and political enquiry for at least the past century. The universalistic aspirations of modernity have come with a characteristic shadow that acknowledges the limits within which claims without apparent limits might be sustained.
