Of communities, gangs, historicity and the problem of Santa Claus: replies to my critics
- PDF / 200,901 Bytes
- 22 Pages / 442 x 663 pts Page_size
- 92 Downloads / 173 Views
Of communities, gangs, historicity and the problem of Santa Claus: replies to my critics Friedrich Kratochwil Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini, 9, 50016 San Domenico di Fiesole (Firenze), Italia. E-mail: [email protected]
In responding to the critics of my Tartu lecture, I firstly examine a little further the ‘community’ aspect of science as a practice, because I do not quite share Lebows’s optimism that ‘ethics’ applied to the scientific enterprise are powerful enough to prevent its derailments. Secondly, I admit that a lack of an explicit historical dimension in my lectures noticed by Suganami was dictated more by circumstances than by an oversight or a denial of its importance. While Suganami believes that a sense of history, as well as some criticism of both international relations (IR) and history on the meta level, are sufficient for a new and fruitful beginning of IR analysis, I’m emphasizing the contribution which ordinary language philosophy could make to a new type of social analysis and, in particular, the theory of speech acts and of ‘institutions’ a` la Searle. Thirdly, instead of putting up a straw man and knocking him down, as Wight has done in his misunderstanding of my position, I’m addressing the issue of ‘scientific realism’ and its alleged predominance in the philosophy of science, the question of ontology and epistemology and, finally, the issue of whether the claims that ‘nature’ directly speaks to us is of any help in explaining actions rather than events. Journal of International Relations and Development (2007) 10, 57–78. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jird.1800113 Keywords: community of practice; epistemology; history; institutions; ontology
Magna latrocinia (Gangs) or Communities of Practice? Ned Lebow’s (2007) contribution to this exchange focuses less on a criticism of my talk. That is probably because there are no deep-seated disagreements with regard to epistemological or methodological issues between us since, over the years, we have engaged in an ongoing conversation on these problems. Instead, he addresses the community of practice problem, a question which I have raised but never fully examined. Ned’s discussion is illuminating and his quite justifiably critical treatment of the fraternity of political scientists indicates that its practices leave much to be desired, if not to say that they often border on the scandalous. As Ned intimated, virtually everyone has some horror stories to Journal of International Relations and Development, 2007, 10, (57–78) r 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1408-6980/07 $30.00
www.palgrave-journals.com/jird
Journal of International Relations and Development Volume 10, Number 1, 2007
58
tell. One of mine is the reaction of one leading international relations (IR) specialist who, after reading an article I wrote years ago with John Ruggie (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986), stated that ‘it is people like me’ (us) who — mirabile dictu — ‘made Hitler possible’ (even getting, among
Data Loading...
