Abstract
‘Political theory’ is a phrase that in general requires no explanation. It is used here to denote speculation about the state, which is its traditional meaning from Plato onwards. On the other hand, the phrase ‘international theory’ does require explanation. At first hearing, it is likely to be taken as meaning either the methodology of the study of international relations, or some conceptual system which offers a unified explanation of international phenomena — ‘the theory of international relations.’ In this paper neither of these is intended. By ‘international theory’ is meant a tradition of speculation about relations between states, a tradition imagined as the twin of speculation about the state to which the name ‘political theory’ is appropriated. And international theory in this sense does not, at first sight, exist.
H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations (London: George Allen & Unwin), pp. 17–34.
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Notes
For recent writings there is a valuable critical study in Stanley H. Hoffman, Contemporary Theory in International Relations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960).
Sir Geoffrey Butler and Simon Maccoby, The Development of International Law (London: Longmans, 1928), p. 7.
They have now been admirably surveyed by F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), part i.
F. Meinecke, Machiavellism (English trans, London: Routledge, 1957), p. 67, n. 1.
H. J. Morgenthau, Dilemmas of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 54. Cf. In Defense of the National Interest (New York: Knopf, 1951).
A. E. Zimmern, The Study of International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), pp. 13–14.
Bohdan Chudoba, Spain and the Empire 1519–1643 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 190.
J. M. Murry, The Free Society (Dakers, 1948), p. 63.
Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 457–458.
The best English translation is still that by W. Hastie, in Kant’s Principles of Politics (Clark, 1891).
Evgeny Krieger, From Moscow to the Prussian Frontier (London: Hutchinson, 1945), p. 8: November 1941.
C. E. M. Joad, Why War? (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1939), pp. 50, 52.
Ivan Bloch, Modern Weapons and Modern War (London: Grant Richards, 1900).
The Grotian Tradition in International Law’, British Year Book of International Law (1946), p. 16.
See C. K. Webster, Foreign Policy of Palmerston (London: Bell, 1951), vol. i, pp. 109, 132.
Francois Laurent, Etudes sur l’histoire de humanite, vol. i (2nd edn., 1879), p. 42. I owe this quotation to Walter Schiffer, The Legal Community of Mankind (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), p. 160.
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Wight, M. (1995). Why is There No International Theory? (1966). In: Der Derian, J. (eds) International Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23773-9_2
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