Silviya Lechner

The article is written in response to a recent flurry of studies on international practices. In investigating this theme, International Relations scholars have drawn on diverse traditions in sociology, philosophy and organisational theory such as Bourdieu’s theory of practice, Dewey’s and James’ pragmatism, communities of practice approach and actor-network theory. One preliminary question presupposed by these investigations however is, what standpoint (if any) enables us to make sense of international practices? Our central thesis is that the proper understanding of practices – including international ones – requires the internal point of view (practice internalism). To make our case, we develop an analytic distinction between two basic standpoints: practice externalism, represented by Adler and Pouliot’s approach to international practices, and practice internalism, represented by Wittgensteinian philosopher Peter Winch. Following Winch, we argue that the practice of social science is externalist, and point to the limitations of an analysis of international practices predicated on externalist, social scientific premises.

Hobbes specialists have been divided over the question whether Hobbes’s major works on morality, law, and politics—The Elements, De Cive, and Leviathan—constitute a unity or whether there are philosophically significant discontinuities. This book makes a case for a discontinuous reading. The hypothesis is that the analysis in The Elements and De Cive is markedly distinct from that in Leviathan. The present chapter introduces the central elements that comprise the analytical construct of a state of nature in The Elements: the passions, the right of nature, and the laws of nature, treating obligation, covenant, and law as background considerations necessary to elucidate these more central concerns. The subsequent chapters will examine this construct in the context of De Cive and Leviathan.

Part II of this book examined the multiple conceptions and models of Hobbes’s state of nature, articulated in The Elements, De Cive, and Leviathan. Part III is devoted to Hobbes’s theory of international relations. This chapter takes up the problem of an international state of nature, or international anarchy. It will develop and assess three alternative positions that can be said to follow from Hobbes’s domestic theory of the state—a world state model, a pure anarchy (or realist) model, and a third perspective, called normativism, which projects an image of a normatively modulated international anarchy.

The fundamental problem of political philosophy—Why should there be a state?—supposes both a definition of the state and an argument for its justification. The central thesis of this book is that Hobbes formulates this problem as a relation between authority and anarchy—or what Hobbes calls a ‘state of nature’—and not between authority and some more basic moral principles. This latter approach to state justification is endorsed by the majority of contemporary political philosophers. This chapter will explicate these two alternative approaches by focussing on the concept of authority. This will prepare the ground for discussing the complex set of arguments on the state of nature that Hobbes presents in his major writings on morality and politics: The Elements, De Cive, and Leviathan.

This chapter continues the analysis of Hobbes’s state of nature by focussing on De Cive (1647/1651). Its central thesis is that even though De Cive modifies the earlier set of arguments for a state of nature from The Elements, Hobbes’s conclusions are broadly consistent with the early work. Three modifications are notable. The first is the new principle of natural unsociability. The second is the radicalised image of the state of war, which becomes a ‘war of all against all’. The third, and most important one, is the increased normative significance of the laws of nature compared with the perfunctory treatment of the right of nature. This priority of law over right calls for an explanation. Accordingly, the final two sections of the present chapter will examine the relation between the right of nature and the laws of nature, and the normativity of the laws of nature (their obligatoriness, and their basis in reason) at the background of classic interpretations of De Cive by Howard Warrender, David Daiches Raphael, and Thomas Nagel.

In the previous chapter, Hobbes’s theory of international relations was reconstructed working from his conception of a domestic state of nature or ‘anarchy’. The result was to identify two mutually opposed models—a world state model or an international anarchy (‘realist’) model—together with a more ambiguous normative perspective that depicts the international anarchy as modulated by laws of nature. The present chapter is devoted to a third Hobbesian model of an international authority that exists within anarchy. Its central argument is that Kant’s theory of international authority, based on his principle of international right, constitutes the closest logical analogue of such an ‘internationalist’ Hobbesian model. The model is a via media between a pure anarchy where states are dissociated individuals relying on self-help and a world state, as a globally centralised coercive structure.

This chapter shows that in Leviathan Hobbes has changed some key concepts as well the basic model(s) of the state of nature. The analysis defends a structuralist reading of the state of nature which presents Hobbesian individuals as free and equal beings interacting inside a finite realm. This constitutes a departure from the conventional, ‘passions’ reading of Hobbes’s state of nature. The chapter highlights the relation between the proposed structuralist interpretation and Hobbes’s internalist understanding of language.

This final chapter addresses two major challenges to the perspective of Hobbesian internationalism developed in this book: globalisation and the resurgence of private authority. Processes of globalisation, global governance, and Foucauldian governmentality have been associated with the spread of agencies—networks, private security companies, and other subnational and supranational actors—that operate across state borders. These processes presuppose values other than freedom such as economic efficiency, speed, even posthumanism, their agencies are not always clearly identifiable, and their authority remains private. The chapter shows that enthusiasm about such global trends may be premature. In the concluding section, the Lockean model of private authority is compared with the Hobbesian/Kantian model of public authority. On this basis, a global public realm committed to freedom is defended against the alternative of a private public realm predicated on efficiency.

This chapter introduces the central thesis of the book: that Hobbes is best read as a theorist of authority (right to rule) and anarchy (‘state of nature’). Anarchy is shown to be the grounding mechanism for the state in Hobbes’s political philosophy. This differentiates Hobbes’s position from that of contemporary political philosophers who justify the state by appealing to moral principles. The chapter warns against reductionist readings of Hobbes’s concept of a state of nature, associated with the image of a ‘war of all against all’. It specifies the interpretive methodology used (analytical hermeneutics). Finally, and crucially, it shows how Hobbes’s political philosophy, augmented with Kantian premises, can be developed into a theory of international relations termed Hobbesian internationalism.

This book sets out to re-examine the foundations of Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy, and to develop a Hobbesian normative theory of international relations. Its central thesis is that two concepts – anarchy and authority – constitute the core of Hobbes's political philosophy whose aim is to justify the state. The Hobbesian state is a type of authority (juridical, public, coercive, and supreme) which emerges under conditions of anarchy ('state of nature'). A state-of-nature argument makes a difference because it justifies authority without appeal to moral obligation. The book shows that the closest analogue of a Hobbesian authority in international relations is Kant's confederation of free states, where states enjoy 'anarchical' (equal) freedom. At present, this crucial form of freedom is being threatened by economic processes of globalisation, and by the resurgence of private authority across state borders.

Are social practices actions, or institutional frameworks of interaction structured by common rules? How do social practices such as signing a cheque differ from international practices such as signing a peace treaty? Traversing the fields of international relations and philosophy, this book defends an institutionalist conception of practices as part of a general practice theory indebted to Oakeshott, Wittgenstein and Hegel. The proposed practice theory has two core aspects: practice internalism and normative descriptivism. In developing a philosophical analysis of social practices that has a special relevance for international relations, Silviya Lechner and Mervyn Frost depart from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of practice that dominates the current 'practice turn' in IR. The authors show that the contemporary global realm is constituted by two distinct macro practices - the practice of sovereign states and that of global rights.

The category of anarchy is conventionally associated with the emergence of an autonomous discipline of International Relations. Recently, Donnelly has argued that anarchy has never been central to IR. His criticism targets not just concepts of anarchy but theories of anarchy and thereby expresses an anti-theory ethos tacitly accepted in the discipline. As a form of conceptual atomism, this ethos is hostile to structuralist and normative theories. This article aims to reinstate theoretical holism against conceptual atomism and to defend the enduring relevance of theories of international anarchy for IR. This is done by revisiting two classic, structuralist accounts of international anarchy articulated in Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics and Hedley Bull’s Anarchical Society. It will be shown that both represent coherent theoretical ‘wholes’ which reveal a more complex relationship between anarchy and hierar...