World Politics: Rationalism and Beyond

By Ralph Pettman

This book provides an overview of the entire discipline of world affairs in a way that makes immediate sense. It is also a critique of the limits that rationalism sets on how we know world affairs, showing how we might transcend these limits by augmenting rationalist research with non-rationalist techniques. It should appeal to anyone interested in why analysts so often seem to explain world affairs inaccurately and misunderstand what these affairs mean.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Society for Philosophy & Culture
• Release date: Feb 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301901319

Ralph Pettman

Ralph Pettman was educated at the University of Adelaide and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has taught at the Australian National University, Princeton University, Tokyo University and the University of Sydney and has held research appointments at the Australian National University, Cambridge University (UK), the Frankfurt Institute for Peace Research, and the New School for Social Research (NY). He has also worked for the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Australian Foreign Aid Bureau, and the Australian Broadcasting Commission. He is the founder of the first electronic journal on world affairs in the world: AntePodium; co-editor of a monograph series on constructivism for M.E.Sharpe, Inc.; a member of the editorial board of advisers of Global Change, Peace and Security; a member of the international advisory board of the European Journal of International Relations; and a member of the advisory boards of International Politics and Religion; Millennium: Journal of International Studies; and the International Advisory Council of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research.

Book preview

Preface

This book represents the conclusion of a protracted attempt to answer three very general questions, namely: what are ‘world affairs’, that we might know them; what are ‘we’, that we might know world affairs; and what, in this respect, is it ‘to know’? Here I address mostly the last concern, though in doing so, I am clearly addressing the others as well.

In making the usual noises about those who have helped, I would like to thank Jim Rolfe in particular, since he has been such an important part of this project over the last few years.

I should also add that the initial idea for this work was not mine. It was that of another esteemed colleague, Paul Morris. For good, ill, or otherwise, what follows wouldn’t have been written if he hadn’t suggested I do so. Thanks Paul, I think.

And last but not least, there’s Setsuko. Thanks, my love.

Ralph Pettman

although it might present a clouded surface to the eye of reason, one sensed a content… solid… consistent… explicit… new… original… on an equal footing with the ideas of the intellect.

– Marcel Proust

Introduction

For reasons that will soon become evident, ‘world politics’ is represented here by the term ‘world affairs’. So, what is ‘world affairs’, whether in general terms or in the particular? What is our subject?

Our subject is an object, or objects, since a question like this is most likely to be answered at the moment by putting the world at a mental distance and reifying it. World affairs studied in this objectifying fashion get notionally detached from us, becoming in the process such things as states and firms, nations and social movements.

It is the mental distancing that comes first, particularly for the legatees of the so-called European Enlightenment. The thinkers of this place and time prioritised untrammelled reason. They exalted the objectifying mind-gaze. And every time we use reason the way they bid us do, we reaffirm the analytic distance they made into a major cultural project they have been pleased to entitle in retrospect the ‘modernist project’.

And every time the result is reification. Objectivity is had by objectifying, which in turn tends to beget discrete analytic entities and outcomes, a sequence that is not inexorable, but one that is definitely a key feature of Euro-American thinking. This includes, of course, the Euro-American thinking that gets done about (and results in) one particular analytic ‘object’ – world affairs.

It also behoves us to consider how it is that abstractions… tend to emphasise the well-being of an aggregate rather than of individuals, excepting, that is, the sort of abstraction that constitutes individuals themselves.[1] This has implications in turn for another key feature of Euro-American thinking – the concept of progress. Those born and raised as rationalists (‘rationalism’ being the use of reason as an end in itself) use detachment as a matter of course. It becomes as a consequence second nature to them. This is also why a question like that posed above does not tend to lead to answers about the objectifying nature of the rationalist mind-gaze itself. Rationalists tend to take abstraction for granted, and they tend, therefore, to assume the ‘object’ character of what they analytically observe. The objectifying itself goes largely unremarked, which is both a strength and a weakness, both helping and hindering our attempts to know world affairs.

It is a strength in that it helps to free the rationalist from the mental constraints of his or her immediate environment. As he or she tries to gain a more abstract understanding of the subject, moving the mind to a point at a distance makes it easier to eschew the influence of tradition and convention. It gives human reason freer rein.

It is a weakness as well, however, in that the reifying results of rationalist disengagement obscure the extent to which world affairs are made up not of objects but of complex patterns of repeated human practice. It obscures the extent to which world affairs are constructed by those taking part. This obviously includes the world’s state-makers, the world’s corporate managers, and the world’s proponents of human rights and democracy. To some extent, however, it now includes us all.

Obscuring the constructed nature of world affairs also makes it harder to appreciate how world affairs actually occur, and how (and why) world affairs change. By inhibiting us from bringing the subjective back in, by depicting any such move as inherently subjectivist, and therefore, as non- or even anti-objective, we are precluded from a comprehensive understanding of world affairs. This in turn inhibits our capacity to explain them.

Might we not turn rationalism’s weakness into a strength? To do that we must depict objectifying and reifying as parts of a knowing process, that does not end there, however. We must not only disengage ourselves from world affairs and reflect on what we see in an objectifying way, but we must also stand close to listen in a subjectifying way. And we must try to take part.

This is not a matter of doing ‘applied’ as well as ‘pure’ research. Nor is it a matter of eschewing theory to collect anecdotes. Rather, it is a matter of doing proximal as well as distal research. It means actively disengaging from world affairs, then actively engaging in them again, and then actively disengaging once more.

The experience of world affairs

We know the rudiments of disengagement. Rationalism teaches us these from a very early age. And since world affairs are ‘in here’ as well as ‘out there’, engaging in them again can be quite straightforward too. We need only introspect, for example, to be able to hear world affairs at work, and to know at least part of what taking part in them involves. After all, those events that seem far away, like a war or a famine in a distant country, only make sense in terms of the ideas we already have about the way world affairs work. Looking inside for these ideas allows us to know more about these issues and events without even going near them.

Gaining access to what other people think is another matter, though, as is gaining access to anything like the ‘whole story’. If we want to know what is going on in world affairs in terms of what other people believe is going on, we must do more than look analytically and in an objectifying way from a distance.

This can be a problem, particularly for academics, since [m]ost academics… are only academics after all. In the course of their careers, they have been paid a salary only by a university… They… have not had the breadth of experience to give them a sense of the reality of international relations….[2] This does not mean there is no solution. Nor does it mean we need sanction more of the same. It is a problem, however.

Let me return, therefore, to the question posed at the beginning of this Introduction. In the light of the above, it seems to me that if we want to get a satisfactory answer to the question of what world affairs is (or are) then we must ask two cognate questions. To get an answer that is coherent, comprehensive and cogent, we must ask what are ‘we’ that we might know world affairs? And we must ask what, in this respect, is it ‘to know’?

Adding these riders to the original question would seem warranted not only because of the perils of reification, but also because of the extent to which most analysts are innocent of world affairs. This said, the practice of world affairs implicates every one of us. It takes place to us and through us all the time, academics included. We are not just bystanders. Thus, while most of us do need to listen more, and our understanding would benefit a good deal from getting involved in world affairs in more overt ways, we are part of the picture that rationalism paints nonetheless. Our lives are shaped in accordance with the patterns of behaviour that constitute this picture, including the patterns that constitute contemporary world affairs.

Adding these riders to the original question would also seem warranted as a way of directly confronting the issue of what it is ‘to know’. In rationalist terms, knowing is assumed to be a matter of standing back and objectifying. By asking explicitly what is it ‘to know’, we make it possible to problematise this assumption. We make it possible to ask whether knowing might not also be a non-rationalist matter, that is, one that can also be done by standing close to listen and by taking part.

This might seem a contentious suggestion in a rationalistic culture like our own. That does not mean it is therefore wrong. Indeed, I want to argue that to do justice, not only to the complexities of world affairs but to their human significance as well, we need to adopt both rationalistic and non-rationalistic research strategies in such a way as to exploit the benefits of both. A commitment to rationalistic research alone is a major mistake.[*] Gellner says that

within philosophy, the most debated issue is that between Reason and Experience. Both… share the assumption that the final judgement lies with the ordinary mind, rather than some Special Fount of Truth. But the question is – what methods does or should this mind employ? Should it above all think clearly… or should it fall back on ‘experience’?[3]

Gellner’s dichotomy is a familiar one to rationalists; indeed, it is rationalism that is used to create it. It is a misleading dichotomy, however, not only because Reason itself is an experience, but also because we get better results by using both. Only the rationalist would force us to make a choice between the two, presumably in favour of Reason rather than Experience. Only the rationalist would fail to recognise the ideological impetus for doing so. Only the rationalist would fail to appreciate the extent to which each, construed in these terms – which are the rationalist’s own terms after all – augments the other. Using both to know world affairs we get more convincing explanations and more cogent understandings than we might with either alone. Objectivist and subjectivist experiences can be combined (rather than made into methodological alternatives) to the benefit of both.

Assertion alone won’t confirm this case, though. Only argument and demonstration will do that. Hence this book.

Distal and proximal experience

My story starts, as noted on the very first page, with the intellectual revolution that took place in Europe in the seventeenth century. The roots of this revolution lay in the cultural renaissance that preceded it, though they are said to run back to the fourth century CE… when an offshoot of Judaic diasporic theology… was grafted onto imperial ideology to create a union of state power and expansionist universal religion. This holy union brought together "Platonic philosophy, Judaic metaphysics and the realpolitiks of the… Roman Empire. It was the collapse of this Empire, followed by the collapse of the Christian project of missionisation that succeeded it, that were the key precursors to the ‘rationalist’ agenda of modernisation and colonisation."[4]

In retrospect, the last stage of this long intellectual revolution was called the Enlightenment. It was supposed to usher in an Age of Reason, an era to be ruled by right thinking, whereby the old world would be recast in a radically new light, that is, the light of untrammelled reasoning. The contemporary study of world affairs is one part of this revolution and one part of the modernist project that ensued.

The whole point of this intellectual revolution was (and still is, since it is ongoing) to prioritise rationalism as a politico-cultural doctrine. A rationalist will stand back metaphorically, and even physically, from ‘world affairs’, in a conscious bid to reach out and grasp the subject as an object in both intellectual and experimental terms. These terms can be so systematic that they are deemed scientific, in principle if not in practice, and the label ‘science’ is now symbolic of the high status that accrues to knowing in this way.

The more we study world affairs in rationalistic terms, however, the clearer it becomes that there are limits to so doing. Though using the mind this way is demonstrably very efficient as a way of knowing, particularly with regard to ‘natural affairs’, it is not the only way to know. This is most notably the case when the subject is a ‘social’ one, like world affairs.

To transcend the limits of rationalism I propose to do more, therefore, than merely acknowledge the need to construct a gap between Reason and Experience, suitably defined, or between ‘cognitivists’ and ‘phenomenologists’, to use more technical terms.[5] Having acknowledged the need to construct such a division (with the provisos noted earlier) I propose that we move on. I propose that we seek a way of using these different accounts of world affairs in sequence. This, I hope, will allow us to exploit the different advantages these expositions provide, and thence to construct a more comprehensive account of world affairs.

I propose, in other words, that we proceed first by trying to apprehend the world distally, that is, from a position outside it, fitting the substance of sensory experience… to a stable system of received conceptual categories.[6] I propose that we next engage more intimately with the subject, making of our perceptions an achievement not of the mind, working on the data of sense, but of the whole body-person… dwelling in the world.[7] This takes two steps: first we listen, then we take part. Finally, I propose that we return to the distal perspective to appraise the knowings that we have been able to glean in these non-rationalist ways, though the return is not by any means a final one. The cycle continues potentially without end.

To rationalists, content with cognitivism, this will not wash. To them, there is no need to take such a seemingly retrograde step. Since rationalists currently dominate the disciplinary mainstream, and since they are a large and very determined fraternity, particularly in the U.S. where the knowing of world affairs in terms of social ‘science’ is a mainstream concern, they find it relatively easy to have such a point of view prevail. Hopefully those less committed to rationalism will accept the suggestion that we try to do more than rationalism recommends, however. Otherwise we will simply get more of the same, that is, large amounts of scholarship that fail to do justice to knowing world affairs because they do not use all the ways of knowing available.

What are ‘world affairs’, that we might know them?

At this point I would like to return once more to the question: what are world affairs? What are world affairs, that is, that we might know them?

Whether used in the generic sense (to refer to ‘world affairs’ in general) or in the particular sense (to refer to these or those ‘world affairs’), the concept of ‘world affairs’ denotes world politics. It refers to all those global practices that are deemed ‘political’.

What is ‘politics’, however? Or, more particularly, what is ‘politics’ when it is done worldwide?

As a concept, politics refers to all those things we do, individually and in concert, to get and use power over others for non-trivial purposes. Politics is always about trying to get our own way to some substantive end.[†] It is always a verb.

One way in which humankind is organised at the moment is into the structured role sets called ‘nation states’. A lot of world politics takes place within and between those who inhabit these role sets, and the particular patterns of practice they entail.

Nation states are not the only politically relevant organisations in world affairs. Trying to get and use power to a non-trivial purpose also describes the behaviour of the leaders of globally oriented firms, for example. It also describes the behaviour of those who represent globally active social movements, crime syndicates, religious devotees and the like. While there is no world government in world affairs, there are many attempts at global governance. And while the attempts people make to get their own way are the defining feature of inter-state politics, it is the defining feature of global non-state politicking too.

There is a wide range of ways in which people organise politically to a global purpose and much of the study of world affairs is about these ways. Some of them involve diplomatic and military initiatives. This is world politics as traditionally understood. Some of them involve global production, trade, investment, and labour practices. Thus, world politics also involves world economics. Somewhat less obvious, but no less significant is the way that world politics means the making and using of particular senses of the (dis)sociated self, and its identities and loyalties, which is why world politics involves world society as well. Least obvious of all, perhaps, though arguably of more significance than any of the above, is the making and using of particular cultural beliefs. World politics, in other words, involves world culture too.

What are ‘we’, that we might know world affairs?

What are ‘we’, that we might know world affairs? As already indicated this question asks us to consider the need to engage more overtly in world affairs, to broaden our experience and to deepen our awareness of what the subject really involves. At the same time it asks us to reflect on the ways in which we experience world affairs already, in terms of the ways we enact in our own selves the major patterns of practice that characterise these world affairs.

The more we reflect like this the more we are able to appreciate the limits the analytic life puts upon what we know. How many of us can say we have first-hand experience of world affairs? How many of us can say we truly understand how tragic our subject can be, or how affirmative?

The more we reflect, the more we discern the lines drawn in our own minds upon which the world affairs of any age depend. One such line today, for example, is the line between being a ‘citizen’ and being a ‘refugee’ or an ‘exile’. Another such line is that between being a citizen of one particular nation state, and being a citizen of another. Then there are the lines that establish our status as entrepreneurs, wage-workers, consumers, or investors (as opposed to being those without wage-work, without capital, and without access to contemporary industrial products) as well as the lines that establish our status as individualists, as members of a nation, or as members of a collective movement of some kind.

What is it ‘to know’?

What is it ‘to know’? Is it enough to make world affairs into an object, for example, by standing back mentally to look at it with an analytic eye, searching for the patterns people make as they politic on a global scale? Or should we do as suggested above and seek out its subjective aspects as well?

Standing back to look at world affairs in an objectifying, analytic fashion is certainly the preferred approach in these post-Enlightenment times. It is part of our Enlightenment heritage. It is what rationalism is supposed to allow us to do.

Looking from a mental distance with the light of the mind can certainly illuminate the subject. The point to note here, however, is that it can also blind us to what is going on. It can set limits to what we otherwise might know.

To compensate for this blindness we have to complement rationalist knowing with other kinds of experience. We have to use other ways of knowing, ones that allow us to stand close to