Justice Community Dialogue IR

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Justice, Community and Dialogue in

International Relations
Shapcott investigates the question of justice in a culturally diverse
world, asking if it is possible to conceive of a universal or cosmopolitan
community in which justice to difference is achieved. Justice to differ-
ence is possible, according to Shapcott, by recognising the particular
manner in which different humans identify themselves. Such recogni-
tion is most successfully accomplished through acts of communication
and, in particular, conversation. The account of understanding devel-
oped by H. G. Gadamer provides a valuable way forward in this field.
The philosophical hermeneutic account of conversation allows for the
development of a level of cosmopolitan solidarity that is both ‘thin’
and universal, and which helps to provide a more just resolution of the
tension between the values of community and difference.
RICHARD SHAPCOTT is Lecturer in International Relations, Deakin

University. His research interests lie in international relations theory,
international ethics and the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-Georg
Gadamer.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Justice, Community and Dialogue in

International Relations
Editorial Board
Steve Smith (Managing Editor)
Thomas Biersteker Chris Brown Alex Danchev Phil Cerny
Joseph Grieco A. J. R. Groome Richard Higgott
G. John Ikenberry Caroline Kennedy-Pipe Steve Lamy
Michael Nicholson Ngaire Woods
Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of

Cambridge University Press and the British International Studies
Association (BISA). The series will include a wide range of material,
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graphs and collaborative volumes. The aim of the series is to publish
the best new scholarship in International Studies from Europe, North
America and the rest of the world.
78 Richard Shapcott
Justice, community and dialogue in international relations
77 Philip E. Steinberg
The social construction of the ocean
76 Christine Sylvester
Feminist international relations
An unfinished journey
76 Kenneth A. Schultz
Democracy and coercive diplomacy
75 David Houghton
US foreign policy and the Iran hostage crisis
74 Cecilia Albin
Justice and fairness in international negotiation
73 Martin Shaw
Theory of the global state
Globality as an unfinished revolution
72 Frank C. Zagare and D. Marc Kilgour
Perfect deterrence
71 Robert O’Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte and Marc Williams
Contesting global governance
Multilateral economic institutions and global social movements
70 Roland Bleiker
Popular dissent, human agency and global politics
69 Bill McSweeney
Security, identity and interests
A sociology of international relations
68 Molly Cochran
Normative theory in international relations
A pragmatic approach
67 Alexander Wendt
Social theory of international politics
Series list continues after index

Justice, Community and
Dialogue in International
Relations
Richard Shapcott
         
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org
© Richard Shapcott 2004
First published in printed format 2001
ISBN 0-511-03482-2 eBook (Adobe Reader)

ISBN 0-521-78028-4 hardback
ISBN 0-521-78447-6 paperback
Contents
Acknowledgements page viii
Introduction 1
1 Beyond the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide 30
2 Community and communication in interpretive
theories of international relations 53
3 Emancipation and legislation: the boundaries of
conversation in poststructuralism and the critical
theory of IR 95
4 Philosophical hermeneutics: understanding, practical
reasoning and human solidarity 130
5 Philosophical hermeneutics and its critics 180
6 Towards a thin cosmopolitanism 209
Conclusion 233
Bibliography 239
Index 248
vii
Acknowledgements
This book would never have been completed, or even undertaken, with-
out the support, advice, encouragement and inspiration of the following
people and institutions (in no particular order).
The School of Australian and International Studies and the Faculty
of Arts at Deakin University granted me six months leave to complete
this project in 2000. The Faculty of Social Sciences and the Department of
Politics of the University of Bristol awarded me a university scholarship,
as did the Overseas Research Scholarship scheme, to undertake the PhD
thesis out of which this book evolved. I would be remiss were I not to
acknowledge the benefits I gained from teaching on Bristol’s Master’s
degree in World Politics. At Bristol I received the support and friend-
ship from the staff in general and the administrative staff – Veronica
Scheibler, Anne Jewell and Elisabeth Grundy in particular. In addition,
the Department of International Relations at the University of Keele pro-
vided me with a fertile, stimulating and welcoming environment for the
seven months in which I was a visiting scholar there in 1994 when crucial
early research was conducted. Alex Danchev, John Macmillan, Hidemi
Suganami and Chris Brewin all expressed interest and enthusiasm as
well as provided constructive input. Rosarie McCarthy, Peter Newell,
Matt Paterson and Jo Van Every all helped to make my transition to
English life easier and my time at Keele enjoyable. The Department of
Politics at Monash University also supported the early stages of my
investigation and awarded me an Australian Postgraduate Research
Award in 1993. The book also benefited from the time I spent at La
Trobe University, Australia, as a Post-doctoral Fellow in 1998. Steven
Slaughter of Monash University stepped in at the last minute to take
over my teaching responsibilities at Deakin; without this assistance the
book would have been a much longer time coming.
viii
Acknowledgements
In England I was fortunate enough to receive real encouragement and

enthusiastic support from a number of colleagues and friends which
went way beyond my expectations and made for a thoroughly hos-
pitable and welcoming intellectual environment. Chris Brown, Mervyn
Frost, Steve Smith, Nick Rengger, Mark Hoffman, Tim Dunne, Molly
Cochran, Eddie Keane, Charlotte Hooper and Ewan Harrison, are just a
few of the people who contributed to this work. Professor Steve Smith
has shown an interest and support for my work since an early stage and
has continued to do so. As an examiner and as managing editor of this
series his input has been crucial to the development of this project.
At Bristol, Professor Richard Little as both Head of Department, and as
examiner, always gave me useful, intelligent advice and support. Most
importantly, he understood the value of supporting a vibrant graduate
student body. He, along with Dr Judith Squires, encouraged our partic-
ipation in every aspect of departmental life. Furthermore without the
time, effort and contributions of Judith Squires I am certain this would be
a much poorer piece of work. During her time as supervisor of the PhD
from which this book grew she was more than generous with her time,
and provided crucial directions, constructive criticism and detailed ad-
vice. She provided the best possible supervision a PhD candidate could
ask for.
This book would certainly never have been completed without the
friendship of Charlotte Hooper, Ian Douglas, Debbie Lisle, Will Gallois,
Matt Patterson, Marinês Garcia, Mark Ogge and Michele Wilson. I would
also like to thank Christie and colleagues at The Beach Café, and the staff
at The Turtle Café, in Elwood.
I would especially like to acknowledge my friend and colleague
Richard Devetak. He has been an excellent conversational partner
(though our conversations sometimes get rather heated and resemble
arguments!) since we shared an office at Keele, and ever since. His criti-
cal mind and close readings have served to engage and correct me many
times since. He has also provided a constant reminder of the importance
of really reading a text.
My major intellectual debt is to Professor Andrew Linklater who,
since my earliest days as an undergraduate, has been able to inspire
me, and others, with the scope of his vision and the fairmindedness of
his criticism. He has set intellectual and professional standards to which
I can only aspire, but which I hope have informed and guided my work.
Several people read and commented on drafts of the various chapters,
in particular Dr Michael Janover of Monash University, who graciously
ix
Acknowledgements
agreed to read, meet and talk with me on several occasions. Michael’s is

one of the finest minds I have ever encountered and I am grateful to have
been the recipient of its insights. Richard Devetak and Andrew Linklater
gave close readings and provided invaluable comments and insights at
crucial stages. My father, Thomas Shapcott, invaluably, proof-read the
penultimate draft, somehow fitting it into his truly enormous reading
load. Needless to say all the inadequacies present are mine. Thanks also
to Janey who read and commented on the early chapters.
Thanks are also due to John Haslam and Susan Beer for their help
in editing and copy-editing. Finally, as always, my largest debts go to
my mother and father, Margaret Grace and Thomas Shapcott, who have
provided support in too many ways to mention here.
Sections of this book were presented as papers in a number of places,
including the Department of Politics, Latrobe University, 1998; the
International Studies Association Annual Conference, Toronto, March
1997; the Department of Politics, Monash University, March 1997
and June 2000; the British International Studies Conference, Durham,
December 1996; the Millennium 25th Anniversary Conference, London,
October 1996; Keele University, Department of International Relations,
May 1994; the Contemporary Research in International Political Theory
(CRIPT) session at the London School of Economics, June 1994.
Various sections of this book have also appeared, in slightly different
formats, in the following publications: ‘Solidarism and After: Global
Governance, International Society and the Normative “Turn” in Inter-
national Relations’, Pacifica Review, vol. 12, no. 2, June 2000; ‘Beyond the
Cosmopolitan/Communitarian Divide: Justice, Ethics and Community
in International Relations’, in J. S. Fritz and M. Lensu (eds.), Value Plu-
ralism, Normative Theory and International Relations, London: Macmillan,
2000; ‘Conversation and Coexistence: Gadamer and the Interpretation of
International Society’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Spring
1994, vol. 23, no. 1.
x
Introduction
Insofar as hermeneutics is more than a theory of the human sciences,

it also has the human situation in the world in its entirety in view.
Thus it must be possible to include different cultures, religions, and so
on, and their relations. What is at issue here is that when something
other or different is understood, then we must also concede something,
yield – in certain limits – to the truth of the other. That is the essence,
the soul of my hermeneutics: to understand someone else is to see the
justice, the truth, of their position. And this is what transforms us.
And if we then have to become part of a new world civilisation, if
this is our task then we shall need a philosophy which is similar to my
hermeneutics: a philosophy which teaches us to see the justification for
the other’s point of view and which thus makes us doubt our own.1
No one can say what will become of our civilization when it has
really met different civilisations by means other than the shock of
conquest and domination. But we have to admit that this encounter
has not yet taken place at the level of an authentic dialogue. That
is why we are in a kind of lull or interregnum in which we can no
longer practice the dogmatism of a single truth and in which we
are not yet capable of conquering the scepticism into which we have
stepped.2
This book faces an impossible task and suggests an impossible solution.

It investigates the question of justice in a culturally diverse world and
asks: is it possible to conceive of a universal or cosmopolitan community
in which justice to difference is achieved? In order to answer this ques-
tion it is necessary to investigate what may count as a just relationship
1 H. G. Gadamer, ‘Interview: The 1920s, 1930s and the Present: National Socialism,
German History and German Culture’, pp. 135–53, in D. Misgeld and G. Nicholson,
Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry and History (Albany: SUNY, 1992), p. 152.
2 P. Ricoeur, History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), p. 283.
1
Justice, Community and Dialogue in International Relations
to ‘otherness’ or ‘difference’. These questions are part of an impossible

task for several reasons: the term community itself implies a collectiv-
ity exhibiting a high degree of homogeneity of identity and consensus
among its members and, therefore, a lack of ‘difference’ between them.
A universal community, one that in principle includes all members of the
species, must by virtue of being a community, exclude or deny important
differences amongst its members. The idea of a universal community
suggests that underlying apparent differences of identity there exists
an essential unity. Such a statement itself denies the possibility of truly
radical ‘difference’. For this reason this book and its subject are guided
by a tension between the desire for community and the recognition of
difference.
The impossible solution to the task presented here originates in the
work of H. G. Gadamer and the tradition of hermeneutics. Gadamer’s
philosophical hermeneutics arises from a tradition of thought which
emphasises the possibility for understanding across both temporal and
linguistic distances. The hermeneutic interest in understanding arises
from the encounter between the familiar and the strange, usually in the
form of historical texts. The primary argument presented here is that the
account of understanding developed by Gadamer in Truth and Method3
provides the basis for a conceptualisation of a cosmopolitanism more
able to accommodate the tension between community and difference in
a productive manner.
While the tension between community and difference is expressed dif-
ferently according to the context both this problematic, and testimony
to the impossibility of resolving it, can be witnessed throughout all of
the positions discussed in this investigation. Be it as a tension between
equality and identity, cosmopolitanism and communitarianism, abstract
and concrete otherness, limitation and legislation, universalism and
particularism or citizenship and humanity, this problem characterises
all discussions of moral life in international relations (IR). Of course
this dilemma goes well beyond the terms employed in this investi-
gation and can rightly be understood to have characterised almost
all western thought about politics and society. It is this same tension
which informs the discourses of citizenship and statehood, rights and
obligations, duties and freedoms. This book restricts itself, with some
minor exceptions, to an examination and assessment of the resolutions
offered by different theories of IR. It argues that while certain approaches
3 H. G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd edn (trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. Marshall),
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1989).
2
Introduction
provide better resolutions than others none escapes the tension entirely,
including the ‘solution’ suggested by philosophical hermeneutics. For
this reason the development of an approach informed by philosophi-
cal hermeneutics should be understood as a contribution to the effort
to better accommodate this tension rather than a claim to have finally
resolved it.
The meaning of community

The identification of a tension between the values of community and
difference raises the possibility of doubt as to the accuracy of the term
‘community’ to describe the goal being pursued here. However, because
what is being attempted here is a reconceptualisation of community
which captures this tension, the term community is employed in the
loosest possible sense. Community here refers to the act of inclusion in
the ‘moral world’. It refers to the range of subjects who are included
within moral calculations or within the range of moral considerateness.
This definition is loose in the sense that it is not restricted to those united
by common beliefs, religion, culture or political institutions. The advan-
tage of formulating community in this way is that emphasis is placed
on the moral realm per se rather than any particular understanding of
morality. It is adopted here because it is the nature of community, moral-
ity and justice in the absence of commonly held norms or normative
discourse that is the focus of this investigation. This definition both al-
lows for and problematises the assumption that morality and justice can
only be practised within a shared discourse. It allows for the fact that
individuals and societies can and do understand themselves as having
moral obligations and duties to those who do not necessarily belong
to their ‘group’ and for the possibility of moral action where norms
and values are either openly in dispute or not shared, this conception
therefore does not restrict the scope of moral action to the like-minded
community. Most importantly it suggests that the act of engaging in con-
versation is an act of community and solidarity that extends the range
of moral inclusion. Understanding community in this fashion is cen-
tral to the task of developing a cosmopolitan community that achieves
justice to difference, because this community itself is instantiated in a
conversation between diverse positions, agents and discourses. It is im-
portant to note that underlying the account presented here is the loosely
Kantian understanding that morality consists fundamentally, but not
exclusively, of treating other humans as equals, or ends in themselves.
It is for this reason that the task of pursuing both moral community and
3
justice are intertwined in this book: inclusion can only be moral if it

is just.
What this book does and does not do

Before proceeding with the argument it is necessary to clarify some key
terms and concepts and to set out exactly what it is this argument seeks to
do and not do. The argument in this book should be understood as an at-
tempt to think philosophically about certain moral dimensions of inter-
national politics. It does not provide a defence of the normative project
itself. Such a defence has been made, rather conclusively I think, by more
capable authors. Andrew Linklater, Mervyn Frost, Charles Beitz, Stanley
Hoffman are just a few of those who have demonstrated the centrality
of moral and ethical concerns to international relations. Those who seek
more elaborate discussion of this project need go no further than the
works of these authors (cited in chapters 1 and 2).
This book engages in a largely philosophical discussion regarding
the conception of a cosmopolitan community and the nature of good
dialogue. It does not attempt a substantive defence of the principles
of inclusion, universality and the value of ‘difference’. The discussion
which follows should be understood as one largely occurring within the
cosmopolitan tradition. It does not seek to defend the ideals of universal
equality nor cosmopolitan community as such. Rather it assumes, for
the purposes of argument that these are ‘goods’ which have been suc-
cessfully defended elsewhere. The argument does problematise these
concepts and offer some alternative interpretations of them.
The language of the discussion is at times necessarily abstract. While
the final chapter engages with some less abstract questions and begins
to investigate the implications of the philosophical positions developed
in the earlier chapters there is relatively little in the way of concrete
policy advice, prescription or analysis of specific moral problems such
as humanitarian intervention. This is not a result of an in-principle re-
fusal to engage with this level, nor still less a belief that philosophical
reflection should be unsullied by the ‘real world’. Rather, it stems from
a belief that before ‘real’ moral and ethical problems can be adequately
addressed it is essential to be clear about the issues at stake as well as
their possible solutions. This being the case, this book is an attempt to
think through the meanings of justice, morality, community and dia-
logue and their relationship to each other. Incorporating the results of
this reflection into any attempt to address the myriad concrete ethical
and moral issues characterising the international realm can only take
4
Introduction
place once the philosophical ground work has been undertaken. That
said, as Gadamer and others emphasise, the meaning of the concepts
explored here are incomplete as long as they remain exclusively in the
abstract realm. Therefore this book should be seen as merely the first
step along the way of developing a thin cosmopolitanism informed by
philosophical hermeneutics.
The moral problematique of international relations

and the problem of community
Before this argument can proceed it is first necessary to outline the de-
velopments in normative theorising in international relations which
have led to the posing of the questions with which this study is con-
cerned. Recent years have seen a small but significant expansion of
interest in what can broadly be called normative IR theory.4 The liter-
ature involved in this expansion covers a wide variety of normative,
theoretical and methodological approaches. Critical theory, constitutive
theory, constructivism, international political economy and others have
all contributed to a transformation of how international relations as a
whole approaches normative issues. Not all of this literature has been
exclusively concerned with debating moral issues and the meaning of
justice but most of it has sought to include normative reflection of some
sort or another in its ambit, whether it be on the normative orientation
of theory itself, the role of norms in constituting and changing the in-
ternational realm, or possibilities for international justice. Nonetheless
there is still a relative dearth of genuine normative reflection within
the discipline as a whole. With some notable exceptions IR as a dis-
cipline steers clear of directly posing the difficult questions normally
associated with political theory and moral philosophy; such as ‘What
is the good life?’, ‘How shall we live?’, ‘What is a just society?’ The
current work is an attempt, amongst other things, to help redress this
imbalance and to erode the divide between IR and other branches of the
humanities.
Despite the relatively recent expansion of moral reflection evidenced
in the publications of Linklater, Hutchings, Frost, Cochran, Beitz, Brown
and Campbell, the presence of the questions which concern this vol-
ume can be identified in most of the central works of the discipline.
4 As Molly Cochran has recently reminded us, all theory is normative theory. See
M. Cochran, Normative Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999).
5
Indeed it is possible to follow Linklater’s lead and argue that almost

all theorising about international relations has at its heart the question
of community.5 According to Linklater, following Martin Wight, the
three dominant traditions of Realism, Rationalism and Revolutionism
(or Idealism) identify the determination of the boundaries of moral obli-
gations in the absence of a universal state or universal moral community
as one of the central problems of IR. The question of community is at
the heart of international relations to the degree that most IR theory
addresses or refers to either or both of the following questions: ‘What
are the possibilities for moral community beyond the state?’, and ‘What
are the qualities and characteristics of any such community?’ Indeed the
dominant question addressed by most studies of international relations
relates to the obstacles and possibilities for a transformation of interna-
tional politics arising from a war-prone system of independent political
communities, usually nation-states, into something less war-prone. For
instance, the central question identified by Waltz in Theory of International
Politics6 is ‘How is it possible to explain the reproduction of the anarchic
system of states?’ In other words what are the conditions that restrict the
transformation of political community? Viewed in this light, the realist
account of the international system stresses those forces which encour-
age particularity and the restriction of moral duties and obligations to
the state-based community.
In contrast to realists, rationalists such as Hedley Bull suggest that not
all moral ties stop at the state border. They argue that states have been
able to commit themselves to international principles of order and co-
existence which constitute a minimal international moral order. In this
way, states admit to a limited and partial recognition of human commu-
nity mediated through a society in which states, not individuals, are the
members. Such a reading of the Rationalist school and of the meaning of
international society is of course contested. But certain comments made
by Hedley Bull suggesting that the society of states can only be judged
according to how well it serves the human species, who are its ultimate
moral referents, indicate the way in which the society of states mediates
relations between the nascent community of humankind.7 Linklater ar-
gues that the existence of such a community of states might provide
the grounds upon which moral community may be developed even
5 A. Linklater, ‘The Problem of Community in International Relations’, Alternatives, 15
(1990), 135–53.
6 K. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison Wesley, 1979).
7 H. Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977).
6
Introduction
further. In this reading the principles of coexistence evident in theories

of international society are testament to the possibility of overcoming
those processes identified by Realism as inhibiting the expansion of
community.8
The achievement of a universal community is the primary defining
aim for Revolutionists. The revolutionist and idealist traditions assert
the primacy of the ‘latent’ universal community of humankind and ar-
gue that this community requires the transformation of the states-system
into a cosmopolitan order. Cosmopolitanism refers to a form of moral
and political community characterised by laws which are universal. The
central proposition of cosmopolitanism as a moral and political doctrine
is that humans can and should form a universal (that is global) moral
community. Cosmopolitans argue that in addition to being members of
our national and local communities we also belong to the human com-
munity. The task facing cosmopolitans, idealists and revolutionists is to
transform the international realm and to bring it into line with moral
law.
It is also true that culture, cultural difference and the obstacles to
developing more inclusive communities presented by them have also
been a concern for thinkers in each of these traditions. Most discourses
of IR have cited the presence of radical cultural difference as one of
the principal obstacles to the development of cosmopolitan tendencies
in the states-system. For example, one of the standard arguments at-
tributed to Realism is that the diversity of moral standards in different
states contributes to the conflict accompanying the international anar-
chy and to the impossibility of moving beyond an international state
of nature.9 Realism suggests that genuinely morally motivated action
remains impossible because the plurality of different standards rules
out any possible agreement on what constitutes either the ‘right’ or the
‘good’ in the international realm. Furthermore, the Realists argue that
any aspiration to cosmopolitanism, or any claim to be acting for the good
of the species, is merely a mask, conscious or not, for the self-interest of
particular states. In this account cosmopolitanism is seen both as a lie
and one that is hostile to particular cultural differences. Traditionally,
this account has led to the endorsement of a moral bifurcation, whereby
8 See A. Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations,
2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1990).
9 See the discussions in E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1939) and
H. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1954).
7
substantive moral life is possible only within the state, and the interstate
realm is portrayed as the realm of necessity possessing a different and
restricted morality, the morality of states (the chief virtue of which is
prudence).
The account of community presented by the rationalists holds a some-
what different place for culture. In the works of Wight, Bull and Watson
the existence of a certain degree of shared cultural inheritance pro-
vides the conditions of possibility for an ordered society of states.10
However, for Bull and others the presence of major cultural difference
within the modern universal society of states raises the possibility for
a decrease in world order and an increase in conflict. Amongst the
tasks of international society then, is the mediation of cultural differ-
ences and the identification of shared interests or goals across cultural
boundaries.11
As the discussion in chapter 2 demonstrates, cosmopolitans have also
identified cultural heterogeneity as an obstacle to progress in the interna-
tional realm. Where they tend to differ from Realists is in the aspiration
to transcend these differences and either to replace or incorporate them
in a universal community. For this reason cosmopolitanism has often
been identified as hostile to the existence of diverse societies and value
systems. While a full discussion of the place of culture in IR theory is
beyond the scope of this investigation it is possible to suggest from this
brief overview that the question of cultural difference is central to the
question of community in IR.
The task of this book is to contribute to the development of alterna-
tive understandings of the relationship between community and cul-
tural difference in the international realm. It addresses both parts of the
question: is moral community possible beyond the state or the particular
community and, if so, what are the characteristics of that larger com-
munity? In answer to the first part, it argues that a morally inclusive
but ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism capable of doing justice through recognition
is possible. In answer to the second, it argues that such a community
should embody the values of communication and the characteristics of
dialogue in which recognition of differences can occur.
10 H. Bull, Justice in International Relations (The Hagey Lectures), (University of Waterloo,

1983). M. Wight, (Wight, G. and Porter, B. eds.) International Theory: The Three Traditions
(Leicester University Press, 1991). M. Wight, ‘De Systematibus Civitatum’, in Systems of
States (Leicester University Press, 1977).
11 H. Bull and A. Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford University
Press, 1984).
8
Introduction
Justice as recognition of difference

For many years moral theory in international politics focused largely
on the moral critique of the states-system. Moral theory in the sense
of thinking about the meaning of justice is a relatively recent arrival in
international relations. Perhaps the most important publication in this
regard is Charles Beitz’s 1979 Political Theory and International Relations
which represents the best known attempt to apply moral theory to
the international realm via the work of John Rawls. Rawls’s landmark
Theory of Justice has, above all else, served to reinvigorate thinking on
the meaning of justice, community and the good life across the board.
The gradual emergence of a small literature of this type, including the
works of Henry Shue, Onora O’Neill, Michael Walzer and, more recently,
Janna Thompson and Andrew Linklater, reflects what might be called,
paraphrasing Quentin Skinner, ‘the return of grand moral theory’ to the
realm of international politics.
It was the reaction to Rawls’s work that largely spurred the develop-
ment of what has come to be called the communitarianism approach and
the associated liberal/communitarian debate. Communitarian critics of
Rawls drew attention to the way in which liberal conceptions of justice
either ignored or were blind to the manner in which individuals were
situated in real communities. The major criticism of Rawls’s position
was that a recognition of this dimension undermines the possibility of
judging from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, the central intellectual de-
vice of his theory. Attention to this dimension of human agency could
reveal the limitations of the attempt to establish an impartial or neu-
tral theory of justice. The result of this insight was the development
of a variety of approaches which attempted to take the specifics of
cultural context into account. These differed in scope and approach,
from the broad alternative provided by Michael Walzer, in Spheres of
Justice12 (which in many ways represents the communitarian attempt
to offer a comprehensive theory of justice similar in scope and ambi-
tion to Rawls’s) to those interested in the way in which liberal theories
(and some communitarian ones) articulated a masculinist view of jus-
tice which ignored or excluded the concerns of women. Writers such
as Iris Marion Young, Seyla Benhabib, Carol Gilligan and Jean Bethke
Elshtain, have all sought to correct the masculinist blindness of con-
ventional, especially liberal, moral theory. Their efforts have sought
to direct moral theory away from the exclusive emphasis on abstract,
12 M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
9
impartial justice in which the aim is to establish the nature of moral

obligations, either within communities or across them, towards an at-
tempt to develop theories which are equally, if not more, attentive to
the arguably more ‘feminine’ perspectives of care, benevolence and
compassion.
For the purposes of this book the most important development to
come out of these debates has been a concern with the development of
a moral theory in which ‘difference’, either ‘cultural’ or gender based,
is accorded an appropriate place. The identification of ‘difference’ as an
element in calculations of justice is indicative of a change of emphasis
away from distributive issues. It is possible to sum up this change in
emphasis as one which focuses on justice as recognition. As Iris Marion
Young has argued, justice for most theorists has referred to questions
of the distribution of material goods and services or the distribution
of rights and duties of equal individual citizens.13 For many theorists,
including Young, the distributive definition of justice fails to capture
the full nature of inequality in most societies and across the globe. As a
result of the perceived limitations of the distributive paradigm there has
been an attempt to broaden and redefine the concept of justice. Justice
understood as recognition embodies the assumption that discrimination
and inequality occur not only in the realm of material well-being but are
equally experienced in the realm of identity. In this formulation, justice
involves recognising the particular identities and claims of distinct eth-
nic, cultural or gender groupings. The idea of justice as recognition asks
how is it possible to do justice to those who are marginalised or excluded
because of their different identities or because they are seen as ‘other’.
The idea of justice as recognition suggests that justice should refer to
a more complete and inclusive account of well-being than those pro-
vided by purely economic or legalistic accounts. Justice as recognition
extends well-being to include external recognition of the identity, or
identities, constituting any individual or group. As Charles Taylor ar-
gues, recognition rests on the argument that:
a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if
the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or
demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Non-recognition or
misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, impris-
oning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being.14
13See I. M. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 1990).
14C. Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in C. Taylor and A. Gutman, Multiculturalism:
Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 25.
10
Introduction
The politics of recognition refers not only to people’s relationships to

the things of the world but to their fundamental modes of being-in-the-
world. The issue of recognition therefore adds an ontological dimension
to the problem of justice whereby justice is related to recognition of who
‘we’ are.
For example, in many societies today the concern with class discrimi-
nation has been replaced or overshadowed by debates on how to recog-
nise the place of various cultures or groups which go to make up society
as whole. In multicultural and immigrant societies such as Canada, the
United States and Australia the issue of cultural recognition is at the
forefront of current political debate. In these societies justice as recogni-
tion extends to the relations between white Anglo-Saxon majorities and
various migrant communities as well as to the relationship between both
these communities and the indigenous populations of their countries.
(In Australia today one of the most pressing issues facing the govern-
ment and society is how to recognise the cultural and identity costs born
by the indigenous populations since white settlement. The demand for
an apology from the Federal Government for its role in the forced sep-
aration of Aboriginal children from their parents and the creation of
what have been called the ‘stolen generations’ is, contrary to current
government thinking which sees such an apology as an acknowledge-
ment of financial responsibility, a demand for recognition of the expe-
riences of indigenous Australians and the impact this has had on their
lives and identities.)
According to their critics, liberal theories of politics and justice, such as
the work of John Rawls, do not recognise substantive differences, in fact
are predicated on their denial, and therefore fail in the goal of achieving
justice. Advocates of the politics of recognition argue that the attempt
to provide an impartial and universal theory of justice constitutes a vio-
lence to different identities because they assume one particular identity
as the standard universal model for human agency.
These arguments will be examined in more depth in chapter 1. What
can be noted here is that injustice at the level of identity is a conse-
quence of the formulation of the meaning of equality. The principal
objection to these models is that in them, equality comes to mean same-
ness or a shared identity, usually derived from a white, European male.
To be equal means to share not only the same rights and duties but
also to be constituted as similar agents sharing the same identity. The
aspiration for an account of justice as recognition on the other hand in-
volves the attempt to redefine equality so that it incorporates difference.
11
The principle of justice to difference, in so far as it is an account of jus-

tice, pursues equality but defines it differently. The issue of recognition
suggests, adopting the vocabulary of Michael Walzer, a ‘thin’ notion of
equality. It suggests that insofar as equality requires some quality to
be shared, then different agents are equal in the manner of sharing the
‘thin’ quality of ‘identity’ rather than any particular substantive identity.
Thus justice is achieved by recognising the particular manner in which
different humans identify themselves.
Justice as recognition has, like many other ideas, crossed over from
political theory and moral philosophy into the domain of IR. Attention
to cultural questions in the moral theory of international politics, while
often present, has only recently come to take a more central place. The
emergence of the idea of justice as recognition has in recent times served
to transform much of how normative IR is conducted and in particu-
lar which questions now form the focus of moral debate and ethical
reasoning. It is only fitting that these developments should be echoed
in attempts to theorise international justice. The work of feminists and
critical theorists in particular has focused on the goal of reframing how
the issue of difference can be approached in IR. The single most im-
portant text in this regard has been Andrew Linklater’s The Transfor-
mation of Political Community.15 Detailed discussion of this text occurs
in chapters 2, 3 and 4. What can be acknowledged here is that while
Linklater sits firmly within the cosmopolitan tradition, he has sought to
engage in a rethinking of cosmopolitanism so that a concern with the in-
clusion of difference becomes a central goal. As a result he has seriously
engaged with the work of ‘difference’ theorists and attempted to incor-
porate their insights into the cosmopolitan project. A central component
of Linklater’s approach is the utilisation of Jürgen Habermas’s critical
theory and in particular the idea of discourse ethics. The introduction
of discourse ethics allows the cosmopolitan project to be reformulated
along communicative lines. In particular it introduces the idea that jus-
tice to difference can be achieved through communicative, dialogic,
inclusion.
The argument presented in this book begins with that insight. It is
argued that recognition is most successfully (though not exclusively) ac-
complished through acts of communication and understanding, and in
particular, through conversation. The recognition of the shared quality
15A. Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the

Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).
12
Introduction
of identity in turn rests on, and is mediated through, the shared qual-
ity of language. Because human identity is shaped and constituted
linguistically (though not exclusively so) it is capable of articulation
through language; in other words, it can be communicated. This being
the case, recognition becomes a dialogical task to be achieved through
understanding the ‘other’ in conversation. For this reason the work of
Gadamer is used to demonstrate how the dialogical character of un-
derstanding constitutes an act of communication between differently
constituted agents. The major task proceeding from these insights is to
theorise the nature of a good dialogue in which justice to difference is
achieved. Linklater’s work contains one theorisation of the nature of
good inclusive dialogue and, to date, represents the most consistent at-
tempt offered in international relations to think through the meaning
of inclusion in a universal dialogue. The work of David Campbell and
other poststructuralists has also contributed to a serious effort to think
through the relationship of ‘self’ to ‘other’ in the international context.
However, as is noted in chapter 2, this has not, for a variety of reasons,
involved sustained reflection on the meaning of dialogue and conversa-
tion. The aim of this work is to contribute to the project of thinking about
the nature of communication and dialogue in an international context
and, in particular, about what a universal community in which justice
to difference is achieved might look like.
However, before proceeding further down this track one important
task needs to be undertaken. The best means for understanding the im-
portance of communication as an ethical/moral relationship is to com-
pare it to its alternatives. It is only when having examined the ways in
which communication differs from certain other modes of interaction
that it is possible to understand both how communication provides a
superior form of self/other relation and what exactly is involved in com-
municating. For this reason the discussion below turns to the work of
Tzvetan Todorov and his now classic discussion of self/other relations
in The Conquest of America.16 The principal task performed by this dis-
cussion is to elaborate on the ways in which communication is related
to both knowledge and belief. While it says little about what ‘good’ dia-
logue itself might consist of, Todorov’s reading of the encounter between
Europeans and the occupants of the Americas provides an essential
service by making the argument for communication over and against
its alternatives of assimilation and coexistence.
16 T. Todorov, The Conquest of America (New York: Harper), 1982.
13
Self/other relations in the conquest of America:

annihilation, assimilation, coexistence
and communication
In the Conquest of America, Todorov attempts to understand how the
‘enigma’ of otherness was apprehended by the Spanish in the Americas.
His enquiry examines the relationship between self and other that de-
veloped when two different cultures encountered each other for the first
time.17 In particular, he examines the relationship between knowledge
of the other and evaluation of them in the century after the Spanish con-
quest. Todorov asks the question: if one’s knowledge of understanding
of the other is inaccurate or deficient then can one truly have a just re-
lationship? Following this is a further question: what is the relationship
between one’s knowledge (or ignorance) of the other and one’s actions
towards them? In this way Todorov’s study addresses the question of
the content of recognition: what does recognition consist of? The aim of
Conquest of America is to examine the relationship between knowledge
and evaluation of the other from the Spanish perspective. The ensuing
discussion will attempt to reveal and explain the most important prob-
lems that stand in the way of knowing and conversing with the other.
The answers to these questions generate four different possibilities
for self–other relations which can be used to assess different accounts
of community and justice in IR.18 For the purposes of this work, the
17 The meeting of the Spanish and the Indians in the years after 1492 is of interest to this
investigation for several reasons. The inhabitants of the Americas, indeed the Americas
themselves, had no place in the Christian cosmology prior to 1492, and were truly ‘other’.
Thus, upon encountering them, the Europeans had to interpret this new phenomenon and
decide how it might fit their old cosmology. It can be argued that this encounter began
the process of decentring the European identity. The difficulties and problems involved
in such a decentring are a necessary step towards communication. For another read-
ing of this encounter see B. Jahn, ‘The Power of Culture in International Relations: The
Spanish Conquest in the Americas and its Theoretical Repercussions’ (San Diego: paper
presented at ISA Annual Conference, April 1996). See also D. Blaney and N. Inayatullah,
‘Prelude to a Conversation of Cultures in International Society? Todorov and Nandy on
the Possibility of Dialogue’, Alternatives, 19 (1994), 23–51; C. Brown, ‘The Modern Require-
ment?: Reflections on Normative International Theory in a Post-Western World’, Millen-
nium: Journal of International Studies, 17.2 (1988), 339–48; C. Brown, ‘Cultural Diversity and
International Political Theory: From the Requirement to “Mutual Respect” ’, Review of In-
ternational Studies (2000), 26, 199–13 and, W. E. Connolly, ‘Identity and Difference in Global
Politics’, in J. Der Derian and M. J. Shapiro, International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern
Readings of World Politics (Lexington, 1989).
18 Todorov’s account is not without its critics. While the following argument draws heavily
on Todorov it is an interpretation and application of ideas found in Conquest of America
and not a wholesale endorsement of his position. The purpose of this discussion is merely
to use his categories to pursue a certain line of thinking.
14
Introduction
significance of Todorov’s book lies in the introduction of a set of cat-

egories derived from these possibilities. These four categories are: an-
nihilation, assimilation, coexistence and communication. Annihilation
involves the complete physical or ideational destruction of the other.
Assimilation involves the other’s incorporation into one’s own world,
but not as an equal, for it also involves the destruction or denial of
important differences in the name of a greater similarity. Coexistence
involves toleration and neutrality but suggests no genuine engagement
with the other. Communication suggests that it is possible to understand
the other and to move towards an exchange of knowledge. It also sug-
gests the possibility of agreement and a reciprocity of subjectivity, two
possibilities denied by the alternative categories. Thus, it is only the last
category that permits a just relation to the other. The goal of justice to
difference involves communication and conversation. This section ex-
amines these categories and demonstrates the relationship of thought
and practice in them.19
In addition to developing these descriptive and evaluative categories
Todorov’s study permits a defence of the category of communication. If
the vocabulary of international justice, at least in philosophical circles,
has now become one of recognition then Todorov provides an argument
that recognition, or justice, is best achieved through communication and
conversation.
The four modes of engagement: annihilation, assimilation, coexis-
tence and communication, not only represent practices but also corre-
spond to normative and philosophical positions. The ensuing discussion
attempts to reveal and explain the most important problems that stand
in the way of knowing and conversing with the other.
Todorov argues that the relation of self to other and knowledge to
action exists on three axes of alterity:
First of all, there is a value judgement (an axiological level); the other is
good or bad, I love or do not love him, or as was more likely to be said at
the time, he is my equal or my inferior (for there is usually no question
that I am good and that I esteem myself). Secondly, there is the action
of rapprochement of distancing in relation to the other (praxeological
level): I embrace the other’s values. I identify myself with him, or else
I identify the other with myself, I impose my own image upon him;
19 Todorov himself does not use these terms, I have adapted them for my own purposes.
Todorov uses the terms enslavement, colonialism and communication, conquest, love
and knowledge to describe various manifestations of similar phenomena. See Todorov,
Conquest of America, pp. 169, 185.
15
between submission to the other and the other’s submission there is

also a third term, which is neutrality, or indifference. Thirdly, I know or
am ignorant of the other’s identity (this would be the epistemic level);
of course there is no absolute here, but an endless gradation between
the lower or higher states of knowledge.20
Annihilation, assimilation, coexistence and communication exist pri-

marily on only one of the planes of alterity, namely that of practice.
Practice here should be taken very broadly to include the act of identifi-
cation. While Todorov is at pains to assert that there is no direct causal
relation between these three levels, we can nonetheless see how one may
lead to the next and how they are mutually implicated. The key ques-
tion of Todorov’s enquiry, therefore, is what relationships exist between
one’s knowledge (or ignorance) of the other and one’s actions towards
the other.
Discovery and conquest

Todorov establishes his categories by analysing the encounters be-
tween a series of Spaniards: Columbus, Cortés, Sepúlveda, Las Casas,
Dúran, Sahagún, and the Indians. To varying degrees these encoun-
ters correspond to the progression: Discovery (Columbus), Conquest
and Annihilation (Cortés and Sepúlveda) and Assimilation (Las Casas,
Dúran and Sahagún), with the last two authors also beginning the act
of Communication.
Cortés and Columbus are instances of discovery and conquest. They
both comprehend the other as inferior and themselves as superior; in the
case of Columbus it is because of their difference, in the case of Cortés,
in spite of it. It is because they begin with the assumption of superiority
that their knowledge or lack of knowledge of the Indians does not affect
their judgement. As far as understanding the Indians, Columbus at first
insists that he can understand their language (because he believes that
all words have a common origin and if they sound alike they must mean
roughly the same thing) but later, as his attempts at interpretation fail
him, he goes so far as to suggest that the Indians not only cannot speak
Spanish but that they do not possess language at all, nor do they have
religion. Indeed they are completely without culture, the evidence of
this being their proclivity for nakedness.21 Columbus, it seems, never
really encounters the other, in the sense that he leaves with almost no
20 Ibid., p. 185. 21 Ibid., pp. 31 and 35.
16
Introduction
more knowledge of the Indians than when he arrived. Instead, he sees

only what he expected to see: the Indies and China.
In the case of Cortés, we see a more complicated relationship between
knowledge, valuation and action towards the other. Cortés, despite be-
ing an agent of the Indians’ destruction, knows them relatively well.
He understands the Indian language, and even manipulates their cos-
mology and beliefs in order to further his conquest. Furthermore, of
all the conquistadors Cortés, surprisingly enough, is liked by many
Indians.22 He demonstrates his knowledge and communicative skill
most famously by using the Indian belief that the Spanish are gods and
that he is the god Quetzalcoatl to assist his victory over them. Cortés
is also an admirer of the products of Indian civilisation and rates them
highly in comparison to those of Spain: ‘I shall not attempt to describe
it all, save to say that in Spain there is nothing to compare with it.’23 It
is, however, not the Indians he admires but their works: ‘Cortés goes
into ecstasies about the Aztec productions but does not acknowledge
their makers as human individualities to be seen on the same level as
himself.’24 Thus, knowledge does not necessarily lead to a positive val-
uation or relation of equality. Cortés understands and knows the other
but values them (the Indians, not their handiwork) as inferior. There is
no self-reflection involved in the encounter, nor any reflection upon the
justice of the Spanish occupation or his own part in it. He takes it as
self-evident that the European Christians are superior. No amount of
knowledge of the Indians’ culture will change the fact that they are
pagans and idolaters and it is Spain’s duty to conquer and convert
them.25
According to Todorov, the moral of the story of Cortés is ‘. . . unless
grasping is accompanied by a full acknowledgement of the other as
subject, it risks being used for purposes of exploitation, of “taking”,
knowledge will be subordinated to power.’26 It is this inability or re-
fusal to recognise the other’s equality, as a subject like oneself, that
allows and condones the Spanish conquest and their massacres: ‘. . . this
conduct is . . . conditioned by their notion of the Indians as inferior be-
ings, halfway between men and beasts. Without this essential premise,
the destruction could not have taken place.’27 For all his knowledge,
22 Ibid., pp. 176–7. 23 Ibid., p. 128. 24 Ibid., p. 129.

25 ‘There is no doubt that the natives must obey the royal orders of your majesty, whatever
their nature.’ Ibid., p. 130.
26 Ibid., p. 132. 27 Ibid., p. 147.
17
Cortés does not communicate, in the sense intended here, with the In-
dians because his evaluation of them as inferior remains and is unaf-
fected by his knowledge, thereby ruling out communication from the
beginning.28
Assimilation
In the case of the Spanish priest and Bishop Bartolomeo de Las Casas,
probably the principal advocate of the Indians’ equality in the sixteenth
century, the relationship between knowledge and evaluation becomes
more complex. Las Casas’ relation to the Indians is that of assimilation.
This is a more complex relationship to the other than the ones discussed
earlier because although it allows for the possibility of equality, such
equality comes at the expense of identity.
Las Casas has his alter ego in the figure of the scholar, lawyer and
philosopher Ginês de Sepúlveda. Where Las Casas argues against the
policies of conquest and enslavement, Sepúlveda defends the wars
against the Indians as just on the grounds that the Indians are naturally
inferior. The two figures engaged in a debate at Valladolid in Spain in
1550, the content of which illustrates the category of assimilation. The
basic arguments were simple: Las Casas argued that the Indians were
the Europeans’ equals and should be treated as such, while Sepúlveda
argued that the Indians’ inferiority legitimated their destruction. Las
Casas’ position, however, is not as straightforward, nor as desirable,
28 Despite the ease with which Cortés undertakes the conquest and despite the general
Spanish assumption of superiority, the Spanish felt the need to provide some moral and
legal means by which they could justify the conquest and dispossession of the Indians.
The example of the requirimiento is the most famous illustration of this. The requirimiento
was a Spanish proclamation required to be read upon encountering Indians in the new
world. It presented the Indians with a history and explanation of how the Spanish came
to be laying claims to the new world. It suggested that the Spanish claim was Just and
God-given, and gave the Indians two alternatives: voluntary surrender and recognition of
Spanish legitimacy, or enslavement and war. The requirimiento illustrates the lack of choice
presented to the Indians. It paid lip service to moral discourse but was, in fact, an ulti-
matum, and one that was beyond the comprehension of those to whom it was addressed
(literally so because it was in Spanish!). The requirement is a parody of conversation, as it
implies that the Indians can partake in the discussion, while at the same time completely
ruling out the possibility of such a discussion and assuming the inequality of the other.
‘The Indians can choose only between two positions of inferiority: either they submit of
their own accord and become serfs; or else they will be subjugated by force and reduced to
slavery . . . (they) are posited as inferiors from the start, for it is the Spaniards who deter-
mine the rules of the game. The superiority of those who promulgate the requirimiento . . .
is already contained in the fact that it is they who are speaking while the Indians listen.’
Ibid., p. 148. For further discussion of the requirement see R. Shapcott, ‘Conversation and
Coexistence, Gadamer and the Interpretation of International Society’, Millennium: Journal
of International Studies, 23.1 (1994).
18
Introduction
as it seems and reveals the difficulties and problems of the category of

equality. The remainder of this section examines the core arguments
of this debate in order to articulate more clearly the category of
assimilation.
Sepúlveda’s argument for the Indians’ inequality is drawn from
Aristotle. For Sepúlveda ‘. . . hierarchy, not equality, is the natural state
of human society’.29 Sepúlveda’s world is made up of dichotomies of
superiority/inferiority; the body must be subject to the soul, matter
to form, children to parents, women to men, and slaves to masters.30
Thus, when it comes to judging the Indians, the calculation is quite sim-
ple: the Indians are different and therefore inferior. For Sepúlveda, it is
self-evident that ‘our’ (Spanish) identity is good, as we are Christians,
and therefore we are superior to those who are not. It therefore follows
that the Indians, being different, are inferior and evil. This ‘natural’ in-
feriority makes it not only possible, but just, to wage war against the
barbarians: ‘The greatest philosophers declare that such wars may be
undertaken by a very civilised nation against uncivilised people who
are more barbarous than can be imagined.’31 The name of Sepúlveda’s
relation to the other is Annihilation.
Equality
Whereas Sepúlveda’s starting point is a premise of human inequality
and the ‘natural fact’ of hierarchy, Las Casas starts from the Christian
principle of equality. All humans are equal before God, because they
are equally capable of accepting God. Indians are human beings and
potential Christians and to wage war against them is wrong and a de-
nial of their fundamental humanity. Thus, Las Casas demonstrates their
equality by asserting not only how like the Spaniards they are, but how
like Christians. His argument for the Indians’ equality is premised upon
a Christian identity, the Indians’ ‘human nature’ is their ‘Christian na-
ture’. As Todorov points out, the universalism of Christianity implies
a fundamental lack of difference between all persons.32 In the case of
the Indians this is not only a matter of recognising them as human be-
ings capable of understanding and converting to Christianity, but also
of their particular predisposition toward it: ‘At no other time and in
no other people has there been seen such capacity, such predisposition,
29 Ibid., in note 3, p. 152. 30 See ibid., p. 153.

31 Ibid., p. 156. 32 Ibid., p. 162.
19
and such facility for conversion . . .’33 They are so predisposed because
they already resemble and embody basic Christian qualities. According
to Las Casas, ‘[t]hese peoples considered in general, are by their nature
all gentleness, humility and poverty, without weapons or defences not
the least ingenuity, patient, enduring as none other in the world’.34 Las
Casas only sees those things he wants to see in the Indians, in par-
ticular those attributes he can interpret as essentially Christian, such
as humility and poverty. There are two important points to note from
this account: first, that all the Indians of the Americas bear these same
traits and, second, that all these traits are psychological states of mind.
The first denies any difference between the various Indian groups,
and the second is blind to social practices and behaviour that will en-
able knowledge of who the Indians are, that is, what they believe, the
reasons and meanings of their practices, and how they understand
themselves; again a form of denial of differences. Las Casas proceeds
to account for all differences as, in fact, similarities. For example, the
Indians’ disinterest in material wealth is in harmony with ‘. . . the di-
vine law and the evangelical perfection which praise and approve that
man be content with no more than what is necessary’.35 It is there-
fore seen as evidence of their essential Christianity. There is, then, a
major catch in Las Casas’ defence, the price of the Indians’ equality
is their identity; according to natural law, humans exist ‘without any
difference’.36
Las Casas attempts to demonstrate the Indians’ equality by min-
imising the differences that Sepúlveda, for instance, draws attention
to. Ironically, this means that Las Casas is, in many ways, even fur-
ther away from knowledge and communication with the other than
Sepúlveda. The Indians themselves never speak in Las Casas’ account;
they are certainly not present at Vallodolid, and we learn little or noth-
ing of them in the course of the debate. For all Las Casas’ love of the
Indians it is at the cost of knowing them. For all Sepúlveda’s hatred of
them he knows them better. Todorov asks ‘Can we really love someone
if we know little or nothing of his identity, if we see, in place of that
identity, a projection of ourselves or of our ideals?. . . Does one culture
risk trying to transform the other in its own name, and therefore risk
subjugating it as well?’37 The name for Las Casas’ relation to the other
is Assimilation.
33 Ibid., p. 163. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., p. 165. 36 Ibid., p. 162. 37 Ibid., p. 168.
20
Introduction
So far in this account we have seen the development of the nexus dif-
ference/inferiority, identity/equality. Sepúlveda believes the Indians
are different and, therefore, inferior. Las Casas believes they are equal
and, therefore, the same. While we may applaud Las Casas and sym-
pathise with his attempts to bring justice to the Indians by ending the
wars against them, the realm of practice reveals another layer to this
story. We know Sepúlveda wishes the Indians’ destruction and justifies
the wars against them, but what of Las Casas? What is the relation of
thought to practice in his case?
Las Casas supports the colonisation and occupation of the Americas;
what he rejects is the Conquest or, more correctly, its means and prac-
titioners: ‘Las Casas does not want to put an end to the annexations
of the Indians, he merely wants this to be effected by priests rather
than soldiers.’38 The Indians are potential Christians, they are equals
but they must be converted in order to achieve their full equality. Las
Casas, believing the Indians to be ripe for conversion, seeks the end of
the bloodshed but not the occupation.
According to Todorov, the difference between Las Casas and
Sepúlveda is the difference between two ideologies: Enslavement and
Colonialism.39 The move to Colonialism may be an improvement on
Enslavement, but it is not a recognition of the other’s being a sub-
ject ‘like oneself’, as the Indians still remain subjugated to the colo-
nial power. Las Casas’ defence of the Indians is only in the name of
Colonialism, and their continued subjugation. As in the requirimiento,40
the Indians only have a choice between two forms of subjugation
(though of course in reality they rarely even have a choice about
this).
Colonialism denies justice in the particular form that Todorov de-
sires, that of communication: ‘. . . if colonialism opposes enslavement,
it simultaneously opposes that contact with the other which I shall
simply call communication. To the triad understand/seize/destroy
corresponds this other triad in inverted order: enslavement/
colonialism/ communication.’41
38 Ibid., p. 171.
39 An ‘enslavement’ ideology reduces the other to the status of an object, to be bought or
sold. A ‘colonialist’ ideology recognises the other’s subjectivity but only to the extent that
‘the other is seen as a subject capable of producing objects that one can then possess’. Ibid.,
p. 176.
40 See note 28 above regarding the requirimiento. 41 Ibid., p. 177.
21
Equality and inequality exist on the axiological level, concerning val-

ues and judgement. However, they are almost inevitably accompanied
by counterparts on the praxeological level of practice and identifica-
tion. The issues revealed at Valladolid no longer just oppose equality to
inequality, but also identity to difference. Specifically, ‘. . . difference is
corrupted into inequality, equality into identity. These are the two great
figures of the relation to the other that delimit the other’s inevitable
space.’42 It is in this space that the category of assimilation provides a
relationship more familiar to modern, liberal approaches to difference
and otherness. Where the categories of annihilation and conquest value
difference as inequality, the category of assimilation asserts equality, in-
tended as a defence of the weak and the different, but ironically at the
expense of difference: ‘If it is incontestable that the prejudice of superior-
ity is an obstacle in the road to knowledge, we must also admit that the
prejudice of equality is a still greater one, for it consists in identifying the
other purely and simply with one’s own “ego ideal” (or with oneself).’43
In the category of assimilation the defence of the other is purchased at
the cost of identity.
Las Casas’ justice for the Indians is an attempt at Christian justice, but
it is a justice to be imposed on the Indians at a considerable continued
cost to them. It is unjust because it is premised on the denial of their
difference and, therefore, it denies them the articulation of their own
concerns. Starting from the assumption of identity, Las Casas’ justice
lies in awakening the Indians to this identity and denying or eradicating
their cultural difference and own self-understanding. It is an imposition
of an identity upon them and, thus, an unwitting denial of what Las
Casas values so highly: their equality. The relation of assimilation is,
therefore, an unjust or less just relation to the other in that it insufficiently
embodies the recognition of the other’s equality.
Coexistence
Before exploring Todorov’s notion of communication, there is one other
option, adopted by Las Casas in his later life and certainly prevalent
in discussions of cultural difference today, especially in IR. This is the
stance of tolerance, neutrality or coexistence.
Todorov argues that after the Valladolid encounter, Las Casas un-
derwent a change that gradually led him to a ‘perspectivist’ position.
At Valladolid, Las Casas had to find a way to make the seemingly
42 Ibid., p. 146. 43 Ibid., p. 165.
22
Introduction
barbaric practice of human sacrifice appear a Christian act. He did

this by demonstrating examples of sacrifice in the Bible, not least of
which is the sacrifice of Christ. However, he also had another, and per-
haps more interesting, argument which leads him to a more directly
relativist position. Las Casas argued that the Indians’ practice of sac-
rifice should be understood as a gesture of religiosity: ‘[M]en worship
God according to their capacities and in their fashion, always trying to
do the best they can . . . the greatest proof one can give of one’s love
for God consists of offering Him what is most precious to oneself, hu-
man life itself.’44 The Indians therefore demonstrate their love of God
through the (misguided) practice of human sacrifice. While the prac-
tice itself may be condemned, the gesture is worthy. Las Casas even
argued that, in the intensity of their worship, the Aztecs exceeded the
Christians.
For Las Casas the Indians’ ignorance of Christian belief is not in it-
self an argument against their religiosity. The value they place on their
gods is equal to that of the Christians. Their error is to believe their
gods to be the true gods. In these arguments, Las Casas comes very
close to an acknowledgement of the relativity of all belief. If their gods
are true for them, ours is true for us: ‘what then remains common and
universal is no longer the God of the Christian religion . . . but the very
idea of divinity, of what is above us; the religious rather than religion’.45
Las Casas argued that the Indians believed their gods to be true and
demonstrated this height of religiosity by sacrificing human life to them.
This is a definite shift from the perception of the Indians as exclu-
sively barbarian and inferior because it perceives them as equal yet
different.
At this point in Las Casas’ argument, the relationship between equal-
ity and identity changes: ‘equality is no longer bought at the price of
identity; it is not an absolute value that we are concerned with: each
man has the right to approach god by the path that suits him. There is
no longer a true god (ours) but a coexistence of possible universes . . .’46
Las Casas has moved to the stage of equality as coexistence.
Though he does not surrender the idea of evangelism and the con-
version of the Indians, there is really only one practice Las Casas can
condone: the withdrawal of the Spanish from the Americas in order to
‘re-establish in their sovereignties all their kings and natural lords’.47
Where previously Las Casas’ sequence ran equal, same, assimilate, it
44 Ibid., p. 188–9. 45 Ibid., p. 189. 46 Ibid., p. 190. 47 Ibid., p. 193.
23
now runs something like same, equal, tolerate.48 Equality becomes tol-
erance, neutrality and coexistence. The question that needs to be put
here is whether coexistence is enough, is this truly where justice to oth-
erness lies? The answer of this book is that it is not enough, and it is
to what lies beyond tolerance, coexistence and neutrality that it now
turns.
Communication
What remains is the option of communication. In none of the scenar-
ios previously explored have we come across an instance of equality
leading to communication. Even Las Casas’ final position, coexistence,
forestalls and withholds from understanding and communicating with
the Indians. Coexistence denies any possibility of communicating or
judging across cultures. Equality here means autonomy but extends no
further. The other is both like me (equal) and unlike me (different) and
being unlike me I cannot engage with them. Put in terms of the iden-
tity/difference nexus Todorov offers us this formulation: ‘. . . we want
equality without its compelling us to accept identity; but also difference
without its degenerating into superiority/inferiority. We aspire to reap
the benefits of the egalitarian model and of the hierarchic model; we
aspire to rediscover the meaning of the social without losing the quality
of the individual.’49 To recognise truly the humanity of the other, to have
a relationship with them that meets this aspiration, one must communi-
cate, or at least attempt communication. Of course, communication and
conversation is itself problematic and requires more space than is avail-
able here to articulate fully and explore it. However, Todorov begins to
sketch the requirements of communication and it is with this that we
will leave this section.
Assuming, Todorov argues, that we want to have interaction between
cultures and go beyond coexistence, then such interaction must proceed
in the form of proposition, not imposition. Communication, therefore,
is opposed to assimilation as proposition is opposed to imposition:
The essential thing . . . is to know whether they [changes] are imposed or
proposed. Christianization, like the export of any ideology or technol-
ogy, can be condemned as soon as it is imposed, by arms or otherwise.
A civilisation may have features we can say are superior or inferior;
but this does not justify their being imposed on others. Even more, to
48 Both of these, of course, contrast with the view of Sepúlveda: different, inferior,
destroy/enslave.
49 Ibid., p. 249.
24
Introduction
impose one’s will on others implies that one does not concede to that
other the same humanity one grants to oneself . . .50
Proposition allows communication and reciprocity, imposition denies

it. Communication involves not only mutual recognition of the other’s
status as both different and like oneself, but also an orientation towards
mutual understanding and enlightenment.
After the false conversation of the requirimiento, the Spanish discourse
is never addressed to the Indians, but instead to the Crown, and their
praxis is concerned with what the Spanish should do to the Indians, and
never with what the Indians desire. It is never conducted as proposition
but as imposition, and that is what makes the relationship unjust.51
Thus, to encounter the other as different we need to suppose as little
as possible regarding their identity beforehand. We need only suppose,
unlike Columbus, that we are capable of communicating with them and
they with us. Understanding and agreement are possible because the
other is seen neither as absolutely other nor essentially identical. The
idea of communication suggests an encounter with the other that is
premised on the possibility of mutual understanding.
What such a morality suggests is a continual ongoing conversation,
that itself contributes to the building of community, of shared under-
standings and practices. It is possible that through engagement with oth-
ers and through a commitment to communication and understanding
that new understandings of self and of the other can come about. A
real conversation Todorov suggests ‘. . . contributes to the reciprocal
illumination of one culture by another, to “making us look into the
other’s face” . . . we know the other by the self, but also the self by the
other.’52 The second great tragedy of the Spanish in the Americas (after
the genocide of the Indians, that is) was that the Spanish never attempted
genuine conversation with the Indians nor sought ‘illumination’ in their
encounter. This book is committed to the task of preventing the repeti-
tion of such tragedies through the formulation of an adequate account
of conversation.
In light of this discussion it is concluded that communication rep-
resents the practice most capable of delivering a more just relationship
50 Ibid., p. 179.
51 ‘No one asked the Indians if they wanted the wheel, or looms or forges; they were
obliged to accept them. Here is where the violence resides, and it does not depend on
the possible utility of these objects. But in whose name would we condemn the unarmed
preacher, even if his avowed goal is to convert us to his own religion?’ Ibid., p. 181.
52 Ibid., p. 241.
25
to otherness. Communication involves a formulation of equality that

does not require the assimilation of the identity of the other, nor re-
strict equality to coexistence. Communication suggests that equality is
achieved through discursive engagement. However, the implications of
communication go beyond this. Communication also suggests the pos-
sibility of developing more inclusive moral arrangements that do not
require the annihilation or assimilation of the other.
The category of communication suggests the possibilities of conver-
sation across moral boundaries and between radically different agents.
In so doing, it suggests the further possibility that dialogue may re-
sult in the expansion and/or reconfiguration of moral boundaries.
This is so because the principle of communication is universally in-
clusive: no agent capable of communication can be ruled out in princi-
ple. Communication, therefore, suggests that moral boundaries remain
open. It suggests that no communicative agent can be excluded on the
grounds of their linguistic or cultural difference.
The idea of communication being pursued here should be understood
as a relationship involving a reciprocity between actors and not just the
transmission of information or knowledge from one actor to another.
It is communication as equality. While communication might seem a
straightforward concept there are in fact varieties to it, some of which are
more reciprocal and ‘communicative’ than others. Discussion of these
issues is the task of the remainder of the book.
Chapter structure
This discussion has provided a preliminary case for communication as
a model of self–other relations capable of providing a more just relation-
ship to difference, of fulfilling the requirement of justice as recognition.
The remainder of this book consists of an examination and evaluation
of approaches to justice and community in IR in terms of this typology:
annihilation, assimilation, coexistence and communication. In so doing,
it explores the relations between the axiological, epistemic and prax-
eological positions of a variety of thinkers and perspectives. The next
two chapters will attempt to assess the contributions of Normative IR
theories according to the degree to which they approximate, account
for, contribute to or embody the idea of communication.
Chapter 1 proceeds from this discussion to an assessment of the
so-called cosmopolitan/communitarian divide. An application of the
26
Introduction
category of communication to this divide suggests the possibility of ef-

fecting a reconciliation between cosmopolitan and communitarian po-
sitions. The discussion here shifts the critique to the level of agency.
At this level cosmopolitanism contains a significant assimilatory logic.
Communitarianism on the other hand comes closest to the category
of coexistence. The case is presented that the positions represented by
Charles Beitz, Onora O’Neill, Michael Walzer and Chris Brown do not
take sufficient account of the possibilities for communication between
radically diverse agents. The category of communication allows a cri-
tique of both sides of this divide by revealing their limitations, while
also offering the possibility of incorporating their key insights into a
new position. By correcting these tendencies with an account of com-
munication between particular, situated agents it can be argued that a
communitarian path to cosmopolitanism becomes available.
Chapter 2 discusses three attempts to move beyond the cosmopoli-
tanl communitarian divide. Constitutive, poststructuralist and critical
theories are examined as accounts which attempt to incorporate a dis-
cursive, communicative dimension into the question of community.
Starting from broadly communitarian premises these approaches as-
pire to more genuinely universal and inclusive positions. Constitutive,
poststructuralist and critical theories all proceed from the hermeneu-
tic premise that the social world is constituted by the meanings it has
for its inhabitants and that this applies as equally to norms and values
as it does to boundaries and institutions. Despite sharing this common
ground with communitarians, they all attempt to extend the possibilities
for recognition and communication beyond the state-based community.
Chapter 2 outlines these positions and demonstrates how they go be-
yond cosmopolitan and communitarian positions by incorporating a
discursive element. The chapter concludes with the acknowledgement
that Linklater’s application of Habermasian discourse ethics to the
cosmopolitan project represents the most sophisticated and thorough
incorporation of a communicative dimension to these issues. One of
Linklater’s principal contributions is the use of discourse ethics to de-
velop a model of conversation between concrete situated agents. In so
doing he moves the debate to another plane.
Having established the category of communication as the basis for
recognition of difference, the debate then moves to the question of what
communication consists of and, in particular, what might constitute an
appropriate model of conversation. It is this question which forms the
27
substance of chapter 3 which engages in more detailed discussion of the

limits and potentialities of both poststructuralist and critical theoretical
accounts of communication. It argues that despite their differences both
approaches exhibit a tension between the concern with freedom and a
concern with communication. Discourse ethics in particular is revealed
to contain a tension between its principle of universal freedom in di-
alogue and the requirements of a dialogue characterised as providing
‘the moral point of view’.
Chapter 4 presents the case for the philosophical hermeneutic ac-
count of communication. Philosophical hermeneutics provides a theory
of what understanding consists of and, as such, develops an account
of communication. In philosophical hermeneutics, understanding is an
act of communication that is essentially dialogical or conversational in
nature. In Gadamer’s model of conversation self and other are seen as
partners in discussion concerning an object or subject (die sache Selbst)
which is placed before them. It is this model of conversation that is most
consistent with a practice of communication in which the other is seen
as different and yet equal. In this model the other is seen as holding
the same potential for truthful interpretation as the self and as being
capable of conveying that interpretation in conversation. It is argued
that the claim to universality of philosophical hermeneutics suggests a
model of conversation which is radically inclusive because it is open to
any linguistically constituted agent. This radical inclusiveness relieves
philosophical hermeneutics of the task of creating a homogenous realm
of similarly constituted agents. At this juncture the Aristotelian concept
of phronesis or practical reasoning is introduced in order to strengthen
the case for the philosophical hermeneutic model of the self/other
relationship and its application to the goal of ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism.
Chapter 4 also involves a comparison of the philosophical hermeneutic
and discourse ethics models and suggests that philosophical hermeneu-
tics provides a less assimilatory model.
Chapter 5 examines the principal limitations and criticisms of philo-
sophical hermeneutics. It begins with an examination of the so-called
Habermas/Gadamer debate which focused on the role of tradition
and the capacity of reason to provide emancipation. Discussion then
turns to the relationship between philosophical hermeneutics and
deconstruction as witnessed in the interaction between Gadamer and
Jacques Derrida. The chapter concludes by arguing that philosophical
hermeneutics, rather than constituting a polar opposite, can be distin-
guished from both critical theory and deconstruction by its distinctive
28
Introduction
Stimmung, or mood, which emphasises continuity over discontinuity or

rupture.
Chapter 6 incorporates the insights of philosophical hermeneutics
into a reformulated and ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism. It suggests that among
the characteristics of a cosmopolitanism informed by philosophical
hermeneutics is the never-completed pursuit of understanding and
agreement. Furthermore, the flexibility of the philosophical hermeneutic
approach leaves open the possibility that different parts of the interna-
tional system may develop or engage in different types of conversations
and correspondingly develop different levels of ‘thick or thin’ agree-
ment. The primary characteristic of such a thin cosmopolitanism is that
it does not prescribe the moral content of the community, instead, it
allows that content to be filled in by the participants themselves. The
chapter concludes with some reflections on how the perspective adopted
in this book might inform thinking about universal human rights.
29
1 Beyond the cosmopolitan/
communitarian divide
we want equality without its compelling us to accept identity; but

also difference without its degenerating into superiority/inferiority. We
aspire to reap the benefits of the egalitarian model and of the hierarchic
model; we aspire to rediscover the meaning of the social without losing
the quality of the individual.1
In recent years the question of community in IR has been dis-

cussed increasingly in terms of a cosmopolitan/communitarian divide.
According to Chris Brown the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide
concerns argument over whether the state or the species represent
the limit of human community.2 Cosmopolitans, Brown argues, place
1 T. Todorov, The Conquest of America (New York: Harper, 1982), p. 249.
2 While these terms are relatively new to the discourse of IR Chris Brown argues
that the positions themselves have a pedigree that goes back a long way. The for-
mulation cosmopolitan/communitarian echoes the formulation, of ‘man and citizen’.
Though the pedigrees of these two discourses are different, the central question is the
same: which comes first, membership of the community or the species? What the cos-
mopolitan/communitarian formulation captures at this particular juncture, however, is
the question of cultural difference, as it theoretically opens up the possibility of substate
communities, whereas the men and citizens formulation focuses on the state/citizenship
relationship. It is interesting to note that Andrew Linklater argues that citizenship can go
higher and lower to include the species and the substate community, whereas Brown – a
sympathiser with communitarianism – resists the claims of non-state communities. See
C. Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (London: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1992); C. Brown, ‘International Political Theory and the Idea of World
Community’ in Smith, S. and Booth, K. International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge:
Polity, 1995) and C. Brown, ‘Ethics of Coexistence: The International Theory of Terry
Nardin’, Review of International Studies, 14 (1988), 213–22; also J. Thompson, Justice and
World Order: a Philosophical Enquiry (London: Routledge, 1992); M. Cochran, Normative The-
ory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); M. Cochran,
‘Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism in a Post-Cold War World’, in J. Macmillan
and A. Linklater (eds.), Boundaries in Question: New Directions in International Relations
(London: Pinter, 1995); A. Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations,
2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1990).
30
Cosmopolitan/communitarian divide
ultimate moral significance on the individual and the species, while

communitarians situate it in the local or national community, or the indi-
vidual’s relationship to the community. Central to this debate have been
the questions of universal justice and cultural diversity. As it presently
stands, the formulation of the problem of community in IR suggests that
these two goals are necessarily oppositional. Cosmopolitanism, on one
hand, is seen as championing universal justice and membership of the
human community at the expense of cultural diversity and membership
of particular communities. On the other, communitarianism is seen to be
hostile to universal projects and sees any attempt to develop universal
moral vocabularies as necessarily destructive of the particular commu-
nities in which people exist. The constitution of this issue in terms of
a divide has meant that universal cosmopolitan justice has continued
to be seen as in conflict with the goal of maintaining cultural diver-
sity and justice to difference. The cosmopolitan/communitarian divide,
therefore, restates the opposition between community and difference.
The aim of this chapter is to assist in overcoming this divide, as a
step towards achieving a more just relationship to difference. In or-
der to begin this task it is necessary to examine both cosmopolitan
and communitarian positions. This chapter argues that neither cos-
mopolitanism nor communitarianism, in their most widely understood
formulations, are adequate in themselves to the task of providing a satis-
factory relationship to ‘difference’. The inadequacy of both cosmopoli-
tan and communitarian positions can be demonstrated by analysing
them according to the criteria of ‘communication’ as categorised in the
Introduction. In particular it is argued that both cosmopolitan and com-
munitarian positions exclude or marginalise the possibility of moral
communication and conversation between diverse groups.
The aim of this exercise, however, is not the total rejection of
either cosmopolitan or communitarian positions; rather it is to ef-
fect a reconciliation. The problem lies in neither communitarianism
nor cosmopolitanism, as such, but rather in aspects of the domi-
nant formulations and, most importantly, the divide between them.
The absence of an adequate account of communication on either
side of the divide leads to a too-quick foreclosure of the possibilities
for what may be called a communitarian path to cosmopolitanism.3
There are two goals in this chapter: the assessment of both cos-
mopolitan and communitarian positions according to the category of
3 It is these possibilities that form the focus of chapters 3 to 6.
31
communication; and beginning the task of overcoming the divide be-

tween them.
For the sake of clarity the discussion here is restricted to the liberal-
cosmopolitanism of Charles Beitz, the obligations-based cosmopoli-
tanism of Onora O’Neill, and the communitarianism of Michael Walzer
and Chris Brown. Liberal-cosmopolitanism designates rights-based cos-
mopolitanism, as distinct from other forms such as Marxism or those en-
dorsed by critical theorists like Andrew Linklater and David Held. While
Beitz, O’Neill, Walzer and Brown are by no means the only important
advocates of these positions, they are nonetheless useful representatives
of these categories. In particular Beitz’s use of early Rawls ties him di-
rectly to the principal focus of the liberal/communitarian debate and
brings the concerns of that debate to the discussion of cosmopolitanism.
Second, not only has Michael Walzer been one of the most important crit-
ics of Rawls, he has also been one of the few communitarians to attempt
to think systematically about the international realm. Chris Brown can
also be understood as attempting an application of aspects of commu-
nitarian thought to the international realm. Onora O’Neill presents an
alternative reading of cosmopolitanism that expressly attempts to ad-
dress some of the concerns of communitarianism. In focusing on these
authors, the purpose is to depict them as representatives of correlate
positions in political theory, on which the cosmopolitan/communitarian
debate in IR draws.
The key to moving beyond the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide
lies in a better understanding of the origins and nature of both positions.
One of the problems with the cosmopolitan/communitarian framework
is that it misrepresents the nature of the issues at stake, constructing
debate as one over moral/political boundaries. However, much of the lit-
erature on which this debate draws is not concerned with boundaries as
such but with disputes over the nature, source or grounding of morality
per se. Characterised as a debate between liberals and communitarians,
the central question is about how we acquire knowledge of the good,
and the relationship between the right and the good, rather than over
the boundaries of the moral community.4 The Liberalism of the early
Rawls, for example, appears to attempt definition of the nature of the
moral point of view and pursues the possibility of defining a universal
4 See S. Mulhall and A. Swift, Liberals and Communitarians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); also
D. Morrice, ‘The Liberal–Communitarian Debate in Contemporary Political Philosophy
and its Significance for International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 26 (2000),
233–51.
32
procedural account, in which the qualities of the right are defined once
and for all time. Communitarianism, on the other hand, suggests that
the contextual and historical nature of human social life prevents such
an exercise from succeeding. Both liberalism and communitarianism
begin with premises relating to the nature of morality itself and only
then move on to positions regarding the scope of moral boundaries; in
particular whether morality is transcendental, or universal, or whether
it is contextualised and particular.5
There is an important qualifier that needs to be made here. Because
they are not concerned with boundaries per se very few, if any, commu-
nitarians argue that we have no obligations to others, or more correctly,
that community borders work as strict walls preventing expressions of
moral solidarity and action between peoples. Most accept that humans
on the whole are moral beings capable of treating each other morally
regardless of their particular origins or situations. What the definition
or expression of morality might consist of is disputed, in the sense that
we may have different obligations to those who do not belong to the
immediate community, but this is secondary to the charge that commu-
nitarians restrict moral actions to the domestic sphere entirely. Likewise,
many liberals, such as Rawls, accept that their theories presuppose con-
sensus and existent levels of community, and, therefore, cannot be ap-
plied unproblematically to the international realm.6
However, what does distinguish these positions are their conceptions
of selfhood and moral agency. Liberal and communitarian positions
begin with different conceptions of the moral self, and derive from them
different conceptions of community. What is at issue here is the nature of
5 This is what the framework suggests. What the participants themselves argue
is often different. Some communitarians, such as Charles Taylor, give more spe-
cific endorsement to the possibility of heterogeneous community. See C. Taylor and
A. Gutman, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton University
Press, 1994). See also his discussion of communitarianism in C. Taylor, ‘Cross-Purposes:
The Liberal–Communitarian Debate’, in N. L. Rosenblum (ed.), Liberalism and the Moral
Life (Harvard University Press, 1989). Taylor argues that the liberal/communitarian debate
runs together two issues which should be kept separate, namely ontology and advocacy.
It blurs the distinction between ‘the factors you will invoke to account for the good life’
and ‘the moral stand or policy one adopts’. Taylor, ‘Cross-Purposes’, p. 159. The two
are not necessarily related he argues and to conflate them is to conflate description with
prescription.
6 For instance see M. Walzer, ‘The Distribution of Membership’ in P. G. Brown and
H. Shue (eds.), Boundaries: National Autonomy and its Limits (New Jersey: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1981); J. Rawls, ‘The Law of Peoples’, in S. Shute and S. Hurley, On Human
Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures (New York: Basic Books, 1993); J. Rawls, Political Lib-
eralism (Columbia University Press, 1993).
33
the ‘selves’, or moral agents, that populate the moral community and the
relationship to otherness suggested by the different conceptions of the
self. Understanding these various levels will allow assessment of both
cosmopolitan and communitarian positions and a movement beyond
the divide at the level of boundaries.
The cosmopolitan/communitarian divide

in international relations theory
This section demonstrates how the cosmopolitan approaches to inter-
national justice articulated by Charles Beitz and Onora O’Neill display
many characteristics of the assimilationist attitude. The following sec-
tion demonstrates how communitarian positions, such as that articu-
lated by Michael Walzer and Chris Brown, too quickly settle for coex-
istence at the expense of communication. In order to argue this case
the work of Seyla Benhabib is employed.7 The discussion concludes by
suggesting how both cosmopolitan and communitarian positions can
contribute to the development of a communicatively based universal-
ism that does justice to difference.
The positions occupied at the level of practice in cosmopolitan and
communitarian thought stem from the conception of the moral self and
of human agency that underpin liberal and communitarian thought,
respectively. In particular, liberal thought relies on a highly abstracted,
idealised conception of human agency and selfhood. Communitarian
thought alternatively focuses on the embedded and contextual nature of
human morality and agency and on how selfhood is relative to particular
social circumstances. These different understandings of selfhood result
in divergent understandings of the relationship between self and other
in the moral community and involve two different standpoints towards
otherness.
Benhabib argues that moral debates of the kind represented by cos-
mopolitanism and communitarianism privilege either the ‘generalised’
other or the ‘concrete’ other. The standpoint of the generalised other
has been the dominant standpoint in Western thought from Hobbes
to Rawls. It corresponds to the liberal–cosmopolitan position. This
standpoint
requires us to view each and every individual as a rational being
entitled to the same rights and duties we would want to ascribe to
7 S. Benhabib, Situating the Self (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
34
ourselves. In assuming the standpoint, we abstract from the individu-

ality and the concrete identity of the other. We assume the other, like
ourselves, is a being who has concrete needs, desires and affects, but
that what constitutes his or her moral dignity is not what differentiates
us from each other, but rather what we, as speaking and acting rational
agents, have in common. Our relation to the other is governed by the
norms of formal equality and reciprocity: each is entitled to expect and
to assume from us what we can expect and assume from him or her.8
Liberal–cosmopolitanism privileges the generalised other. It employs

abstract and impartial conceptions of human capacities, removed from
their particular social, cultural contexts. By privileging the generalised
other, liberal–cosmopolitanism performs an assimilative task. In partic-
ular, it reduces plurality to unity.
The standpoint of the concrete other, in contrast, corresponds roughly
to the priorities of the communitarian position. It
requires us to view each and every rational being as an individual with
a concrete history, identity, and affective-emotional constitution . . . (it)
abstract[s] from what constitutes our commonality and focuses on in-
dividuality. We seek to comprehend the needs of the other, his or her
motivation, what she searches for and s/he desires. Our relation to the
other is governed by the norms of equity and complementary reci-
procity: each is entitled to expect and to assume from the other forms
of behaviour through which the other feels recognised and confirmed
as a concrete, individual being with specific needs, talents and capaci-
ties. Our differences in this case complement rather than exclude each
other . . . I confirm not only your humanity but your individuality.9
Benhabib uses these categories to help negotiate a position transcending,

yet incorporating, both the concrete ‘ethic of care’ offered by writers
like Carol Gilligan, and the justice of rights and responsibility offered
in most liberal theories of justice.10 Benhabib argues that an adequate
account of moral reasoning and justice cannot afford to privilege either
standpoint.11 Instead, she argues that what is required is an account that
mediates between them.12 What is of importance at this juncture is not
8 Ibid., p. 159. 9 Ibid.

10 see V. Held, (ed.) Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics (Boulder: WestView,
1995) for the debates surrounding this approach.
11 In this sense the categories are intended to be descriptive and not prescriptive.
12 Such an account, she suggests, is provided by Habermasian discourse ethics. For reasons
of space Benhabib’s argument concerning discourse ethics cannot be addressed in this
chapter. However, as later chapters will argue it is not entirely clear whether discourse
ethics meets the criteria of communication as articulated here. See the discussion in ch. 3.
35
the issue of Benhabib’s solution but her categories of analysis. In the

first instance, it is the assimilative function of the generalised other that
preoccupies this enquiry.
Liberal–cosmopolitanism: Beitz
Liberal rights-based approaches, in one form or another, form the basis
of the most widely held interpretations of cosmopolitanism. Rights-
based approaches, for example, underlie the advocacy of international
human rights laws and of arguments for global redistributive justice.13
One of the most systematic and widely known formulations of the cos-
mopolitan position in recent times is offered by Charles Beitz who has
outlined a cosmopolitan philosophy derived from the work of John
Rawls.14
According to Beitz, a cosmopolitan morality must be universal: it
must consider the good of the individual and, therefore, of the species.
It is concerned ‘. . . with the moral relations of members of a universal
community in which state boundaries have merely derivative signif-
icance. There are no reasons of basic principle for exempting the in-
ternal affairs of states from external moral scrutiny. . . ’15 What defines
Beitz’s cosmopolitanism as liberal, in addition to its individualism, is the
commitment to universal and impartial principles. According to Beitz, a
cosmopolitan position is impartial because it ‘seeks to see each part of
the whole in its true relative size . . . the proportions of things are accu-
rately presented so that they can be faithfully compared’.16 Cosmopoli-
tan morality must also, therefore, remain neutral in relation to different
conceptions of the good. A cosmopolitan perspective cannot privilege
any one group in relation to any other or any group over any individual.
It must be non-perspectival, claims Beitz.17 In other words, cosmopoli-
tanism aspires to treat all individuals alike, regardless of their situation.
For Beitz, this aspiration comes closest to fulfilment in a Rawlsian so-
cial contract. The cosmopolitan quest for impartiality requires that ‘we
must . . . regard the world from the perspective of an original position
13 See for example H. Shue, Basic Rights (Princeton University Press, 1980).
14 C. R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton University Press, 1979)
and J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press, 1972).
15 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, p. 182.
16 C. R. Beitz, ‘Cosmopolitan Liberalism and the States System’, in C. Brown (ed.), Political
Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 124.
17 ‘By, “non perspectival”, I mean that a cosmopolitan view seeks to see each part of the
whole in its true relative size . . . the proportions of things are accurately presented so
that they can be faithfully compared. If local viewpoints can be said to be partial, then a
cosmopolitan viewpoint is impartial.’ Ibid., p. 124.
36
from which matters of national citizenship are excluded by an extended

veil of ignorance’.18 The Rawlsian ‘contract’ is arrived at through a hy-
pothetical conversation in which rational choosers are placed behind
a ‘veil of ignorance’, where ‘individuals are ignorant of their society’s
history, level of development and culture, level of natural resources, and
role [for Beitz] in the international economy’.19 The ‘veil of ignorance’ is
a levelling device meant to articulate a neutral and impartial principle
that mediates between different conceptions of the good in establishing
a universal conception of the right. According to Rawls, rational actors
choosing from behind a veil of ignorance would agree upon principles
whereby society would be organised for ‘the greatest benefit of the least
advantaged’.20 The aim of the Rawlsian original position is to deter-
mine principles of justice that could be agreed upon by all. It is meant to
encapsulate the liberal principles of equality, freedom and impartiality.
Liberal–cosmopolitanism, as articulated by Beitz, privileges the gen-
eralised other in several ways. The commitment to impartiality, as specif-
ically formulated by Beitz, privileges the generalised other by attempt-
ing to found a position outside of context and above all particularities.
The cosmopolitan focus on individuality in Beitz’s interpretation of early
Rawls, means that ties of context, sectional affiliations and particular-
istic loyalties, such as family, clan or nation, are to be disregarded for
the purposes of moral reasoning; ‘. . . when sectional values come into
conflict with the requirements of an impartial view, why should the
sectional values not simply lose out?’21 To be impartial towards all par-
ticular affiliations, associations and contexts, to take account of the good
of the whole means, in Beitz’s formulation, to judge from a detached,
dispassionate and abstracted position.
According to Iris Marion Young the ideal of impartiality, and thereby
the standpoint of the ‘generalised’ other, denies or represses differ-
ences, or assimilates, in three ways.22 First, it denies the particularity of
situations. In it ‘[t]he reasoning subject . . . treats all situations according
to the same moral rules, and the more the rules can be reduced to a
18 Beitz. Political Theory and International Relations, p. 176.
19 D. R. Mapel, ‘The Contractarian Tradition in International Ethics’, in T. Nardin and
D. R. Mapel, Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), p. 193.
20 Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 83. ‘Rawls argues that in such situations it is rational to choose
principles of justice that maximise one’s minimum share should one turn out to be the
least advantaged member of society.’ Maple, ‘The Contractarian Tradition’, p. 193.
21 C. Beitz, ‘Sovereignty and Morality in International Affairs’, in D. Held. (ed.), Political
Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), p. 24.
22 I. M. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 1990).
37
single rule or principle, the more this impartiality and universality

will be guaranteed’.23 Second, the variety and particularity of feelings
of individual subjects are excluded from the moral realm: ‘. . . reason
stands opposed to desire and affectivity as what differentiates and
particularise persons’.24 Third, impartiality ‘reduces the (actual)
plurality of moral subjects to one (abstract) subjectivity’.25 It is this
third description that is the most important in terms of the moment
of assimilation. To be universally impartial, the cosmopolitan position
must abstract from the particularity of agents and replace them with
a generalised, and, therefore, universal, conception of agency. By
reducing actual agents/subjects to abstract subjectivity, to the reasoning
dispassionate (male) ego, liberal-cosmopolitanism performs an act of
assimilation regarding the other’s identity. The other’s moral identity
is taken to be the same in matters of moral reasoning: ‘Because it
already takes all perspectives into account, the impartial subject need
acknowledge no subjects other than itself to whose interests, opinions
and desires it should attend.’26 Young correctly describes this as a
monological account of human agency and morality.
The ideal of impartiality, according to Young, constitutes a further
threat or denial of difference, in that the claim to theoretical impartial-
ity obscures real particularity. No vantage point is completely impartial
and all positions are situated in some sort of context. In other words,
there is no ‘non-perspectival’ perspective. As Young argues: ‘[i]t is im-
possible to adopt an unsituated moral point of view, and if a point is
situated, then it cannot be universal, it cannot stand apart from and un-
derstand all points of view’.27 Thus, liberal–cosmopolitanism involves
insufficient recognition that the abstract, idealised, supposedly impar-
tial, principle of justice is, in fact, the product of a particular history
and context of social meanings, of a particular culture, and represents a
particular conception of human agency.28
23 Ibid. 24 Ibid.
25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 101. 27 Ibid., p. 104.
28 According to Benhabib this observation does not undermine the universalist project
altogether, instead it merely provides a corrective to it. Under the conditions of the
‘veil of ignorance’ it becomes impossible to know what ‘like’ might mean: ‘Without as-
suming the standpoint of the concrete other, no coherent universalizability test can be
carried out, for we lack the necessary epistemic information to judge my moral situ-
ation to be, like, or unlike, yours.’ Accordingly Benhabib argues a coherent universal-
ism must take into account the plurality of concrete others. Benhabib, Situating the Self,
p. 164.
38
In defence of Rawls and Beitz, it could be argued that the ‘original

position’ attempts to take into account the plurality of subjects, and
indeed that this is a central motivation behind the ‘veil of ignorance’.
However, while the Rawlsian contract may recognise plurality, it does
not incorporate it into moral reasoning itself. Instead, the ‘veil of igno-
rance’ actually works to exclude any meaningful differences from the
deliberation regarding justice. The ‘veil of ignorance’ is premised on
the assumption that if all are situated equally behind it, then all will be
able to take the position of others into account. However, behind the
‘veil of ignorance’ both the ‘other’ and the ‘self’ are robbed of any iden-
tity. The ‘other’ disappears because the ‘veil of ignorance’ requires that
participants be ignorant of their own identity as well as that of others.
The agents here are rational, autonomous, Kantian selves freely capable
of choosing their own ends. However, in Rawls’s theory ‘. . . this moral
and political concept of autonomy slips into a metaphysics according
to which it is meaningful to define a self independently of all the ends
it may choose and all and any conceptions of the good it may hold’.29
Thus, individuals are defined purely in terms of the capacity, but not the
substance, of their agency. They are defined ‘prior to their individuat-
ing characteristics’.30 Defining individuals this way means that behind
the ‘veil of ignorance’ there is in fact no plurality at all; instead there is
what Benhabib calls ‘definitional identity’. Where there is definitional
identity and no plurality, it is impossible to know what the other might
want or desire, because nothing is known about the other that is dif-
ferent from what is known about the self. Under conditions of the ‘veil
of ignorance’, ‘the other as different from the self disappears’.31 In other
words, a significant moment of assimilation occurs.
This leads to the second criteria by which we can judge the cosmopoli-
tan/communitarian debate, namely the issue of conversation. The ‘veil
of ignorance’ is premised on a form of conversation, and it is this con-
versation that is intended to incorporate the plurality of human agents.
However, the conversation is a hypothetical conversation/contract, not
an actual one. Justice in this formulation amounts to anticipating what
abstracted reasoning individuals would choose in an ideal situation, in-
stead of what embedded, contextualised individuals might agree upon
in a real conversation. Furthermore, the outcome of this conversation
is anticipated in advance: ‘appropriate principles of justice’, we are to
29 Ibid., p. 161. 30 Ibid., p. 162. 31 Ibid., p. 161.
39
suppose, would be those arrived at by all participants from behind a

‘veil of ignorance’. But, as Walzer argues: ‘[R]ational men and women,
constrained this way or that will choose one, and only one, distributive
system.’32 Mapel, likewise, notes that in Rawls’s theory ‘. . . the agree-
ment of the contractors is all but dictated by the normative constraints
built into Rawls’s initial situation of the “original position”’.33 This ac-
count of justice is too prescriptive, and, therefore, unjust in relation to
particularism, because it calculates the outcome on behalf of all others
and, unsurprisingly, it arrives at the same outcome for all. The other is
like us and, therefore, we can know in advance what they would choose
under certain circumstances. Therefore, while the idea of conversation
is included, it is not communication in the sense intended by Todorov.
The other’s voice is not heard here at all, instead it is imputed to it, the
other’s identity is already assumed in advance.
At the level of agency, we can see that Beitzian liberal–cosmopo-
litanism involves a high degree of assimilation and disregards the plu-
rality of concrete others. It is assimilative in that it reduces all ‘concrete’
others to the same identity, that of the ‘generalised’ other.34 The claim
to impartiality both reduces the other’s identity to insignificance and
masks the situated identity of liberal–cosmopolitanism. In this sense it
equates equality with identity and privileges identity over difference.
Not all accounts of cosmopolitanism are necessarily liberal in the
above sense. According to Onora O’Neill it is possible to argue for
a reading of Kant that suggests a cosmopolitanism that emphasises
obligations over rights and that also is sensitive to the needs of real
embedded agents. O’Neill distinguishes between accounts that provide
idealised and abstract conceptions of agency: ‘A theory or principle is
abstract if it gives a general account of some matter – one that liter-
ally abstracts from details so is indeterminate.’35 Abstraction necessar-
ily leaves out details and involves selective omission. Idealisation, on
the other hand, involves selective addition. Abstraction is necessary
32 What Walzer means here is that for those behind the veil there really is no choice, to
act rationally in this situation can have only one meaning. M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p. 5.
33 Mapel, ‘The Contractarian Tradition’, p. 183.
34 According to Benhabib this is usually a western, male, public identity. She argues
‘Universalistic moral theories in the Western tradition from Hobbes to Rawls are substi-
tutionalist, in the sense, that the universalism they defend is defined surreptitiously by
identifying the experiences of a specific group of subjects as the paradigmatic case of the
human as such. These subjects are invariably white, male, adults who are propertied or
at least professional.’ Benhabib, Situating the Self, p. 153.
35 O. O’Neill, Faces of Hunger (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), p. 28.
40
in order to think about justice but idealisation is not: ‘Abstraction

enables us to reach audiences who disagree with us (in part); ideali-
sation disables us from reaching audiences who do not fit or share the
ideal.’36 Rights-based and contractarian approaches are based on an
over-idealised conception of agency and so will not be heard by those to
whom they are addressed. Additionally these agents, O’Neill suggests,
are often in most need of a rigorous account of justice, such as those in
the poorest countries of the world. The degree of idealisation precludes
their applicability and accessibility to real embedded agents. Idealisa-
tion, in presupposing and proposing forms of agency and identity on
participants, speaks in a language that is deliberately removed from
local contexts and in so doing makes itself unintelligible or inapplicable
to the actual agents:
For ethical reasoning to be accessible to the individuals, institutions

and collectivities to whom it is addressed they must have some capac-
ities for guiding their action by deliberation, to which the proposed
reasoning can be appropriately adjusted. They do not need ideal ca-
pacities . . . accessible ethical reasoning has to address the actual and
varied capacities for agency of different individual institutions and
collectivities.37
What is required for this is only a degree of abstraction. Abstraction,

O’Neill argues, allows us to think globally, about people who we do
not know, without imputing an identity to them. Idealisation requires
some imposition of identity upon the agent; the ethical process comes
to involve assumptions or argument about individuals that are too
prescriptive and assimilative. According to O’Neill, an obligation-based
Kantian morality attempts to take into account and accommodate the
plurality of contexts and meanings in arriving at a universal morality,
and it does so by refusing the level of idealisation of agents adopted by
contractarian approaches. Abstract accounts of agency are preferable to
O’Neill because they allow for a variety of agents and contexts. This is
necessary if any moral universalism is to be achieved. To be universal,
moral laws must be accessible to a variety of agents and circumstances.
In this way O’Neill attempts to counter the problems of agency that affect
other cosmopolitan perspectives. In particular, her argument suggests
that a Kantian perspective of this type achieves a balance between the
36 O. O’Neill, ‘Ethical Reasoning and Ideological Pluralism’, Ethics, 98, July (1988), 714.
37 O’ Neill, Faces of Hunger, p. 37.
41
generalised and the concrete other. Nonetheless, this position remains

problematic and contains some threads that may undermine its claim.
The Kantian approach offered by O’Neill still claims both impartiality
and a specific account of agency. In particular, the categorical impera-
tive seems necessarily to convey a specific image of individual agents
as capable of making free, rational choices as to their own ends. This
implies that individuals choose their ends, goals and interests free from
the influence of their cultural contexts and those other factors which go
to make up their identities (and, therefore, their definition of their ends).
Furthermore, the mediation between the universal and the particular in
the categorical imperative is deliberated monologically, and abstractly,
in advance of any real conversation. O’Neill’s perspective attempts to
balance the ‘generalised’ and the ‘concrete’ other by making principles
of moral action reconcilable with local beliefs. For O’Neill, however, this
should only be understood in the context of the categorical imperative.
For Kantian ethics, the task is to discover and formulate universal princi-
ples and to make them accessible to particular local contexts and all this
requires is really an act of translation from the abstract to the concrete.
The categorical imperative, therefore, is a universal principle worked
out monologically in advance and for this reason O’Neill remains com-
mitted to a monological account of moral deliberation.
This section has demonstrated the moment of assimilation and the
place of conversation in liberal–cosmopolitan thought through an ap-
plication of Benhabib’s categories of the ‘generalised’ and the ‘concrete’
other. It argued that a commitment to impartiality as conceived by Beitz,
following Rawls, reduces the real plurality of human agents, of concrete
others, to a single abstract and idealised human subject. The reduction
of many voices to one repeats the moment of assimilation present in Las
Casas’s approach to the other by replacing knowledge of the other with
a form of one’s own ‘ego ideal’; by seeing not the other, but oneself.
Communitarianism
If the cosmopolitan position appears biased too heavily in favour of the
generalised other, then the communitarian position appears to favour
the concrete other. At the level of agency, communitarians take the po-
sition of the concrete other as the starting point of their deliberations on
justice. As Walzer argues
. . . the question most likely to arise in the minds of members of a polit-

ical community is not, What would rational individuals choose under
42
universalising conditions of such and such a sort? But rather, What

would individuals like us choose, who are situated as we are, who
share a culture and are determined to go on sharing it?38
Communitarians, therefore, share the critique of the standpoint of the

generalised other outlined above and instead focus on the concerns of
the embedded and particular individual in coming to an understanding
about justice.
In contrast to the liberal–cosmopolitan advocacy of universally im-
partial principles based on idealised conceptions of agency, communi-
tarians argue that justice and morality are relative and particular. In
these accounts, justice stems from, and is defined by, the members of
the community, and morality is local and contextual:
. . . if individuals are constituted wholly or in part by the social relations

of their communities, if their goals, their ethical judgements and their
sense of justice are inextricably bound up with community life, then
why should they accept the criteria or evaluations of cosmopolitans?39
Communitarian approaches argue that if morality is context-dependent

and can only be decided within a culture/community, attempts to pro-
pound universal conceptions of justice come up against the barrier of
cultural difference. They ask ‘[w]here do these “external” criteria get
their authority?’40
According to communitarians, cosmopolitans are particularly prone
to attempts to define justice once and for all, universally across time
and space. Thus, the cosmopolitan commitment to impartiality between
different conceptions of the good life is itself an articulation of a partic-
ular conception of the good life.41 The communitarian critique implies
that, given that knowledge is particular and contextual, there will be no
way of knowing or judging between the many contextual definitions of
the good and establishing which is the correct or best one. In addition,
this is sometimes accompanied by a supporting claim that contextual
38 Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. 5.

39 Thompson, Justice and World Order, p. 22. 40 Ibid., p. 22.
41 As Walzer notes regarding Rawls: ‘. . . the rules of engagement are designed to ensure
that the speakers are free and equal, to liberate them from domination, subordination,
servility, fear and deference . . . but once rules of this sort have been laid out, the speakers
are left with few substantive issues to argue and decide about . . . The thin morality is
already very thick – with an entirely decent liberal or social democratic thickness. The rules
of engagements constitute a way of life . . .’ M. Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at
Home and Abroad (University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 13.
43
knowledge is necessarily incommensurable. The existence of differing

conceptions of the good life, of morality and community, place effective
limits on cosmopolitan and universalist arguments for the existence and
desirability of transcultural norms. From the communitarian position
cosmopolitan morality is seen as the universalisation, and imposition,
of one particular morality or agency at the expense of other local or par-
ticular moralities. Cosmopolitanism requires a degree of cultural and
moral homogeneity. Communitarians see the development of substan-
tive moral universalism in itself as an injustice. Particular norms and
cultures are to be valued and protected, and any imposition of univer-
sal standards upon them is an unjustifiable denial of integrity or group
autonomy. According to Walzer, ‘Justice is rooted in the distinct un-
derstanding of places, honours, jobs, things of all sorts, that constitute
a shared way of life. To override those understandings is (always) to
act unjustly.’42 Given the existence of cultural particularism, we might
abandon the quest for more universally inclusive forms of social life,
morality and community altogether.
By adopting the standpoint of the concrete other, communitarian posi-
tions imply a position of coexistence. If universal norms and principles,
appropriate to the position of the generalised other, are seen as doing an
injustice to difference, the bias towards the concrete other would seem
to suggest that an ‘ethics of coexistence’ between different communities
is the best that can be hoped for.
One expression of communitarianism as an ethics of coexistence can
be seen in the work of Chris Brown.43 Starting from essentially commu-
nitarian premises, Brown has argued that the idea of an international
society of states represents the best means of coping with value pluralism
in the international arena. According to Brown, the society of states is
the means by which particular conceptions of the good life, represented
by sovereign states, are mediated by mutual recognition of interest in
the maintenance of (state) autonomy. In international society states ac-
knowledge that domestic conceptions of the good are not necessarily
shared and, more importantly, can only be secured by a pact of coexis-
tence between these competing conceptions which guarantees freedom
from undue outside influence. International society is seen as providing
the framework of rules that enables separate realms to pursue their own
42Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. 314.
43I have elaborated on this aspect of Brown’s thought elsewhere and what follows is
drawn directly from that discussion. See R. Shapcott, ‘Conversation and Coexistence,
Gadamer and the Interpretation of International Society’, Millennium, 23. 1, Spring (1994).
44
goals, aims or versions of the good life. ‘The general function of interna-
tional society is to separate and cushion, not to act.’44 R. J. Vincent has
described this as the ‘egg box’ conception of international society.
For Brown, Terry Nardin has provided the best articulation of this as-
pect of international society.45 In establishing the nature of international
society Nardin makes a distinction between ‘purposive’ and ‘practical’
associations. Purposive association is concerned with pursuing common
and shared goals, such as a Trade Union might do. Practical association
concerns the relationship between those ‘. . . who are associated with one
another, if at all, only in respecting certain restrictions on how each may
pursue his own purposes’.46 This type of association covers those areas
concerned with the rule of law and standards of conduct, it is ‘. . . a set of
considerations to be taken into account in deciding and acting . . .’47 or, in
other words, the rules of engagement. Nardin himself draws on the work
of Michael Oakeshott for this distinction.48 The point is that Brown wants
us to see that in Nardin’s version ‘. . . the nature of international society
is such that all-inclusive association can only be practical’.49 Because the
rules of international conduct are premised on the lack of agreed com-
mon purposes, the type of conversation in this community is limited to
the terms of its continued existence. Nardin’s version of international
society is that of the ‘egg-box’. In such an association the objective is
merely to keep the various purposive associations apart; it has no role
in facilitating understanding or agreement on matters of substance. This
notion of ethics extends the possibility of shared values only so far as
the maintenance of minimal order. Moral relativism is tempered only
by need to manage diversity, to define rules of engagement and proce-
dure; to establish a secure cushioning environment, an egg box. Thus for
44 R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1986).
45 See T. Nardin, Law, Morality and the Relations of States (Princeton University Press, 1983).
For Brown’s discussion of Nardin see Brown, ‘Ethics of Coexistence’ and also International
Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches.
46 Nardin, Law, Morality and the Relations of States, p. 9. Brown refers to these as the
‘. . . general arrangements of society’. Brown, ‘Ethics of Coexistence’, p. 215.
47 Nardin, Law, Morality and the Relations of States, p. 6.
48 See ibid. and M. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford University Press, 1975). This ar-
gument closely parallels ‘realist’ views which emphasise difference as intractable (though
it doesn’t echo the realist distinction between domestic and international realms and the
ensuing rejection of normative concerns in relations between states). In Brown’s reading
of Nardin ‘Individual states are independent actors, mirroring Oakeshott’s free human
beings . . . and for all the play that is made with the notion of interdependence reducing
barriers between states, is likely to remain so’. Brown, ‘Ethics of Coexistence’, p. 218.
49 Ibid., p. 215.
45
Brown, international society has been conceptualised as the means by

which different particular thick cultures maintain their separateness.50
Difference and exclusion in Walzer

Communitarian thinking in International Relations attempts a formu-
lation of community that does justice to the other by including and
recognising a wide range of moral and cultural diversity. However, by
settling on coexistence, this type of communitarian thought is also ex-
clusive of difference. It is exclusive in the sense that it defines a more
strict boundary between those inside the community of ‘concrete oth-
ers’ and those outside. In so doing it defines a boundary between those
we are capable of communicating with and those who are essentially
outside of the conversation.
While an ethics of coexistence resists an articulation of difference
as inferiority, it nonetheless consigns some concrete ‘others’ to a place
outside the realm of moral conversation. According to communitarian
thought, moral conversation can only take place within a community
of shared values. Walzer argues that communities of this type are nec-
essarily particularistic ‘. . . because they have members and memories,
members with memories not only of their own but also of their com-
mon life. Humanity by contrast, has members but no memory, so it
has no history and no culture, no customary practices, no familiar life-
ways, no festival no shared understanding of social goods.’51 In other
words, the absence of shared social goods, of a common discourse of
meaning, places limits on the capacity to communicate. Communitar-
ian thought, therefore, implies a morally exclusive community.
While Walzer defends the communitarian emphasis on the concrete
other, he also attempts to include, to a limited degree, those outside
the immediate moral community. Walzer wishes to acknowledge that
there are concrete others outside our community of shared discourse,
towards whom we can act ethically and morally. Therefore, while the
existence or non-existence of a shared language or culture places limits
on the possibility for universal community, these limits are not absolute.
50 This approach corresponds with what is known as the pluralist interpretation of in-
ternational society. However, a solidarist interpretation is also available. The advantages
of the solidarist interpretation will be discussed in later chapters; all that needs to be
noted at this point is that the interpretation of the role of international society provided
by Brown and Nardin can be contested by a more cosmopolitan or solidarist reading, see
N. Wheeler and T. Dunne, ‘Hedley Bull’s Pluralism of the Intellect and Solidarism of the
Will’, International Affairs, 72 (1996), 1–17.
51 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 8.
46
Walzer wishes to advocate ‘. . . the politics of difference and, at the same

time, to describe and defend a certain sort of universalism’.52 Walzer
is clearly aware of the inadequacy of certain forms of communitar-
ianism and, while he does not want to argue that we have Kantian
obligations to those concrete others, he does suggest that ‘. . . the mem-
bers of all the different societies, because they are human can acknowl-
edge each other’s different ways, respond to each other’s cries for help,
learn from each other and march (sometimes) in each other’s parades’.53
Walzer, therefore, has argued for a ‘thin’ universalism. A thin morality
is juxtaposed to a thick, contextualised and concrete morality occur-
ring within a community. What is possible outside this type of com-
munity is a thin or minimal morality. A moral minimalism ‘. . . makes
for a certain limited, though important and heartening solidarity. It
doesn’t make for a full-blooded universal doctrine.’54 It refers to the
ability to empathise and think morally about the other and depends
‘. . . most simply, perhaps, on the fact that we have moral expectations
about the behaviour not only of our fellows but of strangers too’.55 So
moral minimalism means, for example, that we can empathise with
what is meant when marchers in Prague use the terms ‘freedom’ or ‘jus-
tice’, without necessarily sharing the concrete particular meanings of
the marchers.
Walzer’s minimalism is nonetheless insufficient because, as he ar-
ticulates it, it is not a principle of conversation but of intuition.
Minimalism, argues Walzer, ‘. . . is less the product of persuasion than of
mutual recognition among the protagonists of different fully developed
moral cultures’.56 However, while this moral minimalism claims some
universal status while seeking recognition of the other’s identity, it does
not do so through conversation, communication or dialogue. Walzer,
like Las Casas, believes the other to be worthy of moral consideration
and even solidarity but holds this to be best recognised by a position of
coexistence.
Likewise Brown’s version of international society is also an attempt
to acknowledge that communitarian premises do not rule out the pos-
sibility of a thin universal agreement. For Brown this exists in the form
52 Ibid., p. x. 53 Ibid., p. 8. 54 Ibid., p. 11. 55 Ibid., p. 17.

56 Ibid., Walzer’s use of the term ‘fully developed’ here lends further support to his aim
to refute the charge of relativism as it suggests a greater commitment to the possibil-
ity of ranking different cultures according to their moral development and thereby to a
substantially ‘thicker’ sense of universalism.
47
of the rules of coexistence which, while minimalist and ‘practical’, are

nonetheless moral. For Brown coexistence is a thin moral solution to the
problem of ethical and cultural pluralism and provides the most satisfac-
tory form for the recognition of difference in the international realm.57
Unlike Walzer, Brown does argue that coexistence requires some form of
conversation, if only to establish the nature of the pluralist international
society. Having done so he then limits conversation to that task alone
and rules out the possibility of engaging in more substantive conversa-
tion that might, for instance, lead to the emergence of shared, common
purposes and, therefore, of a purposive international society.
Walzer and Brown are unable to articulate a proper sense of communi-
cation because of their communitarian starting point. Communitarians
argue that liberal theorists rely on, but do not acknowledge or theorise,
presupposed levels of community. They assume a ‘we’ who all belong
to shared historical continuity of meaning; they assume Sittlichkeit. Lib-
erals ask ‘[W]hich formulation of principles is most in harmony with
pre-existing liberal beliefs and values?’, while at the same time couch-
ing their answers in universal formulations which go beyond merely
liberal communities. The communitarian project aims in part to expose
the situated bases of liberal thinking. In taking the givens of community
as the starting point of their critique of liberalism, however, communi-
tarians underestimate the possibility of moving beyond and enlarging
that community.
Beyond the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide

So far, this chapter has argued that liberal–cosmopolitanism offers the
possibility of a universal community of humankind, while at the same
time running the risk of requiring the community to be populated by a
particular conception of human agents, by modern western autonomous
individuals. Liberal–cosmopolitan positions, therefore, privilege iden-
tity over difference. Communitarians on the other hand proffer an artic-
ulation of justice that stresses the defence of cultural difference in the face
of homogenising tendencies. Communitarian positions privilege differ-
ence over identity, thus underestimating what humanity might have
in common. This scenario suggests that cosmopolitanism necessarily
denies difference and plurality and that communitarianism necessarily
57I have outlined the problems with Brown’s solution in Shapcott, ‘Conversation and
Coexistence’.
48
stands opposed to universal claims and to human unity. This debate

suggests only two, necessarily oppositional, ways of approaching the
question of international community. It offers only a choice between
assimilation and coexistence, and offers little suggestion that these po-
sitions can be transcended.
At this point it is useful to turn again to O’Neill and the cosmopolitan
critique of communitarianism.58 O’Neill argues that while the question:
‘[W]hat level of agreement can we or do we presuppose?’, is necessary,
it is not enough. Communitarian thinkers make the mistake of thinking
that an established community is the limit and sole basis for arriving at
moral principles. In a situation of moral diversity such as characterises
the present there is as much need to construct new shared agreements
as there is to understand existing ones. For O’Neill, therefore, the issue
‘need not be “what agreement can we presuppose?” but rather, “[w]hat
understanding and what agreement can we construct?” ’59 The com-
munitarian approach makes the mistake of focusing on the first and
ignoring or down-playing the latter. The communitarian position, ac-
cording to O’Neill, has too determinate a conception of the ‘we’ as a
consequence of its focus on the first question rather than the second:
If one is concerned with presupposable agreements, the ‘we’ must
be taken rather strictly. If on the other hand, one is concerned
with the agreement that can be achieved, ‘we’ may have no unique
interpretation and need not be defined by reference to any (pre-
existing) shared ideal or outlook.60
The problem with the communitarian position is that it suggests the

stricter version of the ‘we’, or, in the case of Walzer, posits a wider but
very much weaker, or second order, ‘we’.61
Universalist and cosmopolitan projects in contrast do not succeed in
separating the two definitions of who ‘we’ refers to. Thus certain lib-
eral conceptions of justice ‘can be made more widely accessible only
58 O’Neill’s position shows how cosmopolitans and communitarians ask different ques-
tions and how these influence their substantive positions. In this sense, the cosmopolitan
and communitarian positions provide useful and enlightening critiques of each other.
59 O’Neill, ’Ethical Reasoning and Ideological Pluralism’, p. 717.
60 Ibid.
61 A further problem with communitarian positions is that the position of coexistence
requires the establishment of some agreement whereby difference can be valued and
tolerance established, such as an ‘ethics of coexistence’, otherwise they lapse into an in-
coherent relativism. Such an agreement must in some sense be universal. Therefore at the
very least even an ethics of coexistence requires an expansion of the meaning of ‘we’ and
the development of some sort of universal ethic.
49
by imposing a conception of justice that embodies that (liberal) ideal’;62

that is, they are assimilative. O’Neill’s questions suggest that in order
to do justice to ‘otherness’, the question ‘[w]hat agreement can be con-
structed?’ needs to be asked anew with the concerns of the communi-
tarians in mind. The question that those concerned with the possibility
of universal moral community need to ask is ‘what community can be
constructed, not by abstract, idealised and impartial agents, but by par-
ticular, embedded, concrete and situated agents?’ In other words, an
adequate account of the possibilities for justice to difference needs to
include elements of cosmopolitan and communitarian positions in an
exploration of how both can contribute to the constructive project.
One of the tasks of this chapter has been to suggest that a communitar-
ian path to cosmopolitanism exists. In order to do justice to the other’s
alterity and to their humanity, in order to recognise the other as equal
but not identical; in order to do justice to what is different and what is
held in common, it is necessary to go beyond, while incorporating the
best of both, liberal–cosmopolitan and communitarian positions. Taking
such a path requires the attempt to conceive of the ‘we’ as a potential
community of concrete agents engaged in a search for understanding.
The argument of this book is that the construction of a wider or uni-
versal sense of the ‘we’ that resists the movement of assimilation, both
requires and endorses a practice of communication. Such a practice
suggests the possibility of developing more inclusive moral commu-
nities without annihilating or assimilating the ‘other’. It suggests an
encounter with the other that is premised on the possibility of mutual
understanding and agreement. In attempting to communicate an effort
is being made to engage the other’s difference through what is com-
mon, and that, in the first instance, is language. To encounter the other
as different we need to presuppose as little as possible regarding their
identity, only that we are capable of communicating with them and
they with us. Understanding and agreement are possible because the
other is seen neither as absolutely ‘other’ nor as essentially identical.
To achieve this the other and the self must be understood from both
‘concrete’ and ‘generalised’ standpoints. From the standpoint of the
‘concrete’ other, the ‘other’ is understood as embedded in particular so-
cio/politico/cultural situations: from the standpoint of the ‘generalised’
other it is possible to assume the capacity for communication and un-
derstanding as abstract properties belonging to particular selves or as
62 Ibid., p. 716.
50
universally shared capacities. Both standpoints are required in order to

facilitate and undertake conversation. To enable genuine communica-
tion, acknowledgement of the concrete other must take place. Likewise,
both the desire and the belief in conversation must exist and this re-
quires emphasis on the possibilities of the generalised other. It is the
standpoint of the ‘generalised’ other that motivates the question: ‘what
type of agreement/understanding can be constructed?’
A practice of communication premised on these grounds attempts to
work towards a cosmopolitan morality from communitarian premises.
In so doing, it suggests that the standpoints of the concrete and gen-
eralised other are both necessary and mutually corrective positions.
Likewise, cosmopolitanism and communitarianism can be understood
as mutually corrective, rather than mutually exclusive, positions. An
ethics of communication so formulated takes from the cosmopoli-
tan/Kantian tradition the project of universal community, to treat all
others in a moral fashion regardless of national or communal bound-
aries. From the communitarian position it takes the premise that treating
others in a moral fashion requires paying attention to their particularity
and that such particularity may place (flexible) limits on the possible
‘thickness’ of any larger community. In this way a practice of commu-
nication aims to incorporate, while at the same time transcending, the
insights of both cosmopolitanism and communitarianism.
Conclusion
This chapter has pursued the idea that the meaning of justice should
incorporate the idea of justice to difference, and that a relationship
premised on communication suggests a possible way of achieving such
an aim. It can be suggested here that an account of justice as communi-
cation remains universalist in aspiration, while at the same remaining
attentive to particularity. Phrasing this slightly differently, a commu-
nicative morality is universally inclusive of particular, situated agents.
In this regard, Young has suggested the possibility of distinguishing
between two senses of universalism. She argues that ‘[U]niversality in
the sense of the participation and inclusion of everyone in moral and
social life does not imply universality in the sense of the adoption of a
general point of view that leaves behind particular affiliations, feelings,
commitments, and desires.’63 A communicative morality aspires to the
63 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 105.
51
first but not the second dimension of universality. The development

of accounts of moral life that emphasise this first ‘thin’ sense of uni-
versalism and attempt to transcend the cosmopolitan/communitarian
divide is what provides the focus of the next chapter. The ‘interpretive’
approaches of constitutive theory, poststructuralism and critical theory
can all be understood as attempts to incorporate a communicative di-
mension to the question of community while aspiring to universalism.
Chapter 2 examines these accounts and begins to assess their commu-
nicative dimension.
52
2 Community and communication
in interpretive theories
of international relations
To celebrate diversity is necessarily to refuse to treat others as ‘other’.

It is to be aware of a moral duty to be obligated to others . . . In One
world/Many worlds, others cannot be ‘other’. They may be different –
but not cast as exclusion and inferiority . . . The challenge is . . . to work
with the necessary reciprocity of connections between peoples able to
speak on equal terms.1
Recent interpretive developments in IR theory have generated a variety

of alternative accounts of community to those witnessed in the cos-
mopolitan/communitarian divide. In their own ways, constitutive the-
ory, poststructuralism and critical theory have all emerged to challenge
the framework with which moral debate in IR is discussed. Although
there are many differences between them common to these approaches
is a hermeneutic or interpretative understanding of the subject matter of
IR and of moral questions especially. It is this dimension which provides
the resources with which they are able to move beyond the deficiencies
of the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide and resist the ‘devastating
choices’ it presents ‘between being human or being a national citizen
and between being an autonomous individual or a participant in a so-
cial community’.2 It is the essentially hermeneutic dimension of these
approaches which encouraged them to develop accounts of community
emphasising the importance of recognising particular concrete others
and their communities while simultaneously developing universalist
approaches to moral life. What emerges out of these works is the com-
mon theme that justice as recognition is now as important a component
1 R. B. J. Walker, One World, Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 1988), p. 166.
2 Ibid., p. 136.
53
of discussions of international justice as the distribution of economic

and political goods. As such, interpretative approaches are all engaged
in redefining and re-conceptualising the moral problematique of IR.
Furthermore, there appears to be a general consensus emerging that
crucial to this project is an understanding of the possibility of dialogue.
However, it also appears that these ‘schools’ offer different interpreta-
tions and articulations of the content of, and possibility for, dialogue.
This chapter will introduce and outline the contributions of these ac-
counts, and explain how they attempt to move beyond the problems
of the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide. Chapter 5 will develop a
critique of these positions and outline some of their drawbacks. It is
intended that such critique will contribute to the development of the
project of theorising a discursively based cosmopolitanism.
The discussion begins with the ‘constitutive’ approach of Mervyn
Frost, proceeds to examine poststructural approaches and concludes
with the critical theory of Andrew Linklater. This chapter suggests that
critical theory, in particular the work of Linklater, has provided the most
thorough account of conversation that is available in international rela-
tions theory in the form of discourse ethics but that this account is not
without its limitations
Constitutive theory
This section provides a brief examination of the ‘constitutive’ approach
to international ethics, developed by Mervyn Frost.3 While Frost’s con-
stitutive theory bears much in common with the communitarian posi-
tion, it can be understood as an attempt to develop a more coherent
international application of it.4 Frost shares the communitarian posi-
tion that norms and ethical argument must occur within the language
we have available in any given social context; norms must be under-
stood within the particular embedded contexts that generate them. For
Frost, however, a ‘communitarian’ understanding of the constitution
of the ethical subject does not preclude the viability of international
norms such as human rights. A communitarian starting point does not,
3 M. Frost, Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996). Originally published as Towards a Normative Theory of International
Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
4 Molly Cochran for instance categorises Frost as communitarian, and not without jus-
tification. However, it is argued here that Frost’s commitment to human rights places his
analysis somewhere outside this category. See M. Cochran, Normative Theory in Interna-
tional Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
54
Community and communication
therefore, necessarily entail a particularist understanding of morality.

However, Frost does not wish to advocate a full-blown cosmopolitanism
that replaces the national community. Instead he argues that concepts
such as human rights and sovereignty should be understood as part of
a universal ‘state domain of discourse’ and that both are amongst what
he calls, following Dworkin, the ‘settled norms’ of international society.
In other words, Frost does not see human (or individual) rights and
sovereignty as necessarily oppositional categories; instead, they are in-
tegral parts of a universal state-based domain of discourse that includes
the individual and the state.
Frost’s argument consists of several parts: first, individuality and sub-
jectivity are understood to be constructed intersubjectively. In this he
adheres to a broadly hermeneutic and communitarian understanding of
subjectivity. Included in this is an understanding of political discourse as
inherently normative. Frost refutes positivist and objectivist accounts of
the social sciences that reject or deny the essential normativity of human
social life. The next part of his argument is that moral/ethical argumen-
tation and reasoning is carried out within communities of discourse
and in terms of ‘settled norms’. Again, he adheres to a communitarian
account of norms and moral reasoning. Rejecting any transcendental
or Archimedean understanding of morality, Frost accepts that discus-
sion concerning right conduct and action can only take place within
an already commonly held language and understandings: ‘A problem
cannot be formulated as a normative issue except within the context
of given practice of normative argument. Normative issues only arise
as such within the context of certain shared understandings.’5 Frost
follows Dworkin in arguing that these shared understandings for all
intents and purposes can be understood as ‘settled’ in the sense that
they are taken for granted as constituting the domain of discourse
in which moral action and discussion occurs. Therefore, he argues,
‘. . . we who are seeking answers to pressing normative issues in inter-
national relations, must start by seeking an understanding of the area
of normative agreement implied by our agreed list of pressing issues.
Our task is to outline the relevant domain of discourse. A domain of
discourse is an area of discussion within which the participants gen-
erally recognise (and recognise others as recognising) many rules as
settled.’6
5 Frost, Ethics in International Relations, p. 77. 6 Ibid., p. 78.
55
Frost’s third point is that discussion on normative issues in world

politics is and should be undertaken in terms of the settled norms of
international society or what he refers to as the ‘state domain of dis-
course’. Any and all attempts to talk about normative issues in world
politics must necessarily refer to the norms associated with the state
domain of discourse.7 In this argument, in order to be comprehensible
as a normative issue all normative discussion must refer to the state in
at least three ways:
. . . all normative issues in world politics today refer, either directly or

indirectly, to the state, inter-state relations and the role of individuals
as citizens of states . . . it is then possible to encapsulate all the several
normative questions in the one central question: ‘what, in general, is a
good reason for action by or with regard to states?’8
This is what he means by the state domain of discourse.

In referring to the ‘settled norms of discourse’, Frost is also making
a correlative claim here, not unlike that made by Bull in his Hagey
lectures,9 that the state and its domain of discourse, including the dis-
course of modernisation, has been universalised. In other words, no
population or territory can any longer be understood as ‘exterior’ to this
discourse in any meaningful way. Frost argues that: ‘There are no sig-
nificant groupings of people who fall totally outside it. Previously there
were such outside groupings, in earlier times it was as plausible to
characterise the world as consisting of the civilised groups and the
barbarians.’10 Today such divisions no longer exist. The ideological divi-
sion between east and west, between Christianity and Islam for example,
7 ‘All the debates about normative issues in international relations take place within a
common tradition of political theory – within what I have called the modern state domain
of discourse. Ibid., p. 83. Within this domain ‘there is widespread agreement on what
could be called the goals of modernisation. This includes the goals of technical advance,
industrialisation and the education of the populace which is necessary to support the
former two goals’. Ibid., p. 84.
8 Ibid., p. 79. According to Frost there are at least eighteen settled norms of the state do-
main of discourse. They are: (1) preservation of society of states, (2) sovereignty, (3) peace,
i.e. war requires special justification, (4) the anti imperialism norm, (5) action against impe-
rialism is considered good, (6) balance of power, (7) modernization, (8) patriotism, (9) col-
lective security, e.g. United Nations,(10) institutions of diplomacy, (11) international law,
(12) citizens, domestic priority, (13) democratic institutions are good, (14) human rights,
(15) non-intervention, (16) economic sanctions, (17) jus in bello, (18) economic coopera-
tion. See ibid., chapter 4.
9 See H. Bull, Justice in International Relations (The Hagey Lectures), (Waterloo: University
of Waterloo, 1983).
10 Frost, Ethics in International Relations, p. 84.
56
while exhibiting a high degree of disagreement about substantive nor-

mative issues nonetheless remains embedded in and takes place in the
context of the state and its domain of discourse.11
Frost argues that discussion of the ethical and moral issues of in-
ternational relations must, therefore, take place in the context of the
settled norms of international society. Thus Frost uses the communi-
tarian insight in two ways: the local or national society is the most
important community for the individual’s realisation; the state, the
highest form of community in which individual realisation occurs, is
also constituted intersubjectively within a society of states and that
as normative discussion within the state is constituted by the partic-
ular community, so normative discussion between states is conducted
by that community, i.e. the community of states. However, Frost does
not intend to argue that there exists a separate realm of the interna-
tional that is wholly distinct from the domestic. Instead he argues that
there is a hierarchy of institutions and that all levels play their part
in the constitution of the individual. In this, he differs from the ‘plu-
ralist’ account of international society provided by Brown. Frost’s in-
terpretation of international society sees it as a much thicker commu-
nity that has moved well beyond a practical association to issues of
purpose. This leads to the next and most interesting part of Frost’s
account.
Having outlined his understanding of the nature of normative issues
in international relations, Frost outlines two more tasks of a constitutive
theory. The first of these is to develop a justificatory background thesis
for these settled norms; the second, is to examine certain ‘hard cases’
in world politics in order to understand how they may be addressed in
terms of the settled norms outlined above. The remainder of this dis-
cussion examines Frost’s account of constitutive theory as a background
theory justifying the settled norms of the state domain of discourse.
Frost’s list of the settled norms of international society includes both
sovereignty and human rights. In both Bull’s and Brown’s accounts these
two norms are in conflict, because the principle of individual human
rights is seen to oppose and undermine the pact of coexistence between
11 ‘The language of this domain is the ordinary language of international relations. This
language is a functioning whole – not a completely coherent one – which includes within
it a mix of the following terms: state, sovereignty, self determination, citizen, democracy,
human rights (individual rights and group rights), and a set of terms connected to the
notion of modernisation . . . I simply contend that any discussion about what ought to be
done in world politics . . . must be conducted in the language of the modern state.’ Ibid.,
pp. 89–90.
57
states that establishes their sovereignty, that is, their right to an exclu-
sionary realm. Frost argues that Bull, for instance, is, therefore, unable to
account for the importance of both of these norms. Frost also argues that
contractarian, order based, and utilitarian approaches are similarly inad-
equate. He asserts, contra Bull, that there is no such opposition between
the two norms of sovereignty and human rights. According to Frost,
Bull and others have misunderstood not only the nature of sovereignty
but also the nature of rights and the state discourse. He argues that a
constitutive understanding of the individual and the state, drawing on
Hegel’s philosophy of Right, effects the necessary reconciliation.
According to Frost the modern state should be understood as con-
stitutive of its citizens as rights holders and as free and equal citi-
zens. Individuality should be understood as something that is con-
stitutive and realised in the community in the form of the sovereign
state, not against it. Frost argues, against liberals, that the state is not
just an instrumental means of allowing individuals to compete and to
realise their rights and ends. It is instead constitutive of their individ-
uality. He, therefore, takes a Hegelian view of the state as the highest
form of community in which individuality is realised. The state sur-
passes the family and civil society as an institution in which individ-
uals are recognised and constituted. However, Frost does not posit a
strict division between inside the state and outside it. He understands
the state and the individual to be constituted in turn by embedded-
ness in an international society of states ‘. . . within the autonomous
state all individuals are constituted as free citizens, but for their citi-
zenship to be fully actualised their state needs to be recognised by
other states as autonomous.’12 The realisation of the individual can
only occur within a state which is a member of an international so-
ciety of states. The society of states itself rests on certain norms re-
garding the legitimacy of states and their internal and external obli-
gations. Thus an ethically defensible state must guarantee the liberty of
its citizens. It must be a state in which individuality and freedom are
realised:
[I]n order to be recognised as a state, a polity must be one in which the

people recognise each other as citizens in terms of the law which they in
turn recognise as being both constituted by them and as constitutive
of them as citizens . . . An autonomous state is one in which the citizens
12 Ibid., p. 151.
58
experience the well-being of the state as fundamental to their own

well-being . . . 13
In this way he argues that a constitutive theory is able to effect a

reconciliation between the principles of sovereignty and human rights.14
The two principles are, in effect, mutually constitutive, in that recogni-
tion of sovereignty, of state autonomy, is dependent on the state being
one in which individual autonomy is recognised.
Thus it seems that the settled norms of international society, as un-
derstood by constitutive theory, are to be accepted because they provide
the context in which individuals can be realised. The settled norms of
international society allow for the development of domestic political or-
ders in which individuals come to know themselves as rights-bearers.
However, Frost is not just attempting to reconcile the two norms of
sovereignty and human rights in terms of a constitutive theory. He
has another agenda which is to develop a normative justification, not
only for the settled norms but also for the state and the states system.
Constitutive theory supplies not only a descriptive account of interna-
tional norms but also a normative defence of them.
By demonstrating the way in which both individuality and state
autonomy are constituted, Frost attempts a resolution of the cosmopoli-
tan/communitarian divide from an essentially communitarian start-
ing point. His argument contributes an understanding of the way in
which the rights discourse is developed and embedded in real con-
crete situations and institutions, and the way in which those institu-
tions are similarly embedded in international institutions. Frost’s ac-
count of individuality allows the particularity of concrete others by
acknowledging context of their constitution as subjects. It could be
argued that he uses this starting point to develop a communitarian
defence of certain universal principles. Furthermore, in his attempt
to reconcile sovereignty and human rights, Frost takes individuals as
his moral starting point but situates them in a particular community,
the state. In so doing he can be seen as attempting to reconcile cos-
mopolitan and communitarian positions and developing a commu-
nitarian path to cosmopolitanism. Frost suggests that belonging to a
particular community is not exclusive of certain universal principles
13 Ibid., p. 152.
14 For a more detailed discussion of this dimension see P. Such, ‘Human Rights as Set-
tled Norms: Mervyn Frost and the Limits of Hegelian Human Rights Theory’, Review of
International Studies, 26 (2000), 215–31.
59
which target the individual.15 In this manner he attempts to recon-

cile the tension between community and difference. For Frost, a con-
stitutive theory that mediates between and recognises the different
levels in which subjects are constituted is able to surpass the cos-
mopolitan/communitarian divide and to do justice to individuality and
difference without settling for a norm of strict coexistence. Frost has
a thicker understanding of coexistence than that provided by either
Walzer or Brown.
Where Frost’s account fits the category of communication, is in the
central concepts of a domain of discourse and the idea of settled norms.
At the heart of Frost’s theory is the notion of normative discussion
and agreement because a domain of discourse is ‘an area of discus-
sion within which the participants generally recognise (and recognise
others as recognising) many rules as settled’.16 Furthermore, although
he provides no account of how these rules have come to be ‘settled’, that
is, the historical processes in which they were generated and came to be
understood, the settled norms he describes have status and authority
because they are agreed upon. Frost’s account suggests that the develop-
ment of these norms is historical and contextual, and most importantly,
discursive.
However, Frost’s account presents some problems that prevent it
from fitting neatly into the category of communication. First, while
Frost’s account does attempt to mediate and reconcile both cosmopoli-
tan/communitarian positions and gives evidence of the standpoints
of both concrete and generalised others, it nonetheless relies on a uni-
versalised account of agency and subjectivity. In particular, the resort
to a Hegelian account of individuality and the state provides a ‘thick’
conception of subjectivity that is rooted to a particular social formation
and institution. The hope for ethical international politics, in Frost’s
account, is couched in terms of the individual, the state, modernisation
and rights discourses. These provide the only vocabularies in which we
15 However, it is important to note that Frost doesn’t endorse or subscribe to

cosmopolitanism as he understands it. He remains committed to the state as the high-
est form of institution necessary for the recognition of individuality and furthermore he is
sceptical regarding the possibility of the development of a world order in which individ-
uals feel the same attachment to the species as they do to their particular, national, com-
munities. Cosmopolitanism ‘claims that there is a moral community of mankind which it
conceives to be in some way independent of the modernizing inter state practice, whereas
I consider just that modernizing state system as providing the idiom within which nor-
mative argument takes place.’ Frost, Ethics in International Relations, p. 85.
16 Ibid., p. 78.
60
can meaningfully speak of international or universal norms. However,

constitutive theory displays little understanding or recognition of the
many ways in which the state, even the democratic state, frustrates the
aspirations and the realisation of the identities of some individuals and
communities. For these reasons, Frost’s account remains substantially
within the category of assimilation, in that normative discourse requires
the universalisation of one conception of subjectivity and one social
institution, in the form of the state. While this understanding of agency
is not idealised, in O’Neill’s sense, and is accounted for contextually,
it nonetheless requires the assimilation of alternative subjectivities in
order to have the universal status it claims.
Frost’s constitutive account holds open the possibility of the construc-
tion of substantive normative agreement in the international realm. It
suggests not only the possibility, but the reality, of a communitarian
path to cosmopolitanism. It attempts to demonstrate how community
can be constructed, not by abstract universal and impartial agents, but
by particular embedded and situated agents. Frost provides one answer
to O’Neill’s question: ‘What understanding and what agreement can
we construct?’, based on an answer to the question: ‘What agreement
can we presuppose?’ He argues that ‘we’ have already agreed upon
substantive international norms and these can be used as the basis of
ethical reasoning. In this regard Frost provides an advance upon the
cosmopolitan and communitarian positions. However, for the reasons
outlined above, the constitutive theory remains within an assimilationist
logic at the level of agency.
Poststructuralist international relations theory

Postmodern and poststructural approaches have been amongst the
most important developments in recent IR theory.17 While remaining
17 For the purposes of clarity I will use the term poststructuralist to denote a broad
range of thinkers also sometimes referred to as postmodernist. There exists a great deal
of disagreement and dispute about the use of these terms in themselves and as applied to
particular writers both in the field of international relations and more widely. In particular
whether the works of Foucault and Derrida can be placed together under the name post-
structuralism without doing significant violence to either of them is at issue. My usage
follows what I perceive as the dominant usage of these terms in IR. Thus Richard Ashley,
R. B. J. Walker, William Connolly and David Campbell are more likely to refer to them-
selves as practising poststructuralist rather than postmodern IR (though Campbell himself
resists this categorisation). In following this usage I am also distinguishing between post-
structuralism as a strategy of reading and postmodernism as a term that delineates a par-
ticular historical epoch or movement, as has been suggested by Jean-François Lyotard. See
61
on the margins in terms of the discipline as a whole they have made

a significant contribution towards bringing normative issues to the
forefront of inquiry. The principal normative achievement of poststruc-
turalism has been to highlight the centrality of questions of otherness
and alterity to the issue of community in IR. Poststructuralists pursue
this interest by conducting critique aimed to destabilise those projects
engaged in establishing realms, discourses, identities or territories
where difference is excluded, assimilated or denied. Poststructuralist
accounts are motivated by a concern to envisage or allow the creation
of new spaces where difference and heterogeneity can flourish. Within
the domain of IR this concern has manifested itself in a critique of
the principle and practice of sovereignty and the advocacy of moves
towards a deterritorialisation of ethics and community. While poststruc-
turalists are concerned to critique the sovereign state as an exclusionary
form of community they are less inclined to articulate alternative
forms of community, and, especially, wish to eschew the project of
defining the parameters of a ‘thick’ community or morality. They do,
however, have more to say about what a poststructuralist ethic might
look like.18 This ethic is informed by particular emphases on freedom,
on one hand, and responsibility on the other. This section discusses
two streams of poststructuralist ethics and attempts to determine from
them the most important dimensions of poststructuralist accounts of
community. It is argued that poststructuralists provide an ethic which,
in principle, excludes no member of the species from moral considera-
tion, and dialogue and, therefore, shares common ground with critical
theory. It is also argued that poststructuralist accounts of dialogue,
freedom and responsibility are motivated by a concern to overcome the
dichotomies of the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide. In particular,
poststructuralist approaches suggest an understanding of freedom and
responsibility that is explicitly linked to the possibility of communica-
tion between ‘concrete’ others. Poststructuralism, therefore, provides a
significant contribution to the search for an ethics of communication.
This section begins with a brief outline of the poststructuralist project
in IR and then moves on to outline poststructuralist ethics and the
relation of these ethics to the issues of freedom, enlightenment and
democracy.
J-F. Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (University of Minnesota

Press, 1984).
18 Poststructuralists appear to resist the metanarratives of ‘morality’ and ‘justice’ prefer-
ring to restrict themselves to the apparently less determinate discourse of ‘ethics’.
62
Poststructuralist international relations and the problem

of community.
Poststructural approaches to IR follow the lead of Foucault and
Nietzsche in theorising about truth and power. For the most part, post-
structuralist inquiries into IR have concerned investigations into the
relationship between truth and power in international relations the-
ory and in international practices and foreign policy. Rather than ad-
vocating a hermeneutics of suspicion19 involving a deep uncovering of
truth, a truth hidden by or suppressed by power, as critical theorists
do, poststructuralists argue that truth and power are mutually impli-
cated. As Foucault argued ‘. . . there is no power relation without the
correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that
does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations’.20
Therefore, Campbell and George state, poststructuralism ‘looks for no
distinction between “truth” and power, for it expects none’.21 Poststruc-
turalists are concerned to analyse the way in which truth works as a
discourse and as an effect of power. The upshot of this position is that
poststructuralism focuses on offering readings of the way in which his-
torically and culturally contingent interpretations and practices come
to be taken as given, sovereign, ahistorical, true or natural.22 This line
of thinking leads poststructuralists to ask questions, not of the type ‘is
this true?’ but instead ‘How has this come to be/act/function as truth?’
According to Devetak, poststructuralists follow Nietzsche’s assertion
that ‘it is more important to determine the forces that give shape to an
event or a thing than to attempt to identify its hidden, fixed essence’.23
19 For a discussion of the terms hermeneutics of recovery and suspicion, see M. Gibbons
(ed.), Interpreting Politics (New York University Press, 1987). See also the discussion of
philosophical hermeneutics in chapter 4.
20 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1977),
p. 27.
21 J. George and Campbell, D, ‘Patterns of Dissent and the Celebration of Difference: Crit-
ical Social Theory and International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly, 34 (1990),
269–93, p. 281.
22 Poststructuralist readings of IR, therefore, have a concern with revealing the historicity
of the human world and in particular with challenging interpretations that deny that
historicity and claim an ahistorical or transcendent source. They share with critical theory
a concern with the relationship between knowledge and power and with the way in which
humans make their own social world and then attribute a ‘natural’ status to it. They have
often followed the work of Michel Foucault in providing a reading of how the modern
subject as ‘sovereign man’ has come to be constructed as part of the larger historical project
of modernity. They have provided readings of international relations that examine how
the idea of sovereign man has entered and helped to constitute that discourse.
23 R. Devetak, ‘Critical Theory’, in S. Burchill and A. Linklater (eds.), Theories of Interna-
tional Relations (London: Macmillan, 1996), p. 186.
63
This type of genealogical approach has been applied most thoroughly

to the question of subjectivity. Amongst the most important contribu-
tions of poststructuralism has been an account of how the modern no-
tion of subjectivity has come about. Poststructuralist accounts have been
concerned to identify the historicity of the modern subject, rather than
identify and define its rational essence.
An important part of the broader poststructuralist project is to un-
derstand how and in what ways dominant categories of truth, reason,
subjectivity, identity, community, and sovereignty establish themselves
as totalities, or, in Frost’s terms, as settled, by excluding or marginalising
that which is different or other. The rationale behind this project stems
from a concern to include that which has been excluded or denied. As
George and Campbell put it:
The (poststructuralist) project is a search for thinking space within the
modern categories of unity, identity, and homogeneity; the search for
a broader and more complex understanding of modern society which
accounts for that which is left out – the other, the marginalised, the
excluded.24
Following Derrida, poststructuralists argue that any claim to repre-

sent or establish a truth, text or thing ‘in itself’ is always premised on,
or implicates, that which it is not. Thus any truth claim, or claim to
pure presence, is always constituted by its opposite. The outcome of
this insight is a reading that suggests that ‘totalities, whether concep-
tual or social are never fully present and properly established’.25 The
aim of poststructural readings, therefore, is to disturb and unsettle
totalising truth claims and discourses, in order to reveal and dises-
tablish the hierarchies and dichotomies and exclusions they contain.26
Within the field of IR this project has taken the form of a preoccupation
with the practices associated with the concept of state sovereignty.27
24 George and Campbell, ‘Patterns of Dissent’, p. 280.

25 Devetak, ‘Critical Theory’, p. 189.
26 According to Devetak poststructural strategies of deconstruction aim, ‘to disclose the
parasitical relationship between opposed terms, and to attempt a displacement of them’.
Ibid., p. 189. Deconstruction, therefore, claims that the supposed opposition between two
parts of a pair is misleading and instead opposites should be understood as contaminating
each other, neither able to establish a pure presence independent of the other.
27 Poststructuralist readings of international relations have, in particular, been concerned
with analysing the way in which the discourse of sovereignty has not only come to be
constructed, but also how it has come to be constructed as, in effect, an ahistorical phe-
nomenon. They offer alternative readings of sovereignty that stress the historicity of both
sovereignty and the concepts of state, anarchy and reasoning man in which it is embedded.
64
Poststructuralist readings of IR have been concerned to identify the

historicity of the principle of sovereignty as the ‘dominant mode of sub-
jectivity in IR’ and reveal how it has come to function as a naturalised
and given effect of power. Poststructuralists have questioned the prin-
ciple of sovereignty as the universal form of social and political life,
and in particular they have questioned the practices of exclusion that
constitute it.
According to poststructuralists, the principle of state sovereignty as-
serts a political and ethical monopoly over a territory and population.
The sovereign state represents a clear boundary between inside and
outside and presents itself, and is represented by others, as a stable,
fixed and naturalised boundary. The link between territory, identity
and community encapsulated by the principle of state sovereignty is
exclusionary of those outside its boundaries. The central plank of the
critique of sovereignty, therefore, revolves around the question of ex-
clusion and of boundaries and, in particular, the way in which ‘framed
within a spatial metaphysics of same and other, citizen and enemy,
identity and difference . . . [sovereignty] expresses an ethics of absolute
exclusion.’28 Inside the state is community, morality, politics, freedom
etc., and outside is anarchy, power, war, danger, difference and inse-
curity. In particular, the principle of sovereignty underscores and but-
tresses rigid, hierarchical and closed forms of political practice, subjec-
tivity, identity and community. Poststructuralist writers suggest that for
ethical and practical reasons the state’s claim to a sovereign jurisdiction
over a population and territory is no longer able to provide a satisfac-
tory resolution of questions about the nature and location of political
community.29
William Connolly, for example, argues that democratic practices
should no longer be constrained by the principle of sovereignty and
the connection with a clearly demarcated territory. Connolly argues
that the sovereign state has both helped and hindered the practice of
28 R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside, International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 66. According to Walker ‘ . . . the principle of state
sovereignty already expresses a theory of ethics, one in which ontological and political
puzzles are resolved simultaneously, it affirms that the good life, guided by universal
principles, can only occur within particularistic political communities’. Ibid., p. 64.
29 According to David Campbell ‘the extent and nature of the vast network of relations
within which states are sequestered as subjects disturb the efficaciousness of any one-
dimensional representation of agency, power, responsibility or sovereignty. Accordingly
security cannot only (or even primarily) be about territorial boundaries and the ethical
borders that instantiate them.’ D. Campbell, Politics Without Principle: Sovereignty, Ethics
and the Narratives of the Gulf War (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996), p. 84.
65
democracy, but that conditions in the world today require a rearticu-

lation of the democratic ethos that exceeds the state. He argues that
‘[S]ome elements of a democratic ethos can extend beyond the walls of
the state.’30 In other words, he argues that the democratic ethos should
not be exclusive of those outside the state.
The sovereign state is problematic because it arbitrarily and contin-
gently sets the limits of ethical responsibility and political action. Post-
structuralist accounts argue that the possibilities for ethical and political
life need not necessarily be constrained by the oppositions between self
and other, inside and outside that the principle of sovereignty keeps in
place. They are directed towards a reading of sovereignty that ‘decon-
structs’ the sovereignty/anarchy dichotomy and the modes of identifi-
cation, ethics and community that correspond to it.31 This would include
the so-called settled norms of the state domain of discourse identified
by Frost.
The most significant ethical impact of this reading of sovereignty
and the concern to question the ethics of exclusion is the move to,
what Campbell calls, ‘a deterritorialisation of responsibility’.32 The ma-
jor argument here is simply that notions of ethics and responsibil-
ity should not necessarily be linked to those who happen to share
the arbitrarily demarcated boundaries of the territory of the sovereign
state. Poststructuralist accounts, therefore, should be understood as con-
cerned with questioning the morality of exclusion, and included in
this concern is the project of beginning to think of new ways of re-
lating to others and of envisaging community.33 They are concerned to
articulate conceptions of ethics and community that are not bound by
30 W. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 155.
In this Connolly sounds not unlike Frost, who likewise extends the principles of democ-
racy beyond the state. However, Frost remains committed to the state and its domain of
discourse in a way in which Connolly and other poststructuralists are not.
31 For Devetak ‘The consequence of taking a postmodern stance is that central politi-
cal concepts such as community, identity, democracy and the state are rethought without
being anchored in “ultimate markers of certainty” like sovereignty’. Devetak, R. ‘Postmod-
ernism’, in Burchill and Linklater, Theories of International Relations, p. 203. For poststruc-
turalists such as Walker the most important examples of this are new social movements
which stress the connections between peoples across national boundaries.
32 ‘Levinas’ thought is appealing for rethinking the question of responsibility, especially
with respect to situations like the Balkan crisis, because it maintains that there is no cir-
cumstance under which we could declare that it was not our concern.’ D. Campbell, ‘The
Deterritorialisation of Responsibility: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics After the End of Philos-
ophy’, Alternatives, 19 (1994), 455–84, p. 463. See also D. Campbell, National Deconstruction
(University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
33 As Devetak argues ‘the practical political task is to move towards forms of state which
do without the claims of territorial exclusion and supremacy as necessary constitutive
66
the sovereign state nor by its opposite, of a universally homogenous

state/community and that resist the strict dichotomies of self/other
and identity/difference that accompany these categories. Thus, rather
than surrendering the normative project altogether poststructural-
ism is concerned to deconstruct and rethink the framing of moral
questions.34
Deterritorialised ethics: freedom, democracy and responsibility

Rather than attempting to delineate the boundaries of some new form
of human community or to articulate the content of a ‘thick’ community,
poststructuralist writers have, instead, been more concerned with the ar-
ticulation of a poststructural ethical disposition. However, it is possible
to draw the following conclusions regarding community from poststruc-
tural discussions of ethics and the critique of sovereignty. To date, post-
structuralist accounts of ethics have tended to fall into two streams: an
ethics of freedom/democracy and an ethics of responsibility.35 However,
an important, though under-theorised, shared attribute is a concern with
dialogue and an ethical engagement with difference.
The first of these streams is related most closely to the critique of
sovereignty and has most forcefully been put by Ashley and Walker,
with more recent contributions from Connolly. According to Ashley
and Walker, the critique of exclusionary practices of the sovereign state
is carried out in what they call a ‘register of freedom’. In their work
freedom is associated with the critique of boundaries and the register of
freedom is a ‘register that affirms and exploits ambiguity, uncertainty
features of modern politics’. Devetak, ‘Postmodernism’, p. 202. Included in this task is

a question of how those who are seen to be different come to be treated as unequal or
excluded from moral consideration.
34 Thus, for example, Devetak argues that ‘poststructuralism is only critical of commu-
nity to the extent that it attempts to inscribe fixed, rigid boundaries of enclosure; that is to
the extent that it claims or institutes sovereignty’. R. Devetak, ‘The Project of Modernity
in International Relations Theory’, Millennium, 24. 1 (1995), p. 44.
35 Devetak argues that the two streams can be distinguished thus: ‘One strand challenges
the ontological description on which traditional ethical arguments are grounded. It ad-
vances a notion of ethics which is not predicated on a rigid, fixed boundary between inside
and outside. The other strand focuses on the relation between ontological grounds and
ethical arguments. It questions whether ethics ought to begin with ontology before mov-
ing to ethics.’ Devetak, ‘Postmodernism’, p. 204. He also notes that the ethical dimension
of poststructuralist thinking in IR remains the most underdeveloped component. There
are perhaps good reasons, consistent with the poststructuralist approach, for this being
the case. In particular poststructuralists do not attempt to develop universal accounts of
the good life and, therefore, are not necessarily concerned to develop universal accounts
of morality.
67
and the trangressability of institutional boundaries . . . ’36 To privilege

any particular line, community or identity is to give that line sovereign
authority and to create a boundary limiting the space for the exercise of
freedom and ‘with the hardening of boundaries, one’s own domain of
freedom is now more limited’.37 The central premise here is that free-
dom lies in the ability to transgress boundaries. Understood in this way,
freedom necessarily requires a particular orientation and labour and
‘. . . a readiness to question supposedly fixed standards of sovereign
judgement and to transgress institutional limitations . . . ’38 The concern
with questioning boundaries and limits underpins the entire poststruc-
tural project. Poststructuralism finds freedom in the very refusal ‘. . . to
privilege any partisan political line. It is in the act of not privileging
that it offers emancipation and liberation.’39 Freedom is understood as
freedom from totalisation.
William Connolly sees the democratic ethos as consistent with the
problematisation of boundaries and ‘final markers’ in a register of free-
dom. He argues that such an ethos is about more than just electoral
accountability; it embodies a certain disposition, a disposition that con-
tests settled discourses and is involved in a project of denaturalisation
of boundaries (and identities). The democratic ethos
treats the contestation of final markers as a contribution to freedom,
self formation and self governance among constituencies no longer re-
quired to believe that how they have been constituted historically is
what nature requires them to be . . . A democratic ethos balances the
desirability of governance through democratic means with a corollary
politics of democratic disturbance through which any particular pat-
tern of previous settlements might be tossed up for grabs again.40
Such an ethos counters the tendency of democracy towards institutional-

isation and naturalisation of itself in territorialised practices. Democracy
must therefore, like freedom, be forever questioning itself and the
boundaries it invokes.
The register of freedom Ashley and Walker describe is a response to
what they call a crisis of representation in modern subjectivity (linked to
36 R. K. Ashley and R. B. J. Walker, ‘Reading Dissidence / Writing the Discipline: Crisis

and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies’, International Studies Quarterly,
34 (1990), 367–426, p. 389.
37 Ibid., p. 394. 38 Ibid., p. 389.
39 George and Campbell, ‘Patterns of Dissent and the Celebration of Difference’, p. 284.
40 Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, p. 154.
68
a disciplinary crisis). As was noted above, poststructuralists have been

engaged in a reading of western notions of subjectivity that reveal their
historicity and hence their contestedness. For Ashley and Walker, this
historicity is revealed in crisis. For them, subjectivity is always in cri-
sis, contested, contingent and delimited. Crisis in an identity, truth or
representation is revealed when it becomes impossible ‘to exclude the
contesting interpretations of subjective being that must be absent if this
presence is simply to be’.41 In other words, all subjectivities, indeed all
representations that attempt to establish themselves as purely present
and uncontested, are always in crisis. Thus the dominant notions of
freedom in modern western discourse which rely on such essentialised
accounts of human agency as reasoning, rational, western male egos are
also in crisis. The crux of the critique of western or modern subjectiv-
ity is not that it is western or modern but that it attempts to connote
‘an absolute origin of truth and meaning in itself’42 that excludes other
representations. Ashley and Walker argue that the revelation that the es-
tablishment of any identity, agency, subjectivity, truth claim, must rest
upon the creation of the other, and that the other must ‘infect’ that iden-
tity, thereby undermining its claim to a pure presence, has significant
ethical fallout. Any claim to a totalising sovereign identity must neces-
sarily do injustice by excluding or marginalising others. Concerned to
critique any notion of ‘sovereign’ subjectivity that claims to represent a
pure presence, instead subjects and objects are understood as ‘ever in
the process of being inscribed through a hazardous contest of represen-
tations (and) . . . deprived of a self-evident reality’.43 Poststructuralists
are concerned to demonstrate not only how this conception has come to
be, but also its relativity and contingency.
The ethical motivation of this critique of subjectivity is a concern to do
justice to, or at least, not to exclude through totalisation, other modes
of subjectivity.44 This reading of subjectivity, therefore, shares the cri-
tique of the ‘abstract’ other by Benhabib. Privileging the abstract other
41 Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading Dissidence / Writing the Discipline’, p. 378.
42 Ibid., p. 378. 43 Ibid., p. 379.
44 Poststructuralists argue that the marriage of freedom to one particular (though uni-
versalised) account of subjectivity and agency manifests a denial of other subjectivities
and consequently a restriction of freedom. Poststructuralists attempt to rearticulate the
meaning of freedom without tying it to a particular formulation of subjectivity and the
hegemonic and exclusionary practices associated with it. If Poststructuralists provide
readings of IR that unsettle and question totalising discourses motivated by a concern
with human freedom and enlightenment, then it also stands that poststructuralism is con-
cerned to problematise these discourses themselves. They understand enlightenment and
69
involves a problematic universalisation of a particular sense of agency

or subjectivity and is exclusive of other accounts that would contest it.
Ashley and Walker attempt to develop an account of freedom that does
not presuppose privileging the abstract other, in the form of a universal
account of a sovereign subject.
A freedom that does not attempt to claim an exclusive monopoly
over human identity or to privilege any particular account, or establish
a sovereign claim to truth, is a freedom that permits the largest possible
space for diverse articulations of being, doing and belonging, and is a
freedom that allows a more diverse flourishing of different ‘concrete’
subjectivities. Freedom in this sense is about creating a space in which
‘concrete’ others can express and realise their differing subjectivities and
‘that sustains and expands the cultural spaces and resources enabling
one to conduct one’s labors of self making . . . ’45
The emphasis on questioning boundaries, and resistance to totalisa-
tion, in this strand of poststructuralist thought can be understood also
as an ethics of Foucauldian resistance. An ethics of Foucauldian resis-
tance is an ethics of radical autonomy. Thus, the testing of limitations
is conducted in order to pursue freedom in such a way that allows the
greatest scope for freedom for all concerned to pursue it while recognis-
ing that not only does this amount to different things in different times
and places but that it cannot be carried out in isolation.46 Rather than ad-
vocating a nihilism or relativism poststructuralism can be understood as
being motivated by a concern for freedom, democracy and autonomy.47
Again, Ashley and Walker’s treatment of freedom shares much with
Connolly’s understanding of the democratic ethos. Connolly is involved
freedom not as fixed endpoints, universally and transcendentally defined, outside of time
or place but as continuing processes with flexible, contingent and particular meanings in
particular locations.
45 Ibid., p. 139.
46 It is important to note here that this ‘labor of self-making’ is not conceived of as a project
undertaken by individuals in isolation: ‘. . . Self making is not a private matter; . . . the
expansion of freedom cannot be equated with the expansion of sovereign powers’. Ibid.,
p. 392. Indeed the very ethicality of this notion of freedom lies in the recognition that
one’s own ‘labor of self making’ is carried out in the context of others attempting to do the
same, that ‘it is just at this point – where the differences between the ‘she’ of a locality and
the ‘ourselves’ who span localities are tested – that ethical considerations . . . arise’. Ibid.,
p. 393.
47 Walker, for example, argues that ‘[M]uch of the postmodern turn can be understood
as a series of attempts to reclaim or reconstruct or even finally to create some practical
space for, say, a Kantian concern with the conditions of the possibility of knowledge or the
meaning of autonomy in a world in which the secular guarantees of Reason and History
can no longer console us for the death of God’. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 20.
70
in an attempt to provide an account of democracy that does not priv-

ilege the ‘abstract’ other and a universal subjectivity or the territorial
restrictions of the nation-state. For Connolly, a democratic ethos is the
best way of approaching the identity/difference paradox; that paradox
in which identity and, therefore, autonomy cannot be posited without
positing difference. A democratic ethos of questioning final markers is
also an appropriate response to the crisis of representation. Such a ques-
tioning applies to the markers of identity and subjectivity as it does to
the boundaries of any social formation. A democratic ethos is an ethos
of pluralisation, it is an ethos that ‘. . . strives to create more room for
difference by calling attention to the contingent, relational character of
established identities’.48 According to Connolly, a democratic ethos al-
lows for the flourishing of different subjectivities, while at the same time
recognising that these subjectivities are contingent, interdependent and
contending. In a similar vein to Ashley and Walker, Connolly’s agonis-
tic democratic ethos is concerned with the creation of a space in which
different subjects can engage in labours of self-making. An agonistic
democratic ethos ‘. . . opens up a cultural space through which the other
might consolidate itself into something that is unafflicted by negative
cultural markings’.49 Thus, for Connolly, a democratic ethos is the most
appropriate ethos for fostering pluralism and giving due recognition
to identity and difference. Connolly’s emphasis on the recognition of
contingency and on an agonistic conception of democracy attempts to
articulate a conception of democracy that incorporates ‘concrete’ others.
The question remains, how does ‘one’ act or proceed in a register of
freedom, knowing one’s own and the other’s identity to be in flux and
knowing that one’s own ‘labours of self-making’ cannot be unproblem-
atically universalised or exported? Ashley and Walker answer that to
proceed in a register of freedom one must ‘be disposed to undertake
a patient work of questioning and listening . . . ’50 Undertaking one’s
labours of self-making in a world without sovereign centres requires
an ethics where ‘the democratic practices of listening, questioning and
speaking are encouraged to traverse . . . institutional limitations . . . ’51
Freedom comes to be seen as freedom to be heard and to speak and not
to be excluded from communication and conversation. Furthermore,
48 W. Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Cornell

University Press, 1991), p. 33.
49 Connolly, Ethos of Pluralization, p. xvii.
51 Ibid.
71
freedom means that no single voice can come to dominate or ‘stand

heroically upon some exclusionary ground, offering this ground as a
source of a necessary truth . . . ’52 A deterritorialised ethic is, therefore,
an ethic that subjects institutional boundaries and limitations to radical
critique in the pursuit of greater freedom and communication between
radically different subjectivities.
A democratic ethos is, according to Connolly, an ethos of agonistic
respect and care. It is a ‘politics in which one of the ways of belonging
together involves strife and in which one of the democratising ingredi-
ents in strife is the cultivation of care for the ways opponents respond
to mysteries of existence’.53 The cultivation of care itself stems from the
recognition of contingency in oneself and in others. A recognition of
contingency ‘. . . cultivates a politics of agonistic respect among multi-
ple constituencies who respond differentially to mysteries of being while
acknowledging each other to be worthy of respect partly because they
are implicated in this common condition’.54 No constituency, knowing
itself to be contingent, can assert or know itself to be grounded or to be
the model for all. For Connolly exactly how this agonal ethos of critical
responsiveness is undertaken remains unclear. He talks of an agonism
in which strife, care and respect are mixed and in which different sub-
jects contest, but he says little of the actual manner of this contest. The
overall thrust of Connolly’s work is to move beyond the options of anni-
hilation, assimilation and coexistence, towards an ethics of engagement
with otherness in all its alterity. However, at least part of this agonism
is based on the possibilities of communication in the sense that an ethos
of democratisation involves an ‘agonistic dialogue in interpreting actu-
ality, projecting future possibilities and identifying present dangers’.55
Beyond this, however, Connolly does not develop the qualities and char-
acteristics of conversation itself and of what exactly is involved in an
agonistic dialogue.
Poststructuralists therefore, as their critique of subjectivity suggests,
place particular emphasis on the ‘concrete other’ labouring in particu-
lar sites under particular conditions.56 Most importantly the substantive
ethical thrust of this approach is that conversation, the patient labour
52 Ibid. 53 Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 33. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., p. 33.
56 ‘The problem is not one of how to impose this ethics from on high or how to make
doubters believe in it – a problem whose very posing can only seem strange to people of
marginal sites who would practice this ethics of freedom. It is a problem of how working
from local sites and according to this ethics of freedom, to enable the rigorous practice
of this ethics in the widest possible compass.’ Ashley and Walker, ‘Reading Dissidence /
Writing the Discipline’, p. 395.
72
of listening and questioning, is oriented to allowing the voice of par-

ticular ‘others’ to speak and be heard. For Ashley and Walker, inspired
by Foucault, this is very much an ethics of resistance to totalisation,
rather than say, an ethics oriented towards the creation of substantive
agreement on normative principles. But it is nonetheless an ethics that
implies, without theorising, that justice is pursued or realised in conver-
sation, or more correctly by allowing different voices to be heard and
engaged with.
The ethics of responsibility

If the major ethical thrust of the first stream of poststructuralist
thought is resistance to totalisation and towards the freedom of radi-
cally autonomous subjectivities, then the second stream of poststruc-
turalist ethics provides an emphasis on responsibility. Where the
first stream draws on a largely Foucauldian reading of the relation-
ship between ethics and subjectivity the second stream draws on a
Levinasian/Derridaean reading. While David Campbell is equally con-
cerned to question the exclusionary practices of the sovereign state and
in particular to disconnect ethics from territory, his ethical motivation
comes from what he sees as the primacy of ethical responsibility to other-
ness as ‘first philosophy’.57 However, where the ethics of freedom and
responsibility concur is in the recognition that an ethical relationship
between self and other requires contestation and negotiation; in other
words, communication.
The central insight of Levinas’ philosophy, according to Campbell,
is that there is no being, no subjectivity, without a responsibility to
the ‘other’ because ‘being is a radically interdependent condition’.58
Subjectivity, in this account, is actually more like intersubjectivity.
Furthermore, there is, he argues, a real sense in which our subjectivity
is constituted by ethicality: ‘ethics can be appreciated for its indispens-
ability to the very being of the subject’.59 Campbell argues that Levinas’
articulation of a radical interdependence of subjectivity means that all
ethics is constituted by our relationship to otherness. The ethical out-
come of this is that the ‘other’ has an ethical hold on the self from the
beginning by way of its part in the constitution of the self but also be-
cause the self ‘is called into question by the prior existence of the other’.60
57 Campbell, ‘The Deterritorialisation of Responsibility’, p. 461.

58 Ibid., p. 460. 59 Ibid., p. 463. 60 Ibid., p. 460.
73
The larger ethical implication of this, however, is that the self is in effect
constituted by its responsibility to the other and, further, ‘one’s being
has to be affirmed in terms of a right to be in relation to the “other”.61
Ethics, then, is a response to the ‘call of the other’ and involves not a
struggle for one’s own freedom but a decentering of self in the face of
one’s responsibility to the ‘other’.62
According to Campbell, an understanding of Levinas’ ethics of re-
sponsibility undermines the principle of sovereignty, and indeed all ex-
clusionary practices, because such practices place limits on the extent of
responsibility, by restricting it to the nation-state or the particular com-
munity, gender, race or other grouping. Thus, for example, Campbell
argues ‘there is no circumstance under which we could declare that (the
war in the Former Yugoslavia) . . . was not our concern’.63 To take this
ethics seriously is to deterritorialise ethics completely.64 This condition
means that we cannot stop our moral duties at the water’s edge. Further-
more, it is an ethics that in acknowledging interdependence suggests we
have to resist assimilating the other into our world; and at the same time
we have to live for the other in all their alterity.
This transcendent and universal responsibility to ‘others’, accord-
ing to Campbell, suggests (at least) two further responsibilities. The
first is shared with the Foucauldian stream and consists of the project
of permanent critique of totalisation in the name of a single identity,
and thus is an act of resistance. The second suggests that the respon-
sibility to the other requires a politics and ethics that is oriented posi-
tively towards otherness; ‘. . . one in which its purpose is the struggle
61 Ibid., p. 460.
62 ‘Ethics redefines subjectivity as this heteronomous responsibility, in contrast to au-
tonomous freedom.’ Levinas quoted in Campbell, ibid., p. 463. Where Ashley and Walker
are concerned to foster, celebrate and respect difference, their ethical starting point is a
radical understanding of autonomy as resistance. For Campbell on the other hand, fol-
lowing Levinas, ethics begins with recognition of radical human inter-subjectivity which
requires a further recognition of responsibility.
63 Ibid., p. 462.
64 While Campbell is concerned to critique the exclusionary practices associated with
sovereignty he is also aware that sovereignty under certain circumstances provides the
best resource. Sovereignty might help the defence of pluralistic communities in Bosnia
for example. He argues ‘[W]e cannot be for or against sovereignty in such a circumstance;
instead, we have to be alert to sovereignty’s investments and effects in the light of our
responsibility to the Other. Only a critical attitude which enables flexible strategies which
are governed neither by abstract universals (and thus likely to further the conditions they
are responding to) nor by purely ad hoc ones (and thus unaffected by the ethical imperative
of responsibility), can hope to respond to our responsibility to the Other.’ Campbell,
D. ‘The Politics of Radical Interdependence: A Rejoinder to Daniel Warner’, Millennium,
25. 1 (1996), pp. 129–41, p. 141.
74
for-or on behalf of-alterity, and not a struggle to efface, erase, or erad-

icate alterity’.65 It is an ethics that celebrates and respects proliferate
differences.
What then does this mean in terms of conduct and practice in an ethi-
cal realm? For Campbell, the answer seems to lie in something not unlike
Connolly’s agonistic democracy. The substantive ethical outcome of this
position is that Campbell sees politics and ethics as a matter of delib-
eration between contesting selves and others. According to him, this is
a different understanding of ethics from that of traditional approaches
in IR which ‘have sought to specify in the abstract what good and right
conduct consists of . . . ’ 66 In contrast, Campbell argues, an approach in-
formed by Levinasian and Derridaean readings amounts to more of an
ethical disposition towards others, a disposition ‘attuned to the politi-
cal nature of agency and identity’,67 which nonetheless acknowledges
and stems from a recognition of the radical intersubjectivity of diverse
agents.
To get to this end, Campbell’s reading of Levinas is concluded with a
supplementary reading of Derrida. Campbell argues that Levinas’ ethics
require a supplementation with Derridaean deconstruction in order to
take account of the plurality of others. According to Campbell, the plu-
rality of others to whom one might be responsible means that the lines
of responsibility are not clear cut. As a result it becomes necessary to
prioritise one’s ethical responses but doing so is itself morally prob-
lematic and Levinas’ work provides no guidance for such prioritising.
Campbell argues that one way of coming to grips with this dilemma
is via Derrida’s notion of undecidability. Confronted with a plurality
of others to whom one is responsible Campbell argues there remains
a responsibility to act, to make a decision. Derrida’s account of unde-
cidability, of the madness of the decision, acknowledges this dilemma
and suggests the need for a ‘double gesturing’ wherein one acknow-
ledges that in making a decision one is simultaneously doing justice
and injustice to others, by giving priority to some or one and not oth-
ers or another. What the need for a double gesture demonstrates is that
questions of responsibility are not clear cut and cannot be decided in
advance or in a programmatic way. Instead they require the making of
decisions and a knowledge that the decision will necessarily be unjust.

66 Campbell, Politics Without Principle, p. 99.
67 Ibid.
75
To be aware of this dilemma and yet at the same time to have to act re-
quires a ‘double contradictory imperative ‘an imperative that requires
an “interminable” experience and experiment of the impossible’.68 What
such a double gesturing, what an acknowledgement of the complex lines
of responsibility to otherness that exist in a condition of radical intersub-
jectivity, raises is the necessity of keeping lines of communication and
political action open and in continual flux. This reading of Derrida, for
Campbell, suggests that to do justice to the other, and to others, requires
a realm of contestation and negotiation in which differences flourish and
totalisation is resisted. It suggests that one’s duties can only be decided
through contestation and negotiation and the meaning and practices of
concepts such as democracy, identity, freedom, must also be continually
re-negotiated and questioned. Were there no need for decisions, there
would only be the implementation of programmes. However, the ‘het-
eronomous responsibility to the other’ requires that politics and ethics
cannot be reduced to a programme.
Campbell calls for an understanding of ethics and politics as a field of
contestation motivated by responsibility to otherness. The ethical dis-
position he endorses rejects the traditional modern ‘preference for de-
riving norms epistemologically over deciding them politically’.69 Thus,
our ethical responsibility to otherness must not be derived or decided in
advance of our engagement with the ‘other’. Instead the ‘way in which
our ethical responsibility has to be acted upon has to be contested and
negotiated’.70 In this, Campbell’s approach seems to resemble the ago-
nistic democratic ethics of Connolly: an ethos in which the responsibility
to otherness requires the critique of fixed standards of exclusion and of
judgement, the proliferation of multiple discourses and agents, and the
engagement with the ‘other’s’ particular alterity in some form of dia-
logue or communication.
Thus, Campbell’s approach contributes to a critique of the sovereign
state and, most importantly, the development of an ethical disposition
in which individual subjectivity is understood as ethically constituted
in its relationship to otherness. What this ethicality suggests is that, if
one understands oneself to be so constituted then, one’s relationship to
otherness cannot be premised on practices of superiority or indifference
but on respect and engagement. Respect and engagement suggests a

69 Campbell, Politics Without Principle, p. 99.
70 Ibid.
76
practice of communication and dialogue rather than the alternatives of

assimilation or coexistence.
Poststructuralism and the cosmopolitan/communitarian

divide
The question of the other, of the excluded and marginalised, is central
to poststructuralist writings on IR. The critique of sovereignty and the
reading strategies of deconstruction and double reading have been
motivated by a concern to articulate that which has been excluded.
Most importantly poststructural accounts of ethics and community can
be understood as being concerned with articulating and investigating
new possibilities of conceiving ethical relationships to difference. This
focus on the excluded, the marginal and different and the critique of to-
talising and universal discourses, has led some to suggest or imply that
poststructuralists are concerned exclusively with the particular and the
local, that poststructuralism stands opposed to cosmopolitan, universal
projects and global discourses and, therefore, should seem to be the
natural ally of communitarianism.71 Alternatively, poststructuralism
has stood accused of surrendering the possibility of moral judgement
altogether, and advocating nihilism and relativism instead. If the will to
truth is replaced by the will to power and if all understandings of truth
are to be understood as particular and contingent rather than universal
and grounded, then how is it possible to judge between them?
Such characterisations, however, rest on a misreading of the post-
structuralist project. From a poststructuralist perspective, the charge of
nihilism is misdirected because freedom is seen to lie in the very pro-
liferation of perspectives and transgression of boundaries:
If conduct in the margins proceeds in a celebratory register of free-

dom, it certainly will not announce that ‘anything goes’ precisely be-
cause freedom is valued under circumstances like these, no maxim
could be considered less efficacious. Here especially one must always
be prepared to understand that some ways of acting, speaking and
71 Indeed on another occasion I have suggested, following Taylor and Rengger, that the
poststructuralist emphasis on difference endorses the concept of ‘radical value incommen-
surability’ between inhabitants of different traditions and communities. See R. Shapcott,
‘Conversation and Coexistence, Gadamer and the Interpretation of International Society’,
Millennium, 23, 1, Spring (1994). The argument on that occasion suffered from a too-close
adherence to Taylor’s reading of Foucault. The present discussion can be understood as a
correction to that earlier suggestion.
77
writing are better or worse, more or less effective, and more or less
dangerous.72
What is ‘good’, therefore, is that which stands opposed to or resists

totalisation, that encourages freedom or alternatively, in Levinasian
terms, acts out of responsibility to otherness.
Poststructuralists, this section has argued, advocate an ethics defined
by or involving practices of freedom, democracy and responsibility. The
next question to be addressed is where does poststructuralism stand
in relation to cosmopolitan/communitarian perspectives and, perhaps
even more importantly still, the issue of universalism?
As Cochran points out, poststructuralists share certain elements of the
communitarian position, namely the critique of Liberalism and an un-
derstanding ‘. . . that subjectivity, is integrally tied to objectivity . . . any
understanding of the individual as subject is linked to the historical
practices of the social matrix, and similarly, the understanding of those
practices is reinforced by subjective consciousness’.73 However, post-
structuralists are critical of communitarianism in so far as they argue
that the ‘community’ does not exhaust the possibilities of subjectivity.
Poststructuralists see the practices of the ‘historical matrix’ as both si-
multaneously constitutive of individuals and exercising a power and
discipline over them. Poststructuralists adopt a different ethical orien-
tation to this social matrix in that they are concerned to question, disturb
and unsettle and to push the boundaries and understandings in which
the subject is enmeshed. In keeping with the poststructuralist critique of
sovereignty, communitarian accounts of community are seen to endorse
contingent acts of closure and exclusion and to provide support for the
naturalised, bounded, sovereign community.
Poststructuralism is, however, critical of cosmopolitanism, especially
in its liberal form. It shares with the communitarians a refusal to privi-
lege the abstract other. It is sceptical towards cosmopolitan attempts to
define universal accounts of the good life based on particular interpre-
tations of human agency, reason and community. Similarly, poststruc-
turalism is critical of universalism, especially that which presents itself
as transcendent, or outside history, representing a sovereign centre and
exclusionary domain. Universalism is linked with totalisation in most
instances.

73 M. Cochran, ‘Postmodernism, Ethics and International Political Theory’, Review of
International Studies, 21 (1995), 237–50, p. 244.
78
Despite this emphasis, it is possible to detect a significant universal-

ist, if not cosmopolitan, dimension in poststructuralism, that is com-
prised of three elements. First, it seems that while poststructuralists
question and disturb universal accounts of subjectivity they simulta-
neously offer an alternative. In particular, they suggest that all sub-
jectivity should be understood as contingent, contested, in doubt and
negotiated. Second, poststructuralists accompany their accounts of sub-
jectivity with what appears to be an advocacy of the universalisa-
tion of an ethics of freedom and responsibility, even if simultaneously
problematising that universalisation. Third, the emphasis on deter-
ritorialisation and the critique of closure also represents a refusal
to delimit the scope of poststructuralist ethics. Therefore it is rea-
sonable to assume that these ethics are applicable to the species, or
the globe as a whole and indeed Campbell is most explicit about
this. 74
However, it is easier to comprehend these instances of universal-
ism if it is recalled that poststructuralism problematises not just to-
talisation but also binary oppositions. Poststructuralist readings of IR
are concerned to ‘deconstruct’ the established discourses revolving
around the binary oppositions of ‘Man and Citizen’, and cosmopoli-
tanism/communitarianism, and to attempt to think alternative formu-
lations of identity, community and ethical responsibility. That is to say,
they do not aim to replace one sovereign totalising centre with another.
The problem therefore, according to Walker, ‘. . . is not the claims of
universalism as such. It is rather, the way in which universalism has
come to be framed as both the opposite of and the superior to plu-
ralism and difference’.75 What a poststructuralist reading of IR sug-
gests is the ‘possibility of forging a language in which to speak of those
things that human beings share in common: a language in which to ex-
plore universals while recognising the arrogances of existing claims to
universality’.76 Thus, the move beyond state sovereignty requires at least
some minimal universalism, at the same time as a never-ending project
of problematising and questioning that universalism. Thus, Walker
74 ‘Indeed, because engagement with the world is necessarily “global” in its scope, but
the world is characterised by a multiplicity of agents, none of whom can single-handedly
bear the burden of global responsibility, the way in which our ethical responsibility is to
be acted upon has to be contested and negotiated.’ Campbell, Politics Without Principle,
p. 98.
75 Walker, One World, Many Worlds, p. 136.
76 Ibid., p. 134. Campbell likewise appears to endorse such a project, see his quote from
Derrida in Campbell, ‘The Deterritorialisation of Responsibility’, p. 476.
79
argues, ‘[U]niversalism has to be sought and resisted at the same time’.77

Again, what is required is a double gesture both affirming and question-
ing the necessity of universals. What a deterritorialisation of ethics and
community amounts to is not a rejection of universalism in favour of
particularism, or cosmopolitanism in favour of communitarianism but
instead, according to poststructuralists, new resolutions and balances
between them. Thus while poststructuralists are not concerned to es-
tablish or define a universal account of the good life or the good com-
munity they attempt instead to find some way of living with the dilem-
mas of universalism and particularism. It can be argued that the most
important element of their response to these dilemmas involves a recog-
nition of the need for communication and dialogue between concrete
agents originating from particular, though, problematic places, times
and social matrices. In particular, it is the poststructuralist concern to
be engaged with the other in all their alterity, stemming from the prob-
lematisation of boundaries, that gives the greatest support to an ethic of
communication.
Thus, as suggested above, poststructural accounts can be understood
as wishing to privilege neither side of the cosmopolitan/communitarian
divide. In particular, by attempting to deconstruct traditional accounts
of community and morality in IR poststructuralists are engaged in an
attempt to rethink and articulate new balances between universalism
and particularism similar to that undertaken by critical theorists.
Critical theory
The 1980s saw the emergence of a critical theory of IR in part, and,
like poststructuralism, as a response to the re-articulation of Realism
in the work of Kenneth Waltz.78 Critical theorists such as Robert Cox,
Richard Ashley, Mark Hoffman, Andrew Linklater and Mark Neufeld
have all taken issue with Neo-Realism and its agenda.79 In particular,
they have argued that Neo-Realism provides an ahistorical account of
77 Walker, One World, Many Worlds, p. 135.
78 See K. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison Wesley, 1979).
79 See R. W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations
Theory’, in R. O. Keohane (ed.), NeoRealism and Its Critics (Columbia University Press,
1986); A. Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations
(London: Macmillan, 1990); A. Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical
Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997); A. Linklater, Men
and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1990);
M. Hoffmann, ‘Critical Theory and the Interparadigm Debate’, Millennium, 16. 2, Sum-
mer, 1987; R. K. Ashley, ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’, International Studies
80
the state and the states-system that was blind to the possibilities and
likelihood of change in the structure of international system. By focus-
ing on the reproduction of the states-system Neo-Realism ignored those
developments at work in the realms of class, production, and what Cox
called ‘social forces’ that would serve to generate structural transforma-
tion. Critical theorists, therefore, were concerned to develop a theory
that could investigate the possibilities for the transformation of world
politics.
Critical theorists have a particular normative concern with investi-
gating the possibilities for change that may bring about reductions in
systematic violence, inequalities of wealth and power and improvement
in the conditions of human existence. They are concerned both to under-
stand the present world order and to provide a normative critique of it.
Critical theory is informed by Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach: ‘philoso-
phers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to
change it’.80 Most importantly, critical theory is understood to be consti-
tuted by an interest in human emancipation, in expanding the realm of
human freedom. This commitment requires subjecting the social world
to rational scrutiny and in particular ‘to promote emancipation by pro-
viding enlightenment about the constraints upon human autonomy’.81
It is this interest that differentiates it from ‘traditional’, problem solv-
ing or technical theories, like Neo-Realism and Rationalism, which seek
to merely understand and contribute to the maintenance of the status
quo.82
Quarterly, 25. 2, June (1981) 204–36. M. Neufeld, The Restructuring of International Relations
Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
80 Quoted in Devetak, ‘Critical Theory’, p. 146. As Cox argues critical theory ‘ . . . allows
for a normative choice in favour of a social and political order different from the prevailing
order. But it limits the range of choice to alternative orders which are feasible transforma-
tions of the existing world.’ Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders’, p. 210. Critical
theory, therefore, is an immanent theory, it focuses on the tensions, contradictions and
possibilities within existing arrangements that may allow for or lead to transformation.
81 A. Linklater, ‘The Question of the Next Stage in International Relations: a Critical
Theoretical Point of View’, Millennium, 21.1 Spring (1992), 87.
82 Following Max Horkheimer, Robert Cox made a distinction between technical, prob-
lem solving theory and critical or emancipatory theory. Realism Cox argued is a technical
or problem solving theory while critical theory is emancipatory. See Cox, ‘Social Forces,
States and World Orders’. Linklater follows Habermas in making a threefold distinc-
tion between technical, practical and critical theory. According to Habermas the type
of knowledge acquired in any investigation is conditioned by the meaning contexts of
the type of enquiry, by the purpose, or interest, of the investigation: ‘The approach of the
empirical–analytic sciences incorporates a technical cognitive interest: that of the historical
hermeneutic sciences incorporates a practical one; and the approach of critically oriented
sciences incorporates the emancipatory cognitive interest . . . ’ J. Habermas, Knowledge and
81
One strand of critical theory, influenced by the Frankfurt school, ar-

gues that this concern necessarily leads to an investigation into the pos-
sibilities for realising a cosmopolitan community of humankind. These
critical theorists argue that freedom and equality cannot be fully rea-
lised in a world of sovereign states but only in a world based on cos-
mopolitan principles; a critical theory of international relations should
identify ‘the prospects for realising higher levels of human freedom
across the world society as a whole’.83 Thus Linklater, for example,
disputes Frost’s reading of Hegel, in which individual recognition is tied
to the sovereign state, and argues instead that complete individual
recognition can only come about with the emancipation of the species
and the realisation of a form of community that transcends the state.
For Mark Neufeld, the projects of universal freedom and community
are united in terms of what he refers to as the ‘Aristotelian project’.
The task of a critical theory of IR is to direct this project to the interna-
tional realm. According to Neufeld the Aristotelian project was centred
around the polis and the question of how to lead a ‘good and just life’
in it. The central achievements of the polis rested on two qualities: ‘the
understanding that to live in a polis meant that everything was decided
through words and persuasion’;84 and, that to do so requires upholding
the values of liberty and equality. Neufeld stresses (following Arendt)
that the polis was not a physical space but a political one created by those
who partook of it and adhered to these two chief characteristics. The task
of international relations theory in a globalised age, he argues, must be
to expand or recreate the polis on a planetary scale. Accordingly, what is
required is a theory directed towards human emancipation and the cre-
ation of a universal polis in which ‘everything is decided through words
Human Interests (London: Heinemann, 1972), (trans. Jeremy Shapiro), p. 308. Linklater ar-
gues that these interests have their representatives in IR theory: Realism, Rationalism and
Revolutionism (which he renames critical theory) correspond respectively to the Tech-
nical, Practical and Emancipatory cognitive interests. Furthermore Linklater argues they
‘ . . . form a sequence of progressively more adequate approaches to world politics . . . a the-
ory which analyses the language and culture of diplomatic interaction in order to promote
international consensus is an advance beyond a theory of recurrent forces constituted by
an interest in manipulation and control. And an account of world politics which seeks
to understand the prospects for extending the human capacity for self-determination is
an even greater advance in this sequence of approaches.’ Linklater, Beyond Realism and
Marxism. p. 10.
83 Ibid., p. 7. Neufeld’s inclusion of the search for ‘the good and just life’ into the definition
of the polis needs to be contrasted with Linklater’s acceptance of Habermas’ distinction
between matters of the good life and matters of justice.
84 Neufeld, The Restructuring of International Relations, p. 10.
82
and persuasion’.85 Such a theory is attempted by Andrew Linklater.

According to Linklater a critical theory of this sort needs to embrace ‘nor-
mative, sociological and praxeological analysis’86 of the practices and
values of inclusion and exclusion which stand in the way of achieving
this goal.
For Linklater, emancipation requires that the cosmopolitan commu-
nity be constituted discursively as one in which all humans have the
opportunity for equal participation in a conversation, and thereby of
determining their own lives. A cosmopolitanism informed by criti-
cal theory must strike a balance between the claims of universalism
and particularism or, using the vocabulary of previous chapters, the
claims of cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. Linklater pursues
this balance by way of utilising a discursive account of moral reasoning
drawing on the discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas. Linklater’s work
also provides the most comprehensive attempt to incorporate the con-
cerns of communitarians, and the position of the concrete other, into
a cosmopolitan account: critical theory, therefore, aspires to unite the
project of human emancipation, universal community and human con-
versation and to expand the values of the polis into the international
realm.
Discourse ethics and the cosmopolitan project

Linklater argues that the pursuit of universal freedom and equal-
ity should be understood as a project of maximising inclusion in
a discursive community. The aim is to pursue freedom and equal-
ity while at the same time striking a balance between universalism
and particularism. In this, he takes his lead from the later Frankfurt
school theorist Jürgen Habermas. Linklater draws on Habermas for
three major purposes: to help articulate and differentiate the purpose
and constitution of a critical theory; to contribute to the philosophi-
cal defence of moral universalism; and to articulate a conception of
cosmopolitan community informed by discourse ethics.87 Discourse
ethics in turn provides two things: a philosophical account of why
community should be understood as a discursive community and a
model of dialogue or conversation. Discourse ethics provides the ba-
sis for the development of a ‘thin’ universality which ‘defends the
85 Ibid. 86 Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, p 11.

87 See note 82.
83
ideal that every human being has an equal right to participate in di-
alogue . . . ’88
According to Linklater, the principal argument of discourse ethics is
that moral and political arrangements only gain legitimacy if they have
secured the consent of all those affected by them. Habermas’ defence of
universalism emphasises
the importance of answerability of all others; what it highlights is the
need for the destruction of all systematic forms of exclusion and the
pre-eminence of the obligation to develop global arrangements that
can secure nothing less than the consent of each and every member of
the human race . . . this notion of universal consent is the essence of ethical
universalism.89
For Linklater the principle of consent is the best means for both achieving
and defending the aspiration to universalism.
Discourse ethics is premised on Habermas’ reworking of Kant’s cat-
egorical imperative. Habermas argues, after Kant, that for morals to
be valid they must be universalisable: ‘. . . only those norms are ac-
cepted as valid that express a general will. As Kant noted time and
time again, Moral norms must be suitable for expression as “universal
laws” . . . Kant wants to eliminate as invalid all those norms that “contra-
dict” this requirement.’90 For this reason discourse ethics is classified as
a deontological theory which describes the ‘moral point of view’. It pro-
vides the procedures by which the validity of moral claims, understood
in the strict Kantian sense as those norms which are applicable to all, or
‘what everybody ought to do’, can be ascertained. Thus, Habermas sees
discourse ethics, resting on a principle of universalisation (U), as the cor-
rect re-working of Kant’s principle. Where discourse ethics differs from
Kant’s formulation is that, for Kant, universal applicability was the re-
sult of private reasoning on the part of the philosopher. Discourse ethics
on the other hand ascertains the validity of norms in a process of dis-
course and argumentation between genuine, concrete, situated agents.
Discourse ethics reworks the categorical imperative from a monological
88 Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, p. 107. The ‘thin cosmopolitanism’

developed here is obviously to be distinguished from that offered by Michael Walzer and
discussed in chapter 1. The principal difference being the lack of any discursive dimension
in Walzer’s account.
89 A. Linklater, ‘The Problem of Community in International Relations’, Alternatives,
15 (1990), 135–53, p. 142. Emphasis added.
90 J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity, 1990),
p. 64.
84
exercise in abstract reason into a principle of actual intersubjective dia-

logical consent: ‘rather than ascribing as valid to all others any maxim
that I can will to be universal law, I must submit my maxim to all oth-
ers for purposes of discursively testing its claim to universality’.91 Dis-
course ethics, then, provides a procedure for determining the universal
validity of norms, based on a presupposition that norms are only valid if
capable of commanding universal consent: ‘Only those norms can claim
to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected
in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.’92 Discourse
ethics does not in itself provide or contain substantive moral content, it
merely provides the correct procedures for determining which norms
can be said to hold universal validity, or rather which norms can be said
to be legitimately moral in that they can apply to all.
The principle of discourse ethics supports the cosmopolitan project,
according to Linklater, because a commitment to securing the consent,
in principle, of every member of the species entails that any form of
exclusion from moral or political community can only be justified if it
has the consent of those excluded as well as those included. Discourse
ethics suggests that
there are no valid grounds for excluding any human being from dia-
logue in advance. No system of exclusion passes this moral test unless
its constitutive principles can command the consent of all, in particular
those to be excluded from the social arrangement in question.93
A critical theory of international relations, therefore, requires an exami-

nation of the principles underlying state exclusivity and the arguments
for the state’s exclusion of non-citizens from its moral consideration:
‘[S]ince Critical Theory begins with a prima facie commitment to hu-
man equality, the first question to ask concerning the normative ques-
tion of the state concerns the justification for excluding any human being
from any social arrangement.’94 Linklater argues that the sovereign state
maintains strict practices of exclusion based only on the consent of its
domestic population and not of those excluded. Accordingly, Linklater
argues, the state can no longer defend its claim to a sovereign realm, that
is, to a realm of purely internal affairs resistant to and dissuasive of the
claims of outsiders. The logical outcome of the principle of consent is
91 McCarthy quoted by Habermas. Ibid., p. 67. 92 Ibid., p. 66.

93 Linklater, ‘The Question of the Next Stage’, p. 92. 94 Ibid.
85
that discourse ethics requires the establishment of a cosmopolitan com-

munity in which the issue of moral boundaries, amongst others, can be
discussed.
If the first principle of discourse ethics, that of consent, requires the
creation of a cosmopolitan community (in Linklater’s reading), the sec-
ond principle (D) is that the community should be a discursive com-
munity. Linklater follows Habermas in arguing that consent can only
be achieved by establishing a realm that allows a universal and ‘uncon-
strained’ dialogue of equals. Linklater envisions a cosmopolitan com-
munity in which all humans can participate in discussion concerning
matters that affect them, including the drawing of moral boundaries,
a community in which ‘no person and no moral position can be ex-
cluded from dialogue in advance’.95 This aspect of discourse ethics can,
Linklater suggests, be understood as a continuation of the Kantian tradi-
tion of enlightenment.96 If the normative purpose of critical theory is the
realisation of universal human community, then the quality, character
and nature of the community must be consistent with the principles of
freedom and equality. According to Linklater, it is only in such a world
that human freedom and equality can be realised: a community embody-
ing the principle of human autonomy and universality needs to be a di-
alogic and discursive community. Linklater agrees with Habermas that
discourse ethics realises the spirit of Kant’s categorical imperative by
incorporating the argument that ‘. . . every human being (has) an equal
right to participate in open dialogue about the configuration of soci-
ety and politics’.97 The realisation of a discursively based cosmopoli-
tan human community is the end point of a project of emancipation.
Emancipation then comes to mean freedom from unjustifiable forms of
exclusion.98
95 A. Linklater, ‘Citizenship and Sovereignty in the Post-Westphalian State’, European

Journal of International Relations, 2. 1, March (1996), 77–103, p. 86.
96 Linklater, ‘The Question of the Next Stage’, p. 92. ‘. . class particularism exists alongside
forms of national particularism for most of human history, and, therefore, the state and
the states-system must also be regarded as obstacles to the universal recognition of men
as species-beings. Marx’s theory shares with Kant’s the desire for a universal society of
free individuals, a universal kingdom of ends’. Linklater, Men and Citizens, p. 159.
97 Linklater, ‘The Question of the Next Stage’, p. 92.
98 Discourse ethics rests on the argument that the unforced force of the better argument
favours inclusion over exclusion. The force of the better argument is in favour of univer-
sal ethics and the principle that the highest forms of ethics consistent with the species
capacities for self-determination involve recognising the equal rights of all humans to
participate in dialogue. For Linklater the question of community formulated in this way
suggests that the study of international relations should expand its attention on the study
of the competition for power to include a study of how certain practices of exclusion
86
In addition to justifying universalism in terms of a principle of consent

discourse ethics also outlines the mode of conversation that is appro-
priate to an unconstrained dialogue. The means for pursuing consent
is through ‘a mode of dialogue in which human beings strive to reach
agreement’.99 This mode of dialogue has several prerequisites. The first
is that no position can be excluded in advance. Another is that agents
must be willing to enter into dialogue and to strive towards agreement.
This, in turn, requires a particular moral psychology in keeping with a
principle of unconstrained dialogue. Conversation is to be understood
not as a competition nor a ‘trial of strength between adversaries bent on
converting others to their cause . . . ’100 Instead, Linklater suggests that
an authentic dialogue should be motivated and guided by a willing-
ness to be persuaded by the ‘unforced force of the better argument’. A
commitment to the unforced force of the better argument suggests that
‘agents suspend their own truth claims, respect the claims of others and
anticipate that their initial points of departure will be modified in the
course of dialogue’.101 The process of coming to an agreement requires
that agents be able to reflect upon their own starting points and posi-
tions and, in principle, change them, or come to see how these positions
‘reflect personal biases and local cultural influences which others may
not share’.102 A commitment to dialogue requires a degree of openness
and reflexivity between agents who are willing to engage in a conver-
sation involving reciprocal critique and in which ‘there is no certainty
about who will learn from whom’.103 Linklater follows Habermas in re-
ferring to this standpoint as a postconventional morality.104 A postcon-
ventional morality allows reflection and critique and more importantly
it is only from this point that actors can ‘ask whether they are complying
with principles which have universal applicability’.105 In other words,
have worked over time and how they have been replaced by the adoption of ever more
universalistic perspectives.
99 A. Linklater, ‘The Achievements of Critical Theory’, in S. Smith, K. Booth and
M. Zalewski (eds.), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), p. 286.
100 Linklater, ‘Citizenship and Sovereignty’, p. 86. 101 Ibid., p. 86.
102 Linklater, ‘The Achievements of Critical Theory’, p. 286.
103 Linklater, ‘Citizenship and Sovereignty’, p. 86.
104 The topic of the postconventional agent is dealt with in more depth in the following
chapters. For Linklater ‘the widening of the sense of who counts as amoral person or
moral equal and the willingness to be bound by universalisable norms are, arguably, the
two main features of the more advanced moral codes’. Linklater, ‘The Problem of Com-
munity’, p. 142.
105 Linklater, ‘The Achievements of Critical Theory’, p. 285.
87
postconventional morality is necessary in order to learn how to conduct

social life consensually.
Linklater is also keen to assert that learning how to conduct so-
cial life consensually does not require the creation of universal agree-
ment as to the good life, as, for instance, is the case in Rawls’s orig-
inal position.106 While the search for consensus suggests that agents
are involved in a search for agreement on ‘thick’ universals it may
also involve merely attempting to ‘reach agreement about the princi-
ples of inclusion and exclusion and [the] attempt to understand the
rules of coexistence which agents could accept where they fail to reach
consensus’.107 In other words, discourse ethics accepts that a position of
coexistence may be the best available option and that agents may agree
to disagree. The important point here is that a practice of coexistence be
consented to by all parties and is itself the outcome of dialogue. Again,
discourse ethics does not attempt to determine the outcome of conversa-
tion in advance; it does, however, begin with certain assumptions about
how dialogue should be conducted and with certain formal principles
which need to be established before dialogue can commence. In dis-
course ethics dialogue is constituted as a genuine dialogue between real
agents and not as an exercise in monological reasoning, as in the case of
Rawls’s original position. It involves the opposite principle to the ‘veil of
ignorance’. Conversation is an avenue for the pursuit of genuine knowl-
edge of the other and the self, and the agreements it pursues are the
outcome of deliberations concerning genuine, situated, and not hypo-
thetical, positions. Discourse ethics, Linklater argues, is commensurate
with Benhabib’s concern to engage with concrete others, as well as with
O’Neill’s project to reduce the level of idealisation of agency involved in
previous cosmopolitan projects. Conversation does not require a notion
of individuals removed entirely from their social contexts but instead
works on the premise that contextualised and embedded individuals
are nonetheless capable of thinking in universalist terms and being per-
suaded by the unforced force of the better argument. Discourse ethics ar-
gues that real contextualised agents are capable of engaging in dialogue
in order to understand each other, of transcending their own, particular,
starting points and of coming to agreement as to how to conduct social
life. Thus Linklater suggests, this vision of a discursive universalism
106 In this his understanding of the Aristotelian project’s application to international re-
lations is different from Neufeld’s.
107 Ibid., p. 292.
88
‘imagine[s] a stronger universalism in which dialogue encounters dif-

ference . . . ’108 Justice to difference, to diverse cultures and individuals,
is obtained by inclusion in the discursive realm. In this sense, discourse
ethics does not, it is claimed, require the universalisation of a particular
idealised sense of agency. This claim is examined more closely in the
next chapter.
On the other hand, what discourse ethics shares with the Rawlsian
contract is the aspiration of universality and the belief that moral princi-
ples can be just only if they are universally applicable. In this way, both
inhabit the Kantian deontological tradition. Neufeld, amongst others,
has argued that Habermas’ discourse ethics shares with Rawls’s theory
of justice the aim of developing a universal procedural account of the
right as a means for mediating between different accounts of the good.109
While the two share the aim of universality the emphasis in discourse
ethics is less on the determination of substantive or specific universal
principles than it is with the creation of a realm in which discussion as
to what may be universalisable can take place.
The creation of a cosmopolitan community informed by discourse
ethics, Linklater asserts, overcomes the weaknesses of liberal cosmopoli-
tanism. It does not require the creation of a completely homogenous
society that is dismissive of group and particularistic identities. It is
not a requirement of discourse ethics that the interests of the partic-
ular group should simply ‘lose out’ as Beitz argued. For Linklater a
cosmopolitanism that is commensurate with the principles of discourse
ethics, is one that is able to coexist with, and is not exclusive of, mi-
nority or particularistic identities and obligations: ‘The point is not to
dissolve the obligations at the core of the concentric circles of human
obligation but to modify them in response to the rights of those located in
the penumbra.’110 Linklater denies, therefore, that discourse ethics must
necessarily involve a universal form of identity resting on the necessary
subordination of cultural diversity and individual or group identities:
The issue for the universalist is not to replace customary moral differ-
ences with a single universalised moral code but rather to find the right
balance between the universal and the particular. The aim is to defend
moral inclusion and equality without positing a single human identity

109 M. Neufeld, ‘The Right and the Good in International Ethics’. Paper Presented for the
ISA Annual Convention. San Diego, April, 1996.
110 Linklater, ‘The Problem of Community’, p. 143.
89
and to value difference without subscribing to doctrines of innate su-

periority and inferiority and correlative forms of moral exclusion.111
This conception of community, he argues, is one that can include group

rights, to land and cultural self determination, as well as universal rights
of inclusion.112 However, discourse ethics does not wish to privilege
the local and particular either. According to Linklater, the universalism
of discourse ethics ‘. . . does not entail the demise of inner circles of
obligations . . . but it does imply that the inner sanctum must be available
for the scrutiny of outsiders if it has any impact at all upon their equal
rights to promote their own ends’.113 In this way one of the aims of
discourse ethics is, according to Linklater, to strike a balance between
universalism and particularism.
Linklater defends discourse ethics against the charge that it is merely
formalistic and lacking in content and argues that it contains a spe-
cific politics. A cosmopolitanism informed by discourse ethics seeks to
critique all forms of violence, oppression or systematic inequality that
prevent active participation in dialogue and is, therefore, committed to
‘the critique of structures and beliefs which obstruct open dialogue’.114
One of the principal targets of a critical theory of international rela-
tions is the examination of systems of exclusion whereby those who
are different are excluded from moral consideration.115 This form of
cosmopolitanism stands opposed to practices which exclude the ‘other’
from moral consideration and from being legitimate partners in con-
versation. In particular, discourse ethics requires the eradication of two
forms of exclusion, those generated by economic inequality and those
generated by the question of group difference. This conception of cos-
mopolitan democracy is concerned with creating the conditions that
111 Ibid., p. 141.

112 ‘The normative ideal of the extension of community does not simply involve bringing
aliens or outsiders within one homogeneous, moral association. It also entails recogni-
tion of the rights of groups, such as indigenous people, which fall within the jurisdiction
of the sovereign state, but which suffer exclusion from full participation in the national
community . . . it is a vision which argues for greater power for subnational and transna-
tional loyalties, alongside older, but transformed, national identities and separate, but not
sovereign, states.’ Linklater, ‘The Question of the Next Stage’, p. 93.
113 Linklater, ‘The Problem of Community’, p. 142.
115 Discourse ethics argues that ‘. . . human beings need to be reflective about the ways
in which they include and exclude others from dialogue (and therefore) that they should
be willing to problematize bounded communities . . . and the legitimacy of practices of
exclusion is questionable if they have failed to take account of the interests of outsiders’.
Ibid., p. 85.
90
allow the practice of a conversation amongst equals. Therefore what

discourse ethics can be said to contribute to the project of a cosmopoli-
tan community is an emphasis on creating a context in which competing
understandings of the good life can be brought into communication. As
noted above, discourse ethics is inconsistent with the maintenance of a
system of sovereign states and instead endorses the pursuit of new forms
of political community that take account of the limits to universalism
and the limits of particularism.
Discourse ethics and post-Westphalian communities

In his most recent work, Linklater has suggested that the notion
of ‘post-Westphalian citizenship’ may be one way of embodying
discourse ethics in a cosmopolitan political structure that replaces the
sovereign states-system.116 Modern notions of citizenship, he argues,
must be reformulated in order to become more inclusive. Previously
citizenship has worked to define insiders from outsiders and to cement
and confirm individual loyalty to the nation-state. Linklater argues
that discourse ethics can contribute to an alternative universal and
post-sovereign conception of citizenship. Such a conception might
allow for overlapping multiple loyalties as well as universal ones.
It is crucial that ‘the politics of recognition be incorporated within
post-sovereign conceptions of cosmopolitan democracy’.117 Such
a conception of political community and citizenship suggests that
individuals and groups, including sub-national and transnational com-
munities should have recourse to authorities both above and below the
level of the nation-state.118 The notion of post-Westphalian citizenship
must transcend earlier formulations by including the commitment to
consent through dialogue. In post-Westphalian citizenship legal and
welfare rights are ‘. . . necessarily accompanied by rights to participate
in dialogue as equals who can either grant or withhold their consent’.119
Such developments allow for the creation of a political community
116 Ibid. 117 Ibid., p. 94.

118 Linklater identifies four means of pursuing this goal: ‘(1) devolving political power
so that citizenship can be enjoyed through participation in subnational assemblies; (2)
given their desire to reclaim lost rights though international recognition, ensuring that
subnational groups are adequately represented in transnational institutions; (3) making it
possible for subnational groups to appeal to international courts authorised to scrutinise
claims of discrimination against minorities and (4) ensuring that subnational regions re-
ceive adequate resources to withstand the effects of de-industrialisation upon vulnerable
economies and to ensure the survival of their various languages and cultures.’ Ibid., p. 96.
119 Ibid., p. 92.
91
wider than the state but which does not merely reproduce the practices
of sovereignty at a larger level. Citizens of post-Westphalian states
can have multiple loyalties and identities as well as being subject to a
variety of authorities situated at a trans-and sub-state level. Again the
aim of such developments is to strike a balance between the universal
and the particular, between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism.
This section has attempted to outline the most important elements of
the contribution to the project of community in international relations
from a critical theoretical perspective. It argued that the constitutive
interest of a critical theory of international relations in emancipation
has resulted in a defence of universal community informed by dis-
course ethics and the development of post-Westphalian communities.
This form of universal community is, according to Linklater, able to
meet the communitarian criticism of cosmopolitanism and provide a
universal defence of difference while at the same time developing a
substantive conception of global community. Indeed, one of the goals of
cosmopolitan democracy as understood by Linklater is the protection
and inclusion of minority and sub-national groups in the global cos-
mopolis. The extent to which Linklater has been successful at this will
be examined in the following chapters.
Conclusion
This chapter has provided an account of constitutive, poststructuralist
and critical theoretical approaches to the problem of community in IR
and has argued that in different fashions these perspectives provide an
advance on liberal cosmopolitan and communitarian perspectives. The
works presented here all contribute significant steps towards transcend-
ing the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide and in beginning to chart
what might be called a communitarian path to cosmopolitanism. In a
variety of ways these approaches address the cosmopolitan question:
‘what kind of community can we construct?’ In so doing, they can all
be seen to be motivated, in different ways and to different degrees, by
the standpoints of both concrete and generalised others. They are all
concerned with articulating different possibilities of community that
neither exclude those outside the boundaries of the sovereign state nor
achieve inclusion at the price of a universal homogenous identity. The
primary importance of these perspectives lies in their emphasis on the
centrality of communication and dialogue in allowing a more ethical
and equal relation to concrete others. All three perspectives appear to
share the contention that a more satisfactory ethical relation to otherness
92
can be achieved through recognition in conversation. The basis for this

common understanding of the place of dialogue in normative thought
stems in part from their shared hermeneutic position on knowledge and
agency. Critical theory, poststructuralism and constitutive approaches
are all premised on an interpretative account of social life and it is this
element that makes for their appreciation of the communitarian po-
sition. This hermeneutic moment involves an appreciation that moral
codes, community and human agency are all constituted by and in the
constellation of meanings of particular humans and their communities.
In turn, this means that any account of the right or the good and of what
constitutes the community must be articulated and negotiated by partic-
ular, situated agents in dialogue, and cannot be delivered from outside
any given social context nor found in some ahistorical or asocial origin.
However, despite this common ground it was also suggested that
poststructuralism and critical theory in turn provided better accounts
of communication and community than that provided by constitutive
theory. Constitutive theory, as articulated by Frost, was handicapped
by its claim that the highest form of recognition could only be achieved
within the framework of the modern state. It was argued that limiting the
form of community in this way prematurely discounted the possibility
that concrete individuals may achieve recognition in a diverse range of
communities at both substate and suprastate levels. Constitutive theory
remains too prescriptive in its account of community and, therefore,
unable fully to realise the goal of recognition of difference. For this
reason, the contributions of constitutive theory remain of limited use for
the project of developing a communicatively based cosmopolitanism.
Poststructuralist and critical theoretical accounts, in contrast to con-
stitutive theory, are concerned to emphasise the possibilities for conver-
sation and communication between concrete individuals, that are not
tied explicitly to the state. Poststructuralists see the state and the state
domain of discourse as unnecessarily exclusive and restrictive in its un-
derstanding of the possibilities for human agency and communication,
and are concerned to deterritorialise community. Linklater, on the other
hand, argues that an alternative reading of Hegel, this time informed
by Marx, suggests that full recognition of human agency can only come
about with the realisation of a cosmopolitan community. Linklater also
shares with Ashley, Walker and Campbell the argument that recogni-
tion of the variety of concrete agents requires the detachment of ethical
community from the modern state. They argue that such a detachment
is necessary to securing an adequate and inclusive relation to diverse
93
concrete ‘others’. In this way, these theories move beyond the limitation
of the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide.
Having made this move, however, the question that is raised again
is ‘of what does communication consist?’ In this regard, this chapter
suggested that Linklater’s application of discourse ethics to the cos-
mopolitan project provided an account of communication that was more
fully developed than the poststructuralist alternative. Discourse ethics
consists of a rigorous attempt to provide the answer to the question
‘of what does communication consist?’ The principal achievement of
Linklater’s critical theory has been to introduce a model of conversation
between participants inhabiting potentially radically different contexts
but who are nonetheless conceived of as equals. In so doing, Linklater
has provided the most detailed and systematic account of what a dis-
cursively based community concerned to do justice to difference might
consist of.
Despite these advantages significant problems remain. The succeed-
ing chapters argue that the openings for communication provided by
poststructuralism and critical theory do not exhaust the meaning of
‘good’ conversation. Furthermore, it is argued that the resolutions of the
tension between community and difference offered in them can still be
improved upon. Specifically significant assimilatory potential remains
in both poststructuralism and in Linklater’s account of discourse ethics,
which require further examination. A preliminary assessment suggests
that both perspectives contain tensions between a practice of enlighten-
ment (or emancipation) and a practice of communication. While this
tension may be both productive and restrictive in the long run, it
nonetheless raises the following questions: ‘Does the project of universal
emancipation and the creation of a community of self-determining au-
tonomous beings require the universalisation of a particular “postcon-
ventional” agency?’ and; ‘To what extent does the creation of a universal
principle of conversation require more substantive transformation of
individuals and communities that is itself a process of assimilation rather
than communication?’
Finally, by introducing a model of conversation Linklater gives the
discussion a different focus. Linklater’s introduction of discourse ethics
directs attention beyond the issue of boundaries and towards examina-
tion of the meaning of communication itself. The next two chapters take
up this task and introduce a model of conversation which provides both
an alternative and a complement to discourse ethics.
94
3 Emancipation and legislation:
the boundaries of conversation
in poststructuralism and
the critical theory of IR
In the previous chapter it was argued that both critical theorists and
poststructuralist writers in IR shared the goal of a non-exclusionary and
communicative relationship to difference. A reading of the works of
Linklater, Ashley and Walker, and Connolly suggested that communi-
cation, as an act of recognition which did justice to difference, was a
common element of both. In addition, it was also suggested that post-
structuralism (in at least one variant) and critical theory came to focus
on the issue of communication as a consequence of a commitment to
the possibilities for human freedom. However, it was also suggested
that Linklater’s appropriation of Habermasian discourse ethics pro-
vided the most sophisticated treatment of the nature of communica-
tion and conversation in IR. Because it is premised on the principle of
universal consent, discourse ethics provides a more just relation to dif-
ference through the formula of an unconstrained dialogue. This allows
a more just orientation towards difference because no agent, no matter
what their particular cultural starting point might be, is to be excluded
from dialogue in advance: conversation is exemplified in the principle
of equality in dialogue without requiring (uniform) identity. Stemming
from this principle, Linklater argued that discourse ethics recognises
the need for a universal and unconstrained dialogue in order to pursue
consensus and agreement on questions of justice and inclusion. The task
left to discourse ethics was the setting out of the nature of procedures
necessary to ensure such communication. Discourse ethics, Linklater
argued, provided the basis for a ‘thin’ conception of cosmopolitan com-
munity in which the demands of universalism and particularism could
be reconciled.
The purpose of this chapter is further to advance the case for a
‘thin’ cosmopolitanism by examining the nature of good conversation
95
in more depth. Chapter 2 concluded that Linklater’s cosmopolitanism

most closely approximated an ethics of communication balancing the
standpoints of the concrete and generalised others. However, it was
also concluded that Linklater’s project might not be able to escape the
tensions associated with the reconciliation of community and difference
and this was evident in the form of a tension between a practice of assim-
ilation and a practice of communication. This chapter argues that, while
both discourse ethics and poststructuralist approaches help us to think
more clearly about the meaning of a thin cosmopolitan community and
help to provide a basis for conceiving of cosmopolitanism in commu-
nicative terms, their attempted resolutions of the tensions between the
aspiration for community and the goal of recognising difference can still
be improved upon. The argument which follows identifies the poten-
tially assimilatory dimensions of their approaches to conversation and
suggests that these dimensions stem from the identification of conversa-
tion with a Kantian concern with a politics of freedom. Discourse ethics
in particular, suffers from an overdetermination as a result of this iden-
tification, and its model of conversation, therefore, is in need of further
refinement. The argument begins by examining the limitations of the
Kantian paradigm as embodied in poststructuralism and the discourse
ethics model of conversation. The next chapter advances an alternative
understanding of conversation based on the philosophical hermeneu-
tics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The focus of these two chapters, therefore,
is on the specifics of the model of conversation and the meaning and
nature of an inclusive and non-assimilatory dialogue.
Emancipation and legislation: reason, agency and

practice in critical theory and poststructuralist IR
This section re-examines critical theory and poststructuralist accounts of
community and communication in IR with the intention of highlighting
their most problematic aspects. The substantial argument of this section
is that, in so far as both critical theory and poststructuralism constitute
their relationship to otherness purely in terms of expanding the realm of
human freedom, they stand at risk of retaining both a restricted notion
of equality and a potentially assimilative account of communication.
More particularly because they equate morality with freedom, and free-
dom with critique, critical theory and poststructuralist IR necessarily
engage in a practice in which equality is understood in terms of a ca-
pacity to practise reasoned self-critique. As a result, inclusion into the
96
Emancipation and legislation
realm of communicative equals requires the exclusion of those facets

which are deemed illegitimate, unreasonable or inconsistent with this
capacity.
This point can best be understood in terms of what Kimberley
Hutchings calls the legislative function of the Kantian critical project.
Hutchings argues that the Kantian project is bedevilled by an in-
escapable paradox of ‘limitation and legislation’.1 Kant, and those who
have followed him, have been faced with a paradox whereby critique
refuses and questions all limitations on thought, and all claims to au-
thoritative knowledge, while at the same time claiming a legislative, ju-
dicial role (which involves the placing of limitations) for itself. Kantian
critique as a result, she argues, ‘. . . is characterised both as free debate
and as the passing of “judicial sentences” . . . ’2 The legislative or judicial
role of critique is to define and exclude those modes of speech
which are illegitimate, in particular, dogmatism and radical scepticism
(relativism). According to Kant, these positions are illegitimate because
they claim knowledge of things which are unknowable, in contrast to
the claim of critique which accepts and recognises the limitations of
human cognition.
In terms of providing a model of conversation the Kantian appeal to
reason, along with the defence of freedom of thought and expression,
encourages a plurality of voices while simultaneously excluding some
voices from the realm of legitimate speech, it ‘. . . legitimates and en-
courages freedom of speech, while arguing that only certain speech is
legitimate’.3 According to Hutchings, this paradox is further troubled
by the inability of reason to secure the grounds for its legislative, judge-
mental authority. In other words, how can critique claim authoritative
knowledge of what is legitimate or illegitimate when it denies the pos-
sibility of authoritative knowledge?
The Kantian paradox of limitation and legislation provides for the
possibility of assimilatory and exclusionary relations in the following
ways. It is potentially exclusionary of modes of thought and speech
which do not conform to the idea of critique, and deems them illegit-
imate for the purposes of negotiation or communication in the moral
realm. It is potentially assimilatory because it suggests the possibility of
1 K. Hutchings, Kant, Critique and Politics (London: Routledge, 1996). By referring to

critical theory in this manner Hutchings is emphasising the Frankfurt school’s position as
a manifestation of the project first articulated by Kant. Accordingly many of the problems
associated with critical theory have their roots in Kant’s project.
2 Ibid., p. 32. 3 Ibid., p. 18.
97
a practice oriented towards the creation of a realm of discourse popu-

lated by those able to conform to the ideal of reason.
The Kantian paradox finds expression in both critical and poststruc-
tural approaches to IR.4 In particular, what links these projects is the
legislative function of the discourse and practices of freedom and
enlightenment and it is this common ground which makes for the pos-
sibility of an unequal form of the self/other relationship in both. Both
critical theory and Foucauldian poststructuralist IR hold that the pur-
pose of freedom is best achieved through the exercise of critique. As such
they find themselves in the same inescapable bind as Kant. They aspire
to offer critique, the questioning of all limitations on human thought,
as the path to and realisation of human freedom. However, in so doing,
they also posit critique as the opposite to dogma, power and radical scep-
ticism, or nihilism, which are deemed illegitimate and thus excluded.
In both critical theory and poststructuralism this has direct ramifica-
tions on the possibilities for communication between radically different
cultures and agents. In critical theory in particular, the exclusive and as-
similatory potentials of the Kantian emphasis on critique and its opposi-
tion to tradition, provide contestable grounds for possible unjustifiable
exclusion.
The argument below outlines the most important ways in which post-
structuralism and critical theory provide evidence/examples of the leg-
islative mode. The most important of these occurs where the voices of
certain agents are excluded from the model of conversation provided by
discourse ethics. Because poststructuralism does not provide a model
of conversation as such it can not be compared on this issue in the same
degree of detail, but it can, and is, addressed for what it does say about
communication.
Agency and practice in poststructuralism

This section re-examines the poststructuralist position on commu-
nication and community. Concern about the legislative and exclu-
sionary aspects of critical theory and discourse ethics is shared by
4 What Hutchings’ discussion of the legislative function of freedom raises is the difficulty
of grounding the idea of reason outside of itself. If reason cannot be grounded in the
way that its advocates would like, as Hutchings argues, then it must be a practice as
vulnerable as any other. As a result, the legislative and judicial power of reason has its
universality undermined. Reason, therefore, must appeal to its persuasive faculties rather
than ontological or metaphysical grounds. According to Hutchings, Ashley and Walker, in
adopting a register of freedom, likewise claim some sort of grounding for it and, therefore,
are appealing to its legislative faculty.
98
poststructuralists. However, poststructuralists also argue that criti-

cal theory retains a high degree of logocentrism and they question
Habermas’ goal of grounding critique in the presuppositions of argu-
mentation. Furthermore, they understand discourse ethics as an attempt
at closure, in so far as it appears oriented towards definite and ultimate
consensus.5 Poststructuralists also resist the logocentrism involved in
critical theory’s understanding of reasoned discourse between rational
beings by problematising more completely the guiding concepts of rea-
son and rationality, as well as the unified identity of the beings engaged
in discourse. In addition, they dispute the teleological and developmen-
tal/evolutionary model employed by Linklater and Habermas. Finally,
poststructuralists would have cause to be critical of Linklater’s concep-
tion of international community on the grounds that, despite its claims,
it represents yet another exercise to determine the particular good life for
all. Some of these concerns are shared with philosophical hermeneutics
and will be taken up below.
In addition to a commitment to communication between real, situated
agents requiring the critique of boundaries and unjustifiable forms of
exclusion, as argued in the previous chapter, poststructuralist perspec-
tives share with critical theory a commitment to practice in a ‘register
of freedom’. However, by virtue of this mutual commitment poststruc-
turalists also run the risk of envisioning a community populated by
‘enlightened’ beings and a practice oriented towards the realisation of
that community.
It was demonstrated in chapter 2 that Ashley and Walker offered an
understanding of freedom as Foucauldian resistance. The task of post-
structuralism, in addition to the ‘patient labour’ of listening and speak-
ing with others, was to engage in unsettling and disturbing practices in
order to increase the range of freedom and the variety of spaces within
5 As Ashley and Walker argue ‘. . . any understanding of disciplined ethical conduct that
would aspire to cast all activities in the clarifying light of sovereign centre of universal
judgement – in the light of some given consensus, for example, or some canon for the
production of consensus – ironically depends on the exemption of certain activities from
the critical, juridical light to which it would refer . . . A universalistic ethical system, so
understood, always depends upon a reach of activity that exceeds the system’s ethical
grasp . . . we cannot represent, formalise, or maximise deterritorialized modalities of ethi-
cal conduct. We cannot evoke a juridical model, define the good life and lay down the code
crucial to its fulfilment, as if bespeaking some universal consensus formed according to
rules of discourse already given, without at the same time covertly imposing a principle
of territoriality that these modalities refuse to entertain.’ R. K. Ashley and R. B. J. Walker,
‘Reading Dissidence / Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in
International Studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 34 (1990), 367–426, pp. 390–1.
99
which individuals could carry out their ‘labours of self-making’. This

stream suggested that freedom was premised on the never-ending cri-
tique of sovereign identities and boundaries. Poststructuralist theorists
in IR take an unequivocal stand against sovereign identities, discourses
and presences and argue that totalisation could be resisted by reveal-
ing the contested, arbitrary, fluid and historical nature of identity and
subjectivity. The recognition of subjectivity, of agency as ‘socially con-
structed’, contingent, arbitrary and malleable, is a necessary component
in a poststructuralist ethics of freedom. Through recognition of the con-
tingent nature of subjectivity and resistance to totalising and sovereign
claims, the individual was more able to engage in ‘their labours of self-
making’. Ashley and Walker, therefore, suggest that freedom requires
the exercise of non-sovereign identities.
The poststructuralist account of subjectivity and agency shares a great
deal with the notion of autonomy in critical theory. Seen to be historical
and contingent, subjects are capable, within flexible limits, of asserting
and exercising agency and thereby transforming themselves and their
social world.6 In particular, critical theory and poststructuralism share
an understanding of enlightenment as the realisation that it is ‘man’ and
not nature who is the source of the social world, and all its inequalities
and power structures.
As a result of this observation, poststructuralism and critical theory
also share the goal of achieving freedom from indefensible, traditional,
given beliefs about society, self and other through the use of reason. It
will be recalled that Linklater endorsed the Habermasian understanding
of reason’s emancipatory power as simultaneously a means to, and the
realisation of, an individual’s freedom. Poststructuralism lends support
to the use of reason in rendering visible and placing in question preju-
dices and, more particularly, totalising truth claims. At the same time,
poststructuralism refuses to recognise the possibility of a consciousness
free from distortion or the influences of ‘irrational’ considerations. For
this reason, Devetak argues, critical theory and poststructuralism in IR
can be understood to be engaged in rethinking the enlightenment project
of ‘modernity’. This project, he argues, ‘is exactly this concern with the
idea, meaning, and scope of emancipation. It is the breaking away from
6 As noted in chapter 2 poststructuralists also problematise the meaning of autonomy and
subjectivity to a degree not matched by critical theory. For poststructuralists the possibility
of autonomy in the classical enlightenment sense is a much more difficult and impossible
project because they appear to dispute while also aspiring to the possibility of individual
subjectivity divorced from relations of power and domination.
100
the past, and past forms of injustice, and the need to shape a universal
normative trajectory for the future.’7 In particular, poststructuralists par-
ticipate in this project in so far as they offer a politics of radical autonomy
in which the destabilisation of sovereign identities and subjectivity is
linked to an ethics of critical freedom. Furthermore, poststructuralists
follow Foucault in depicting enlightenment as the questioning of limits.
Freedom is found in the questioning and removal of limits previously
seen to be final and absolute. In particular, they share the aspiration to
subject all ‘given’ limits and truth claims to critical scrutiny and aim, as
a consequence, according to Foucault, to ‘separate out, from the contin-
gency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being,
doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think’.8 According to Devetak, this
orientation towards limits requires ‘. . . the “permanent reactivation” of
the critical attitude’.9 While critical theory and poststructuralist inter-
national relations may offer differing interpretations of the meaning
of enlightenment and autonomy, they nonetheless partake in a similar
project by adopting a legislative practice oriented towards increasing
the realm of freedom, however, so defined, or problematic, its meaning
may be. Both endorse freedom understood as critique and offer it as the
grounds for the exclusion of other modes of thought and speech.
While Ashley and Walker resist a developmental or teleological ac-
count of freedom and enlightenment they nonetheless find themselves
engaged in a similar practice with similar problems to those facing crit-
ical theory. By theorising in ‘a register of freedom’ Ashley and Walker’s
account of freedom also ‘. . . take[s] on the explicit status of a Kantian reg-
ulative idea as a standard of judgement’.10 For Ashley and Walker, free-
dom, therefore, inevitably functions simultaneously as both an emanci-
patory and a legislative ideal. In this sense and to this degree (and only to
this degree) Ashley and Walker’s account of practice is complicit in a po-
tentially unequal relationship between self and other. This is so because
from this position the other remains to be enlightened or emancipated
7 R. Devetak, ‘The Project of Modernity in International Relations Theory’, Millennium,

24. 1 (1995), p. 35. For Devetak, what poststructuralists bring to this project is the task of
subjecting the enlightenment tradition itself to critique and problematising its basic as-
sumptions about subjectivity, freedom and knowledge. This does not mean they abandon
it, only that it ‘. . . remains an open question, but one that must continually be re-posed’.
Ibid., p. 46. In this regard Foucault’s text is exemplary.
8 M. Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment’, in P. Rabinow, The Foucault Reader (London:
Penguin, 1984), p. 46.
9 Devetak, ‘The Project of Modernity’, p. 46.
10 Hutchings, Kant, Critique and Politics, p. 164.
101
from something like their immaturity (in the Kantian sense) and it is
this which governs the orientation of the poststructuralist self towards
the other. The poststructuralist practice of disturbance also suggests the
goal of the creation of a community (or communities) populated by
beings who share a similar self-understanding, that of reflexive post-
structuralist individuals. Poststructuralism suggests that those who do
not share this assessment of themselves as unfree are in need of enlight-
enment and, therefore, should be the subject of further critique or more
correctly, should engage in more reflective self-critique. The poststruc-
turalist account of freedom, like critical theory, suggests the expansion
of the realm of those agents who understand themselves in a certain
manner, that is, as postsovereign, reflexive, critical individuals. For this
reason, despite both the aim of inclusion, and the recognition of the mul-
tiple meanings of freedom and communication with ‘concrete’ others,
poststructuralist accounts of IR retain the potential for assimilation and
prescription in the domain agency.
This aspect of poststructuralist thought comes through most clearly
in Ashley and Walker’s account of communication. For them communi-
cation does not have the same requirements for entry or participation as
discourse ethics, they have no intention of developing a uniform model
of conversation between post-conventional beings and furthermore, are
not concerned with the development of ‘thick’ universal norms. The
poststructuralist account of developing a ‘universal moral trajectory’
suggested by Devetak (above) appears to go only so far as the thin prin-
ciple of inclusion. Thus while Ashley and Walker engage in a project
of enlightenment, communication itself does not appear to be limited
exclusively to enlightened agents. The pursuit of universal freedom in
terms of a recognition of the arbitrary and historical nature of subjectiv-
ity is not an essential component of the ability to converse. Rather, the
poststructuralist account of conversation is directed only at questioning
the practices and beliefs which serve to prevent different agents from
conversing with each other.
Ashley and Walker explicitly raise the question of how to engage
ethically with those who do not share their self understanding or who
‘in their specific marginal sites’ comprehend the meaning of freedom
differently. They ask, ‘how is it possible to pursue and expand the realm
of freedom and at the same time be sensitive to others?’:
If, in the process of testing limitations, one assumes that one’s local
strategic situation is a paradigm for the struggle for freedom wherever
102
it unfolds, then one is all too likely to be impatient with other’s labors
in other strategic situations . . . one is all too likely to be insensitive to
the ways in which one’s own conduct, one’s way of questioning lim-
itations – might ramify beyond one’s locality and threaten to deprive
others of the cultural resources by which they reply to the problems of
freedom in other equally difficult strategic settings.11
Their response to this problematic is illuminating. In this situation

there is a risk that an inappropriate response is likely to generate ‘unfor-
tunate results’ which reduce the scope of freedom for all. To be insen-
sitive in such a context is likely to produce a hardening of institutional
boundaries on behalf of the ‘other’ and in response to a perceived threat.
There is a danger of provoking the other into ‘consecrate[ing] some
semblance of a sovereign territorial ground they might call their own,
even at a cost of freedom’.12 Therefore, the best practice in this situa-
tion it is to engage in conversation: in ‘the patient labour of listening
and questioning’. But another question arises at this point: ‘what is the
purpose of this patient labour of conversation?’ For Ashley and Walker
it is ‘to explore possible connections between the strategic situation of
others and one’s own, always sensitive to the problem of expanding the
space and resources by which the ongoing struggle for freedom may
be undertaken there as well as here’.13 However, there is an ambigu-
ity about this response. Conversation in this circumstance seems to be,
on the one hand, the ethical way of engaging with radically different
others, and on the other hand, an ethical way of engaging in strategic
relation to others. In this conversation one engages with other, not in
order to understand them per se, but rather in order to prevent a further
hardening of boundaries that limits their’s and one’s own freedom. In
this regard poststructuralism introduces the danger of engaging in a
quasi-instrumentalist practice whereby communication with the other
is over-determined by the strategic purpose of expanding the realm of
freedom. That is, it proceeds to engage with the other presupposing the
purpose of communication is the achievement of freedom, understood
as self-critique. The point here is not to suggest that the relationship
between self and other accompanying Ashley and Walker’s project is
a purely strategic one. Instead the intention is to bring to light a pos-
sible danger which might accompany a conversation with the other in

12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.
103
which the achievement of freedom, understood this way, provides its

purpose or telos. The nature of this danger and its alternatives will be
made clearer below and in the next chapter.
Finally, before proceeding to examine critical theory it is neces-
sary to revisit the other stream of poststructuralist thought in IR. In
chapter 2 it was argued that David Campbell had advocated an alter-
native poststructuralist ethics based on the work of Levinas. Campbell
suggested that in contrast to conducting ethics in a register of freedom,
Levinas argues that ‘ethics redefines subjectivity as . . . heteronomous
responsibility’14 to otherness. For Campbell, the radical interdepen-
dence of human subjectivity requires an acknowledgement of a uni-
versal obligation and responsibility to others, wheresoever they may be
situated. While this ethics stems from a particular conception of human
subjectivity as radical intersubjectivity, it resists ascribing the contents
of particular identities to particular others. The engagement with the
other is not motivated by a practice oriented to creating or realising
a particular form of agency or community, but by a responsibility to
them. In Campbell’s account the other is engaged in conversation in
order to understand their particular positions and problems and as a
means of recognising and fulfilling a responsibility to them. This re-
quires the other, Campbell notes, to be ‘placed at a height’ whereby
the other’s call, needs and wants orient the conversation. In this sense,
Campbell’s account provides a useful contrast to Ashley and Walker
because in it there is no risk that the other will be seen as the object of
our ends of enlightenment (even if our ends involve the recognition by
the other of their own status as an end). Rather the other, for Campbell,
is someone who places a demand on us and to whose voice we must
listen and respond, that is: an end which ‘we’ must serve. For this rea-
son Campbell’s account is arguably less instrumental than Ashley and
Walker’s because the purpose of conversation is to fulfil moral respon-
sibility, to allow an ethical life, to answer another’s call and not to aspire
to a realm of similarly ‘free’ agents.
Campbell acknowledges there are many problems and difficulties
with the account of ethics that stem from the plurality of others to whom
one can be responsible. However, these problems are not of concern here.
Nonetheless there remains a need for caution in relation to Levinas’
ethics for the following reason. There is a danger that placing the other
14D. Campbell, ‘The Deterritorialisation of Responsibility: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics

After the End of Philosophy’, Alternatives, 19 (1994), 455–84, p. 463.
104
at a height is not a relationship of equality as such. In this scenario the

other’s needs come before those of the self and the other is somehow
seen to be more important or to have a superior demand. The question
that can only be raised here is what place is there in this encounter for
the needs of the ‘self’ and for the other’s responsibility to the self. For
the ethics of radical interdependence to realise a fully equal relationship
it would seem that this responsibility must necessarily be reciprocal.
Campbell does not employ Levinas’ work in order to pursue a theory
of community or justice and, as such, equality is not the foundational
value of his ethics. However, as this enquiry is concerned with the idea
of formulating an account of community that does justice to difference,
the notion of equality is essential.
Discourse ethics: universality, dialogue

and difference
It was argued in the previous chapter that Linklater’s use of discourse
ethics to provide the basis of a ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism represents a ma-
jor advance in the pursuit of a universal community in which justice
to difference could be achieved. The goal of a thin cosmopolitanism in
which dialogue is the means of engagement between actors situated in
different concrete circumstances, such as different cultures, stands as a
motivating ideal and defensible aim. However, discourse ethics, both as
conceived by Habermas and appropriated by Linklater, is not without
its problems. In particular, the model of conversation supplied by dis-
course ethics and endorsed by Linklater is not as ‘thin’ as it appears at
first sight and retains significant assimilatory potential. The problems
arising from discourse ethics have their origins in Habermas’ conception
of the purpose of conversation. This section argues, following Benhabib,
that the Habermasian telos of consensus and agreement repeats the para-
dox of limitation and legislation and places unnecessary restrictions on
conversation which are potentially exclusive of difference. It is also ar-
gued that the Habermasian understanding of the necessary conditions
of universal moral dialogue are likewise unnecessarily restrictive at the
level of agency.
Benhabib suggests that by hitching the model of conversation ex-
clusively to the telos of a rational consensus on universal validity
claims between postconventional agents the formulation of commu-
nication provided by Habermas (and endorsed by Linklater) is un-
necessarily restrictive and, in turn, exclusive of difference. Benhabib’s
105
criticism suggests that by emphasising Universalisation[U] discourse

ethics restricts conversation to questions concerning the right and, in
so doing, necessarily invokes the dual Kantian task of legislation and
limitation, which, in turn, has major implications for the inclusivity of
its model of conversation. Benhabib argues that because Habermas re-
stricts conversation only to the task of determining those principles
which might be acceptable to all participants in a practical discourse he
risks creating a tension between the goals of inclusion and communica-
tion. The telos of ‘understanding oriented towards rational agreement’,
that is towards consensus on the validity of normative statements, nec-
essarily restricts our understanding of both the topics and the agents
involved in discourse. Because conversation is limited exclusively to
questions of ‘the right’ discourse ethics generates two possible types of
exclusion: exclusion in relation to the possible topics of conversation
and exclusion in relation to the identity of the agents of conversation.
In terms of envisioning a community in which justice to the mem-
bers of radically different cultures is achieved through dialogue the
exclusions which accompany Habermas’ understanding of discourse
ethics are problematic. However, the shortcomings of the particulars
of Habermas’ model of discourse ethics should not and do not present
insurmountable obstacles to the defence and articulation of a thin cos-
mopolitan model of dialogue. Instead they simply further clarify the
ground and enable us to seek alternative understandings of conversa-
tion which might capture the best elements of discourse ethics while
at the same time losing those which are more problematic. The next
chapter introduces and examines the philosophical hermeneutics of
H. G. Gadamer and argues that Gadamer’s perspective allows us to
preserve many of the gains made by discourse ethics while losing many
of its disadvantages in the pursuit of thin cosmopolitanism. The remain-
der of this chapter focuses on the limitations of Habermasian discourse
ethics and Linklater’s appropriation of it for international relations.
Universalisation and the right versus the good

In discourse ethics the telos of conversation is the achievement of sub-
stantive agreement on universal principles. For Habermas the primary
defining goal, the telos, of conversation is consensual redemption of
claims to universal moral validity among postconventional agents.
As such discourse ethics is a deontological approach which seeks
to define justice or ‘the moral point of view’ without defining ‘the
106
good’.15 The goal of universal conversation is predicated upon the

assumption of the priority of defining the ‘moral point of view’. In
Habermas’ theory this standard is encapsulated in the principle of
Universalisation[U] (see below). Discourse ethics, therefore, provides
the procedures and conditions under which divergent agents engage
in conversation to establish the validity of their moral claims. Thus
the purpose of conversation is both to achieve substantive agreement
and to regulate, adjudicate and assess these competing moral claims.
Discourse ethics itself does not claim to provide substantive resolutions
of moral problems, only the means by which they may be resolved.
It will be recalled that in chapter 1 Iris Marion Young distinguished
between two different senses of universalism, the thin, inclusive sense
and the thicker sense associated with the claim to neutrality in which
the necessary procedures and methods for adjudicating between claims
are emphasised. As noted above discourse ethics contains both these
dimensions of universalism. The first refers to the principle of inclusion
and consent. It is this principle which stipulates that discourse should
include all competent agents who stand to be affected by a norm. The
second sense refers to the telos of validation, the principle that norms
cannot be considered valid unless they have secured universal consent.
These two dimensions form the heart of discourse ethics and are encap-
sulated in the two interrelated principles of U (universalisation) and D
(discourse) which state:
[U] every valid norm has to fulfil the following condition: All affected
can accept the consequences and the side-effects its general observance
can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests
(and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative
possibilities for regulation).16
and
[D] Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet)
with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a
practical discourse.17
According to Habermas, of these two, U comes before D and is the pre-

supposition upon which discourse ethics rests.18 U states the conditions
15 See D. C. Hoy and T. McCarthy, Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 54.
16 J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity, 1990),
p. 65.
17 Ibid., p. 66. 18 See ibid.
107
of normative validity, in the form of the goal of consensus between ra-

tional agents. It also generates a principle of universal inclusion. For a
norm to be valid it must not only be acceptable to all but must be ac-
ceptable to all on the basis of its observance by all. All participants can
reasonably be expected to abide by the norm because all interests are
satisfied by it. In order to assure consent everybody affected by a norm
must be consulted. In other words, norms can only be considered valid
and binding if they have universal consent.
The principle of D on the other hand stipulates the necessity of con-
versation, it states that U can only be realised by a genuine practical
discourse. D introduces the argument that norms can be valid only if
their acceptance can be assured in real practical discourse. But D also
provides a principle of inclusion because it states that all affected must
be included in the conversation.
Benhabib argues that in Habermas’ theory the principle of inclusion
is undermined by the orientation of conversation towards consent on
validity claims.19 She argues that U is unnecessary for achieving the
goal of a universally inclusive conversation and provides unnecessarily
restrictive criteria for conversation. Benhabib is correct in this identifi-
cation because in addition to generating a principle of inclusion U also
provides discourse ethics with the grounds for possible exclusions. U
contributes to the legislative tendency because it excludes from conver-
sation all statements, or all topics of conversation which are not oriented
towards achieving universal redemption. The incorporation of U as the
telos of conversation serves to define the purpose of conversation exclu-
sively as mutual seeking for consensus in regard to claims of normative
rightness (which, according to Habermas, are analogous to claims to
truthfulness). The principle of universalisation formalises the content of
what counts as acceptable speech. It states that only those utterances and
claims which seek universal approval, that is, which ought to apply to
everybody, are to be the subject of dialogue. Of crucial importance here
is the dimension of rationality. Conversation is oriented towards rational
agreement, that is, the possibility of consensus based upon the ‘unforced
force of the better argument’, and only those principles which are truly
rational can be universalised. Universalisation is both the criterion and
the test of rationality. As a result, conversational participants are re-
stricted to discussing those claims which seek universal redemption by
everybody.
19 See S. Benhabib, Situating the Self (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
108
This dimension of discourse ethics can best be explained as a result

of its privileging of questions of ‘right’ over questions of the ‘good’.
As already noted U establishes discourse ethics as a deontological the-
ory. Habermas is in agreement with Rawls in so far as both their theo-
ries seek to define ‘the standpoint from which moral questions can be
judged impartially’.20 Both present scenarios which claim to ‘show the
participants the procedure they must follow if they want to solve moral
problems’.21 According to Habermas, such a position is the only one
possible under conditions of modernity. Because discourse ethics takes
‘modern pluralism seriously (it therefore) . . . renounce[s] the classical
philosophical claim to defend one uniquely privileged mode of life’.22
These approaches conceive of the moral standpoint ‘purely as a guide to
action, concerned exclusively with what it is “right” to do, rather than
what it is “good” to be’.23 Discourse ethics, therefore, aims ‘to define
some criterion or procedure which allows us to derive all and only the
things we are obliged to do . . . ’24 It provides the impartial means by
which different substantive conceptions of the good life are able to co-
exist and sort out their differences. However, as a result questions of the
‘good’ are excluded from discussion.
In the context of discourse ethics, as formulated by Habermas, the
hard and fast distinction between these two domains excludes discus-
sion of the ‘good’ by bracketing it in the private realm: ‘moral questions
which can in principle be decided rationally in terms of criteria of justice
or the universalisability of interests are now distinguished from evalua-
tive questions, which fall into the general category of the good life and are
accessible to rational discussion only within the horizon of a concrete
historical form of life . . . ’25 For Habermas the ‘moral point of view’ is
restricted to matters which are rationally redeemable and formalisable,
that is, subject to rational argumentation and formalisation according
to the principle of U, and which can hypothetically be acceptable to all
participants in a practical discourse. Only matters of justice and obliga-
tion, of what it is morally ‘right’ to do, strictly speaking, can fulfil this
criterion. As Benhabib argues: ‘Habermas assumes that only judgments
of justice possess a clearly discernible formal structure and thus can
be studied along an evolutionary (rational) model, whereas judgments
20 Habermas, J. Justification and Application (Cambridge: Polity, 1993), p. 48.

21 Ibid., p. 128. 22 Ibid., p. 123. 23 Taylor quoted in ibid., p. 3.
24 M. Neufeld, ‘The Right and the Good in International Ethics’. Paper Presented for the
ISA Annual Convention. San Diego, April. (1996), p. 20.
25 Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, p. 178.
109
concerning the good life are amorphous and do not lend themselves to
the same kind of formal study.’26 Personal conceptions of the good life
and of what it means to be a good person, Habermas suggests, can be
equated with aesthetic preferences or tastes in that they are not suscep-
tible to rational argument. It is not possible to argue rationally about
personal tastes as they are merely a matter of preference and individ-
ual constitution. For Habermas, as Benhabib puts it, ‘[A]ll other moral
matters as pertain to the virtues, to normal emotion, to life conduct
are questions which belong to the domain of “ethical life”. They are
non universalisable and non formalisable.’27 The resolution of conflicts
between different conceptions of the good and their general validity
as ought statements cannot be subjected to the unforced force of the
better argument and discursively redeemed. Thus ‘ethics’ as distinct
from ‘morality’, the ‘good’ as distinct from the ‘right’, are not suscepti-
ble to ‘rational’ argumentation in the same sense. Those matters which
are not rationally redeemable in this way have no place in discourse
ethics.
However, by excluding questions of the good and orienting conversa-
tion exclusively towards the telos of consensus Habermas is unnecessarily
restricting and legislating the topics of possible conversation. In so do-
ing, not only is the nature of conversation unnecessarily narrowed but
the likelihood of excluding radical difference is heightened. This dimen-
sion is revealed if we return to the concerns of both communitarians and
gender oriented thinkers.
The communitarian and feminist arguments describing the limits of
impartialist theories were discussed in chapter 2 in terms of the issue of
agency. Many of these arguments have also been made in slightly dif-
ferent form against discourse ethics. In particular, it has been claimed
that discourse ethics like other ‘neutral’, ‘impartial’ accounts of the right
actually presupposes fairly ‘thick’, but disguised, accounts of the good.
Mark Neufeld argues, following Charles Taylor, that deontological the-
ories, including discourse ethics, are caught in a self-contradiction in
relation to the good; ‘they postulate not just first order goods, under-
stood as desires or wants (for example, the individual purposes of states)
but also higher order goods that stand qualitatively above others’.28 By
this he means that deontological theories are not neutral mediators be-
tween different conceptions of the good but also embody and advocate
26 Benhabib, Situating the Self, p. 72. 27 Ibid., p. 40.

28 Neufeld, ‘The Right and the Good in International Ethics’. Ibid., p. 9.
110
particular conceptions of what is a ‘good’. The most obvious way in

which this is so is that by their very goal of seeking to mediate between
interests they presuppose both the existence of a pluralist society and
its value as a good in itself. In other words, a philosophy of the right
conducted in this vocabulary actually constitutes a thicker and more
partial conception of community than is claimed by its exponents.
Thus from a communitarian position the danger accompanying dis-
course ethics is that despite its explicit attempt to engage with and in-
clude difference, its self-definition as an unambiguous account of the
right means that it is open to the same charge made against Liberal cos-
mopolitans outlined in chapter 1: ‘conceptions of the good/ good life are
unreflectively smuggled in and not subject to critical review (and thus)
the danger of falsely universalising and unnecessarily excluding differ-
ence becomes that much the greater’.29 One of the crucial indicators of
this is the way in which discourse ethics is gendered.
According to Benhabib, Habermas’ emphasis on the maintenance of
the distinction between right and the good, between the realm of the
truly moral and the merely ethical, has damaging side-effects. In par-
ticular, Habermas’ emphasis on U unnecessarily dictates the topics of
conversation by narrowing the realm of the moral to that which can be
formalised and judged according to the standard of rationality (defined
as universalisability). The price of this distinction is that it excludes
from dialogue matters which can be understood as moral in the every-
day sense but which do not fit into Habermas’ definition. As a result,
discourse ethics repeats the tendency of other deontological theories
to privilege the generalised over the concrete other. The emphasis on
achieving agreement guided by the unforced force of the better argu-
ment runs the risk of repeating an emphasis on an abstract, disembodied
‘reason’. More specifically discourse ethics, in so far as it privileges the
generalised other, runs the risk of unnecessarily smuggling in gender
biases and blindnesses regarding the capacity of agents and the topics
of conversation.
Benhabib’s argument here extends from an engagement with Carol
Gilligan’s critique of Kohlberg (upon which Habermas draws, see the
discussion below) and her elaboration of the contents of an ethic of
‘care’.30 The ethic of care is a response to the emphasis on the gener-
alised other in deontological theories of justice which place issues such
29Ibid., p. 21.
30See V. Held (ed.), Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics (Boulder:
Westview, 1995).
111
as virtue, altruism, benevolence, solidarity and compassion, questions

associated with the good life, but also with ‘maternal thinking’, firmly
within the domain of moral theory. According to Benhabib, ‘obligations
and relations of care are genuinely moral ones, belonging to the center
and not at the margins of morality’.31
From the perspective of an ethics of care many matters which are
relevant for members of a community living together and which can
be understood as moral, in the sense of concerning ‘what ought I to
do’, should also be the subject of conversation between participants. An
example of such everyday moral issues for instance might include the
obligations one has to a friend versus the obligations one may have to
family or to other ‘important’ (in Bernard Williams’ sense) dimensions
of one’s life, such as work or a political cause.32 As Benhabib puts it
the moral issues which preoccupy us most and which touch us most
deeply derive not from problems of justice in the economy and the
polity, but precisely from the quality of our relations with others in ‘the
spheres of kinship, love friendship and sex; . . . for democratic citizens
and economic agents, the moral issues that touch her most deeply arise
in the personal domain’.33
For agents facing these sorts of questions the issues ‘what ought I to do’
and ‘what sort of person should I be’ are inextricable from each other, as
it would be difficult to answer one without having an idea of how one
should answer the other. Furthermore, the solutions to these problems
are not necessarily to be formulated in terms of universal maxims or
subject to universal validity tests. The questions are concerned with
what ‘I’ as a specific individual ought to do in ‘this’ specific situation and
not with what it is universally right to do, that is, with what everybody
ought to do. While these obligations and concerns are not necessarily
subject to a Universalisation test they do help to constitute the moral
realm in the everyday experience and reflect the most obvious sorts of
moral problems faced in everyday life.
The problem with Habermas’ theory, according to Benhabib, is that
its focus on the generalised other is gendered and excludes the concerns
and capacities associated with women’s experiences of moral life.
The qualities associated with ‘femininity’ are relegated to the private
realm. Benhabib argues that ‘[T]he restriction of the moral domain to
31 Benhabib, Situating the Self, p. 186.

32 See B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985).
112
questions of justice . . . results in the privatisation of women’s ex-

perience and lead to epistemological blindness toward the concrete
other’.34 As a result, discourse ethics cannot claim to be neutral in
the sense of being without bias or partiality. Instead, as constituted
by Habermas, discourse ethics privileges certain styles of engagement
and certain types of moral experiences, those usually associated with
the ‘masculine’ and risks unjustifiably excluding morally significant
differences.
Furthermore, Benhabib suggests, there is no reason for thinking that
such moral dilemmas are not amenable to reasoned discussion. In ev-
eryday situations moral agents can and do help clarify issues for each
other and help each other decide what is the right thing to do by engag-
ing in reasoned discussion. However, inclusion of such conversations
in the moral realm is possible only if the notion of what counts as rea-
soned discussion is relaxed to include a larger more flexible concept of
reason than that provided by its equation with universal validity. In this
sense reason should be seen as inhabiting the processes of argumenta-
tion, understanding, explanation and persuasion and not the outcome
alone.35
In sum, the point being made is that to restrict morality to those issues
which are rationally formalisable is to restrict and distort the nature of
reason, moral action and dialogue. The overall consequence of the em-
phasis on questions of right is that it serves to exclude the concerns of
private life from the realm of dialogue and to restrict the topics of con-
versation. This restriction is legislative and exclusive precisely because
it rules out certain topics and concerns, which can justifiably be con-
sidered moral, from the conversation pre-discursively. It prescribes not
only the procedure but also the content of dialogue, that is of what are
acceptable statements and topics, according to an already given defini-
tion of the moral realm, one which is constituted prior to engagement
with the other. In this way, discourse ethics enacts the Kantian paradox
of legislation and limitation.
Habermas has responded to many of these criticisms and attempted
to incorporate them into his overall position. There is not the space to
detail his response but a few points can be made. He argues that the con-
cerns of the concrete other have their place in discourse ethics but only
at the point of application of universal principles to specific contexts.
The exact meaning of universalised principles he argues is never firmly
34 Ibid. p. 164. 35 For further discussion of this point see chapter 4.
113
established in some Archimedean point but is only established in the

moment of application in specific discourses, that is, cultural/political
contexts. The task of application requires the type of hermeneutic in-
sights appropriate to the understanding of the ‘concrete other’. Without
a knowledge of the particular contexts and meanings structures of con-
crete others in genuine situations the universal principles are empty
and abstract. However, Benhabib has responded by arguing that the
relevance of the concrete other, and the ethic of care, goes much further
than something that can simply be added at the point of application. The
perspective of the concrete other is essential to understanding the very
framing of universal claims and the meaning of universality for partic-
ular agents. It is by no means clear that members of different cultures
or even of different groups within cultures (including western cultures)
understand universality in the same way nor frame moral questions
the same way. Therefore, the knowledge of the concrete other and the
‘hermeneutic’ skills that go with it need to be applied much earlier in the
process, indeed they need to be applied from the very beginning, from
the construction of the model of conversation itself and the goal of uni-
versality. Such a position is apparently not available to discourse ethics
as Habermas understands, and this is in part because the rules of argu-
mentation stem from the universal pragmatic presuppositions of speech.
Habermas claims that the rules of discourse ethics are pre-given and
universal regardless of the self-understanding of any agent.36 To en-
gage in conversation, he argues, one must logically assume that one’s
claims as to what everybody ought to do can be verified in a universal
conversation guided by the unforced force of the better argument. All
such claims regardless of intention presuppose universality, according
to Habermas. There is not the space in this enquiry to go into Habermas’
attempt to ground discourse ethics in this fashion. Suffice it to say that
there is something in the manner of the attempt to provide philosophical
grounding for his project which is a source of disquiet. This aspect of
Habermas’ project seems to contradict the very goal of discourse ethics
itself which is the validation of such claims in a dialogue between con-
crete subjects and not by philosophical fiat.
Finally, and most importantly, Habermas has not surrendered the task
of defining ‘the moral point of view’ nor the necessity of excluding the
36 ‘Every person who accepts the universal and necessary communicative presupposi-
tions of argumentative speech and who knows what means to justify a norm of action
implicitly presupposes as valid the principle of universalisation . . . ’ Habermas, Moral
Consciousness and Communicative Action, p. 86.
114
good from that viewpoint.37 As such he has not modified those ele-
ments of the model of conversation which are exclusionary as outlined
here.
Turning the discussion from Habermas to Linklater’s use of discourse
ethics in the context of a critical theory of international relations several
points should be made. In so far as Linklater’s account of moral conver-
sation is different from Habermas’ it can be addressed separately.
Linklater’s use of discourse ethics has not been uncritical and in The
Transformation of Political Community he clearly states how he thinks
discourse ethics can be modified in light of the comments of its crit-
ics. Linklater accepts the claims of both Benhabib and others such as
Neo-Aristotelians that discourse ethics needs to take into account the
hermeneutic skill of understanding and application at a much earlier
stage than acknowledged initially by Habermas.38 Indeed he goes fur-
ther than Habermas to accept that a hermeneutic perspective is nec-
essary not only in terms of applying universal principles to particular
situations but it also aids in reflecting on different understandings of
the universals themselves.39 Benhabib’s critique of Habermas, Linklater
argues, indicates ‘engagement with the particularity of others is essen-
tial whenever agents become involved in any dialogue about whether
there are any universal principles which ought to regulate their social
interaction’.40
According to Linklater, the development of an account of universal
dialogic cosmopolitanism does not need to be harnessed exclusively to
Habermas’ understanding of discourse ethics. For this reason Linklater
has had little to say regarding Habermas’ ‘grounding’ of discourse
ethics nor some of Habermas’ other larger philosophical claims as they
have little bearing on his own project. Linklater has turned to discourse
ethics primarily because it relates moral universalism to the principle
of discursive inclusion. Therefore, while many significant differences
remain between discourse ethics and its critics, dialogic universalism as
a larger project is not necessarily fundamentally undermined by these
criticisms. Rather Linklater argues it can accommodate many of them
37 He has, however, acknowledged that a relationship between these two does exist and
that one does indeed presuppose the other. See J. Habermas, ‘Justice and Solidarity’, in
M. Kelly (ed.), Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1990), pp. 32–52.
38 For a suggestion of the manner in which discourse ethics can be made inclusive of ‘con-
crete others’ see A. Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations
of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).
39 Ibid., esp. pp. 94–5. 40 Ibid., p. 95.
115
while remaining true to its fundamental premises of Universalisation

and discourse.
However, that said, Linklater has not addressed Benhabib’s concerns
regarding U nor has he addressed the problems with Habermas’ distinc-
tion between the right and the good. In so far as this is the case then we
can assume that U plays a similar role in his theory. Indeed rather than
modify U Linklater at times appears to endorse it as the central plank of
discourse ethics. Universalisability provides the test by which the ratio-
nality of competing claims can be measured. In this he appears to share
Habermas’ vision of the telos of moral conversation. Therefore, in so far
as these dimensions remain unaddressed his account remains vulnera-
ble to the same problems as Habermas’. As a result, Linklater’s pursuit
of universal inclusion is hindered by certain aspects of the Habermasian
model of conversation upon which he draws so heavily.
Having outlined the restrictions and exclusions which accompany
the understanding of conversation in discourse ethics it is necessary to
turn to the other means whereby Habermas’ model exhibits a tension
between the goals of inclusion and communication, which is at the level
of agency. The next section argues that the exclusionary potential of
discourse ethics is reinforced by the dimension of Habermas’ theory
which argues that moral conversation regarding universal principles
can only be conducted between postconventional agents guided by the
unforced force of the better argument.
Agency and inclusion in discourse ethics

It will be recalled that the previous chapter concluded by raising the fol-
lowing questions: ‘Does the project of universal emancipation and the
creation of a community of self-determining autonomous beings require
the universalisation of a particular “postconventional” agency?’ and: ‘To
what extent does the creation of a universal principle of conversation
require more substantive transformation of individuals and communi-
ties that is itself a process of assimilation rather than communication?’
It is argued here that as long as conversation is understood exclusively
to mean consensual validation of moral claims, that is matters concern-
ing the right, then indeed discourse ethics does raise the possibility of
an assimilatory account of agency. This is so because the Habermasian
account is reliant on an account of agency which is teleological and de-
velopmental. The goal of communicative universality in discourse ethics
can not be distinguished from the pursuit of freedom and as such Dis-
course ethics exhibits the Kantian dilemma of legislation and limitation.
116
In particular, the Habermasian project of determining the moral point of

view necessarily legislates the topics of conversation and limits the types
of agents who can practically engage in conversation, even while aspir-
ing to universal inclusion. In attempting to describe the condition of free
and equal communication discourse ethics, as formulated by Habermas,
not only restricts discussion to matters of the ‘right’ but also raises
the possibility of excluding those forms of agency (and corresponding
modes of thought and speech) which are deemed incompatible with this
goal. Again these aspects stem from the telos of universalisation.
It will be recalled that, according to Linklater, the goal of human free-
dom can only be realised in a discursive cosmopolitan community, in
other words, when universality is achieved. For Linklater the telos of
freedom is inextricably linked with universality. It was also argued dis-
course ethics contained elements of both the dimensions of universalism
identified by Iris Marion Young. It contains both a principle stipulating
that the conversation should include all competent agents who stand
to be affected by a norm and a principle stating that norms cannot be
considered valid unless they have secured universal consent.
These two forms of universalism directly correspond to Linklater’s
understanding of the meaning of human freedom and of a truly free hu-
man agent. Freedom in Linklater’s critical theory has (at least) two mu-
tually supportive definitions. First is a ‘thin’ sense of inclusion in conver-
sation. Freedom in this first sense can only be realised in a cosmopolitan
community of humankind in which all humans have the opportunity to
participate equally in conversation regarding the arrangements of social
life.
Accompanying this ‘thin’ understanding of freedom as inclusion is
the ‘thicker’ interpretation premised on what Linklater calls the species
capacity for individual autonomy. It is this second meaning which gener-
ates the potentially exclusionary dynamics of discourse ethics because it
involves a substantially thicker and more prescriptive account of human
agency than the idea of mere inclusion. In particular, Linklater follows
Hegel in arguing that central to achievement of freedom is recognition
of the capacity for rational human self-determination. This recognition
in turn rests on the realisation that the social world is not subject to im-
personal nature-like or god-given laws beyond the control of humans.
According to Linklater
Hegel argues that the formation of species-powers required man’s tran-

scendence of those societies in which men think they are governed by
117
natural powers and forces and believe that social distinctions have
their origins in nature or confront men as naturally sanctioned . . . But
this is an alienated form of consciousness for what men are unaware
of at this level of social organisation . . . is the fact that it is their cul-
tural framework which endows nature with authority over them: it is
they themselves who have conferred social power and meaning upon
natural phenomena.41
As Linklater sees it freedom understood as self-determination can

only be fully exercised in a universally inclusive community where all
can participate as equals in the negotiation of the forms of collective
life; ‘. . . the existence of a moral community more inclusive than the
sovereign state can be defended only on the basis of man’s unique ca-
pacity for self-determination’.42 In this way for Linklater freedom and
universality are run together. Hence, the appeal of discourse ethics is that
it captures both the ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ senses of freedom, freedom as in-
dividual autonomy and freedom as discursive inclusion. It provides an
account of community that embodies the principles of freedom, equality
and diversity in the form of a conversation between differently situated
self-determining actors. To be free, and to see others as free and equal,
is to engage in rational discussion regarding the arrangements of social
life. Inclusion in conversation is both the means by which this capacity
for self-determination is fully exercised and, it seems, a prerequisite for
successful engagement. The freedom to participate in dialogue both si-
multaneously requires and realises a degree of human autonomy and
self-determination on the part of the participants.
However, it follows from this that discourse ethics exhibits a ten-
sion between the principle that all those who stand to be affected
by a norm are included and the contention that conversation regard-
ing U can take place only between agents possessing what Habermas
41 A. Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, 2nd edn (London:
Macmillan, 1990), p. 145.
42 Ibid., p. xii. Linklater expands on this point thus: ‘At this level of self consciousness, it
would be necessary to accept the Kantian proposition that not to allow others to promote
their self development is not to recognise their humanity, the capacities which differen-
tiate them from the natural world. To understand the relationship between history and
self-knowledge . . . is to require acceptance of the Marxian claim that man should elimi-
nate from his environment those obstacles to the further development of his distinctively
human powers. With these understandings it becomes essential for men to determine
what each individual owes the other members of his species by virtue of their common
humanity, their equal status as free beings. They must seek satisfaction as self determining
beings, as progressive beings with fundamental obligations to all other members of their
species.’ Ibid., p. 198.
118
refers to as ‘postconventional’ consciousness. This tension stems from

Habermas’ controversial use of the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Follow-
ing Kohlberg, Habermas described a conception of moral development
that involves the progression through three stages: the preconventional,
the conventional and the postconventional. In Linklater’s words:
Pre-conventional morality exists when actors obey norms because they
fear that non-compliance will be sanctioned by a higher authority;
conventional moral norms are observed because actors are loyal to a
specific social group; post-conventional morality occurs when actors
stand back from authority structures and group membership and ask
whether they are complying with principles which have universal va-
lidity . . . Post-conventionalism demonstrates a capacity for ethical re-
flectiveness in which agents recognise that moral codes are malleable
social products rather than immutable conventions to which they must
submit.43
Linklater describes this as a process of moral development in which

agents learn how ‘. . . to formulate and institutionalise reflective and
universal ethical principles’.44 The postconventional agent ‘assumes
guidance by universal ethical principles that all humanity should
follow’.45 It is this capacity for universality which marks the postcon-
ventional stage as the highest stage of moral development.46 Thus in
line with the principle of a conversation informed by a telos of securing
universal validity Habermas (and Linklater) endorse an evolutionary
and developmental account of human agency. This account of the sort
of consciousness that is required to engage in conversation equates in-
dividual human development with the awareness of the possibility of
universality and equates universality (U) with maturity.
This aspect of discourse ethics, which stems from an over-
determination by the goal of assessing the validity (rationality) of
43 A. Linklater, ‘The Achievements of Critical Theory’, in S. Smith, K. Booth and
M. Zalewski (eds.), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996). p. 286.
44 A. Linklater, ‘Rationalisation Processes and International History’, in M. Hoffman and
N. J. R. Rengger (eds.), Beyond the Inter-Paradigm Debate: Critical Theory and International
Relations (forthcoming), p. 7.
45 Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, p. 124.
46 The developmental structure of the moral learning process, as leading to universality,
has a high degree of resonance with Linklater’s earlier argument in ‘Men and Citizens’.
There he set out the idea of a scale of forms by which societies could be assessed ac-
cording to their level of freedom. Post conventional morality corresponds to that of the
emancipated being: it is critical of traditional moralities, guided by rational thought and
universal. Autonomy and self-determination, therefore, are properties that belong only to
those higher, more mature, forms of social development.
119
normative claims, is in tension with the goal of universal inclusion. More

particularly it gives rise to the possible grounds for legitimating either
the exclusion of certain agents or their assimilation. Habermas’ resort
to Kohlberg’s theory only serves to entrench the Kantian dilemma and
heighten the problems of discourse ethics not solve them. In discourse
ethics the validity of moral claims is assessed in terms of an uncoerced
dialogue between agents who are likely to be affected and who are con-
scious of the fallibility of all moral claims and are willing to submit their
own values to universal scrutiny and who are not ‘alienated’ (in Hegel’s
terms). Agents engaged in rational dialogue oriented towards consen-
sus must be able to stand back from their specific contexts, discourses,
tradition and conventions. As rational agents reason alone, not tradition,
authority, group affiliation or doctrine determines the universal valid-
ity of principles. The achievement of freedom, in other words, involves
a postconventional consciousness in which the individual recognises
his or her ability to rationally determine the content of their own life
in the context of a conversation with others. In other words, conver-
sation oriented towards U can occur only between subjects who have
achieved a ‘postconventional’ level of consciousness: that is, morally
mature, reasonable beings able to be governed by the unforced force
of the better argument. Put more directly the achievement of univer-
sal rational discourse requires ‘. . . the development of reflective moral
codes which affirm the value of the individual subject, the principle of
autonomy and the ideal of a universal dialogue as the mechanism for
endeavouring to resolve moral disputes’.47 Discourse ethics is the mode
of conduct appropriate to postconventional beings.
As a result, it can be seen that the account of the postconventional
agent is an account of the necessary prerequisites for unconstrained di-
alogue but as such it also sets out the criteria of judgement by which
certain types of agents might be excluded. Thus it appears that the cri-
terion for inclusion in conversation is not only that one be affected by
a norm but also that one recognise oneself as a self-determining agent.
The pursuit of freedom in the form of a morally inclusive universal con-
versation in discourse ethics is, therefore, simultaneously an advocacy
of a particular conception of agency. As such it involves an assimila-
tive moment at the level of agency because it envisages a community
47 Linklater, ‘Rationalisation Processes’, p. 16. According to Habermas ‘The reason for

doing right is that, as a rational person, one has seen the validity of principles and has
become committed to them.’ Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action,
p. 125.
120
of equally self-determining rational agents.48 More specifically the pro-

cedure and telos of discourse ethics require ‘constraints on the range of
plural selves that may be encountered in moral discourse’.49 Discourse
ethics contains the possibility that certain forms of difference might not
be able to engage in conversation as equals because they may be judged
to be incapable of acting as postconventional thinkers. As Hutchings
notes:
The idea of communicative rationality, which is intersubjectively based

and oriented towards understanding, is both presupposed in all
discourse and provides a standard against which both individual rational
capacities and the organisation of societies can be judged.50
The ‘discourse’ of discourse ethics, therefore, risks being open only

to those deemed mature enough to enter it. As a result, the achieve-
ment of equality in discourse appears to require a fairly substantive
common capacity which is associated with a particular account of
agency.51
Conversation requires certain thick prerequisites: it requires a popu-
lation of individuals who share the same qualities, that is individuals
capable of being guided by the unforced force of the better argument.
Discourse ethics so understood, can be seen to require a much thicker,
48 Thus, as it was in Beitz, cosmopolitanism in critical theory remains linked to princi-

ples of equality and autonomy and as such risks sacrificing difference for identity. What
changes is the form and degree in which these principles are articulated.
49 K. Hutchings, ‘Feminism, Universalism and Ethics’, in V. Jabri and E. O’Gorman,
Women, Culture and International Relations (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), p. 28.
50 Hutchings, Kant, Critique and Politics, p. 62, emphasis added. This tendency in discourse
ethics is echoed in Linklater’s (earlier) interest in developing an ‘international scale of
forms’ of those cultures/states/societies that aspire to and achieve universality and those
that don’t. The purpose of such a scale of forms is to assess and judge the other according
to the degree to which they conform to the aspiration of universality.
51 Despite her reservations in regard to Habermas’ project, this tendency is indeed em-
braced by Benhabib, who accepts the model of the postconventional agent and endorses
the substantive contents of the discourse ethics model. Benhabib argues ‘Communicative
Ethics promotes a universalist and post-conventionalist perspective on all ethical relations:
it has implications for familial life no less than for democratic legislatures.’ Benhabib, Sit-
uating the Self, p. 39. She also acknowledges, discourse ethics involves a much thicker
conception of community than that of mere inclusion, because it presupposes and privi-
leges ‘a secular, universalist reflexive culture in which debate, articulation, and contention
about value questions as well as conceptions of justice and the good have become a way of
life’, ibid. p. 42. However, Benhabib also argues that what she refers to as communicative
ethics does not mean ‘the advocate of conventional morality is excluded from the conver-
sation; but the kinds of grounds such a person will bring into the moral conversation will
not be sufficiently universalisable from the standpoint of all involved’. Ibid. However, she
can only make this claim having previously rejected the Habermas’ emphasis on U.
121
and therefore, exclusive, conception of agency or subjectivity than sug-

gested by the idea of universality as inclusion. In this sense discourse
ethics raises obstacles to communication with the radically different
even while seeking to achieve universal inclusion. While discourse
ethics attempts to articulate a form of cosmopolitanism that balances
universalism and particularism in a discursive community, it nonethe-
less presupposes that the community will be populated by rational,
autonomous, postconventional beings. The self–other relation here is
equal only in so far as identity is common or all have developed the
same consciousness. In this way Habermasian discourse ethics remains
trapped in a paradox of limitation and legislation (which in turn is an-
other manifestation of the difficulties involved in reconciling the tension
between community and difference).
In addition to running the risk of assimilating identity into equality
a number of other problems are raised by pursuing the model of con-
versation as a strictly Kantian project. In particular, in so far as it relies
upon postconventional agency discourse ethics seems to make the pos-
sibility of justice to those who are not postconventional, or those who
in Habermas’ terms are situated outside the discourse of modernity
(which is to say the same thing), more problematic.52 For Habermas,
a postconventional consciousness is that which characterises the dis-
course of modernity. This suggests that only those situated within the
discourse of modernity have the appropriate skills to participate in dis-
course ethics.53 This account of agency denies the possibility that those
on ‘lower’ levels of development, who might inhabit a pre-modern or
52 Not only does this account exclude those not engaged in the philosophical discourse of
modernity but it also attributes reason as a property specific to that discourse, non modern
forms of reasoning are not understood to be fully rational.
53 There is a sense in which in a strict logical form this three level analysis makes sense,
in that only those capable of reflective discourse can engage in reflective discourse. How-
ever, because discourse ethics is tied to specific historical–philosophical cultural for-
mation it makes claims beyond those of strict logic and instead becomes engaged in
quasi-anthropological statements regarding human capacities. Put simply as Hoy notes
‘Habermas believes that an evolutionary theory of the development of rationality struc-
tures allows the anthropologist to criticise the practices of a less developed culture.’ Hoy
and McCarthy, Critical Theory, p. 204. The nature of the relationship between postconven-
tionality and modernity is complex and ambiguous. Habermas and Benhabib have both
made it clear that postconventionality is not tied to an account of human development
at the societal level. That is, it is quite possible that those inhabiting pre-modern epochs
in human history might exhibit the capacity to reflect critically upon their own and their
societies practices and to do so in light of an abstract universality. However, despite this
dimension discourse ethics is still troubled by an equation of reflexive thought with uni-
versality which forms the basis of its potential for exclusion, and the tension between its
goals of inclusion and universality.
122
conventional consciousness and hold to traditional social practices and

conceptions of the good life, may be able to engage in reasoned discus-
sion. This might be so, for example, because they may continue to hold
that moral laws are divinely ordained or exist independently of human
thought.
The question raised by linking the possibility of a rational consen-
sus to the concept of postconventional agents is, how does a univer-
sal postconventional theory of justice include those who do not share
the same self understanding, that is, who are not, in Habermas’ terms,
part of the discourse of modernity? A truly moral relationship between
modern and pre-modern agents appears impossible because those out-
side of the discourse of modernity are seen, like children, as not ma-
ture enough for reasoned discussion.54 Hutchings notes that for both
Kant and Habermas ‘the formulation of the principle of morality poses
problems for its actualisation outside of a kingdom of ends, or a fully
rationalised lifeworld’.55 If this is so then it implies that understand-
ing and agreement are apparently ruled out between those at different
stages of moral development. Thomas McCarthy puts the point this
way: ‘. . . the social evolutionary components of Habermas’ interpreta-
tive frame ensure that the interpretation of some types of traditional
views will represent them from the start as “pre-modern” and hence
not up to discursive par’.56 Traditional, or pre-conventional moralities
(i.e. those that are ‘unreasonable’ and that are not the product of con-
sent freely given) are, it appears, to be excluded from conversation.57
If traditional and pre-modern groups are still too tradition-bound and,
therefore, incapable of rational discourse, how do we conduct relations
with them morally? One answer seems to lie in Linklater’s commitment
to the project of emancipation.58 However, this avenue also seems to
lead to an overly assimilatory engagement.
54 Or are we to assume that there is no ‘outside’ the discourse of modernity? In which

case the ‘totalisation’ project might be thought to have succeeded.
55 Hutchings, Kant, Critique and Politics, p. 75.
56 Hoy and McCarthy, Critical Theory, p. 243.
57 Benhabib for one endorses this exclusion.
58 Linklater does in fact consider the question of how to relate to others in the absence of
a universal kingdom of ends and his answer is, through discourse ethics. The emphasis
in Transformation is, he states, ‘. . . on the harm we do to them, and on what we should do so
that they are able to defend their interests in their relations with us’. A. Linklater, ‘Trans-
forming Political Community: A Response to the Critics’, Review of International Studies,
25. 1 (1999), 165–75, p. 174. The point here is not that Linklater’s answer to this question is
emancipation, rather discourse ethics it seems requires a process of emancipation in order
to be realised.
123
Discourse ethics and emancipation

The assimilative moment of conversation in discourse ethics is aggra-
vated and compounded by Linklater’s stress on the emancipatory telos
of critical theory. Critical theory is constituted by an interest in eman-
cipation understood as ‘freeing human subjects from unnecessary so-
cial constraints and distorted patterns of culture and communication’59
The critical theoretical interest in human emancipation requires the
realisation of universal community in the form of a Kantian ‘univer-
sal kingdom of ends’: ‘. . . the purpose of social enquiry is to promote
emancipation by providing enlightenment about the constraints upon
human autonomy’.60 Discourse ethics is able to provide both further
theoretical support for this project, and an articulation of the nature of
that community.61 However, as we have noted this aspect of the Kantian
project raises the prospect of a community of homogenous agents.
Because conversation is limited to the search for universalisable state-
ments then it requires discourse amongst postconventional agents and
any deviation from such agency, or from such a telos of conversation, is
by nature an obstacle to discourse.62 In this way the goal of inclusion, re-
moving the obstacles to discourse, comes to mean not only the removal
of political and moral practices of exclusion but also the creation of a
realm of agents who understand themselves to be autonomous, free and
self-determining, that is postconventional agents. In other words, inclu-
sion comes with emancipation and equality, therefore, only comes with
achievement of a shared consciousness.63 Therefore, a conversation, the
59 A. Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations
(London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 4.
60 A. Linklater, ‘The Question of the Next Stage in International Relations: a Critical
Theoretical Point of view’, Millennium, 21. 1. Spring (1992), p. 87.
61 According to Linklater ‘discourse ethics reconceptualises the emancipatory project and
retrieves the universalistic position within a compelling account of the historical develop-
ment of species-wide moral competences’. A. Linklater, ‘Citizenship and Sovereignty in
the Post-Westphalian State’, European Journal of International Relations, 2. 1, March (1996),
77–103, p. 86.
62 Thanks to Michael Janover for this formulation.
63 Critical theory’s emancipatory project is open to a presumption of superiority, and,
therefore, inequality, on behalf of the ‘emancipated’ towards the ‘unemancipated’. It
should be emphasised here that it is the practice of emancipation, and not the idea of
freedom per se, that creates the opening for the assimilative relations between self and
other. The telos of emancipation presupposes a condition of unfreedom for both self and
other: The task then, is to liberate or emancipate both from this condition. In itself, this
formulation understands both as equal in their need and capacity for emancipation. How-
ever, potential inequality arises when ‘one’ recognises one’s own unfreedom and capacity
for freedom and simultaneously sees that the other does not recognise themself in this
manner. As a result, the enlightened agent might engage with the unenlightened agent
124
telos of which is the consensus between post conventional agents, might

require a practice directed towards the creation of a realm of similar
agents.
In Linklater’s work emancipation also takes two forms correspond-
ing to the two forms of freedom. The first of these is the removal of any
obstacle to discourse between humans. The second is the goal of expand-
ing the realm of agents who understand themselves to be autonomous,
free and self-determining. If freedom lies in self-determination, then
emancipation comes about when humans understand that their world
is made by their own actions and beliefs and therefore, is susceptible
to consciously willed transformation. Emancipation means subjecting
the social world to rational scrutiny and lifting or removing barriers
to the exercise and recognition of human self-determination. However,
in Linklater’s critical theory, the distinction between the two appears
nonsensical: the removal of obstacles to discourse is simultaneously
the expansion of agents who understand themselves as free.64 Thus
the purpose of critical theory is to create a universal communication
community in which all can engage in ‘reasonable’ discourse. In prac-
tice this means that the praxis of emancipation involves the univer-
salisation of a particular account of human agency, that of individuals
who understand themselves to be free, that is, rational postconventional
beings.
These two meanings of freedom are in tension. The practice of critical
theory as emancipation would seem to imply that the appropriate orien-
tation towards the other is one concerned with enlightening and emanci-
pating them from their pre-conventional and conventional moralities so
that they can partake in conversation. Emancipation appears to be, not
the goal, but the prerequisite of dialogue. This meaning of emancipation
stands in tension with the goal of universal inclusion to the extent that it
presupposes that discourse is only possible between similarly reflexive
agents. This compounds a form of self–other relation that is potentially
for the purpose of reducing their ignorance. The presupposition is that the other is less
free and in need of enlightenment because they do not share the same self-understanding.
The assimilationist resonances of this argument can be evoked if we remember Las Casas’
argument that Indians were worthy of inclusion on the grounds that they were capable
of becoming Christians.
64 According to Linklater this vision is not excessively assimilative of otherness, indeed,
he argues, only an interest in emancipation can provide an adequate account of universal
moral community. Linklater argues that it is a commitment to freedom that prevents
the unjustifiable exclusion of the radically different from the realm of moral obligation.
However, as this discussion indicates the critical theoretical ability to deliver in relation
to ‘radical’ difference is in doubt.
125
assimilative in both the dimensions of equality and identity. The other’s

equality is only realised when they are emancipated, when they become
modern, reflexive unalienated individuals, when they are assimilated.65
Furthermore, the legislative aspects of the Kantian paradigm are high-
lighted in this instance by the coexistence of two opposing categories,
hierarchy and equality. The problem with an uncritical acceptance of
Habermas’ postconventional agent is that it implies a hierarchical rela-
tion between those more, or less, progressive participants in the conver-
sation. While the principle may hold that those on different stages of
development are equal, discursive equality is achieved only when one
reaches the pinnacle of the hierarchy. For this reason the emancipa-
tory telos of critical theory does not provide sufficient insurance
against the possibility of generating an unequal relation to otherness
capable of undermining communication between radically different
agents.
These aspects of discourse ethics are testimony to the difficulties ac-
companying the task of attempting to reconcile the goals of community
and difference. The tension between these two goals is evidenced in
the tension within its core principles: the goal of universality as inclu-
sion and as validation of norms. Whether discourse ethics as conceived
by Habermas and Linklater does in fact overcome this contradiction be-
cause of its commitment to open dialogue is an open question. The point
is that, at the very least, the language of hierarchy should be replaced
by a language of equality and the language of emancipation by one of
understanding and communication.66
The major point that has been made here is that because, for discourse
ethics, conversation comes to mean consensual validation of universal
moral claims among postconventional agents then any deviation from
such form of agency or from this telos of conversation is by nature an
obstacle to discourse. The goal of inclusion, removing the obstacles to
discourse, might also mean not only the removal of political and moral
practices of exclusion but also the creation of a realm of agents who un-
derstand themselves to be autonomous, free and self-determining. The
conclusion that can be drawn from these observations for Linklater’s
65 While the achievement of emancipation or enlightenment can only be the result of a
process of self awareness it stands to reason that if the fulfilment of the categorical imper-
ative is universal conversation between postconventional agents then this goal arguably
requires the creation of such a realm.
66 Indeed Habermas himself has explicitly moved away from this language. See
J. Habermas, The Past as Future (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), p. 104.
126
account of the nature of a thin cosmopolitanism is that in so far as he

subscribes to Habermas’ understanding of the telos of conversation then
his conception also provokes the same concerns. Despite his efforts to
emphasise the openness of conversation Linklater does not appear to
have succeeded in adopting the inclusive dimension of discourse ethics
(D) without simultaneously endorsing the legislative aspects which
accompany the telos of U. Most importantly Linklater’s formulation,
like Habermas’ does not rest at defining universalism in relation to the
issue of inclusion alone but extends it to the process of the validation of
norms. As a result, it involves a commitment to both a thick and a thin
project.
At this point it is rewarding to return to Benhabib’s critique of U.
Benhabib argued that U introduces consequentalist complications by
emphasising the need to gain consensus in order to validate norms.
However, consensus, she argues, does not in itself guarantee validity.
In her view ‘[C]onsent alone can never be a criterion of anything, nei-
ther of truth nor of moral validity’.67 The consensual implications of
U introduce an unnecessarily teleological element into discourse ethics
because conversation becomes oriented towards achieving rational con-
sensus regarding the right. She argues rather that it is rationality of the
procedure which is of importance. This can be provided by D alone.
Discourse ethics does not need the principle of U in order to facilitate
inclusive moral dialogue. The core idea of conversation as procedure
is enough upon which to base a defence of normative universalism:
‘ . . . consent is a misleading term for capturing the core idea behind
communicative ethics; namely the processual generation of reasonable
agreement about moral principles via an open-ended moral conversa-
tion . . . ’68 Therefore, Benhabib argues, it is possible to reject U but keep
D. We should not reject the goal of inclusion nor the generation of uni-
versal norms but these can be achieved without the over-determining
telos of U.69
67 Benhabib, Situating the Self, p. 37. 68 Ibid.

69 In rejecting the principles of U Benhabib also appears to be rejecting Habermas’ at-
tempt to provide a weak transcendental defence of the discourse ethics. Benhabib rejects
the argument that the normative goals of discourse ethics can be ‘grounded’ in pragmatic
presupposition of argumentation. The principle of mutual respect and inclusion in dia-
logue are ought statements which cannot be deduced from the pragmatic presuppositions
of what a good argument consists of. She argues instead that the principle of universal
inclusion in dialogue stems rather from an interpretation or immanent critique of western
philosophical tradition (something like Rawls’s reflexive equilibrium). In so doing, she is
arguing that the U principle is an ought position and not a scientific statement.
127
What is of most interest in Benhabib’s argument is that the effect

of relinquishing the dimension of U from discourse ethics opens the
possibility that we might provide communicative ethics with a broader
focus which is arguably more inclusive of difference. By de-emphasising
U we open conversation up to questions not concerned exclusively
with
what all would or could agree to as result of practical discourses to

be morally permissible or impermissible, but what would be allowed
and perhaps even necessary from the standpoint of continuing and sus-
taining the practice of the moral conversation among us (the emphasis
shifts from) rational agreement, (towards) . . . sustaining those norma-
tive practices and moral relationship within which reasoned agreement
as a way of life can flourish and continue.70
In addition to Benhabib’s reservations we can add another which

supports hers but proceeds in a slightly different direction. Benhabib’s
criticisms point to the possibility that the problems identified with dis-
course ethics might stem from the fact that it envisions conversation
purely as a means for resolving moral disputes. The problems then are
not with discourse ethics as an account of the ‘moral point of view’.
Rather the problem lies as much with the consignment of conversation
exclusively to the task of dispute resolution and mediation between
competing moral claims. If this is the case there is less at stake in aban-
doning the more problematic principle of U while keeping the goal of D.
In so doing, we open the possibilities for investigating how conversation
be maintained, encouraged and built. Relaxing the requirement of nec-
essary consensus orients the goal of conversation towards other tasks
such as community building and solidarity, without denying its role
in dispute resolution or in the pursuit of universally agreeable norms.
Indeed valid universal norms are most likely to be achieved only af-
ter, or in the context of, other conversations and after the generation of
mutual understanding through a process of dialogue. To achieve both
solidarity and justice, to build and maintain a discursive community,
conversation must become both the means and the end. For this pur-
pose we need a fuller, more comprehensive and less restrictive under-
standing of conversation than that provided by discourse ethics. The
meaning and outline of such an understanding is pursued in the next
chapter.
128
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to demonstrate the manner in which the
approaches to communication supplied by critical theory and post-
structuralism in IR are problematic. It has been suggested that the
Foucauldian strain of poststructuralist IR and Linklater’s critical theory
share a commitment to ‘theorising in a register of freedom’. Following
Hutchings it was suggested that as a result both these approaches could
be identified as being subjected to what she referred to as the Kantian
paradox of limitation and legislation. This paradox manifests itself in
a dynamic which both encourages free communication and yet simul-
taneously appears to provide restrictions on it. In drawing attention to
these possible problems in this fashion the purpose has not been to re-
ject either the value of freedom or the goal of a universal community
in which all are free. Nor has the intention been to suggest that either
the Kantian paradox or the tension between community and difference
can be escaped completely. Rather the intention has been to indicate
the ways in which a certain definition of the meaning of freedom, espe-
cially when equated with the enlightenment ethos of critique, can affect
the possibility of communication between radically different actors. If
this chapter has succeeded in drawing attention to this dimension of
the project of a thin dialogic cosmopolitanism then the next challenge
becomes how to conceive of a universally inclusive dialogue in which
all are free to speak, which reduces the potential for assimilation and
exclusion detailed here. The next chapter offers one suggestion as to
how this might be achieved.
129
4 Philosophical hermeneutics:
understanding, practical reasoning
and human solidarity
Every conversation presupposes a common language, or better, creates

a common language. Something is placed in the centre, as the Greeks
say, which the partners in dialogue both share, and concerning which
they can exchange ideas with one another. Hence reaching an under-
standing on the subject matter of a conversation necessarily means that
a common language must first be worked out in the conversation . . . in
a successful conversation they both come under the influence of the
truth of the object and are thus bound to one another in a new com-
munity. To reach an understanding in dialogue is not merely a matter
of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point
of view, but being transformed into communion in which we do not
remain what we were.1
Chapter 2 identified Mark Neufeld’s claim that the goal of a critical

theory of international relations was the recreation of the Aristotelian
polis on the global scale. Linklater’s use of Habermasian discourse ethics,
it was argued, had been the most successful attempt to think about
how to proceed with this aim. Discourse ethics, Linklater argued, pro-
vided one conceptualisation of what such a recreation might look like. In
Linklater’s project the global polis, in order to be both inclusive and just,
must necessarily take the form of a ‘thin’ cosmopolitan community mod-
elled on discourse ethics. Chapter 3 argued that certain limits applied to
this model as a result of its commitment to a strictly proceduralist, de-
ontological conversation. The discussion concluded by suggesting that
while discourse ethics provides many important criteria for understand-
ing conversation it nonetheless has retained a tension between the goal
of universal inclusion and a limitation on the forms of legitimate speech.
1 H. G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd edn (trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. Marshall),
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1989), p. 379.
130
Philosophical hermeneutics and solidarity
It was suggested that this model contains the potential for a ‘thicker’
cosmopolitanism than suggested by Linklater’s reading. This chapter
presents the case for advancing a model of dialogue informed by philo-
sophical hermeneutics and which entails a ‘thinner’ and thereby more
inclusive vision of cosmopolitan community. Philosophical hermeneu-
tics provides an alternative basis for thinking about conversation and
the nature of a polis in which matters are decided through words and
persuasion. The argument below is that the theory of understanding pro-
vided by philosophical hermeneutics supplies an account in which the
goal of justice to difference through recognition in conversation might
be more closely actualised. Philosophical hermeneutics provides the
resources for such an account because of its orientation towards under-
standing, practical reasoning and the achievement of solidarity through
dialogue.
The case for philosophical hermeneutics consists of several parts.
The first requires analysing the model of conversation central to the
hermeneutic account of understanding. Philosophical hermeneutics is
a philosophy of understanding rather than a theory because it asks the
question: ‘what does it mean to say we have understood something?’
or, rather, ‘what is the meaning of understanding?’ From this question
conclusions are drawn about the nature of human ‘Being-in-the-world’
(Dasein) and these conclusions have significance for understanding the
possibility of developing a universal communication community. The
discussion begins by briefly outlining the nature and context of the philo-
sophical hermeneutic theory of understanding. It presents Gadamer’s
case for the ‘ontologisation’ of hermeneutics through the recognition
of the linguisticality of all understanding, and then moves to discuss
the depiction of understanding as a dialogical ‘fusion of horizons’.
This metaphor demonstrates that for philosophical hermeneutics, un-
derstanding is conceived not as a purely private, subjective, act but
rather as a dialogical, communicative and intersubjective one. Philo-
sophical hermeneutics conceives of understanding as a communicative
act, between equal but differently situated agents, in which self and
other achieve recognition through dialogue. It is this dimension which
provides the basis for an alternative model of dialogical community
which preserves the strengths and cancels some of the weaknesses of
those discussed in previous chapters.
The philosophical hermeneutic conception of the nature and pur-
pose of conversation has much in common with discourse ethics but
nonetheless provides an alternative model that avoids some of the
131
potentially assimilatory dimensions. In particular, it is argued that

Gadamer is able to articulate a better form of self–other relation by
emphasising the central place of the experience of truth. The partic-
ipants in a conversation, if genuinely seeking understanding, enter
the conversation with the expectation of learning through encounter-
ing a new experience of truth. A claim to have achieved understand-
ing involves coming to experience a new or different truth. This in-
volves a form of learning because the other’s difference offers a new
experience. This encounter permits the other to be seen as both dif-
ferent and equal because, like the self, they may possess truth but
this is a new and different truth. Therefore because a ‘genuine’ con-
versation oriented towards understanding is guided by the expecta-
tion of truth a less assimilatory relationship between self and other is
achieved.
The philosophical hermeneutic account of understanding as dia-
logue between equal partners is situated within a practical philoso-
phy that is also oriented towards the achievement of understanding,
agreement and solidarity. Philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer ar-
gues, is a practical philosophy which seeks to facilitate the exercise of
practical reasoning, the chief virtue of the Aristotelian polis. Practical
reasoning in turn requires the cultivation of solidarity between its mem-
bers. Because philosophical hermeneutics is universalistic in its scope
its telos is the creation of universal solidarity as the necessary con-
ditions for the exercise of practical reasoning. Putting these two as-
pects of philosophical hermeneutics together, the model of dialogue
and the pursuit of solidarity points to the pivotal place of communica-
tion. Platonic dialogue as understood by Gadamer both requires and
creates a level of solidarity between the conversational partners and
can, therefore, be seen as both means and end of a thin cosmopolitan
community.
While the first part of the chapter examines these themes, the second
explores the differences between this model and the one provided by
discourse ethics. It argues that Gadamer’s model provides a mean for
overcoming certain of the limitations accompanying discourse ethics
while nonetheless contributing to the goal of a thin dialogical and uni-
versal community. In particular it is argued that the most significant
difference between the account of a conversation oriented towards
truth in philosophical hermeneutics and that provided by discourse
ethics, is the telos of understanding which underpins philosophical
hermeneutics.
132
The hermeneutic claim to universality:

understanding as mode of being-in the-world
Hermeneutics, of which philosophical hermeneutics is only one branch,
refers to the study of the relationship between meaning, interpretation
and understanding. Historically, those engaged in this project have been
concerned with questions of how best to interpret and understand a text
or texts, originating with the Bible.2 In the nineteenth century Wilhelm
Dilthey argued that hermeneutics could provide a general methodol-
ogy for the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften]. Such a methodology
would be distinct from, but equal in status and objectivity to, that of the
natural sciences. It is with Dilthey that the famous distinction between
explanation and understanding first originates.3 Explanation is the task
of the natural or physical sciences and understanding, that of the human
sciences. This is because the Geisteswissenschaften are concerned with the
understanding of meaning rather than brute facts: ‘The human studies
do not deal with facts and phenomena which are silent about man but
with facts and phenomena which are meaningful only as they shed light
on man’s inner processes, his “inner” experience.’4
Dilthey’s other major contribution was to assert that the human sci-
ences are intrinsically historical sciences. Whilst knowledge in this realm
is historical it is not, for Dilthey, precluded from being objective. The task
of nineteenth-century hermeneutics then was to achieve objective un-
derstandings of inner experience via the interpretation of the ‘works of
man’(sic).
Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics involves the use of the onto-
logical insights of Martin Heidegger to deepen and reconceptualise the
hermeneutic project begun by Dilthey. Gadamer starts Truth and Method
with the question ‘. . . what kind of knowledge and what kind of truth’5
do we attain when we study texts and traditions, when we engage in the
human sciences? Beyond that question he asks ‘what is understanding?’
and ‘. . . how is understanding possible?’6 Gadamer’s answer to these
questions provides his distinctive contribution to the pursuit of a dis-
cursive relationship of recognition between equal but different subjects.
2 For an excellent introduction to the history of continental hermeneutics see

R. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and
Gadamer (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969).
3 For a discussion of the place of this distinction in IR see M. Hollis and S. Smith,
Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
4 Palmer, Hermeneutics, pp. 103–4. 5 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. xxi.
6 Ibid., p. xxx.
133
His answer indicates the ontological, rather than the epistemological or

methodological, dimensions of understanding. Like Dilthey he chal-
lenges the attempts to apply the methodology of the natural sciences to
the human sciences. The human sciences, Gadamer argues, are informed
by a different experience to that of the natural sciences, they are:
connected to modes of experience that lie outside science: with the

experience of philosophy, of art, and of history itself. These are all
modes of experience in which a truth is communicated that cannot be
verified by the methodological means proper to science.7
The essential common ingredient of these modes of experience is that

they are interpretative. Thus, Gadamer’s answer to the question ‘what
is understanding?’ is ‘all understanding is interpretation’.8 When we
say we understand something, we have in fact interpreted it.9 As a
result, hermeneutics becomes not the act of ‘discovering’ and under-
standing some ‘original’, deep, hidden, or objective meaning (or Truth),
nor the act of recapturing the ‘inner’ experiences of humans (as in
Dilthey) but rather the explication of a fundamental dimension of hu-
man experience.10 Gadamer argues that understanding is not so much
something we do but more the manner of our experience (Erfahrung) of
the world. If all understanding is interpretation then our knowledge of
and action in the world, our Being-in-the-World (Dasein), is also funda-
mentally interpretative or hermeneutic:
Understanding is not conceived as a subjective process of man over and

against an object but the way of being of man himself; hermeneutics
is not defined as a general help discipline for the humanities but as a
philosophical effort to account for understanding as an ontological –
the ontological – process in man.11
7 Ibid., p. xxii. 8 Ibid., p. 274.

9 Madison identifies these as the three main theses of Truth and Method ‘(1) To un-
derstand is in fact to interpret . . . (2) All understanding is essentially bound up with
language . . . (3) The understanding of the meaning of the text is inseparable from its
application.’ G. B. Madison, The Hermeneutics of Post-Modernity: Figures and Themes
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 114.
10 Gadamer, unlike Dilthey is not concerned with creating a new science, nor is he con-
cerned with creating an objective historical methodology. Philosophical hermeneutics de-
scribes not ‘. . . a methodology of the human sciences, but an attempt to understand what
the human sciences truly are, beyond their methodological self-consciousness, and what
connects them with the totality of our experience of world’. Gadamer, Truth and Method,
p. xxiii.
11 Palmer, Hermeneutics, p. 163.
134
The ontological dimension of hermeneutics provides the basis for

what Gadamer refers to as the hermeneutic, the claim to universality.
The significance of this claim for the project of community and the ques-
tion of recognition lies in its necessarily linguistic dimension. Gadamer
bases his claim for the ontological dimension of hermeneutics on the
universality of language as the medium for understanding. Understand-
ing for Gadamer ‘is not understanding of language, but understanding
through language’.12 The major argument of Truth and Method is that
all knowledge is interpretation because all knowledge is constituted
linguistically. According to Gadamer, not only do we understand and
experience the world through language but language in a real sense
discloses and manifests the world for us. Linguisticality is ‘. . . the fun-
damental mode of our being-in-the-world and the all embracing form
of the constitution of the world’.13 For Gadamer therefore: ‘[B]eing that
can be understood is language.’14 The linguisticality of human ontology
makes for the most fundamental aspect of human situatedness. Because
we are embedded in language in this way we are conditioned in the
scope of our knowledge and experience.15
Intimately related to the argument for linguisticality is Gadamer’s
argument for the simultaneous historicity of human Being. If linguisti-
cality is both the constitution of our world and the manner of our ex-
perience of it, then what is contained within it, what it carries or bears,
is history and tradition. When Gadamer refers to tradition he does not
mean tradition in the everyday sense but rather he is arguing that we are
12 Ibid., p. 139. In order to make this claim Gadamer employs an expressive view of lan-
guage. One of the main elements of expressivism is that language is not simply a tool
for understanding to be manipulated at will. Instead, it is the expression of being-in-the-
world [Dasein]: ‘. . . words and language are not wrappings in which things are packed
for the commerce of those who write and speak. It is in words and language that things
first come into being and are [for us]’. Heidegger quoted in Palmer, Hermeneutics, p. 135. If
language is the location of understanding and is thus constitutive of our experience it can
never be transcended in the sense of achieving an extra linguistic or objective understand-
ing. The attempt to reproduce the objectivity of the natural sciences in the social sciences
through the manipulation of an objective language is thus limited by this embeddedness.
To use or manipulate language can only be done through language because language is
always present in any attempt to understand Language. For another account of expres-
sivist views of language, see C. Taylor, ‘Language and Human Nature’, in M. Gibbons
(ed.), Interpreting Politics (New York University Press, 1987).
13 H. G. Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1977), p. 4.
14 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 474.
15 In this sense we are always in a position of less than complete knowledge or under-
standing. Gadamer argues ‘It is the medium of language alone that, related to the totality
of beings, mediates the finite historical nature of man to himself and to world.’ Ibid., p. 457.
135
‘prejudiced’ beings ‘. . . always already affected by history. It determines

in advance both what seems to us worth inquiring about and what will
appear as an object of investigation.’16 Gadamer refers to this as effective
history (Wirkungsgeschichtliches). As we understand through language
we also understand through our situatedness in an historical tradition:
[T]o Be historically means that knowledge of oneself can never be
complete. All self-knowledge arises from what is historically pre-
given . . . because it underlies all subjective intentions and actions and
hence both prescribes and limits every possibility for understanding
any tradition whatsoever in its historical alterity.17
According to Gadamer, all interpretation and understanding occur

within the ‘tradition’ or horizon of consciousness constituted by the
linguistic and historical tradition of the interpreter: the webs of mean-
ing in which and through which we experience the world and which
are the conditions of possibility of understanding. Tradition constitutes
and is constituted by ‘. . . the prejudices that we bring with us . . . [they]
constitute . . . the horizon of a particular present, for they represent that
beyond which it is impossible to see’.18
The horizon of our tradition is, therefore, that which is formed by our
embeddedness in language and history. It is ‘the range of vision that
16 Ibid., p. 300. Gadamer’s concept of effective history derives from his critique of the
nineteenth-century historicist school. Historicists argued that the past could be under-
stood ‘in its own terms’ and, therefore, it was not possible to judge one period by the
standards of another. Gadamer argues that such a project requires an objectification of the
past which is both impossible and which prevents actual understanding. Historicism does
not recognise the manner in which the Historian unknowingly projects the understanding
of the present onto the past. In so doing, it presupposes a clear distinction between past
and present. This Gadamer denies: ‘there is no pure seeing and understanding of history
without reference to the present. On the contrary, history is seen and understood only and
always through a consciousness standing in the present’. Palmer, Hermeneutics, p. 176. The
present at the same time ‘. . . is seen and understood only through the intentions, ways
of seeing and preconceptions bequeathed from the past.’ Ibid., p. 176. The past, Gadamer
argues, can never be fully objectified as it is always operative within us and in ways in
which we are not aware: we can never make our own position in history fully transparent
to ourselves. Gadamer calls this the principle of effective history (Wirkungsgeschichtliches).
Effective historical consciousness (Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstein) is the consciousness
of ‘. . . being exposed to history and to its action, in such a way that this action upon us
cannot be objectified because it is part of the historical phenomenon itself’. P. Ricoeur,
Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (ed.
Thompson, J. B.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 61. Thus we can
never have complete knowledge of the efficacy of history: ‘. . . effective history still deter-
mines modern historical and scientific consciousness; and it does so beyond any possible
knowledge of this domination’. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. xxxiv.
17 Ibid., p. 302. 18 Ibid., p. 272.
136
includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point’.19

For any given agent the universal characteristic of linguisticality takes
the form of a particular linguistic and historical tradition. As a result,
understanding does not occur in a vacuum, or from a ‘neutral’ or im-
partial position, and is not simply a subjective grasping of an objective
truth but always an interpretation from within an historical tradition.
The effect of historicity and language is that they form the horizon of our
consciousness and the conditions for understanding. Because of our sit-
uatedness in tradition any understanding of our past, a text or another
person, must be an understanding for us, in our particular situation.
History and language make for our situatedness in ‘tradition’ and pro-
vide the productive ‘prejudices’ with which we understand the world
and engage with it. In this sense philosophical hermeneutics begins
from something like a communitarian premise regarding the particu-
larity of norms and situatedness of agents in particular communities.
For philosophical hermeneutics however, this situatedness does not re-
strict understanding to the particular community nor does it restrict
practice to coexistence. On the contrary it is this situatedness of humans
in linguistic and historical horizons that makes for our finitude and fini-
tude provides limits, possibilities and motivation for both conversation
and understanding.20
If the historicity and linguisticality of human experience provide the
conditions in which we understand, experience and gain knowledge
of the world, in other words, if they constitute our belongingness to
the world, then these same determinants simultaneously make for our
limits, our finitude. Finitude however, is simultaneously that which mo-
tivates and allows our search for understanding and which provides our
openness to new knowledge and experiences. The search for meaning
and understanding is, Gadamer argues, an implicit recognition of this
finitude. Furthermore, the recognition of finitude, of not-knowing, is
what makes us humble in the pursuit of knowledge. Finitude motivates
and modifies the search for knowledge because it suggests, not that
we should be content to remain ignorant, but that the search for truth
and knowledge is never complete. Hermeneutic knowledge is also a
19 Ibid., p. 302.
20 The philosophical hermeneutic emphasis on situatedness and tradition is compatible
with Richard Rorty’s philosophy which emphasises the inescapability of thinking from
‘where we are now’, i.e. from where we are situated historically, culturally and linguisti-
cally, as distinct from thinking from outside history in some Archimedean vantage point.
137
knowledge of the flexibility and mutability of limits, and, therefore, of

the possibility of learning.
It is the relationship of openness and limitation which generates the
hermeneutic conception of the self–other (what Gadamer refers to as
the I–Thou) relationship because the recognition of finitude requires
the search for knowledge to be necessarily dialogical. Being finite and
situated beings we must engage in conversation in order to learn. It is
in this context that Gadamer generates a model of understanding in
conversation which achieves recognition of the other.
By including the dimension of historicity and linguisticality Gadamer
radicalises and deepens the hermeneutic project. By expanding its realm
from the interpretation of texts to the interpretation of human Being he
is able to encompass the nature of what it means to have knowledge of
the world. However, Gadamer’s deepening of the hermeneutic project
and his reflections on the possibility of understanding between agents
situated within historical traditions, or contexts, also provides the basis
for the dialogical dimension of his philosophy of understanding and
a model of conversation which comes closer to achieving justice to
difference.
The advantages of the dialogical account of understanding, and in
particular the manner in which it generates a relationship of equal-
ity and recognition, can be initially illustrated by a comparison to two
other forms of understanding. Gadamer distinguishes between three
different types of understanding, involving three types of self–other
relations.21
The first involves what he calls a knowledge of human nature. This
form of understanding is informed by a means–end rationality which
perceives the other merely as a means to ‘our’ end. It ‘. . . seeks to calcu-
late how the other person will behave . . . (and it sees) the other person
as a tool that can be absolutely known and used’.22 For Gadamer this
type of knowledge reflects a ‘naive faith in method and . . . objectivity’ as
practised in scientistic models of social science.23 According to Gadamer
‘. . . this orientation towards the Thou is purely self regarding and
21 These types of understanding also bear strong resemblance to Todorov’s categories of

annihilation, assimilation, coexistence and communication.
22 Ibid., p. 359.
23 This type of understanding also corresponds to Habermas’ technical instrumental ra-
tionality. See J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (trans. Jeremy Shapiro), (London:
Heineman, 1972).
138
contradicts the moral definition of man’24 (as an end in himself [sic]). It

can be seen as corresponding in some measure to the category of anni-
hilation, in that the other’s distinctive identity and equality are denied.
The second type of understanding reflects the historical consciousness
which Gadamer identifies as characterising historicist approaches to
history, and to what might be called a hermeneutics of recovery. This
relationship corresponds in some degree to the category of assimilation
but also interestingly to that of coexistence. This form of understanding
is restricted to the goal of recovering an accurate representation of the
self-understanding of the other. In this relationship the other, the Thou,
is seen as a person who can be understood, like the self. However, the
goal of this type of understanding is not only to know the other as well
as they do but also to understand them better than they do themselves.
For Gadamer this is an improvement on the first form but is still not
sufficient because in it
the Thou loses the immediacy with which it makes its claim. It is un-
derstood but this means it is co-opted . . . by understanding the other,
by claiming to know him, one robs his claims of their legitimacy . . . the
claim to understand the other person in advance functions to keep the
other person’s claim at a distance.25
In this relationship the self is removed from the understanding of the

other who is still objectified to the degree that they are unable to make
any claim to truth upon the self. This approach ‘. . . makes him the ob-
ject of objective knowledge, [and] involves the fundamental suspension
of his claim to truth’.26 In this sense the other is assimilated through
the claim to know them while at the same time we have ‘. . . given
up the claim to find . . . any truth valid and intelligible [applicable] for
ourselves’.27 The other in this way is denied their full equality because
they are objectified.
The third type of understanding is dialogical understanding. It re-
sembles and gives substantive content to Todorov’s category of Com-
munication. In this type of relationship what is being understood
(be it a text, a work of art or another person) is capable of speaking
24 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 358. 25 Ibid., pp. 359–60.

26 Ibid., p. 270. In historical consciousness ‘we have as it were, withdrawn from the situa-
tion . . . He (the other) himself cannot be reached . . . The text that is understood historically
is forced to abandon its claim that it is uttering something true.’ Ibid.
27 Ibid.
139
to the interpreter as a partner in conversation.28 The relationship to the

other here is not one of control but engagement, it allows the interpreter
to see the other (the Thou) ‘. . . truly as a Thou – i.e. not to overlook his
[sic] claim but to let him really say something to us’.29
The distinction between philosophical hermeneutics and historicism
(the second type of understanding) rests on the notion that understand-
ing refers to the subject matter (Die Sache or Sache selbst) of conversation,
to what is said, not the sayer, the text not the writer. For Gadamer, ‘to
conduct a conversation means to allow oneself to be conducted by the
subject matter to which the partners in the dialogue are oriented’.30 The
concept of the subject or the ‘thing at hand’ is what guides or moti-
vates the conversation and to which one’s interpretations always refer.
The Sache is what the conversation is about and it is the other’s inter-
pretation of the Sache that we are attempting to see the truth of. It is
also in relation to the Sache that we assess the accuracy or persuasive-
ness, to us, of the other’s interpretation. Thus as Hoy states, although
Gadamer
believes that interpretations are always bound to a particular context,
he does not think that we can interpret things any way we want. In-
terpretations are always guided by the Sache, and thus by a sense that
there are right and wrong ways to say things that ought to be said.31
The concern with the Sache liberates us from the attempt to psycholo-
gise and relativise understanding. According to Gadamer, to be open
to the other’s truth claims is to be open towards what it is the other
communicates. To understand ‘. . . means, primarily, to understand the
content of what is said, and only secondarily to isolate and understand
another’s meaning as such’.32 Furthermore, it does so by enabling us to
28 ‘. . . a person trying to understand a text is prepared for it to tell him something . . . ’ Ibid.
Although Gadamer uses conversation as a metaphor for what happens in understanding
a text there is, for him, no major difference between studying a text, understanding a
work of art or engaging with another person in dialogue. Gadamer argues that all such
encounters are dialogical in one form or another. For this reason Gadamer refers to the
relationship between an interpreter and a text as an I–Thou relationship. Hence also the
many references to texts in the quotations provided here.
29 Ibid., p. 361. 30 Ibid., p. 367.
31 D. C. Hoy and T. McCarthy, Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 189.
32 For Gadamer this is the essential similarity between understanding a text and reach-
ing understanding in a conversation ‘. . . the chief thing that these apparently so different
situations . . . have in common is that both are concerned with a subject matter that is
placed before them . . . this understanding of the subject matter must take the form of
language . . . the way understanding occurs . . . is the coming-into-language of the thing
itself’. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 378. Gadamer here shares with Paul Ricoeur and
140
offer a critical position on ourselves by referring our understanding to

something outside of ourselves.
A conversation, therefore, is not merely an exchange of information
nor the acquisition of knowledge for strategic, or instrumental purposes
(as in the case of say medical diagnosis which is a conversation but
not necessarily a hermeneutic conversation). Nor is it about gaining
knowledge of the other’s mind or psychology. Instead it is for Gadamer
‘a process of coming to an understanding’33 in regards to the subject-
matter [Sache] of conversation. The significance of emphasising the Sache
is that it is the means by which the hermeneutic model of conversation
avoids the objectification of the other and achieves recognition through
being open to the possibility of truth. However, it is worth noting that
for Gadamer the Sache is always a particular thing, text, interpretation,
topic. Thus truth is always particular, situated and in reference to some
subject. This particularist and situated notion of truth sits in contrast to
the principle of discourse ethics which necessarily directs conversation
exclusively to universalisable statements.
It is important to note that emphasising the subject orienting con-
versation does not involve denying the subjectivity or presence of the
conversational partners themselves. Likewise, to emphasise learning
from the other is not to deny the self nor to deny the truth that one
has to offer.34 The hermeneutic conversation is also not an example of
Levinasian ‘placing the other at a height’. On the contrary, for Gadamer
acknowledging the orientation of a conversation towards the thing at
hand is the only way of doing justice to, of acknowledging the full sub-
jectivity, situatedness and equality, of self and other. Understanding in
Jacques Derrida the emphasis on separation of a text from its author’s intention: ‘. . . the
understanding of tradition does not take the traditionary text as an expression of another
person’s life, but as a meaning that is detached from the person who means it, from an I or a
Thou’. Ibid., p. 358. Gadamer’s appeal to truth and the Sache suggests, on first reading, that
he is referring to some sort of correspondence notion of truth and understanding. How-
ever, such an interpretation would be inaccurate. The purpose of Gadamer’s account of
historicity and linguisticality of all understanding is to move away from such endeavours
while simultaneously resisting the obvious relativist implications of such a move.
33 Ibid., p. 385.
34 ‘The acceptance of the other certainly does not mean that one would not be com-
pletely conscious of one’s own inalienable Being. It is rather one’s own strength, espe-
cially the strength of one’s own existential certainty, which permits one to be tolerant . . . . it
(hermeneutic understanding) does not concern abandoning and extinguishing the self for
the sake of universal acceptance, but rather the risking of one’s own for the understanding
and recognition of the other.’ H. G. Gadamer, ‘The Future of the European Humanities’,
pp. 193–208, in D. Misgeld and G. Nicholson, Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry and
History (Albany: SUNY, 1992), pp. 206–7.
141
the Gadamerian sense involves an orientation in which the other is not

objectified but is engaged with in a mutual project in which both self
and other achieve recognition.
If philosophical hermeneutics describes and seeks to achieve the third
type of understanding the question then, to return to Gadamer’s original
task, is what does such an understanding between equals consist of?
Gadamer argues that understanding is a result of a dialogical process of
questioning and occurs in and when the participants achieve what he
calls a fusion of horizons.
The dialogic model of understanding: the fusion of horizons

Gadamer’s assertion of the linguisticality of human experience points to
the possibility of understanding and conversation between radically dif-
ferent agents. Understanding, Gadamer argues, would not be conceiv-
able without the prejudices provided by tradition. Therefore in contrast
to the everyday meaning of tradition Gadamer emphasises the extent to
which linguistic/historical traditions are not ‘grids’ or cages that are in-
flexible and closed. On the contrary, traditions are open, changing, and
contain in Taylor’s words ‘doors to otherness’.35 The everyday notion
of tradition as something which is fixed and unchanging is misplaced
when used as Gadamer intends because, he argues, ‘. . . the horizon of
the past . . . tradition, is always in motion’.36 Human existence is itself a
process of movement and ‘. . . consists in the fact that it is never utterly
bound to any one stand-point, and hence can never have a truly closed
horizon’.37 The horizon ‘is . . . something into which we move and that
moves with us. Horizons change for a person who is moving.’38 The
fact of human linguisticality in the form of tradition does not mean
35 C. Taylor, ‘Connolly, Foucault, and Truth’, Political Theory, 13. 3, August (1985), 377–85,
p. 382.
36 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 271. Understanding is, therefore, not a matter of our
correctly grasping an unchanging tradition. Instead it is as much a creative transforma-
tive act in which the historical tradition is transformed once again: ‘understanding is to be
thought of less as a subjective act than as participating in an event of tradition, a process of
transmission in which past and present are constantly mediated’. Ibid., p. 290. The expe-
rience of change allows or forces us to see things differently, it means our interpretations
and understandings of the world transform over time with exposure to new circumstances
and it is this which creates the possibility of understanding.
37 Ibid., p. 271. ‘Just as the individual is never simply an individual, because he [sic]
is always involved with others, so too the closed horizon that is supposed to enclose a
culture is an abstraction.’ Ibid. What Gadamer means here is not that cultures have not
historically been isolated, temporally and spatially, from others, for example the Aztecs
from the Spanish prior to 1492, but their isolation does not necessarily constitute a wall.
38 Ibid., p. 271.
142
that we are trapped within a pre-given order from which we cannot

escape and which we are destined to repeat, instead: ‘[T]o be situated
within a tradition does not limit the freedom of knowledge but makes it
possible.’39
The common quality of linguisticality allows for what Gadamer
calls the fusion of horizons of tradition. The act of understanding
Gadamer argues occurs when the different linguistic/historical hori-
zons of the participants, be it individuals, or a reader and a text, meet in a
fusion: ‘In the process of understanding there takes place a real fus-
ing of horizons, which means that as the . . . horizon is projected,
it is simultaneously removed.’40 Therefore despite the plurality of
human language, humans nonetheless all inhabit the same house of
linguisticality. What we have in common is not this or that particular
language, but linguisticality itself which both limits and enables com-
munication. According to Gadamer, understanding is possible because
linguisticality provides the bridge over the barriers formed by particular
languages.
Understanding is referred to as a fusion because this word captures
the idea that the individual horizons come to occupy the same place,
while not necessarily losing their particular perspective. Understanding
involves a fusion in the sense that it does not involve either the anni-
hilation or assimilation of existing positions but rather their coming to
inhabit a shared perspective. This shared meaning is, in an important
sense, something new that exceeds and transforms the previous hori-
zons without destroying them. It is in this sense that understanding
‘. . . always involves the attainment of a higher universality that over-
comes, not only our particularity, but also that of the other’.41 The fusion,
therefore, occurs when both horizons remain and yet simultaneously
come to share a new meaning, or simultaneously come to occupy the
same territory or vantage point.
Understanding, therefore, engenders change in the traditions and
the participants as they come to see things from a new perspective
through their encounter with the other. By creating something new the
hermeneutic conversation, in so far as it achieves understanding, brings
39 Ibid., p. 361 ‘. . . in whatever tradition we consider it, it is always a human – i.e. a

verbally constituted – world that presents itself to us. As verbally constituted, every such
world is of itself always open to every possible insight and hence to every expansion of
its own world picture, and is accordingly available to others.’ Gadamer, Truth and Method,
p. 447.
40 Ibid., p. 273. 41 Ibid., p. 271.
143
about a transformation of our own horizon, that is to say we are changed

by the conversation. As Gadamer argues:
We are continually shaping a common perspective when we speak a

common language and so are active participants in the communical-
ity of our experience of the world . . . Discussion bears fruit when a
common language is found. Then the participants part from one an-
other as changed beings. The individual perspectives with which they
entered upon the discussion have been transformed, and so they are
transformed themselves.42
For this reason, a fusion of horizons is not merely a matter of assimilating

the other to ‘our’ horizon but a process in which both horizons undergo
change and transformation.
The achievement of a fusion of horizons is the task of dialogue.
Hermeneutic understanding, according to Gadamer, involves a dialogi-
cal movement between the participants. Understanding requires that we
‘transpose’ or ‘place’ ourselves into the horizon of the other. It requires
that:
into this other situation we must bring precisely, ourselves . . . If we put

ourselves in someone else’s shoes for example, then we will understand
him[sic] – i.e. become aware of the otherness, indissoluble individuality
of the other person – by putting ourselves in his position.43
However, Gadamer emphasises that the aim here is not totally to

harmonise or reconcile the other to our existing knowledge. Transposing
ourselves ‘consists neither in the empathy of one individual for another,
nor in subordinating another person to our own standards . . .’44 but
always in bringing ourselves into the other’s position, seeing things
as they see them and simultaneously acknowledging that we can
only understand the other’s horizon from the starting point of our
own horizon. Gadamer argues that we can only understand the other,
hear their particular voice and resist assimilation by acknowledging
our prejudices and by realising that our situatedness always informs
our understandings. Gadamer argues that only when we are aware of
the fact that we always bring prejudices with us can we prevent them
from over-determining the content of encounter. Only then is it possible
to begin to hear the voice of the other. For this reason, ‘it is constantly
42 Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, p. 110.

43 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 305. 44 Ibid., p. 305.
144
necessary to guard against overhastily assimilating the past to our

own expectations of meaning. Only then can we listen to tradition
in a way that permits it to make its own meaning heard.’45 In other
words, understanding is only possible because of our situatedness and
belonging and a willingness to risk its disturbance. It is through such
transpositioning that a new horizon is formed.
The possibility of understanding in a hermeneutic conversation
has significant implications for the move beyond the cosmopoli-
tan/communitarian divide and the pursuit of a communicatively based
cosmopolitanism. The fusion of horizons in a hermeneutic conversa-
tion implies the possibility of the creation of something like a shared or
even universal meaning. Such a conversation and agreement is possible,
despite the different identities of the parties, and because of their situ-
atedness: ‘[b]ecause of our belongingness to language and because of
the belongingness of the text to language, a common horizon becomes
possible’.46 But primarily it suggests the possibility that rather than be-
ing restricted to those who already share a language conversation itself
is actually a creative process wherein ‘reaching an understanding on the
subject matter . . . necessarily means that a common language must first
be worked out in the conversation’.47 The means for achieving a trans-
position, for placing ourselves in the other’s shoes, and creating new
shared meanings in a fusion of horizons is conversation or dialogue.
According to Gadamer, the process of reaching an understanding in-
volves something like a process of question and answer between the
interpreter and the text, the tradition or another person. In particular to
place one’s self in the other’s horizon requires a process of question and
answer in which both partners articulate the questions which concern
them regarding a subject. According to Gadamer, to understand any
historical text, statement or belief is to understand it as an answer to a
question posed in relation to the Sache. In a process of understanding
an historical text, for example, the interpreter asks certain questions of
the text in order to ascertain its meaning. If the interpreter did not ask a
45 Ibid., ‘. . . a hermeneutically trained consciousness must be, from the start, sensitive to
the text’s alterity. But this kind of sensitivity involves neither “neutrality” with respect
to content nor the extinction of one’s self, but the foregrounding and appropriation of
one’s own fore-meanings and prejudices’. Ibid., p. 269. Of course none of this is to say that
having prejudices exposed is a guarantee that they will be ‘overcome’.
47 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 379. ‘this understanding of the subject matter must take
the form of language . . . the way understanding occurs . . . is the coming-into-language of
the thing itself.’ Ibid., p. 378.
145
question, that would imply that they were already in possession of that
which is to be understood, that is, the meaning of what is being said.
Following this, the interpreter also comes to see the historical text as an
answer to a certain question, and in order to appreciate how something
is an answer one must also understand the question which it answers.48
This dimension of conversation is integral to the process of coming to
see the truth in what the other has to say. Understanding something as
an answer also means understanding it as a valid answer, that is coming
to see that it answers a question.49 It is in the sense of understanding
how a statement, text or law is an answer to a question, that we see its
truth and learn from it.
The process of question and answer goes further than this, however,
for the interpreter must also acknowledge the question that they them-
selves are attempting to ask and answer. It is the question which, in
the case of history or a text for example, has prompted one’s own en-
quiry. This dimension of understanding refers again to the questioner’s
own situatedness; the question that is asked is one that is formed in the
context of the tradition and prejudices that the questioner brings.
Furthermore, in attempting to understand, one also acknowledges the
question that one is being asked by the text:
the voice that speaks to us from the past – whether text, work, trace –
itself poses a question and places our meaning in openness. Recon-
structing the question to which the text is presumed to be the answer
itself takes place within a process of questioning through which we try
to answer the question that the text asks us.50
Thus interpretation and understanding of a text actively involve the

interpreter, who in turn is interrogated by the text. If we have a question
which guides our interpretation then to some degree that question itself
comes from the text but also from our own tradition. The text confronts
us with something new and alien which we do not understand and in
48 Kögler puts this clearly ‘according to Gadamer understanding a question can mean
nothing other than posing the question oneself. If a text is understood as an answer to a
question, it is related back in a productive way to one’s own questioning; that is to one’s
own problem situation. Only when a text is conceived in terms of a question can a dialogue
be set into motion in such a way that the other’s as well as one’s own views can be treated
as substantive and potentially true views.’ H. H. Kögler, The Power of Dialogue: Critical
Hermeneutics After Gadamer and Foucault (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), p. 122.
49 This does not mean that understanding requires us to see all answers as correct
answers. On the contrary understanding involves endeavouring to discover if and how
what is being understood answers the question.
146
so doing, prompts us to enquire into its meaning; ‘recognising that an

object is different, and not as we first thought, obviously presupposes
the question whether it was this or that’.51 If anything this dimension
of recognition is the ‘original’ hermeneutic moment, in which the other,
the different, the new and the incomprehensible are confronted and
provoke the challenge of making sense of them.
Some commentators, such as Fred Dallmayr, have suggested that the
metaphor of the fusion of horizons over-emphasises the possibility of
consensus and agreement and, therefore, suggests an end to discus-
sion and understanding. More particularly, he also suggests that it im-
plies an eradication of difference in something like a final Hegelian
synthesis.52 To counter this perceived tendency, Dallmayr himself has
highlighted Gadamer’s later writings which emphasise the ongoing and
never-completed task of understanding. Rather than engage with the
particulars of Dallmayr’s reading of Truth and Method, it is important
to emphasise the ongoing nature of the hermeneutic conversation and
Gadamer’s rejection of any final Hegelian style synthesis.
For Gadamer, the purpose and the achievement of hermeneutic
understanding is not the assimilation of the other into the self, instead
it is the recognition that in understanding one comes to know the
other as other, and the self as other. Complete or final understanding
is never achieved but neither is total alterity maintained. Instead, what
occurs resembles a conversation involving a continual too-ing and
fro-ing of meanings. Conversation is the realm in which understanding
is achieved and identity and difference articulated and negotiated.
The purpose of conversation is not the eradication of difference in
agreement, but instead the understanding of identity and difference
through what is common: language.
That said, it is also important to note that conversation does not rule
out the possibility of agreement or consensus. To do so would also be
to over-prescribe the content and outcome of conversation. It may well
be the case that in conversation different cultures can come to share
agreements on ‘thick’ dimensions of community including the value of
certain legislative norms and principles. But such convergence is not a
requirement or the telos of a hermeneutic conversation. Rather, the telos
of a hermeneutic conversation is understanding, and it is this which
generates the fully equal relation between self and other. This telos both
51 Ibid., p. 362.
52 F. R. Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross Cultural Encounter (Albany: SUNY,
1996).
147
allows for difference and leaves open the possibility of convergence or

consensus, in other words, agreement is neither legislated nor assumed.
The different participants are able ‘freely’ to enter into discussion with-
out any preconceptions as to what will be achieved working to prevent
them from pursuing understanding.
If conversation is a process of question and answer between agents
concerned to understand a subject matter, then, according to Gadamer,
it is also, and fundamentally concerned with truth. It is the common
orientation and expectation of encountering truth in conversation with
an ‘other’ that provides the access to an opportunity for a more equal
relationship between self and other.
The moment of equality in conversation occurs, not because under-
standing of the other is achieved, but rather because in conversation
both self and other are seen equally as potential revealers or communi-
cators of an experience of truth. At the same time the other is seen as
different, because unknown, and what they have to say has not been
revealed. To recognise their equality and their difference, one must be
ready to learn from what they may have to say. Thus, in a genuine con-
versation the identity, of the other, or the content of what the Thou says,
cannot be known beforehand. In other words, one must remain open to
what one might learn in communication.
The concept of truth, therefore, is the crux of Gadamer’s theory of un-
derstanding. Ironically truth itself however, is not treated systematically
by Gadamer, in Truth and Method or elsewhere. Where he comes closest
to doing so is the discussion of aesthetic experience in the first section
of Truth and Method. It will be recalled that Gadamer’s philosophical
hermeneutics is based on the assumption that scientific method does
not exhaust the possibilities for knowledge. Hermeneutic knowledge
is knowledge of a different kind from that gained through scientific
method. For Gadamer, the most convincing means of demonstrating
this comes through the experience of art which is ‘. . . the most insistent
admonition to scientific consciousness to acknowledge its own limits’.53
The importance of art lies not merely in its aesthetic appeal, we don’t
appreciate it merely for its beauty, but for the meaning it has beyond its
beauty. Art has meaning and significance because it presents a world
to us:
[T]he experience of encountering a work of art opens up a world; it is
not mere gaping in sensuous pleasure at the outsides of forms. As soon
53 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. xxiii.
148
as we stop viewing a work as an object and see it as a world, when we

see a world through it, then we realise that art is not sense perception
but knowledge.54
We communicate with a work of art as a world-disclosing experience.
In understanding a work of art we recognise, or rather we experience,
something, a truth, of the world. As Palmer puts it ‘when we see a great
work of art and enter its world, we do not leave home so much as “come
home”. We say at once: truly it is so.’55 A successful work of art says
something to us and makes a claim about the world, a claim to truth,
that is not scientific.
The meaning of encountering truth should not be understood as
the encounter with a transcendental truth applicable to all. Rather to
encounter truth is to have an experience (Erlebnis). An experience in
this sense is a life-changing encounter, it involves both a dislocation
from previous thoughts and an integration of new insights. Gadamer
states that the experience of art ‘. . . suddenly tears the person experi-
encing it out of the context of his life and yet relates him back to the
whole of his existence’.56 To have understood is to have had such
an experience. It is in this manner that the concept of experiencing
truth should be understood in philosophical hermeneutics: understand-
ing occurs as a moment of an experience of a truth of Being and the
manner of such understanding is always dialogical. This characteris-
tic provides the contrast between hermeneutical understanding and its
alternatives.
This moment of experiencing a truth, or a world, has something of
the quality of an application. Understanding, Gadamer argues ‘always
involves something like the application of the text . . . to the present situa-
tion of the interpreter’.57 It is the moment of application which underlies
the metaphor of the fusion of horizons. We can only understand the past
(or a text) in so far as it says something to us, in so far as it has meaning
and applicability to ourselves in our own situation. ‘Genuine’ under-
standing occurs when we have transposed ourselves into the other’s
situation, heard the other’s voice and understood its applicability to
ourselves.
The final dimension to Gadamer’s definition of truth relates to the idea
of the fusion of horizons as agreement. Coming to an understanding,
hearing the voice of the other, coming to see a truth through a process
54 Palmer, Hermeneutics, p. 167. 55 Ibid., p. 168.

56 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 70. 57 Ibid., p. 274.
149
of question and answer is akin to coming to an agreement:
it belongs to every true conversation that each person opens himself

to the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes
himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the
particular individual but what he says. What is to be grasped is the
substantive rightness of his opinion, so that we can be at one with each
other on the subject.58
The importance of agreement lies not so much in its content nor its
achievement itself but, rather, that in being open to encountering truth
one sees the other as an equal. According to Gadamer: ‘[T]he experience
of the Thou also manifests the paradox that something standing over me
asserts its rights and requires absolute recognition; and in that process is
“understood”. But . . . what is so understood is not the Thou but the truth
of what the Thou says to us.’59 Understanding, therefore, is oriented by
the possibility of reaching an agreement concerning the meaning (not
necessarily its moral rightness or universal validity) of a subject matter
of conversation between fully equal participants.60
Socratic conversation
For Gadamer the ultimate model of conversation embodying this
approach is the Socratic dialogue which presents a model of hermeneu-
tic conversation/understanding in at least three senses: first: it is a
conversation the purpose of which is to seek truth. It is not an argument
in which the aim is to win through demonstrating the other’s weakness:
‘[T]o test the assertions of the other person, one does not try to weaken
them but rather to strengthen them, that is, to find their true strength
in the subject itself.’61 In a Socratic dialogue the manner of proceeding
58 Ibid., p. 385. 59 Ibid., p. xxxv.

60 Richard Bernstein and D. C. Hoy have both argued that for this reason Gadamer’s
notion of truth is ‘contingent upon an intersubjective consensus rather than upon a tran-
scendental subject . . . ’ D. C. Hoy, The Critical Circle (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1978), p. 110. However, Risser has demonstrated that this is an oversimplification
because it underplays the importance of Being, i.e. of that which is external to individual
subjectivity. The consensus notion removes the reference to that which is being discussed,
the Sache. See R. Bernstein,Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. 155; J. Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other (Albany:
SUNY, 1997).
61 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 199. According to Gadamer, ‘The unique and continuing
relevance of the Platonic dialogues is due to this art of strengthening, for in this process
what is said is continually transformed into the uttermost possibilities of its rightness and
truth, and overcomes all opposition that tries to limit its validity.’ Ibid., p. 368.
150
attempts to get at the ‘truth’ through mounting the strongest possible

case for that which is being understood, the text, the other etc. In the
moment of application one sees the truth or applicability of a statement
or a text for oneself. This requires that one endeavours first to see if
what one wishes to understand is truthful or applicable and then if
that fails, and only then, to see why it doesn’t, that is in what way the
argument/text is weak or doesn’t answer the question.
Second: Gadamer argues that the dialogic structure of question and
answer requires genuine questions and a genuine openness and a desire
to learn: ‘The sense of every question is realised in passing through this
state of indeterminacy, in which it becomes an open question. Every true
question requires this openness.’62 The Socratic dialogue is not a contest
between opinions (or doxa) which, Gadamer argues, are removed from
the search for truth and are self-contained. The structure of the genuine
question presupposes, in contrast to mere opinion, that the question is
not ‘rhetorical’ or ‘pedagogical’, in which the answer is already known,
but actually open to the possibility of a new answer.
Third: the hermeneutic/Socratic conversation presupposes a certain
degree of good will on the part of the participants. It presupposes that
genuine understanding is the goal of the conversation and it is only
under these conditions that conversation generates understanding and
a new horizon.63 Thus a Socratic conversation is a genuinely productive,
transformative and creative encounter between partners and not merely
an exchange or act of recovery.
Fourth: the attitude of openness to the truth stems from admission of
one’s own fallibility and ignorance, what Gadamer calls ‘Socratic not-
knowing’.64 Gadamer argues that the Socratic questioning of experts
was a means of articulating the limits of human understanding, of fini-
tude. Central to the entire hermeneutic conception of understanding and
dialogue (and especially in their ontological significance) is, Gadamer
argues, a recognition of human finitude. Furthermore, the recognition
of finitude underlying philosophical hermeneutics provides it with its
account of self–other relations in so far as it provides the motivation
62 Ibid., p. 363.
63 ‘Reaching an understanding in conversation presupposes that both partners are ready
for it and are trying to recognise the full value of what is alien and opposed to them. If this
happens mutually, and each of the partners, while simultaneously holding onto his own
arguments weighs the counter arguments, it is finally possible to achieve – a common
diction and a common dictum.’ Ibid., p. 387.
64 See chapter 2, ‘Socratic Knowing and Not-Knowing’, in H. G. Gadamer, The Knowledge
of the Good in Platonic–Aristotelian Philosophy (Yale University Press, 1986).
151
for learning. It is only through not-knowing, acknowledging one’s lim-

its and ignorance, that dialogue becomes necessary and one can ask a
question and be open to the answers that may be heard in response: ‘In
order to be able to ask, one must want to know, and that means knowing
that one does not know.’65
In conclusion then the philosophical hermeneutic answer to the ques-
tion ‘what is understanding?’ starts with the recognition that under-
standing involves communication between self and other. Coming to
an understanding requires an orientation towards otherness which is
open to the possibility of experiencing ‘truth’ and to what the other
may have to teach the self regarding the subject at hand. Understanding
depicted as a fusion of horizons involves a conversational metaphor il-
lustrating this condition. The hermeneutic model of understanding in
conversation has the following consequences: first, humans as linguis-
tically situated agents cannot attain perfect knowledge of ourselves or
others. Whatever knowledge we possess is always informed by our prej-
udices; second, recognition of finitude, acknowledgement of one’s own
limits, allows for the possibility of learning, that others can communi-
cate some truth to us; third, the act of understanding creates a realm of
common meaning in so far as we have come to share an understanding.
This is what happens when we have really understood something.
Phronesis
Philosophical hermeneutics is, Gadamer emphasises, a practical phi-
losophy. Gadamer sees Aristotle’s discussion of phronesis, or practical
wisdom, as illustrative of a process of reasoning that is essentially
hermeneutic. If Philosophical hermeneutics as a practical philosophy
begins with an understanding of knowledge as interpretative, situated
and intersubjective, then the concept of phronesis illustrates the under-
standing of reason as a contextualised practice. The virtues associated
with Socratic conversation and a dialogic engagement with others in a
spirit of openness are characteristic of the exercise of phronesis, according
to Gadamer. Therefore in order to understand the nature of Philosophi-
cal hermeneutics it is necessary to understand Gadamer’s interpretation
of the meaning of phronesis. Furthermore, phronesis represents an alter-
native to a practice of emancipation dedicated towards the creation of
a realm of suitable agents and has direct relevance to the task of devel-
oping a thin cosmopolitan community.
152
This section briefly outlines Gadamer’s interpretation of the meaning

of phronesis as a model of hermeneutic reasoning by way of a comparison
with the practice of techne. The adoption of phronesis by Gadamer points
to the fact that Philosophical hermeneutics shares with Habermasian
critical theory the aim of combating the dominance of the technical in-
strumental (techne) model of reason. Technical instrumental rationality
shares with the first model of understanding a relationship of inequality
and objectification towards other agents. If dialogical understanding is
the appropriate mode of understanding between linguistically consti-
tuted agents then phronesis or practical reasoning is the form of practice
appropriate to philosophical hermeneutics. For this reason practical wis-
dom or phronesis can be best understood in the first instance in relation
to techne.66
Phronesis can be distinguished from techne in several important ways:
first, phronesis involves an understanding of the relationship between
means and ends and between the right and the good which distinguishes
it from technical or instrumental understandings of reason and practice.
Techne involves a simple relation between means and ends: ends are set
in advance and reason is used in determining how to apply established
means to achieve them. In the social realm this corresponds to the idea
that ‘the good’ can be determined in advance and in abstraction outside
of the particular circumstance or community to whom it refers. In phrone-
sis both means and ends are subjects of deliberation and specifically:
‘. . . what separates it fundamentally from technical expertise is that it
expressly asks the question of the good too’.67 The relationship between
means and ends is also, therefore, more complex and bi-directional. For
Gadamer phronesis represents ‘[M]oral knowledge . . . of a special kind’68
whereby knowledge of the good is not permanent or unchanging but
always in process, in question and a matter of negotiation. A practice
of phronesis suggests a conception of community in which the question
of the good, ‘How ought we to live?’ is never finally answered and in
which the common negotiation of this question itself helps to constitute
the community.
66 In Gadamer’s engagement with Habermas it also became necessary to distinguish

phronesis from Habermas’ version of emancipation.
67 Gadamer, Reason in The Age of Science, p. 93.
68 Truth and Method, p. 322. ‘Moral knowledge can never be knowable in advance like
knowledge that can be taught. The relation between means and ends here is not such that
one can know the right means in advance, and this is because the right end is not a mere
object of knowledge either. There can be no anterior certainty concerning what the good
life is directed towards as a whole.’ Ibid., p. 321.
153
Second: phronesis involves a less abstract conception of application

than techne. Gadamer argues that in techne knowledge is applied to an
object by an actor who is situated outside and who remains unaffected
by this application. For Gadamer, phronesis involves applicability in the
sense that to understand a particular situation, text, or law, for example
one must have some idea of its applicability to oneself. The common
element is that the interpreter of the law or the text is situated and
must acknowledge their situatedness. Without such acknowledgement
neither the text nor the law is properly understood. The understanding
of the issue at hand, the text or the law, takes place within a context in
which it is applied.
Third: where techne involves the gaining and application of abstract,
universal knowledge outside of and not determined by its situation
phronesis involves knowledge of particular situations and circumstances.
Practical reasoning involves a different relationship between universal
and particular. Where techne suggests that application is simply a mo-
ment of applying universal to particular phronesis suggests that applica-
tion determines the meaning of both universal and particular. Practical
wisdom cannot be defined in the abstract because there are no universal
rules to guide it. According to Gadamer, Aristotle’s discussion of phrone-
sis in the Nicomachean Ethics illustrates the manner in which general or
universal principles or commonly held values are mediated and ap-
plied in particular circumstances. In phronesis ‘. . . the meaning of any
universal, or any norm, is only justified and determined in and through
its concretization’.69 In this sense practical wisdom is knowledge of what
to do or how to act in a particular situation and involves understanding
what is at stake in that situation ‘of what it is right to do here and now’.
If a text’s meaning is only realised in its application, moral principles
likewise are only realised in concrete situations. Therefore to act justly
one needs to know the specifics of the situation. Gadamer argues that for
those employing practical reasoning the question of justice ‘. . . is totally
relative to the ethical situation in which we find ourselves. We cannot
say in a general and abstract way which actions are just and which are
not: there are no just actions “in themselves”, independent of what the
situation requires’.70 The decision regarding how to interpret the
universal in particular circumstances, the decision as to what a certain

70 H. G. Gadamer, ‘The Problem of Historical Consciousness’, in P. Rabinow and W. M.
Sullivan, Interpretive Social Science: A Reader (University of California Press, 1979), p. 140.
154
value might mean or be translated into in certain circumstances, is

always open and is always defined, in part, by its application.
The best example that Gadamer gives of the type of reasoning in-
volved in phronesis relates to jurisprudence and the application of the
law. The role of the jurist according to Gadamer, does not require the
mere technical application of pre-existing laws to a particular situation.
The jurist instead must interpret a law in a particular case. This means
that the meaning of the law must be decided in that case, which con-
versely means that the meaning of the law cannot be understood in ad-
vance or in abstracto, without its particular moment of application. Thus
not only is the particular justice determined in the moment of application
but so is the universal (law), or as Gadamer states, in practical reason
‘the “universal” derives its determinacy by means of the singular’.71 This
is made most obvious in those instances where the law is seen to be out-
dated or rigidified, for example the case of rape in marriage. In such a sit-
uation the justice of the law is in doubt and is revealed to be so in a partic-
ular circumstance and the law (hopefully) is revised or rejected in order
to make it more ‘just’. Such a move requires reflection and practical wis-
dom and not merely technical, instrumental application of an existing
knowledge. The jurist must reflect upon the justice of the law in light of
the justice of a particular situation, such reflection is outside the ambit of
a technical knowledge in which no reflection as to the good, or the just, or
the universal, is conceded. However, the jurist must also have a knowl-
edge of the ethos surrounding the law and the values of those affected by
it. They must be ‘placed’ in the situation. It is in this sense that practical
reasoning involves ‘a question of perceiving what is at stake in a given
situation’.72
Fourth: techne involves knowledge which can be taught and trans-
ferred simply from one actor to another. Phronesis on the other hand,
requires wisdom and insight which can only be gained by experience.
The practice of phronesis requires a degree of wisdom and perception, to
know specifics or to be familiar with the letter of the law is not enough:
‘it requires experience as well as knowledge’.73 In particular, phronesis
requires the exercise of judgement drawing upon a knowledge and un-
derstanding of a situation that excels what may simply be taught. Thus
phronesis is also unlike techne in that it is not a knowledge that is readily

72 Hoy, The Critical Circle, p. 58. 73 Ibid.
155
transmittable or transferable. Rather than a skill to be taught, it is an

awareness, or consciousness, that needs to be cultivated: ‘It refers to a
non-objectified and largely non-objectifiable accumulation of “under-
standing” which we often call wisdom.’74
However, it is important to emphasise that while phronesis is a form
of knowledge it also places emphasis on ‘not-knowing’. Knowledge,
as Gadamer seems to understand it here, suggests both certainty and a
lack of choice or deliberation. In contrast the actor informed by phronesis
does not ‘know’ how to act in a certain situation, instead they use their
experience, knowledge and judgement to come to understand a situation,
to perceive what is at stake or at issue and to make a decision as to how
to act or what is right to do. The actor does not ‘know’ how to act in
advance but instead gains understanding of a situation.
Gadamer describes such not-knowing as the product of ‘experience’
(Erfahrung).75 Experience is what enables and what comes from genuine
understanding. Experience, for Gadamer, is knowledge of the limits of
human capacities and powers in the face of finitude. Experience teaches
us that we are not ultimately in control of our destiny: ‘[I]n experience
man’s powers to do and his planning reason come up against their
limits.’76 In the face of this we require not dogmatism and rigidity but
openness to future experience. The experience of finitude results in an
openness to new possibilities:
Experience, in the true sense of its meaning, teaches one inwardly to
know that he is not lord over time. It is the experienced man who
knows the limits of all anticipation, the insecurity of all human plans.
Yet this does not render him rigid and dogmatic but rather open for new
experience.77
This openness generates a willingness to understand, to risk one’s self,

to acknowledge ignorance and to learn one’s limits and expand them
at the same time. The concept of experience suggests that in many ways
the most important aspect of Gadamer’s use of phronesis is its descrip-
tion of a process of understanding as a mediation between finitude and
openness. This process of mediation is capable of delivering a more
just and equal relationship to difference because of the crucial place of
finitude.

75 Erfahrung refers to the sense of being experienced rather than of having an experience
(Erlbenis) mentioned above.
76 Ibid., p. 197. 77 Ibid., p. 195.
156
The practical and political manifestation of a hermeneutic inter-

est in understanding and the endorsement of the Socratic model of
conversation is the cultivation of a realm in which practical reasoning
can occur. The account of understanding as dialogue between equal part-
ners is situated within a practical philosophy that is oriented towards
the achievement of understanding and solidarity. Practical reasoning
requires the cultivation of solidarity between its members. However, de-
spite the usual association of such appeals with a communitarian project
Gadamer’s account of practical reasoning buttresses and is consistent
with the model of conversation but is, furthermore, the basis for the ex-
pansion of that model to the globe. Because philosophical hermeneutics
is universalistic in its scope its telos then is the creation of universal soli-
darity as the necessary conditions for the exercise of practical reasoning.
This dimension of philosophical hermeneutics will be returned to at the
conclusion of this chapter.
Philosophical hermeneutics as practical philosophy:

understanding and solidarity
The argument thus far has focused on the possibilities for understanding
and conversation presented by the philosophical hermeneutic theory of
understanding and how the model of conversation arising from this
theory compares with discourse ethics. What has not been emphasised
is that aspect of philosophical hermeneutics which is a more active en-
dorsement of the expansion of community. This section suggests that
in contrast to a primary concern with the communitarian goals of the
transmission of tradition from one generation to the next, which in turn
suggests a practice of coexistence, philosophical hermeneutics is equally
concerned with the expansion of community.
The hermeneutic appeal to the horizon of tradition as the founda-
tion of reason suggests an essentially communitarian project that is
concerned chiefly with the practice of reasoning within an established
tradition. The adoption of a practice oriented towards understanding
encapsulated in the Aristotelian conception of phronesis, or practical
wisdom as an alternative to a practice of emancipation is normally
associated with communitarian thinkers such as Alasdair Macintyre.78
Gadamer acknowledges that the Aristotelian term phronesis can be
understood as a form of reasoning appropriate to a particular situation,
that is, it is a contextual use of reason usually situated in a particular
78 See A. Macintyre, After Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, 2nd edn).
157
community or nomoi. Aristotle refers to this as the Ethos in which

‘normative notions always stand under the presupposition of their
normative validity’.79 For Richard Bernstein, the appeal to phronesis
buttresses the interpretation of philosophical hermeneutics as commu-
nitarian in so far as its exercise is restricted to a particular community in
which norms are shared. He suggests that this announces the limits of
the philosophical hermeneutic enterprise especially in the normatively
fractured societies of the modern west.80 However, his reading of philo-
sophical hermeneutics unnecessarily restricts hermeneutic ambition
and underestimates the significance of its claim to universality.
Philosophical hermeneutics it has already been noted is a practi-
cal philosophy. In later works, principally Reason in the Age of Science,
Gadamer makes a distinction between phronesis as practical reason and
hermeneutics, or understanding, as a practical philosophy. The key
to this distinction lies in Gadamer’s acknowledgement that for Aris-
totle phronesis occurs within the context of a ‘thick’ community or
ethos. The thrust of Gadamer’s work, however, is that hermeneutics
and the practice that it entails should not be restricted in their ambi-
tion. The hermeneutic situation, that of interpretation and understand-
ing in the context of linguistically carried tradition, is universal. There-
fore the type of practice appropriate to it should not be restricted to
or contained within traditions or a particular community but rather
equally directed across them and to the creation of solidarity between
them.81

80 ‘Given a community in which there is a living shared acceptance of ethical principles
and norms, then phronesis as the mediation of such universals in particular situations
makes sense. The problem for us today . . . is that we are in a state of great confusion and
uncertainty . . . about what norms or “universals” ought to govern our practical lives . . . we
are living in a time when the very conditions required for the exercise of phronesis . . . are
themselves threatened or do not exist.’ Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 157.
For Bernstein it seems that Habermas’ critical theory provides the necessary next step and
in that sense goes beyond philosophical hermeneutics.
81 The term phronesis, therefore, does not capture the full range of Gadamer’s approach
to practice or to hermeneutics as a practical philosophy because of its association with
the idea of established community. A more appropriate term to describe the broader
concept of practice at work in philosophical hermeneutics is that of practical reasoning.
Practical reasoning refers to a dimension of the ‘hermeneutic claim to universality’, to a
form of practice that is not restricted to a particular ‘ethos’ but which nonetheless shares
the general characteristics of phronesis. The distinction between phronesis and practical
reasoning here serves to highlight the difference between a local instance of hermeneutic
practice, phronesis, and a general one; practical reasoning.
158
The practical and political manifestation of a hermeneutic interest in

understanding is the cultivation of a realm in which practical reasoning
can occur. As Bernstein notes ‘If we follow out the logic of Gadamer’s
own line of thinking, if we are really concerned with the “sense of what
is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now”, then this
demands that we turn our attention to the question of how we can nur-
ture the type of communities required for the flourishing of phronesis’.82
The pursuit of a realm in which practical reasoning can occur requires
recognition and creation of a degree of solidarity between its members.
Solidarity Gadamer argues ‘. . . is the decisive condition and basis of
all social reason’.83 This being the case the first task of philosophical
hermeneutics is the pursuit of solidarity. Solidarity does not mean be-
longing to a fully-fledged, common historical tradition or ‘thick’ com-
munity. Rather, it is an expansion of the area of identification and of
‘we’ feeling, premised perhaps merely on acknowledgement of a shared
historical predicament, situation or of a common future.84 Gadamer ar-
gues that it resembles friendship, or the Greek notion of synesis: ‘. . . the
person who is understanding does not know and judge as one who
stands apart and is unaffected, but rather he thinks along with the other
from the perspective of a specific bond of belonging, as if he too were
affected’.85 Philosophical hermeneutics sees understanding as both cre-
ating and requiring solidarity. The exercise of practical reasoning both
relies on pre-existing solidarities or horizons and enables the creation of
new ones. In other words, if we are to engage in universal conversation
we require solidarity in order to allow communal reasoning to occur.
Because philosophical hermeneutics is universalistic in its claims this
means that it is concerned ultimately with the creation of universal soli-
darity as the necessary conditions for the exercise of practical reasoning
on a global scale. Indeed Gadamer is explicit in seeking to enable a uni-
versal realm of solidarity amongst different cultures of the world and
he sees philosophical hermeneutics as precisely the philosophy appro-
priate to such a project.
82 Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 158.

84 In his later writings Gadamer highlights the recognition of the environmental crisis as
a possible source of new solidarities. For a discussion of this sense of ‘we’-ness from a dif-
ferent perspective see M. Cochran, Normative Theory in International Relations (Cambridge,
1999).
159
Insofar as hermeneutics is more than a theory of the human sciences,

it also has the human situation in the world in its entirety in view.
Thus it must be possible to include different cultures, religions, etc.
and their relations . . . And if we then have to become part of a new
world civilisation, if this is our task, then we shall need a philosophy
which is similar to my hermeneutics: a philosophy which teaches us to
see the justification for the other’s point of view and which thus makes
us doubt our own.86
In other words, philosophical hermeneutics is consistent with the goal

of seeking to re-create the achievements of the Aristotelian polis on the
global scale. The necessity of solidarity, therefore, suggests that if there is
a single telos to philosophical hermeneutics then it is the creation of uni-
versal solidarity through the expansion of the realm of understanding
to include those inhabiting other traditions. Philosophical hermeneu-
tics attempts to direct attention to existing solidarities and to awaken
the possibility of new solidarities in which understanding and practical
reasoning can operate: the task of hermeneutic practice is the pursuit of
‘new normative and common solidarities that let practical reason speak
again’.87 It is oriented towards the creation and expansion of commu-
nity in the ‘thin’ sense of solidarity or ‘we’ feeling and identification.
The creation of new solidarities requires an effort to understand and,
above all, engage in conversation. This, if anything, is the meaning of the
metaphor of the fusion of horizons and forms the major ethical thrust of
Gadamer’s overall project.88 Hermeneutic philosophy, therefore, gives
rise to a practice of understanding defined in its most broad ambit.89
The universality of the hermeneutic situation suggests the possibility of
a ‘reawakening consciousness of solidarity of a humanity that slowly
begins to know itself as humanity, for this means knowing that it belongs
86 H. G. Gadamer, ‘Interview: The 1920s, 1930s and the Present: National Socialism,
German History and German Culture’, pp. 135–53 in Misgeld and Nicholson, Hans-Georg
Gadamer, p. 152.
88 For Gadamer this task is directed primarily against what he sees as the replacement
of practical reason with techne in the political and social decision making of modern
technological societies.
89 In its ultimate form then Gadamer sees the task of hermeneutics as contributing to
‘. . . the rediscovery of solidarities that could enter into the future society of humanity’. Ibid.,
p. 87. ‘. . . I ask whether in foreign civilisations that are now being drawn technologically
over into the ambit of European–American civilization – China, Japan, and especially
India – Much of the religious and social traditions of their Ancient cultures does not
still live on under the cover of European furnishings and American jobs, and whether
whatever lives on may not perhaps bring about an awareness out of necessity once again
of new normative and common solidarities that let practical reason speak again.’ Ibid.
160
together for better or worse and that it has to solve the problems of its
life on this planet’.90 In other words, one of the goals of philosophical
hermeneutics is to increase human understanding and solidarity across
the globe and across cultural divides as a contribution to the develop-
ment of a thin cosmopolitan community.
The vision of cosmopolitanism that might be informed by philosoph-
ical hermeneutics is, therefore, obviously different from the thick vision
presented by liberals, such as Beitz, where universality is privileged
over particularity, homogeneity is endorsed and otherness denied. It
also does not fall prey to the criticisms which often confront discourse
ethics, including that conversation is necessarily oriented towards a fi-
nal consensus and agreement. Instead philosophical hermeneutics sug-
gests a multicultural cosmopolitanism in which, through conversation,
various cultures and individuals learn to ‘experience the other and the
others, as the other of ourself, in order to participate with one another’.91
A part of this of course is also to learn to ‘live with the other, as the other
of the other’.92 It is this ‘learning to live and participate’ with others
which is, for Gadamer, the meaning of solidarity.
The model of conversation in discourse ethics

and philosophical hermeneutics
The account of conversation and understanding in philosophical
hermeneutics outlined above bears many resemblances to a commu-
nitarian concern for the situatedness of concrete agents. Furthermore,
it has been demonstrated that philosophical hermeneutics develops a
philosophy of communication and a model of conversation from these
premises that allows for an equal relationship through dialogue be-
tween concrete others. While the situatedness of agents in a philo-
sophical hermeneutic conversation has been emphasised, it is necessary
at this point to detail further the account of agency in philosophical
hermeneutics in order to emphasise the radically inclusive dimension
of hermeneutic understanding. In particular, having outlined the philo-
sophical hermeneutic account of understanding as a dialogical process it
is necessary to demonstrate to what extent and in which ways this model
is less assimilatory and more inclusive than the Habermasian discourse
90 Ibid., p. 86.
91 ‘The Diversity of Europe: Inheritance and Future’, pp. 221–36 in Misgeld and
Nicholson, Hans-Georg Gadamer, p. 236.
92 Ibid., p. 234.
161
ethics model discussed in chapter 3. It was argued there that because

discourse was directed exclusively towards questions of ‘the right’ and
was informed by a telos of agreement on those principles which might be
universalisable, it generated two possible types of exclusion: exclusion
in relation to possible topics of conversation and exclusion in relation
to the identity of the agents of conversation. The model of conversa-
tion and understanding provided by philosophical hermeneutics is less
exclusionary and less assimilatory along both these axes.
It was also argued in chapter 3 that discourse ethics provided a po-
tentially exclusionary account of conversation in so far as it emphasised
that conversation concerning universalisable principles was possible
only between postconventional agents. The account of understanding
provided by philosophical hermeneutics and outlined above avoids this
problem by emphasising the universality of understanding and simul-
taneously removing the opposition between reason and tradition. The
issue of agency and inclusion is, therefore, predominantly a question
about the possibility and nature of reasoning. Thus in order to under-
stand more fully how philosophical hermeneutics provides a more in-
clusive account of conversation it is necessary to examine the concept
of reason and its relation to agency.
Reason, understanding and agency

in philosophical hermeneutics
The radically inclusive dimension of philosophical hermeneutics stems
from, and is directly related to, its conception of reason as a capacity of
language.93 The model of conversation outlined above rests upon the
hermeneutic claim to universality: all understanding is interpretation.
The metaphor of the fusion of horizons depicted a universal property
of all understanding through language. Therefore, the model of conver-
sation presented by Gadamer is universal in that it is a property of all
humans, or all who possess language. This model is also premised on an
account of understanding in which ‘reason’ is a universal phenomenon
by virtue of being a property of language. Understanding, or the fu-
sion of horizons, is the achievement not only of tradition but of reason
also. In philosophical hermeneutics reason is akin to understanding and
understanding is essentially linguistic and universal. The philosophical
93 It is important to stress here that the possession of reason itself is not the criterion
for moral inclusion. Rather, reason allows conversation and the engagement with others,
and conversation provides merely the means for this engagement and not the moral
justification.
162
hermeneutic account of conversation can be seen to involve a radically

inclusive account of conversation because in it reasoned conversation
is a capacity of all linguistically constituted agents. In other words,
in the Habermasian view rationality is equated with universal valid-
ity whereas Gadamer’s equates reason with the universal capacity for
understanding.
The key to Gadamer’s account of reason can be found in the section of
Truth and Method examining ‘the prejudice of the enlightenment’. Many
commentators imply that the strength of Gadamer’s ‘rehabilitation of
prejudice’ lies solely in its demonstration of the difficulty of rendering
tradition completely transparent through reason. That is, the principle of
effective history indicates the difficulties of pursuing enlightenment. For
similar reasons, Gadamer’s insights have also been used to buttress the
argument that enlightenment is an ongoing and never-ending project.94
However, there is another reading which demonstrates that the enlight-
enment’s opposition between tradition and reason was ill-founded and
misleading from the beginning. This critique also demonstrates the man-
ner in which ‘reason’ is not exclusively a property of enlightened or, in
Habermas’ terms, postconventional agents.
Gadamer argues that the task of the enlightenment is to effect the re-
placement of tradition and authority with the sovereignty of reason. In
doing so the enlightenment project became set in a dogmatic opposition
to tradition and as a consequence established a false dichotomy between
tradition and reason.95 Gadamer’s particular concern is to demonstrate
that the enlightenment project maintained a prejudice against authority,
or a prejudice against prejudice.96 He aims to demonstrate the manner
94 Gadamer asserts that reason ‘would become vacuous and undialectical . . . if it tried
to think the idea of a completed reflection, in which society would lift itself out of the
continuing process of emancipation – the process of loosening itself from traditional ties
and binding itself to newly constructed validities – so as to achieve an ultimate, free
and rational self-possession.’ Truth and Method, p. 571. See for instance Bernstein, Beyond
Objectivism and Relativism, and also R. Devetak, ‘The Project of Modernity in International
Relations Theory’, Millennium, 24. 1 (1995).
95 Gadamer’s account here shares something with Foucault’s observation that the
enlightenment generated a form of ‘. . . intellectual blackmail of “being for or against the
enlightenment” ’. M. Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment’, in P. Rabinow, The Foucault Reader
(London: Penguin, 1984), p. 45. Foucault’s argument is that enlightenment, as a process,
needs to be separated from the development of the specific ideology of eighteenth-century
humanism. Separating them allows the articulation of a more general and less particular
account in which it is no longer necessary to choose to be for or against enlightenment.
In such an account it would be possible to partake in the enlightenment project without
endorsing the particular conception of human subjectivity associated with humanism.
96 It is this issue which formed the core of the so-called Habermas–Gadamer debate
which is discussed in the next chapter.
163
in which tradition and prejudice provide the conditions of reasoning

and could, therefore, generate knowledge and be the bearers of truth.
Tradition and prejudice, he argues, are not in themselves illegitimate.
Indeed reason is a property of tradition, it does not occur within a
vacuum or have properties that can be divorced from the tradition from
whence it came. As a result, reason and enlightenment do not stand in
heroic opposition to tradition, but should be understood as the contin-
uation of a tradition itself. Furthermore, the enlightenment conception
of reason relies on unacknowledged authority. What makes something
reasonable is not merely its ability to be persuasive, to make sense ‘in
itself’, but what counts as persuasive always depends on the tradition.
Tradition, therefore, is viewed as authoritative.97
Because Gadamer disputes the idea that reason can be persuasive in
and of itself, divorced from its context, philosophical hermeneutics is
sceptical towards the possibility of being moved by the unforced force
of the better argument alone. The force of an argument will always be
related to the horizons of meaning of those to whom it is addressed.
Contra the enlightenment, or rather the critique of tradition, Gadamer
argues that if all understanding occurs in the horizon of linguistic tra-
dition then the knowledge gained by reason is also similarly situated.
Reason and critique are, therefore, not objective but conditional, and as
such, limited in their insights. The rehabilitation of prejudice and au-
thority is not a rejection of critique but rather an acknowledgement of the
historical and temporal conditions in which critique, as a form of under-
standing, takes place. Gadamer does not deny the necessity of reflection,
only that reflection ‘dissolves’ tradition or equals emancipation. Philo-
sophical hermeneutics, therefore, informs reason with a recognition of
finitude.
Gadamer’s aim is not to undermine the pursuit of freedom, enlight-
enment or the criticism of authority, merely to resist the opposition be-
tween them.98 The point is, rather, that tradition is not merely a limi-
tation of which we must be aware, but is also a positive, productive
97 ‘even in a state of perfect enlightenment we cannot ground everything we hold to be
true through strict proof or conclusive deduction. Rather we must permanently rely on
something and ultimately on someone, in whom we have trust. Our entire communicative
life rests on this.’ H. G. Gadamer, The Enigma of Health (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), p. 121. In
this sense Gadamer seeks to address the impossibility of reason’s grounding itself which
was identified by Hutchings.
98 Indeed Gadamer has been explicit in his defence of freedom. See for instance his
comments on Hegel in Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, esp. p. 37 where he states
‘The principle of freedom is unimpugnable and irrevocable. It is no longer possible for
anyone still to affirm the unfreedom of humanity. The principle that all are free never
164
and creative element in the reasoning process. Thus it is possible to

concur with Dallmayr’s assessment that: ‘[U]nder these auspices, tra-
dition and modernity are no longer binary opposites or poles of a his-
torical trajectory, but rather ways of life intimately entwined with each
other . . .’99
As a result, however, a philosophical hermeneutic position rejects the
developmental account of reason, and the idea that the postconven-
tional agent can be sharply differentiated from the conventional agent,
provided by Habermas. According to Gadamer, change, reflection, cri-
tique (all exclusive properties of postconventional agents, according to
Habermas) are themselves all part of the ‘process’ of tradition as a ve-
hicle of understanding: ‘[T]radition is not the vindication of what has
come down from the past but the further creation of moral and so-
cial life; it depends on being made conscious and freely carried on.’100
In short in so far as philosophical hermeneutics rejects the opposition
of enlightenment and tradition then it also rejects the opposition be-
tween the conventional and the postconventional agent. Thus, the qual-
ities of reason and enlightenment, the ability to reflect, change and
understand the self and others in a new light, which Habermas, Lin-
klater and Benhabib ascribe to postconventional agents alone, are, in
philosophical hermeneutics, qualities that characterise the process of
understanding and the possession of linguisticality itself and which,
therefore, are not restricted to enlightened individuals.101 Where this
account of agency differs from the description of the postconventional
agent is that it drops the telos of universalisation. Because Gadamer does
not insist on relating understanding to universalisation he does asso-
ciate reflection, critique and change exclusively with the capacity to ask
‘are these interpretations, norms, meanings, capable of being adopted
by all?’
There is a crucial implication which follows from this argument: if
understanding and reasoning are properties of all linguistically situ-
ated agents then conversation between concrete others does not require
the creation of a community of similarly ‘thickly’ constituted agents, and
again can be shaken.’ But Gadamer’s understanding of freedom is not the same as Kant’s
and his philosophy can be understood as an attempt to avoid or at least relax the tension
identified by Hutchings.
99 Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism, p. 168. 100 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 571.
101 If there is a moment of assimilation in philosophical hermeneutics then it occurs in
the argument that all humans possess reason as a consequence of being linguistically and
historically situated. Thus philosophical hermeneutics does not escape the assimilationist
moment altogether. However, it can be argued that it reduces that moment significantly.
165
opens the conversation to more universal participation. The philosophi-

cal hermeneutic account of understanding suggests that if one collapses
the distinction between reason and tradition then it is no longer possible
to maintain a praxis dedicated solely to the removal of tradition and
its replacement by reason. Philosophical hermeneutics provides a con-
ception of reason as a value that cannot necessarily be associated with
particular stages of human development nor with the capacity to think
in terms of how the species as a whole might react to one’s propositions.
Reasoned conversation is a property of all humans who possess lan-
guage. For this reason, Gadamer’s account of conversation potentially
encompasses the entire range of human subjects without necessarily im-
plying that they all share the same identity or that conversation must
be withheld until they have achieved the right level of competence.
This extension of the nature of the reasoned agent is only possible by
rejecting the sharp distinction between reason and tradition and its cor-
relate distinctions between public/private, right/good, moral/ethical
realms. In so far as philosophical hermeneutics rejects the dichotomy
between reason and tradition then it also rejects these dichotomies as
well. These dichotomies all rest, in Habermas’ work, on the possibility
of securing a distinction between that which is rational, by which he
means consistent with the unforced force of the better argument, and
that which is not. If we remove this distinction then we create the pos-
sibility of more inclusive conversation by ‘thinning out’ or making the
meaning of reason less determinate or fixed in its goals.
Philosophical hermeneutics seeks a universally inclusive conversa-
tion. It understands conversation as a universal capacity and because
it relaxes the equation of reason with the possibility of universal ac-
ceptance it does not repeat the paradox of limitation and legislation in
the same way. Philosophical hermeneutics does not stipulate the for-
mal requirements of conversation, beyond a certain willingness or good
faith, and so does not exhibit the same tension as discourse ethics be-
tween universal inclusion and the need to set criteria for communicative
competence.
In sum then, it can be argued that Gadamer’s entire thesis on the uni-
versality and nature of understanding, on the linguisticality of under-
standing, is an argument for the universality of ‘reason’ and reflection.
Understanding, or the fusion of horizons through conversation, can and
does occur in any human society or individual. The prerequisites for
conversation are in a sense already in place by virtue of linguisticality.
166
This means that the philosophical hermeneutic conversation is less ex-

clusive at the level of agency and that it is radically inclusive of all lin-
guistically constituted beings capable of understanding. In a sense the
philosophical hermeneutic account lowers or broadens the conditions of
possibility for a universal communication community by extending and
simultaneously ‘thinning out’ the conception of a reasoned agent. Philo-
sophical hermeneutics rejects the implication that a reasoning agent is
one solely oriented to universalism. Instead what is meant by a reasoned
agent is extended to include, in principle, any linguistically constituted
agent. In the philosophical hermeneutic account the other is understood
as a linguistically constituted agent from the start and, therefore, inher-
ently capable of understanding and conversation. It does not assume
ignorance or ‘immaturity’ on the part of the other: ‘. . . the knowledge
of practical wisdom is not a knowledge that is conscious of its ascen-
dancy over the ignorant’.102 Philosophical hermeneutics informed with
a recognition of finitude on the part of the self, therefore, contains no
presumption of superiority. This means that the orientation to the other
is concerned from the beginning with the ‘thinner’ goal of understand-
ing in conversation rather than emancipation. It is for this reason that
philosophical hermeneutics is able to embody the relation of equality
to otherness through a category of communication in a way that is un-
available to critical theory.
Having outlined the advantages of the philosophical hermeneutic
conception of agency and how this makes for a radical inclusivity the
task now is to compare the specifics of this model with discourse ethics
in order to highlight the advantages of the former. It was argued in
chapter 3 that discourse ethics relied too heavily on a model of conver-
sation which emphasised questions of the right and the achievement
of universalisation. The danger of this emphasis lay in the exclusion
of certain topics from conversation, and, therefore, of the interests and
concerns of particular concrete others. It was suggested, therefore, that
a model of conversation was necessary which could be more inclusive
of a wider range of concerns and agents. It was also suggested, fol-
lowing Benhabib, that attention should be directed towards the means
and conditions whereby conversation itself, could continue. This sec-
tion examines and demonstrates the manner in which the philosophical
hermeneutic model of conversation preserves the strength and cancels
102 Ibid., p. 293.
167
the weaknesses of Habermasian discourse ethics and helps to provide a

‘thinner’, less assimilatory, more inclusive conception of cosmopolitan
conversation.
In order to understand fully the differences between these two mod-
els it is useful to examine the common elements and points of con-
vergence between the two approaches. The two models of conversa-
tion converge and share the following strengths. Conversation in both
is directed towards something like Habermas’ formulation of ‘under-
standing oriented towards agreement’. Both philosophical hermeneu-
tics and discourse ethics understand that in some ways a conversation
has a goal of agreement at its end. The orientation towards agreement
serves to motivate the conversation and to help provide momentum.
More importantly both models suggest that understanding has been
achieved when agreement is reached. However, significant differences
over the meaning of agreement are also present and will be discussed
below.
For both discourse ethics and philosophical hermeneutics the ques-
tion of agreement is linked to the possibility of a certain type of truth.103
Both models of conversation share the understanding that dialogue is
oriented towards truth to the degree that it is about something more
than access to the other’s self-understanding. In both accounts the no-
tion of truth functions as a means of escaping from the psychologistic
functions of understanding and as a means of enabling reflection on
oneself and the other. This concept of truth also has a critical function
and works as a kind of regulator orienting the conversation to the pos-
sibility of learning and away from merely the transmission of existing
knowledge and taken for granted understandings. It also serves a reg-
ulative function preventing a conversation from slipping into a pure
relativistic contest.104 In discourse ethics this takes the form of a search
for universalisable principles determined by a willingness to be guided
by the unforced force of the better argument whereas in philosophical
hermeneutics truth comes into play in relation to the concept of the Sache
and in the possibility of learning from the other. In discourse ethics the
103 For Habermas moral rightness is analogous though not identical with truth.
See J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity,
1990), pp. 58–60.
104 This is an important qualification which Linklater has emphasised in his latest writ-
ings, where he is at pains to point out the open-ended and possibly inconclusive nature of
genuine dialogue and which serves to bring the approaches of critical theory and philo-
sophical hermeneutics closer to each other. See Linklater, The Transformation of Political
Community.
168
participants are guided in their search for universalisable principles by

the unforced force of the better argument. In philosophical hermeneutics
it is the possibility that the other may be capable of revealing a truth to
us in relation to a subject matter of conversation which enables us to
treat them as equal.
In addition, and as a result of a commitment to truth, both require a
recognition of finitude in so far as they require an openness towards the
other participants in dialogue and towards the possibility of learning
from them. The possibility of learning from the other involves recogni-
tion that the other, like the self, could articulate a certain but different
truth and, therefore, could be seen as both equal and different. Linklater
for instance emphasises that crucial to discourse ethics is an openness
amongst the participants in a rational discourse to the possibility that
they can learn from the other. For those engaged in discourse ethics:
‘there is no a priori certainty as to who shall learn from whom’.105 This
openness implies a willingness to reflect upon the self and to change
one’s self understandings or beliefs in the light of new or different inter-
pretations and knowledge. The possibility of understanding as depicted
in the metaphor of the fusion of horizons is also contingent upon the pos-
sibility of change and transposition from one’s own horizon. Change is a
necessary part, or risk, of understanding. Both philosophical hermeneu-
tics and discourse ethics, therefore, hold in common the argument that
dialogue can only occur when the participants are willing to risk them-
selves and learn from others: ‘. . . dialogue requires that agents are pre-
pared to question their own truth claims, respect the claims of others
and anticipate that all points of departure will be modified in the course
of dialogue’.106
Furthermore, discourse ethics and philosophical hermeneutics agree
that this type of conversation is to be distinguished from a strategic con-
versation in which the aim is to achieve knowledge of the other in order
to control them (as for instance in the example of Cortês). Likewise both
models distinguish a conversation oriented towards mutual compre-
hension and agreement from an argument in which the purpose is to
prove ‘oneself’ right and win over the other. It is not the purpose of con-
versation to ‘convert’ the other to one’s cause or position. Instead it is a
process of mutual engagement and exchange oriented towards mutual
105 A. Linklater, ‘Citizenship and Sovereignty in the Post-Westphalian State’, European
Journal of International Relations, 2. 1, March (1996), 77–103, p. 86.
106 Ibid., p. 87. Linklater also adds the rather thick rider that this requires participants to
be guided by the unforced force of the better argument.
169
enlightenment in which all can learn. In this respect the other is seen as
a dialogic equal in discourse ethics and philosophical hermeneutics and
both, therefore, involve a high degree of communication.
However, despite these commonalities, substantial differences remain
over the exact meaning and emphases placed on all these common
elements, in particular, the concepts of agreement, truth and learning.107
These differences in turn can be traced to the more significant point of
departure regarding the ultimate purpose or telos of conversation. As
a result of being motivated by the goal of understanding philosophi-
cal hermeneutics is able to preserve some of the strengths and cancel
some of the weaknesses of the discourse ethics model. Philosophical
hermeneutics preserves the strengths of the discourse ethics model in
those areas outlined above where there is a commonly held position.
Philosophical hermeneutics preserves the strengths of conversation ori-
ented towards truth, of openness towards others, of the possibility of
agreement, and on the goal of universal inclusion. However, it cancels
out some of the weaknesses of discourse ethics on these issues as well.
In particular, three areas can be identified in which the goal of under-
standing provides a more inclusive and less exclusionary approach to
conversation: the goal of inclusion, the right versus good, openness to
others and the possibility of learning.
Superficially at least philosophical hermeneutics and discourse ethics
share the belief that conversation requires ‘understanding directed to-
wards agreement’. However, further examination reveals more pro-
found differences on the significance of agreement and its relation to con-
versation. In particular, the Habermasian model involves a thicker and
107 Both approaches share a view that open dialogue and the ‘reversibility’ of perspec-
tives are essential to being open to the other’s point of view. In discourse ethics this was
classified as being open to the possibility of learning and was the achievement of the post-
conventional agent. However, such learning, for Habermas and apparently for Linklater, is
really only of one type: learning regarding that which can be universalised. Linklater gives
further support to this when he argues that discourse should proceed in the attempt to
assess which principles, both in the west and in other societies, have transcultural validity
or appeal. This search would involve a conversation which sought to discover only those
beliefs in other cultures which are capable of universalisation. These appear to constitute
a predisposition towards what counts as learning in this situation. In this fashion, and
because it asserts that all normative claims seek universal redemption, discourse ethics
appears to discount the very possibility of ‘particular’ learning. Discourse ethics, there-
fore, delimits in advance the possible scope for understanding and, therefore, for hearing
the voice of the other. The self is closed off to the particularity of the other and their truth
because the other becomes merely a source of verification (or not) of universalisable norms.
Learning for philosophical hermeneutics is not associated with a developmental process
as it is for Habermas and Linklater. Instead it merely involves acquiring an awareness of
different possibilities of being and a gaining of experience (Erfahrung).
170
more specific conception of agreement than does philosophical

hermeneutics which in turn stems from a significantly different under-
standing of the purpose of conversation. For Habermas ‘understanding
oriented towards agreement’ is understood to mean that conversation
is oriented towards rational agreement on universal principles of moral
life. Discourse ethics argued that norms were only valid if they were
consented to by all those affected. The purpose of conversation then
is to secure the consent and agreement of genuine agents to universal
principles.
In contrast to this, philosophical hermeneutics presents a model of
conversation oriented towards the much thinner goal of ‘understand-
ing’. To engage in ‘understanding oriented towards agreement’ does
not necessarily mean to be engaged in a discursive test of universal va-
lidity claims, rather, it can also mean something like coming to share
a particular understanding of the Sache. Agreement means simply that
the self can ‘understand’ the other’s point of view and has success-
fully ‘stood in the other’s shoes’. As was argued above Gadamer states
that when understanding occurs it is always something like agreement.
What he means here is that one agrees with another in so far as one
can comprehend their position and is able to say, ‘yes I see what you
mean and why you mean it and how you have come to see things this
way’. As Georgia Warnke notes ‘[W]e need not ultimately agree with
the text or text analogue we are studying. It may not be an option for
us to adopt Zande beliefs in witchcraft . . . But Gadamer’s contention is
that whatever the outcome of conversation – the result is an achieve-
ment of understanding . . . ’108 This is the sense in which philosophical
hermeneutics perceives understanding oriented towards agreement. To
be able to recognise that the other is comprehensible is not the same as
being able to come to share their opinion, in the sense of saying, ‘yes I
see what you mean and I believe that you are right and I shall adjust my
opinions/beliefs/practices accordingly’. Philosophical hermeneutics
depicts understanding oriented toward agreement in the first of these
two senses, discourse ethics depicts the second type of agreement. How-
ever, in both there are other possible outcomes, or rather neither pre-
clude the possibility of either agreement or disagreement. Nonetheless
108 G. Warnke, ‘Walzer, Rawls and Gadamer: Hermeneutics and Political Theory’, in
K. Wright (ed.), Festivals of Interpretation: Essays on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Work (Albany:
SUNY, 1990), p. 156. It is important to emphasise that to have agreed or understood in this
sense is to have ‘experienced’ (erlebnis) the other’s position or horizon and not merely to
have recovered their self-understanding.
171
it is the possibility of agreement in philosophical hermeneutics which

constitutes an acknowledgement of the other’s equality. The other can
be understood and agreed with, in so far as they can be comprehended,
without necessarily being understood as revealing knowledge which is
universally valid or of significance. As Warnke argues, understanding is
a matter of ‘expanding our ideas, altering our practices and, in general,
educating ourselves. There is no need to think that there is only one way
to realise these interpretive aims.’109 Therefore there is no guarantee that
having understood another’s position in a fusion of horizons one will
necessarily agree that their propositions can be universalised. Rather it
simply means that having engaged with another in conversation one
has recognised them as equal by seeking to understand their position
and understand them and allowing their experience of truth to speak
to us.
As a result, if for discourse ethics the telos of conversation is a consen-
sus between postconventional agents regarding universalisable prin-
ciples, then for philosophical hermeneutics the purpose or telos of
conversation is simply that of hermeneutic understanding in its broad-
est sense. Philosophical hermeneutics eschews the task of determin-
ing universal principles which should govern conversation and in this
sense it is not a purely procedural account of conversation as the means
of determining the right. Philosophical hermeneutics does not under-
stand the task of philosophy as defining procedures prior to dialogical
engagement.110 Rather the task of philosophical hermeneutics has been
to reflect on what understanding means and what is involved in com-
ing to an understanding. Conversation is oriented towards achieving a
fusion of horizons between the different participants in relation to the
subject matter of conversation. In philosophical hermeneutics conversa-
tion is the means of reaching an understanding on a matter of common
interest or concern, in the process the other is seen as a dialogical equal
through having their truth claims recognised. Unlike discourse ethics
109 Quoted in Hoy and McCarthy, Critical Theory, p. 261.
110 It may well be argued that it is precisely this refusal to address procedural, institutional
and societal conditional questions that represents the principal weakness of philosoph-
ical hermeneutics. It is not the aim here to develop an account of the conditions under
which this type of communication may flourish. And it may well be that were it to do
so then philosophical hermeneutics would suffer from the same problems that accrue to
critical theory. If a philosophical hermeneutic account were to address these particular
questions then it would invariably be drawn into describing a thicker form of community
and a thicker form of praxis. This is a very important question but not the concern of
this book. The goal here is to provide a philosophical account of what conversation and
communication should involve in terms of a model of conversation.
172
the philosophical hermeneutic conversation is not overdetermined by

the goal of universalisation as understood by Habermas and does not
contain the telos of developing universally justified, valid, regulative
and legislative norms. The philosophical hermeneutic conversation is
not a model of justice understood in the strict Kantian sense but it is a
model of conversation which is nonetheless capable of delivering jus-
tice understood as recognition. While it does not rule out the possi-
bility of universal agreement, such agreement is not the measure by
which conversation is assessed. It is this difference which makes the
most difference and which leads to the less assimilatory elements of
philosophical hermeneutics. By eschewing the Habermasian goal of jus-
tice defined deontologically, as the definition of what everybody ought
to do, philosophical hermeneutics avoids those assimilative tendencies
of the discourse ethics model outlined in the previous chapter while
at the same time remaining committed to the values of freedom and
equality.
As a result of its telos of understanding philosophical hermeneutics
does not restrict either the tasks or the topics of conversation. This thin
version of cosmopolitanism informed by philosophical hermeneutics
differs from Habermasian discourse ethics in that a conversation
modelled on its insights is one in which deliberation about the meaning
of the good life can occur. A conversation informed by philosophical
hermeneutics does not rule out questions of the right and the achieve-
ment of universalisation but neither does it restrict agents in their
enquiries or the subject matters of conversation. Conversation involves
discussing whatever it takes to come to an understanding with each
other. As a result the philosophical hermeneutic model does not restrict
conversation exclusively to matters of right. Questions of the good life
are up for discussion as well as questions of the right because both are
required to have a complete engagement with the other. Because moti-
vated by the goal of understanding a conversation informed by philo-
sophical hermeneutics does not need to enforce a separation between
those matters which are public and those which are merely private.
In this sense the philosophical hermeneutic model preserves the em-
phasis on the abstract other while being more inclusive of concrete
otherness. It is abstract in that it is oriented towards the possibility of
understanding any and all linguistically constituted agents and yet con-
crete because understanding requires an engagement with all the partic-
ularity of agents and their concerns, their horizon of meaning. Or rather
philosophical hermeneutics acknowledges that conversation cannot be
173
restricted to questions of the right, that it is not possible to maintain

that distinction when it comes to understanding and, therefore, under-
standing involves discussion of the good. By dropping the requirement
that conversation can only concern ‘questions of right’ philosophical
hermeneutics opens up the possible topics and purposes of conversation
allowing a more complete and overall more inclusive and less assimila-
tory engagement between participants.
An interesting observation can be made against the theories of the
right at this juncture. By conceiving itself as a discourse concerned with
mediating between conflicts of interests the impartialist position demon-
strates characteristics of both assimilationist and coexistence categories.
The assimilatory characteristics of the goal of impartiality were demon-
strated in chapter 2. Where impartialist accounts display elements of
a coexistence approach it is to the extent that the goal of mediation of
interests effectively excludes the identity of participants and more im-
portantly the content or truth of their conception of the good from the
realm of discussion. In other words, the other is engaged with only
in so far as their actions, beliefs and so on have an effect upon the
self.
The philosophical hermeneutic account of conversation avoids both
these problems because it is not restricted to a purely procedural role.
Because it eschews the supposedly neutral position of theories of the
right it paradoxically allows for more just relationships between ‘others’
in a thinner conception of community. If one understands conversation
as concerned not just with the mediation of interests and the resolu-
tion of conflicts but with addressing the question of what is the good
life, or better still, how shall we live, then the other is seen as a partner
who participates with oneself in a common project. Under these cir-
cumstances the purpose of conversation also includes the building of
solidarity rather than the mediation of interests alone. From this per-
spective the other is seen as participating with oneself in a mutual task
of comprehension and understanding and, consequently, one is more
truly open to the other and what they have to say.
The discussion of the good life in this form of thin cosmopolitanism
is not a ‘requirement’: it does not demand that ‘internal’ conceptions
of the good life must be held up for universal approval. Rather a con-
ception of community informed by philosophical hermeneutics sees the
cosmopolitan conversation itself, whether it be limited to principles of
coexistence or thicker principles of the right, as discussion regarding the
good life (understood as ‘how shall we live’). An approach informed
174
by philosophical hermeneutics does not restrict discussion of the good

life to domestic politics. Furthermore, it is not concerned to provide
one thick universal account of the good life, rather, like poststructural-
ism, it refuses a hard and fast distinction between internal and external
accounts.
In addition, because philosophical hermeneutics is expressly com-
mitted to conversation about the good it is consequently less likely to
‘smuggle in’ such conceptions unreflectively or to present itself as an
account of ‘the moral position’. Emphasising questions of the good also
suggests that the degree to which any individual or society wishes to en-
ter into thicker relations or converge upon more substantive conceptions
of the good life and the right are themselves a part of the discussion.
The conception of community at work in philosophical hermeneutics
is thicker than some and amounts to a substantive preference for one
form of life over another. It is not possible to deny that what Gadamer
offers us is something like a different conception of the good, as a discur-
sive community. Philosophical hermeneutics is as affected by its preju-
dices as any perspective. Philosophical hermeneutics does privilege a
particular form of life by suggesting that some modes of reasoning and
action are inappropriate. Thus dialogical understanding is privileged
over its alternatives such as techne. However, the model of conversa-
tion presented by Gadamer allows for a more thorough contestation
and reflection on its prejudices by not over-determining the content and
purpose of conversation. In addition, the project of being inclusive of
difference rests itself upon a thick and universalistic claim that diversity
is good and difference demands respect and ethical treatment. Further-
more, the model of conversation being developed here is based on the
values of equality and freedom and seeks to encourage the exercise of
both. It can however, be argued that the emphasis on finitude is in-
tended to work as a brake and a corrective to the assimilative moment
in Gadamer’s conception of the good, thereby rendering it more open,
inclusive and ‘thinner’.
Finally, in so far as it is impossible to reconcile completely the goals of
community and difference, that it is impossible to conceive of a commu-
nity defined in any way, without it being, in some sense, thick or substan-
tive, then philosophical hermeneutics does not escape this tension as the
brief discussion in the preceding paragraphs demonstrates. However,
the point then is not to deny the situatedness and particularity of the
hermeneutic account of community and conversation but rather to make
that account as thin as possible in order to be as inclusive as possible.
175
However, if the philosophical hermeneutic conversation can be dis-

tinguished from the model of conversation developed by critical the-
ory as argued above it nonetheless shares the goal of inclusion of ‘the
other’ in conversation. If conversation and understanding are human
capacities then, from a philosophical hermeneutic perspective, there is
no reason, at this level, to exclude any such being from the realm of di-
alogue. However, while Aristotle’s discussion of phronesis is, Gadamer
suggests, the type of reasoning and practice that is appropriate to a
hermeneutic consciousness, practical reasoning is not restricted to those
who have cultivated a hermeneutic consciousness and does not require
the existence of a community of similar individuals in order to be exer-
cised. Philosophical hermeneutics, therefore, does not necessarily involve
a praxis oriented towards the expansion of the realm of individuals who
share the consciousness of finitude or effective historical consciousness.
Practical reasoning does not require a community of hermeneuts in or-
der to function. It is this dimension which contributes to its radical
inclusiveness.
Furthermore, the philosophical hermeneutic emphasis on under-
standing directs attention to the role of conversation in building com-
munity and solidarity which is largely absent from critical theory and
poststructuralist thought. This emphasis sits in contrast to the deonto-
logical emphasis of discourse ethics with its stress on the regulative,
legislative mode of conversation. As Habermas himself notes the de-
ontological model itself assumes a certain level of solidarity and trust
between participants.111 Philosophical hermeneutics in contrast is con-
sistent with the possibility and pursuit of consensus but is motivated
by the goal of understanding and creation of shared horizons rather
than exclusively the goal of determining the ‘right’. Therefore the philo-
sophical hermeneutic model preserves the goal of inclusion, the es-
sential moral insight of discourse ethics, based on the recognition of
others as ends in themselves, while cancelling the pure telos of estab-
lishing universal validity. Philosophical hermeneutics remains consis-
tent with the principles of inclusion central to discourse ethics, because
no agent is a priori ruled out of conversation, but this goal is not sub-
ordinated to the goal of universal validity. Philosophical hermeneu-
tics is consistent with a vision of conversation which does not require
the principles of universalisation (U) in order to guarantee discursive
inclusion (D).
111 See discussion of this in the next chapter.
176
In addition, the dimension of Gadamer’s conceptions of practical rea-

soning which focuses on the relationship between means and ends pro-
vides this form of praxis with a more flexible approach to questions
of community and in particular, the nature of cosmopolitanism than is
suggested by the deontological Kantianism of discourse ethics. Because
practical reasoning involves a conception of practice in which means
and ends are both reflected on it, therefore, suggests that both the means
for pursuing cosmopolitanism and the form of cosmopolitanism itself
must and can be subjected to reflection in any given situation. Thus
cosmopolitanism can only be defined in its actualisation. Rather than
defining in advance a form of cosmopolitanism in which rules are laid
down in advance a practice informed by philosophical hermeneutics
suggests a flexibility when it comes to the forms that cosmopolitanism
will take in specific situations. This includes whether or not involvement
in the cosmopolitan project itself will be desirable or attainable in any
given situation. This is especially so in the case of a cosmopolitanism
concerned with the idea of justice to the radically different. Thicker
forms of moral agreement and solidarity may come about as a result
of conversation but the decision to proceed on such conversation is it-
self to be decided not philosophically but discursively. Philosophical
hermeneutics preserves the possibility of reaching further and creating
a more substantive, ‘thick’, conception of community without legislat-
ing or requiring that eventuality.
Finally, from this position the likelihood of failure in achieving uni-
versal consent at any given time does not prevent those concerned with
acting justly towards others from acting in a manner consistent with
a thin cosmopolitanism (that is in a conversational mode oriented to-
wards the possibility of understanding). The hermeneutic account of
practical reasoning provides some guidance as to how to act morally
when the ‘thick’ cosmopolitan community has not been achieved. For
this reason the greatest advantage of practical reasoning lies in the fact
that it has no pre-determined ends in relation to otherness, other than
understanding. Thus it has no plans upon the other nor any prescrip-
tion laid out in advance which dictates the encounter. If the ends of
conversation or engagement are determined in advance then the voice
of the other is unable to get itself heard and their equality denied. Thus,
for example, confronted with individuals who resist or do not share the
same consciousness, an approach informed by philosophical hermeneu-
tics is capable of maintaining a just relationship. Instead it merely asks
the question again: what does justice mean in this particular situation?
177
Faced with the ‘other’ who resists or does not share its consciousness
or understanding, a position informed by philosophical hermeneutics
is able to keep the question of justice open and in dialogue. Because of
this it is possible to remain open to what the other has to say because
the other’s difference does not prevent them from being perceived as an
equal in conversation. This account resists the traditional dynamic of IR
in which the lack of a thick homogenous cosmopolitan community can
only mean the perpetuation of exclusive and self-interested communi-
ties and, instead, contemplates the nature of moral action in the absence
of a universal kingdom of ends. In the absence of a final universal con-
sensus or completed community of emancipated beings there is instead
the task of living together in difference, a task which requires a medi-
ation of means and ends, universal and particular and the pragmatic
development of wisdom and understanding in which differences and
agreements are worked through.
Conclusion
This chapter has demonstrated the position of philosophical hermeneu-
tics on knowledge and conversation. The argument made for philo-
sophical hermeneutics can be summarised as follows. A hermeneutic
conversation provides a relationship to otherness that is concerned with
understanding. It argued that the concept of conversation as one ori-
ented towards truth and understanding provides an orientation towards
the other which neither denies difference nor assimilates it. In particular,
it was argued that the hermeneutic model of a conversation provided
an account of communication that recognised equality without it im-
posing identity and that recognised difference without it degenerating
into inferiority. In this sense, it was argued that Gadamer’s formulation
of conversation as an engagement with otherness directed by an open-
ness to ‘truth’, provided a model of a relationship to difference that was
able to escape the categories of assimilation and coexistence. It depicted
the relationship between self and other as a relationship between equals
oriented towards mutual understanding and towards the truth of a sub-
ject over which they are engaged. The motivation for and condition of
this conversation is provided by human finitude. Thus, the hermeneu-
tic concept of the self–other relation is informed and fundamentally
structured by the recognition of finitude. The search for understand-
ing does not rule out the search for universal consensus or agreement
and it is possible that conversation oriented towards understanding
178
may identify universally acceptable positions. However, a philosophi-

cal hermeneutic approach suggests that it is dangerous and prescriptive
to assume that this is the ultimate, or even the initial, purpose of con-
versation. Instead, conversation must begin at least with understanding,
and only then move on to thicker goals, in light of the achievements of
understanding. Because the goal of philosophical hermeneutics is un-
derstanding, this involves both the inclusion of other but also the cre-
ation of new shared meaning horizons. In this sense then the possibility
of creating universal conceptions of both the right and the good is left
open. The creation of a single universal horizon, while not necessarily
likely, is possible. Its creation however, can not be considered as merely
the creation of a universal community of right but also the creation of a
universal realm of solidarity which preserves distinctions between ‘us’
and ‘them’ while simultaneously creating solidarity amongst ‘us’ all.
179
5 Philosophical hermeneutics
and its critics
The principle that all are free can never again be shaken.1
The account presented in the previous chapters argued for the princi-
pal contributions of philosophical hermeneutics to the development of
a thin cosmopolitanism. However, philosophical hermeneutics is not
without its critics, nor its own limitations and exclusions. Therefore, in
order to build the case for a philosophical hermeneutic approach it is
necessary to engage with these critics. Out of this engagement a bet-
ter sense of the requirements of a cosmopolitanism encompassing the
principles of communication can be determined and the case for a thin
cosmopolitanism made stronger. This chapter examines the principal
criticisms of philosophical hermeneutics and uses them to help formu-
late a more complete account of conversation.
The most relevant criticisms made against philosophical hermeneu-
tics generally fall into two types. Perhaps the most longstanding, and
common, of these arguments is that philosophical hermeneutics is es-
sentially conservative. This charge is usually, but not exclusively, made
from a critical theoretical perspective. Critical theorists also often make
the related assertion that philosophical hermeneutics suffers from a
form of philosophical idealism and is dismissive of, or blind to, material
conditions which contribute to the formation of horizons of meaning.
Philosophical hermeneutics has also been subjected to criticism from
poststructuralists such as Jacques Derrida who charge that its arguments
are embedded in a metaphysics of the will and, more importantly, that
it privileges continuity over discontinuity and closure over disruption.
1 H. G. Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981), p. 37.
180
Philosophical hermeneutics and its critics
This chapter engages with the relevant dimensions of these claims, be-
ginning with critical theory, before proceeding to those problems iden-
tified by Derrida.2 The chapter concludes by rearticulating a model of
conversation and an understanding of community which is informed by
philosophical hermeneutics, critical theory and poststructuralism and
identifying those elements which might form the basis of a common
perspective.
Philosophical hermeneutics and critical theory

Perhaps the most persistent and detailed criticisms of philosophical
hermeneutics have come from critical theory. Of course, the most im-
portant and sustained of these were made by Habermas in the context
of what has now become known as the Habermas/Gadamer debate
which followed the publication of Truth and Method.3 There followed
an exchange in which the most important similarities and differences
between philosophical hermeneutics and critical theory were clarified.
At the same time the differences between them came to be seen as less
stark than first suggested. There is no need or space to recount this de-
bate in full. Instead it is useful to highlight the most important issues
around which the debates revolved and to highlight those criticisms of
Gadamer’s position which seem to have survived the debate.
From the perspective of Habermasian critical theory philosophical
hermeneutics opens itself to the charge of conservatism because of its
emphasis on effective history, the authority of tradition and its appeal
to phronesis. From this point of view Gadamer’s rehabilitation of ‘tradi-
tion and prejudice’, and his argument that all understanding occurs
within tradition, dismisses the possibility of critical reflection. If all
2 The discussion in chapters 3, and 4, has focused on the ‘Foucauldian’ stream of post-
structuralist thought which has been evident in international relations. The introduc-
tion of Derrida at this juncture serves to bring in another dimension of poststructuralist
thought and one which provides for a deeper engagement with the concerns of philo-
sophical hermeneutics. In addition, as the focus here is on the limitations of philosophical
hermeneutics it is necessary to address the concerns arising at its ‘origins’ so to speak,
i.e. that is in the philosophical realm. In this realm Habermas is the best representative of
critical theory and Derrida of poststructuralism.
3 For details of this debate see. J. Habermas, ‘A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method’
(trans. T. McCarthy and F. Dallmayr), in B. R. Wachterhauser, Hermeneutics and Modern
Philosophy (Albany: SUNY, 1986). J. Habermas, ‘The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality’,
in M. Gibbons, Interpreting Politics, pp. 174–202, and H. G. Gadamer, ‘Reply to My Critics’,
in H. Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics: Figures and Themes (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1980), also chapters 1 and 2 of H. G. Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).
181
understanding is interpretation in the sense that Gadamer means it

then critical reflection which seeks to stand back from tradition and
to offer rational criticism of that tradition is impossible. Critical reflec-
tion appears to be nothing other than the ‘prejudice’ of enlightenment,
one prejudice among many. For Habermas, critical reflection achieves
its power precisely because it is able to stand back from prejudices
and subject them to rational critique, but such a practice is denied by
a philosophical hermeneutic starting point. According to Habermas,
‘Gadamer’s prejudice for the rights of prejudices certified by tradition
denies the power of reflection.’4 For Habermas this collapse of reflection
and tradition means that philosophical hermeneutics reduces reason to
a context-specific faculty and denies its transcultural validity.5 As a re-
sult of this dimension of the universality of hermeneutics, Habermas
implies that it must necessarily privilege the status quo as it seeks
to legitimise current prejudices only by reference to the authority of
tradition.
According to Habermas, by restricting knowledge to ‘everyday lan-
guage’ (by which he means nonscientific language) Gadamer denies
reflexivity. Habermas argues that Gadamer is positing an opposition of
truth to method. That is, he thinks Gadamer wants to deny the pos-
sibility that a vocabulary constituted outside everyday language, such
as a technical or scientific one, can produce reflections [truth]. Truth
for Gadamer can only occur within the tradition [of everyday commu-
nicative experience], which is inaccessible by this type of distantiation.
This is a problem for Habermas because the linguistic tradition will
be a product of power and evinces distorted understandings. In other
words, tradition is also a source of untruth. So, for Habermas, the level
of hermeneutic understanding, because it occurs in everyday language,
is essentially pre-reflexive, pre-theoretical and, therefore, uncritical. In
contrast, Habermas argues reason ‘proves itself in being able to reject
the claim of tradition . . . Authority and knowledge do not converge.’6
In becoming reflective, hermeneutics steps out of tradition and becomes
something else. In doing this, in objectifying or distancing itself, it be-
comes a social science, indeed it becomes critical theory. Critical theory,
therefore, draws upon the reflective capacity of reason and rationality to
4 Habermas, ‘A Review ’, p. 269.

5 In this Habermas seems to associate philosophical hermeneutics with ‘deep contextual-
ists’ such as MacIntyre and Rorty. See J. Habermas, Justification and Application (Cambridge:
Polity, 1993), esp pp. 101–5.
6 Habermas, ‘A Review’, p. 269.
182
define itself and defend its goal of enlightenment whereby it constitutes

itself as an emancipatory theory.
Habermas later drew upon the reflective capacity of reason to es-
tablish the categories of agency drawn from Kohlberg. The distinction
Habermas drew between a critical theory and philosophical hermeneu-
tics parallels the distinction between the conventional and the postcon-
ventional consciousness. It is only the postconventional consciousness
which is able to reflect fully upon and transcend their context and agree
to be guided by universalisable principles. As was noted in the previous
chapter, Gadamer’s collapsing of the distinction between reason and tra-
dition also meant a rejection of the distinction between the conventional
and postconventional agent.
Furthermore, Habermas has also claimed that it is rationality alone
which provides the necessary universality with which to understand
and develop consensus between different traditions. The universal fu-
sion of horizons, implied by Gadamer’s metaphor, can only be achieved
in reference to some regulative ideal, such as rationality or the idea
of the unforced force of the better argument.7 Therefore, philosophi-
cal hermeneutics is necessarily conservative and not up to the task of
developing a universal communication community.
However, as the discussion in the previous chapter would suggest
Habermas’ reading of Gadamer is, at least in part, misguided because it
misunderstands Gadamer’s claims in relation to reason and understand-
ing. In this debate, Habermas accused Gadamer of defending tradition
over reason and of denying reason its emancipatory power. Gadamer
defended the claim that what counted as reasonable rested on an author-
ity other than its own which is handed down from the past in the form
of tradition. What Gadamer did not claim was that reason necessarily
sits in opposition to tradition. Nor did Gadamer deny the desirability
of reflection, or presuppose the inherent legitimacy of any particular as-
pect of tradition. Tradition is exposed to scrutiny through the encounter
with the other and this encounter in turn helps to reveal the limitations
of tradition, or in Gadamer’s words, to reveal which prejudices are legit-
imate and which are not. In other words, Gadamer’s understanding of
tradition does not imply that any given aspect of tradition is necessarily
legitimate, but that any test of its legitimacy can also only come about
in the context of the language which tradition itself has bequeathed.
That language however, is not necessarily the same, as it is through the
7 See Habermas, Justification and Application, p. 105.
183
encounter with differences that the language is changed. Thus, rather

than underestimating the power of reflection, Gadamer seeks merely to
counter what he sees as the enlightenment’s over-estimation of reason’s
ability to see through its own prejudices.
If Gadamer is correct, then it is true that there is nothing in philo-
sophical hermeneutics which rejects critique, or the use of reason to
understand and engage with prejudices. As Bernstein has put it, ‘every
encounter with tradition is intrinsically critical’.8 Gadamer simply offers
a different description of what it is that occurs when we have claimed
to understood something, and a different interpretation of what it is to
‘reason’. In this sense, philosophical hermeneutics is not necessarily con-
servative. Indeed philosophical hermeneutics can only be understood
as necessarily conservative if a strict division between modern and con-
servative, between enlightenment and tradition, or conventional and
postconventional agency is enforced. However, it is precisely such a
strict division that Gadamer is engaged in undermining.
Nonetheless, Habermas has succeeded in pointing out some other
important omissions or apparent blindnesses in Gadamer’s philosophy,
which suggest some of its limitations. These limitations however, are
neither fundamental nor fatal, but they do bring to light those elements
of philosophical hermeneutics which are in need of supplementation.
In addition to the criticisms made above, Habermas, and others such
as Bernstein, argue that philosophical hermeneutics suffers from a blind-
ness towards certain aspects of language, and that this blindness is
symptomatic of a general tendency. Habermas argued that in addition
to being the vehicle of tradition and the manner of our ‘being-in-the-
world’, language is also a vehicle, or a tool, for the expression of power
relations. Language, he argues, ‘is also a medium of domination and
social power; it serves to legitimate relations of organized force’.9 Our
understandings or traditions are not just the passing down of a form
of life, but they are also the expression of power relations and material
interests, or rather the form of life they hand down is also constituted
by certain power relations. Language, Habermas argues, is also used to
mask deception or distort understanding in order to conceal:
[I]nsofar as the legitimations do not articulate the power relations
whose institutionalizations they make possible, insofar as these
8 R. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. 149.
9 Habermas, ‘A Review’, p. 272.
184
relations merely manifest themselves in the legitimations, language

is also ideological. Here it is a question not of deceptions within a
language but of deceptions with language as such. Hermeneutic expe-
rience that encounters this dependency of the symbolic framework on
actual conditions changes into critique of ideology.10
According to Habermas, philosophical hermeneutics’ focus on linguis-

ticality and the deep nature of human-being-in-the-world means that it
ignores the role of social forces and in doing so it is blind to the play of
power in a tradition or society.11 Furthermore, from Habermas’ perspec-
tive philosophical hermeneutics ignores the argument that linguistical-
ity is itself mediated by changes in the material circumstances of life. So,
in other words, Habermas accuses Gadamer of a form of idealism, in
which all social phenomena are reduced to language, while at the same
time ignoring the limits of language as world disclosure. The ability to
identify and criticise these dimensions of language is the role of critical
theory and the critique of ideology.
While these points are important they do not, in themselves, in
Gadamer’s words, represent a ‘philosophical going beyond’12 nor do
they undermine philosophical hermeneutics, or the position outlined in
Truth and Method. Rather, and despite Habermas’ claims to have secured
the grounds for a critical theory from outside the specific horizon of
western enlightenment, these criticisms can all be reinterpreted within
the horizon of philosophical hermeneutics. The role of material or
social forces in providing stimulus, and in forging particular human
understandings, does not undermine Gadamer’s claim that these
understandings occur in, and because of, linguisticality. Social forces
only have meaning, can only be understood, because they occur within
language. As Gadamer put it in a letter to Bernstein ‘Our experiences of
things, indeed even of everyday life, of modes of production, and yes
also of the sphere of our vital concerns, are one and all hermeneutic.’13
Furthermore, the intrinsically critical nature of the encounter with
tradition, and with the other, is also consistent with a recognition that
10 Ibid., p. 272, emphasis added.

11 As Bernstein notes ‘Habermas does not really disagree with what Gadamer means by
dialogue, conversation, and questioning, but is rather . . . constantly drawing our attention
to those systemic features of contemporary society that inhibit, distort or prevent such
dialogue from being concretely embodied in our everyday practices.’ Bernstein, Beyond
Objectivism and Relativism, p. 224.
12 ‘A letter from Hans-Georg Gadamer, in R. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism,
p. 264.
13 Ibid., p. 263.
185
language can function as a tool of power, and that certain prejudices

may not be legitimate. Thus, it can be suggested that critical theory and
philosophical hermeneutics are concerned with similar dynamics, and
with describing and explaining the conditions of understanding and re-
flection. Where they differ is that they claim a different epistemological
status for their descriptions.
In addition, while it is true that Gadamer says very little about the
way in which power might distort the construction of horizons of mean-
ing, this does not necessarily mean that Gadamer is blind to the ubiq-
uity of power in political relations. In contrast to Habermas’ claim
that Gadamer is unaware of or blind to the role of domination and
power, Dieter Misgeld has argued that Gadamer is only too aware
of power. It is because power is a pervasive and ineradicable dimen-
sion of the human social world that philosophical hermeneutics can-
not envision a world free from domination. Gadamer cannot conceive
of a world in which social differences are eliminated and as a result,
he rejects and is deeply suspicious of any solution which attempts to
engineer such an outcome. This is one reason why Gadamer defends
Aristotelian practical reasoning and the cultivation of phronesis, involv-
ing the prudent weighing of alternative possibilities, against emanci-
patory or utopian practices. It is, Misgeld argues, because Gadamer
‘is so much aware of the presence of these factors (power-coercion)
that he refuses to transform philosophical hermeneutics into a critique
of domination’.14 Unfortunately as a result, Gadamer’s recognition of
domination also means that he underestimates the importance of those
movements which, since the enlightenment, have attempted to increase
the realm of human freedom. Gadamer either fails to address them
at all, or, where he does, he ‘fails to perceive the difference between
emancipatory and technocratic politics’.15 Thus while Gadamer is le-
gitimately sceptical of the epistemological claims to have eradicated
the influence of tradition which accompanies the discourse of eman-
cipation, he also nonetheless downplays the practical significance of
emancipatory movements such as feminism, anti-colonialism and anti-
racism, which have sought to increase the ability of previously excluded
voices from taking their place in the ‘conversation of humankind’, and,
14 D. Misgeld, ‘Poetry, Dialogue and Negotiation: Liberal Culture and Conservative
Politics in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Thought’, in K. Wright, Festivals of Interpretation: Essays
on Hans–Georg Gadamer’s Work (Albany: SUNY, 1990), pp. 136–60, p. 171.
15 Ibid., p. 173.
186
more specifically, in the political processes of modern states. In so far as

Misgeld is correct, then Gadamer’s philosophy practises certain exclu-
sions and blindnesses as a result of its emphasis on understanding, and
is in need of supplementation.
What these reflections on the relation of philosophical hermeneutics
to power suggest is that, with one exception, philosophical hermeneu-
tics has not been directed towards an understanding of the obstacles
to achieving dialogue and to the realisation of the type of solidarity in
which practical reasoning can flourish. Richard Bernstein argues that
philosophical hermeneutics must address the question of ‘what it is
that blocks and prevents such dialogue, and what is to be done, “what
is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now” to make such
a genuine dialogue a concrete reality’.16 In philosophical hermeneutics
the investigation into how communication may be encouraged, and into
what features of human social life might prevent the realisation of dis-
cursive communities, has been limited to the critique of the dominance
of techne or instrumental rationality, in the modern world. Gadamer’s
primary aim has been to challenge the idea of ‘planning reason’ or tech-
nical instrumental rationality, first in the form of historicism and later in
the form of ‘social science’ based on natural sciences. He has indicated
how both these approaches stand in the way of ‘genuine’ understanding
but has said little about other forms of communication, practice or belief
which may prevent genuine understanding.
The investigation into these aspects of human communication has
been the focus of critical theory, with its emphasis on understanding
the practices of inclusion and exclusion over time. In directing our at-
tention to what it is that blocks dialogue and prevents a genuine act
of understanding, critical theory directs the attention of philosophical
hermeneutics away from the meaning of understanding and towards the
socio-cultural obstacles to understanding. As Bernstein puts it, critical
theory reminds us that ‘[I]f the possibility (of dialogue) is to be more than
an empty “ought”, and if it is to be concretely embodied in social prac-
tices, this requires a transformation of the material conditions that block
and distort communication’.17 This is indeed a necessary step towards
the creation of the conditions for practical reasoning and solidarity in the
16R. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, p. 163.

17Ibid., p. 190. Bernstein’s point is that investigation into these material conditions requires
going beyond, or outside, the philosophical hermeneutic concern with meaning alone.
187
modern international order, and in so far as philosophical hermeneutics

ignores, or is uninterested in, these questions then it remains insufficient
in itself. Philosophical hermeneutics, therefore, requires supplementing
with the insights and interests of other approaches, such as critical the-
ory, which do direct attention to the obstacles to dialogue.
One final comment can be made, and which should not be forgotten
in this context, is that where philosophical hermeneutics and critical
theory differ in this regard, is at the level of epistemological and cog-
nitive obstacles to understanding. As we have seen, from Habermas’
perspective, one of these obstacles to genuine communication is the
persistence of conventional consciousness: that is, of consciousness tied
to tradition. Philosophical hermeneutics, it has been argued, does not
see tradition itself as an epistemological obstacle to communication. For
Habermas, achieving a universal communication community requires
the removal of the epistemological obstacles as well as the sociological
ones. Gadamer does not agree that tradition forms an obstacle in the
way Habermas argues, therefore, there is no need to reject tradition per
se, only those prejudices which prevent the achievement of a fusion of
horizons.
Philosophical hermeneutics and deconstruction

Critical theorists have not been alone in their criticisms of philosoph-
ical hermeneutics and its ‘rehabilitation of tradition and prejudice’.
From the position of the poststructuralism of Jacques Derrida, philo-
sophical hermeneutics seems the heir to an outdated and anachronistic
logocentrism.18 In 1981 Derrida and Gadamer met in an arranged en-
counter in Paris which, in tone as much as substance, revealed a great
deal about their respective philosophies and the absence or presence of
common ground between them. The following discussion briefly out-
lines the substance of this ‘encounter’, in order to highlight what was
revealed about the relevant similarities and differences between philo-
sophical hermeneutics and Derrida’s deconstruction.19
18 See also for instance the oversimplified contribution by Caputo in D. P. Michelfelder and
R. E. Palmer (eds.), Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer–Derrida Encounter (Albany:
SUNY, 1989).
19 See ibid. For an interesting and illuminating discussion of the relationship between
Derrida and Gadamer see also F. R. Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross Cultural
Encounter (Albany: SUNY,1996); and D. C. Hoy, The Critical Circle (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978).
188
The most important point made by Derrida against Gadamer is that

we should question the philosophical hermeneutic emphasis on soli-
darity, agreement and continuity. This questioning of the very telos of
philosophical hermeneutics, at face value, suggests an absolute limit to
its ambitions. However, rather than suggesting a strict dichotomy be-
tween radically different projects, Derrida’s position also serves to di-
rect attention to otherwise backgrounded aspects of understanding and
communication. Derrida’s deconstructive approach provides a crucial
difference of emphasis which serves both to supplement philosophi-
cal hermeneutics and remind it of the limits of understanding. In this
sense deconstruction, by emphasising the obstacles to and limits of un-
derstanding, helps contribute to the goal of a dialogical community, in
which a primary aim is the recognition and awareness of difference and
‘otherness’.
In many ways philosophical hermeneutics has more in common with
poststructuralism and deconstruction than it does with Habermasian
critical theory. Philosophical hermeneutics and poststructuralism both
reject Habermas’ problematic and ambiguous references to objectivity
and the ideal of a social science in favour of a more thoroughly interpre-
tive discourse. In this sense they are more fully hermeneutic and anti-
foundationalist than critical theory. And it is this which had resulted
in Gadamer occasionally being referred to as postmodern or poststruc-
turalist. However, despite these similarities, significant differences do
remain.
In his response to Gadamer’s Paris paper ‘Text and Interpretation’,
Derrida posed three brief questions. The first concerned Gadamer’s
passing mention of ‘good will towards the text’. Derrida suggested
Gadamer’s use of this term signified a deeper issue in hermeneutics.
He asked: ‘[D]oes not this way of speaking, in its very necessity, be-
long to a particular epoch, namely that of a metaphysics of the will?’20
His obvious intention here is to suggest that philosophical hermeneu-
tics remains within what he sees as the problematic horizon of meta-
physics. This question addresses Derrida’s concern with logocentrism
and metaphysics and the aporias involved in attempting somehow to
think beyond these concepts and preoccupations. In this context Derrida
attempted to demonstrate how, even in those who think they are escap-
ing metaphysics [Gadamer/Heidegger], metaphysics persists. And, in
20J. Derrida ‘Three Questions to Hans-Georg Gadamer’, in Michelfelder and Palmer,
Dialogue and Deconstruction, p. 53.
189
this particular case, the search for meaning and truth, even understand-
ing, is a continuation of the metaphysics of presence.21
Derrida’s particular problem with Gadamer, it would seem, is
Gadamer’s continuation of the project of the ‘hermeneutics of Being’
which, he argued, Heidegger later abandoned. Returning to his question
to Gadamer, this particular charge relates to interpretation of Heidegger
from different periods and in particular, to Heidegger’s interpretation
of Nietzsche. Derrida criticises Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche and
argues instead that Nietzsche did more to disrupt metaphysics than
Heidegger’s search for Being. Derrida sees Nietzsche as going further
in destroying metaphysics than Heidegger, precisely because Nietzsche
reveals meaning as ‘the will to meaning’. That is, he reveals meaning to
be nothing other than the play of power without any hidden essence,
or truth, to conceal or to be revealed. Nietzsche, like Gadamer, remains
within a metaphysics of the will but does more to reach out of it because
he emphasises the arbitrary and the disruptive. Derrida wants to argue
that Heidegger, Nietzsche and others are still caught by metaphysics,
but he also wants to argue that it is an aporia that can’t be escaped; so
he therefore acknowledges that he can’t escape it either:
[T]here is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in
order to shake metaphysics. We have no language – no syntax and
no lexicon – which is foreign to this history; we can pronounce no
single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into
the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it
seeks to contest.22
In his question to Gadamer, Derrida can be understood as reminding
Gadamer that philosophical hermeneutics is also caught in this aporia.23
21 Derrida’s critique of Metaphysics is, according to Bernstein, a critique of ‘the history of
the search for a series of substitutions of center for center by which we seek a “reassuring
certitude”, a “metaphysical comfort”, . . .’, R. Bernstein, The New Constellation (Oxford:
Polity, 1991), p. 175. Metaphysics is dangerous because ‘. . . it also (always) establishes
ethical–ontological hierarchies in which there is subordination and violence . . . (Derrida’s)
critique, his protest against metaphysics is primarily ethical–political. It is the invidious
and pernicious tendency toward hierarchy, subordination and repression that informs his
rhetoric and tropes.’ Ibid. p. 175.
22 J. Derrida, Limited Inc. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 183.
23 As David Hoy puts it ‘Hermeneutics may not think of itself as a version of metaphysics,
but the hermeneutic desire to decipher the univocal meaning of the text may mirror
the desire of metaphysics for a complete and comprehensive account of the meaning
of everything, for the truth of the whole and the unity of the world.’ Hoy, The Critical
Circle, p. 56. As Gadamer himself puts it, ‘. . . in taking up and continuing hermeneutics
as philosophy, [I] would appear at best as the lost sheep in the dried up pastures of
metaphysics’, H. G. Gadamer, ‘Letter to Dallmayr’, in Michelfelder and Palmer, Dialogue
and Deconstruction, p. 94.
190
But Derrida also wants to resist it and to challenge metaphysics, and

perhaps develop a ‘quite different way of thinking about texts’.24 For
Derrida, this quite different way of thinking in the face of such continu-
ity, is to emphasise and disclose rupture. This different way of thinking
informs his subsequent questions to Gadamer.
Derrida’s second question concerned what he argued was Gadamer’s
intention to ‘integrate psychoanalysis into general hermeneutics’. In
such a situation he asks: ‘[W]hat to do about good will – the condi-
tion for consensus even in disagreement – . . . what would good will
mean in psychoanalysis . . . ?’25 This question directs our attention to-
wards that aspect of the psychoanalytic process in which the aim is to
understand, not what the other wants to be understood, but exactly
that which the patient wishes to conceal and which they don’t want
to be understood. In this case it would seem that psychoanalysis re-
quires a degree of bad will or suspicion. As he goes on to suggest, for
Derrida, Nietzsche’s approach is a better form of hermeneutics in this re-
gard. Derrida argues that the Nietzschean approach to meaning and the
possibility of understanding is better placed for asking the necessary
type questions for understanding this situation. Does not good will,
Derrida suggests, cover up what is not said, what is hidden and not
acknowledged?
The third and most important question (for this enquiry) asked:
[W]hether one speaks of consensus or of misunderstanding (as in

Schleiermacher), one needs to ask whether the precondition for Ver-
stehen, far from being the continuity of rapport . . . is not rather the in-
terruption of rapport, a certain rapport of interruption, the suspending
of all mediation?26
This question is a more direct statement of this same proposition: ‘Does

real understanding [Verstehen] or knowledge come about through good-
will or through rupture, through consensus or through dispersion, and
through discontinuity?’ Understanding, it would seem, can only come
about by shattering any instance of agreement and showing what it
hides and excludes.
Derrida’s position here can be better understood if related to his dis-
cussion of the undecidability of the text. Derridean deconstruction im-
plies that any attempt to find meaning is/must be an attempt to establish
the straightforward relationship between signified and signifier and, as
24 Derrida, ‘Three Questions’, p. 54. 25 Ibid., p. 53. 26 Ibid.
191
such, is rooted in metaphysics. It must be an attempt to decide on a

final, true and definitive meaning in isolation from other meanings, a
meaning in its essence. What deconstruction attempts to show is that
such attempts both hide and reveal the very instability of meaning and
of language:
this is the possibility on which I want to insist: the possibility of every

mark, spoken or written, and which constitutes every mark in writing
before and outside of every Horizon of semio-linguistic communica-
tion in writing, which is to say in the possibility of its functioning
being cut-off at a certain point, from its ‘original’ desire-to-say-what-
one-means (voulour dire) and from its participation in a saturable and
constraining context. Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or writ-
ten (in the current sense of this opposition) on a small or large unit, can be
cited, put between quotation marks; in so doing it can break with every given
context, engendering an infinity of new contexts in a manner which is ab-
solutely illimitable. This does not imply that the mark is valid outside of a
context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center
or absolute anchoring (ancrage).27
Because language only ‘refers’ to itself then meanings are arbitrary or

undecidable, words can come to mean something completely differ-
ent from what may have been their original usage or intention. What
Derrida argues is that words only get their meaning in relation to each
other in a play of differences, and not by reference to an external reality
or some essential conceptual kernel:
the signified concept is never present in and of itself, in a sufficient

presence that would refer only to itself. Essentially and lawfully, every
concept is inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers
to the other, to other concepts, by means of the systematic play of
differences.28
Thus meanings and words are not, in Rorty’s phrase ‘the mirror of
nature’ nor the representation in language of something else. But the
relationship of words to each other is not overdetermined by tradition,
or by one particular context. Instead, Derrida is suggesting an ability of
meanings to become detached from certain contexts and attached to new
ones. Thus Derrida emphasises the infinite flexibility of language and the
limits of tradition to determine the context of meaning. Disrupture and
undecidability emphasise, exacerbate and encourage this dimension of
27 Derrida, Limited Inc., p. 12. 28 Ibid., p. 11.
192
language and meaning. In this way, the issues of undecidability and of

rupture and discontinuity are related, the outcome of the undecidabil-
ity of texts is the end of the hermeneutic search for Meaning (Verstehen)
as something transferred in its essence through tradition. Therefore, for
Derrida, undecidability means that rupture is as, if not more, significant
than continuity. This emphasis on undecidability and rupture suggests
that the type of understanding and communication sought by philo-
sophical hermeneutics is impossible. Indeed, because meaning cannot
be fixed, it suggests that understanding is something to be mistrusted.
However, to portray philosophical hermeneutics as blind to rupture
and discontinuity is misleading. The depiction of understanding in a
fusion of horizons also involves an element of displacement. Gadamer
affirms ‘that understanding is always an understanding-differently
(andersverstehen). What is pushed aside or dislocated when my word
reaches another person, and especially when a text reaches its reader,
can never be fixed in a rigid identity.’29
In a sense, philosophical hermeneutics and deconstruction focus on
different sides of the same coin; the aporia which lies at the heart of
linguisticality; the capacity of language to both enable and hinder com-
munication. The question which they both explore, as Gadamer puts it,
is:
What, in the final analysis, is linguisticality? Is it a bridge or barrier? Is
it a bridge built of things that are the same for each self over which one
communicates with the other over the flowing stream of otherness?
Or is it a barrier that limits our self abandonment and that cuts us
off from the possibility of ever completely expressing ourselves and
communicating with others?30
What is revealed in Derrida’s questions to Gadamer is not necessar-

ily any radical difference over the nature of language. Philosophical
29 Gadamer, ‘Letter to Dallmayr’, p. 96.

30 Gadamer, ‘Text and Interpretation’, in Michelfelder and Palmer, Dialogue and
Deconstruction, p. 27. In so far as Gadamer has an answer to this and where he can be
seen to differ from Derrida, concerns the precondition of interruption. As he says in his
reply to Derrida: ‘Now certainly I would not want to say that the solidarities that bind hu-
man beings together and make them partners in a dialogue always are sufficient to enable
them to achieve understanding and total mutual agreement. Just the same would apply
with regard to the inner dialogue the soul has with itself. Of course we encounter limits
again and again; we speak past each other and are even at cross purposes with ourselves.
But in my opinion we could not do this at all if we had not travelled a long way together, perhaps
without even acknowledging it to ourselves. All human solidarity, all social stability, presupposes
this.’ Gadamer, ‘Destruktion and Deconstruction’, in Michelfelder and Palmer, Dialogue
and Deconstruction, p. 57.
193
hermeneutics and deconstructionist poststructuralism share a view

of the linguisticality of the human world and a conception that this
means that knowledge is always interpretation and is in question. In-
stead, what comes to light in the discussion is the importance of both
continuity/discontinuity, understanding/misunderstanding and good-
will/suspicion or rupture. Derrida’s last question best signifies the
difference that makes a difference in this regard. At the risk of over-
simplifying the issues, it can be suggested that where Gadamer sees
understanding as requiring continuity, Derrida looks for and brings
out discontinuities and ruptures which also heighten understanding.
However, while not denying significant differences, it can be suggested
that the most productive way to read these two positions is not as mutu-
ally exclusive and radically opposed orientations, but rather, as different
and complementary approaches to the possibility of understanding.31
James Risser has characterised the differences between Gadamer and
Derrida as representative of the ‘two faces of Socrates’. Socrates, Risser
argues, ‘appears on the scene not to answer but to question, to be vigilant
against unquestioned authority that would confuse what appears to be
with what really is . . . Socrates takes up this questioning of others in
the humility of his own ignorance.’32 This questioning stance has two
functions, represented by the two faces: one is the posing of ceaseless
questions and the shaking up of accepted beliefs, the questioning of
prejudices and unmasking of power through reason; the other is the use
of critical questioning to bring about a better understanding, a greater
wisdom, a more compelling interpretation. Thus, the two faces are that
of the gadfly, who seeks to disrupt all settled knowledge through a
vigilant questioning and ‘the midwife who seeks to bring wisdom to
birth’.33
The approach of Derrida, Risser argues, is characteristic of the first
face. In seeking disrupture, Derrida reminds us that there are no ulti-
mate assurances of truth. He seeks to confront those who claim to know,
or to be able absolutely to present something as truth, with a questioning
attitude which disrupts this stance and reminds them of the tenuousness
of their claim to truth and their finitude. Gadamer, on the other hand,
31 Such is the interpretation offered by John D. Caputo which relies on an oversimpli-

fied account of philosophical hermeneutics to present a very dichotomous reading of the
relationship between the two which seems rather to fly against the strategy of rejecting
binaries.
32 James Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other (Albany: SUNY, 1997), p. 169.
33 Ibid., p. 171.
194
represents another face of Socrates, the one which uses questioning as

means of coming to agreement, or at least a better understanding, on
a subject, and thereby achieving a sort of wisdom. Questioning and
conversation in Gadamer’s Socratic stance not only subject dogmatism
(doxa) to reason but also help create common ground, or solidarity, in
conversation. Risser argues that both the faces of Socrates require a cer-
tain vigilance. The first face requires the vigilance of criticism of ultimate
truths, while the second requires the ‘vigilance in the conversation that
we are . . .’,34 a vigilant attention which seeks that which is common and
‘the continuing effort to find common ground’.35
Risser’s characterisation captures much of what is important in both
Gadamer and Derrida, as well as the intertwining and interdependence
of their approaches in a common though multifaceted exploration of
the meaning of reason and communication. This identification of the
two faces of Socrates leads to a recognition of the mutually illuminating
aspects of poststructuralism, philosophical hermeneutics and critical
theory. If we understand the issues involved this way, then it becomes
possible to see how a mutually illuminating relationship exists between
these different philosophies which may help to contribute to the devel-
opment of a thin dialogic cosmopolitanism capable of doing justice to
difference.
The task of reciprocal illumination

The arguments presented here and in the previous chapters have been
constructed with the intent of demonstrating not only the achievements
of the various approaches but also the manner in which they can be
seen to have incompletely met the goals, or realised certain of the val-
ues they pursue. The purpose of introducing philosophical hermeneu-
tics has been to contribute to those achievements and to provide a
means for remedying some of the lingering residues of assimilationist
relations in the existing field of work. This chapter has begun to argue for
the ways in which critical theory and poststructuralism are both capa-
ble of illuminating certain tendencies in each other and in philosophical
hermeneutics. Such a process of reciprocal illumination is necessary if
a more complete account of ‘good’ conversation, which aims to achieve
justice to difference, is to be sought and achieved. The most important
34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., p. 172.
195
matters in which such a reciprocal illumination can be achieved can be

summarised as follows.
In regard to critical theory it has been argued, philosophical
hermeneutics does not concern itself with examining the material or so-
cietal conditions in which dialogue can be undertaken. Critical theory, on
the other hand, can invoke its Marxist heritage to suggest that there are
material and social forms of inequality which actively serve to exclude
others from conversation. What is required then, is the identification
and removal of these obstacles in order to facilitate maximum inclusion
in conversation. Such concerns have not been central to philosophical
hermeneutics and serve to correct its emphasis on the ontological and
philosophic obstacles to understanding.
In regard to poststructuralism, it is as a response to the Derridean
reading of Gadamer that the aspect of Gadamer’s thought most ex-
pressly concerned with the ‘voice of the other’ has been brought to
the fore. The poststructuralist emphasis on rupture and discontinuity,
and the suspicion of the search for consensus, also serve to illuminate
and balance the reading of Gadamer which emphasises the synthetic
aspect of understanding, as against the agonal and incomplete aspect
of understanding, and the ‘irretrievability’ of the other’s meaning. The
readings of Risser, Dallmayr and others have emphasised the compo-
nent of philosophical hermeneutics, in which understanding is always
also ‘understanding-differently’.36
Poststructuralism and critical theory, together, also illuminate the ab-
sence of an account of power in philosophical hermeneutics. They illu-
minate how agreement and consensus may reflect relations of power,
inequality and ‘distorted’ communication, rather than genuine mutual
understanding. Likewise, the poststructuralist emphasis on difference
and exclusion serves to continually pose the questions of ‘who’ and
‘what’ are excluded, and why, to the participants of any philosophi-
cal hermeneutic conversation, as well as in relation to any ‘fusion of
horizons’ which may emerge from it. In these ways, poststructuralism
and critical theory illuminate the possibilities for assimilation in the
hermeneutic account of conversation as a fusion of horizons.
However, in addition to illuminating certain limitations of the philo-
sophical hermeneutic project, critical theory and poststructuralism have
also served to illuminate each other. For example, it is clear that
36 Gadamer, ‘Letter to Dallmayr’, in Michelfelder and Palmer, Dialogue and Deconstruction,

p. 96.
196
Linklater’s continuing development of the critical theoretical agenda

has been deeply influenced by poststructuralist thought. Nowhere is this
more evident than in The Transformation of Political Community, where he
argues that the work of Rorty, Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard add crucial
dimensions to the project of a cosmopolitan community. In particular,
Foucault’s enquiry into the construction of difference and marginalisa-
tion contributes to the goal of facilitating inclusion, by highlighting the
processes in which different societies ‘construct and exclude the moral
other’. According to Linklater, Foucault raised the question and pro-
vided new ways of understanding how:
societies construct self-constituting dichotomies between the normal

and the abnormal . . . how as the dominant understanding of rationality
comes to be established, societies construct the ‘other’ who does not
belong and who becomes the object of strategies of marginalisation,
normalisation and control.37
For Linklater, understanding these processes is crucial to moving be-

yond practices of unjustifiable exclusion and towards the realisation of
cosmopolitan community that does justice to difference.
Another area in which poststructuralist concerns have made them-
selves felt in Linklater’s project, stems from the critique of totalisa-
tion, which draws attention to the danger of convergence or assimila-
tion in the cosmopolitan community. Linklater’s defence of the manner
in which discourse ethics is inclusive of a wide range of differences,
and without requiring the annihilation of particular or parochial iden-
tities, in addition to his acknowledgement of the never completed di-
mensions of conversation, derives in part from a desire to counter-
act the totalising elements of cosmopolitanism. In this fashion, certain
tendencies in the critical theoretical project have been illuminated by
poststructuralism.38
From the perspective of critical theory, poststructuralism is also in
need of illumination. According to Linklater, the poststructuralist cele-
bration of diversity is situated within an unacknowledged universalism,
whereby difference is hailed as a universal good. In so doing, poststruc-
turalism rests on certain unacknowledged and undefended universal
37 A. Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, 2nd edn (London:
Macmillan, 1990).
38 To appreciate the full extent of Linklater’s engagement with poststructuralism see A.
Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity, 1997).
197
claims. Linklater argues that, as a result, much of poststructuralism

tends to avoid
the issues of deciding what can and what cannot – what ought and what
ought not to – be universalised. It has failed to raise the key question
of how the defence of universality and the claim for difference might
be woven into a single theoretical perspective.39
While the poststructuralist preoccupation with difference is needed

to counteract the assimilative tendencies of cosmopolitanism, from
Linklater’s position, the particularist and relativist tendencies of post-
structuralism need to be balanced by the Kantian preoccupation with
universalism. From this perspective the task of a coherent account of
community in IR requires the balancing of the needs of the universal and
the particular. Likewise, philosophical hermeneutics illuminates those
elements of poststructuralism which neglect or dismiss continuity, un-
derstanding, and the possibility of solidarity. Philosophical hermeneu-
tics reflects and emphasises the manner in which language is a bridge,
as well as a barrier, to understanding.
Finally, however, in addition to those insights which philosophical
hermeneutics supplies and which have been outlined above, there is
one other dimension, so far unstated, but perhaps of comprehensive
importance. In The New Constellations Richard Bernstein argued that
what perhaps best illuminates the meaning of poststructuralism and
postmodernism can be characterised as their distinctive mood or Stim-
mung. He suggested that
it is best to use the expression ‘modern/postmodern’ to signify what
Heidegger calls a Stimmung, a mood – one which is amorphous, pro-
tean, and shifting but which nevertheless exerts a powerful influence
on the ways in which we think, act and experience.40
The distinctive Stimmung of poststructuralism/postmodernism is one

‘. . . of deconstruction, destabilisation, rupture and fracture – of resis-
tance to all forms of abstract totality, universalism, and rationalism’.41
It is this mood which can be detected in the face of Socrates represented
by Derrida.
In this vein, it can be suggested that it is the Stimmung of philosophical
hermeneutics which most distinguishes it from critical theory and post-
structuralism, but which also provides its greatest contribution to the
39 Linklater, Men and Citizens, p. 216. 40 Bernstein, The New Constellation, p. 11.
41 Ibid., p. 57.
198
mutual task of seeking a just world order. The Stimmung of philosophical

hermeneutics, which can be detected in the face of Socrates represented
by Gadamer, is one of reconciliation, understanding, solidarity and com-
munity. This Stimmung contrasts with the mood displayed in Socrates’
other face which expresses scepticism and is constitutive of both criti-
cal theory and poststructuralism. It was argued above that one aspect
common to critical theory and poststructuralist approaches is the task
of uncovering the lack of real agreement between differently situated
agents.42
This dimension of critical theory and poststructuralism emphasises
scepticism and the role of critique: they suggest an ever-vigilant and crit-
ical stance towards any assumed or given understandings and agree-
ments. In particular, one of the tasks of critical theory is to identify
agreements or understanding that rest on, for want of a better term,
false consciousness.43 Furthermore, some instances of poststructural-
ism also seem to argue that communication is impossible because any
understanding is always already an act of violence or assimilation.
If this is the case then the most important contribution that philosoph-
ical hermeneutics can make is to emphasise the possibility of continuity
and understanding. Where enlightenment or emancipatory approaches
seek or address disrupture, change and discontinuity, philosophical
hermeneutics also seeks meaning, understanding, continuity, stability
and coherence. As Gadamer concludes
[B]ut though the will of man is more than ever intensifying its criticism
of what has gone before to the point of becoming utopian or eschato-
logical consciousness, the hermeneutic consciousness seeks to confront
that will with something of the truth of remembrance: with what is still
and ever again real.44
42 Critical theory approaches the object of understanding with the goal of revealing that
which is taken to be true as untruth: ‘It is for this reason that every consensus, as the
outcome of an understanding of meaning, is, in principle, suspect of having been en-
forced through pseudo communication: in earlier days, people talked about delusion
when misunderstanding and self mis-understanding continued unaffected under the
appearance of factual agreement.’ J. Habermas, ‘The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality’,
in M. Gibbons, Interpreting Politics (New York University Press, 1987), p. 197.
43 As Gadamer notes the idea of false consciousness retains a presence in the critique of
ideology central to Habermas’ earlier work and by which he attempted to distinguish
critical theory from philosophical hermeneutics: ‘It is not only the neurotic patient who,
in defence of his neurosis, suffers from systematically distorted communication. Indeed
every social consciousness that finds itself in agreement with the ruling social system,
thereby supporting its coercive character, also suffers fundamentally from such system-
atically distorted communication. This is the presupposition, itself never discussed, of
Habermas’ argumentation.’ Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 279.
44 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. xxxviii.
199
Or, in another vein, he states ‘[I] am concerned with the fact that the dis-
placement of human reality never goes so far that no forms of solidarity
exist any longer. Plato saw this very well: there is no city so corrupted
that it does not realize something of the true city . . .’45 The Stimmung of
philosophical hermeneutics, therefore, is one of ‘good will’ and open-
ness towards the possibilities of the other, be it a text, an individual, the
past or a culture. In this way it balances critical theory and poststruc-
turalism by presenting an account of understanding that emphasises
the possibilities for the exchange of meaning and mutual comprehension
between different agents. The pursuit of a conception of universal com-
munity which does justice to difference requires both these moments.
It requires both the awareness of discontinuity and misunderstanding
and the possibility of continuity and understanding. Indeed, it is the
interaction between these two moments which makes for productive
conversation and the possibility of learning.
Conversation and dialogue revisited

Having outlined the philosophical hermeneutic contribution to the
project of community in international relations, and having reflected on
how critical theory, poststructuralism and philosophical hermeneutics
all serve to provide mutually illuminating perspectives on the possibil-
ities for understanding and conversation, the task now is to revisit the
model of conversation itself and to attempt to spell out the conclusions
that can be drawn from the above discussions.
The first task is to identify some of the shared goals, themes and as-
pirations common to the literature surveyed above.46 The discussion of
the mutually illuminating dimension of critical theory, poststructural-
ism and philosophical hermeneutics outlined here leads to the con-
clusion that they should not be understood as necessarily conflicting
approaches.
The following discussion briefly outlines the manner in which these
approaches converge on some common ground in relation to the issues
of conversation and community. In this, it depicts the manner in which
they can be understood as attempts to explore a similar problematic:
how to approach the tension between community and difference?, or
45 Gadamer, ‘A letter from Hans-Georg Gadamer’, p. 269.

46 The areas of common concern identified here by no means constitute an exhaustive list.
They are merely what appear to me to be the most relevant in terms of the investigation
being undertaken here.
200
alternatively, how is it possible to achieve justice through recognition in

a world of differently constituted agents?
As a corollary to a commitment to communication, there is a general
consensus that good dialogue is not compatible with the maintenance
of hard and fast boundaries between individuals, communities, states
or cultures. While pragmatic considerations may arise which justify the
construction of boundaries in certain circumstances, boundaries should
not, in principle, prevent dialogue and discourse. There is also a clear
sense in which the principle of communication works actively to sub-
vert such boundaries and the exclusionary and unequal relationships
they maintain. Unlike theories of justice or community which justify
themselves according to pre-existing shared values, physical proxim-
ity, bloodlines, history or family, the emphasis on dialogue and dis-
cursive construction of community is inherently more universalistic,
and inclusive, because it seeks justification in a universal capacity or
potential.
The questioning of boundaries in philosophical hermeneutics, post-
structuralism and critical theory is also consistent with the common
hermeneutic starting point. A hermeneutic emphasis on meaning
amounts to recognition of the social construction of reality or, in
Linklaters terms, the recognition that social forms are not dictated by na-
ture, but are, rather, the effect and consequence of human volition. This
recognition allows for a critical and questioning attitude to the bound-
aries which divide the species. This concern with critical appraisal can
be witnessed in the account of autonomy in critical theory, the idea of
deconstruction and disturbance in poststructuralism, or the idea of the
critical appropriation of the historical horizon of tradition, in philosoph-
ical hermeneutics. In this way, a commitment to a dialogic community
that seeks justice to difference necessarily involves a critical disposition
towards the boundaries of moral community.
The questioning of boundaries, and emphasis on critique, lead di-
rectly to another common theme: reason. By their own accounts, critical
theory, poststructuralism and philosophical hermeneutics all are con-
cerned to rescue reason from the idea and practice of techne (technical
instrumental rationality). There is a significant sense in which they share
a preoccupation with the conditions under which non-instrumental
reasoning can occur, and with expanding the realms in which reason
and critique, however defined, can operate. However, the common en-
gagement in the critique of technical and instrumental rationality does
not preclude the development of a variety of conceptions of reason, and
201
its relationship to agency. In all three meditations on communication,

justice, agency and practice are determined by the possibility of reason,
and the definition of reasoning agents. The development of forms of
community in which reason, and, therefore, freedom, can be exercised
and flourish, underlies the critical dimension of these approaches, and
supports their critiques of the inscription of absolute and sovereign
boundaries. Where they differ, from the strictly universalist form
provided by Habermas, to the fluid interpretations and practices in
poststructuralist writings, is in their understandings of what reason
actually amounts to, how it is defined, what it can achieve and how
it is practised. In particular, it is the relationship between reason,
agency and praxis that helps make for the key distinctions between
philosophical hermeneutics, critical theory and poststructuralism.
Thus, it can be suggested that critical theory, philosophical hermeneu-
tics and poststructuralism all share a desire to increase or expand the
realms in which conversation can take place and ‘reason’ be exer-
cised, but differ in their understanding of the meaning and purpose
of dialogue.
Beyond this common ground the most significant area of agreement
that emerges is the confirmation of the centrality of discourse and con-
versation in realising a relationship of justice based on recognition.
Critical theory, philosophical hermeneutics and poststructuralism all
concur that recognition through dialogue, in which the other is seen to
be equal and yet different, is an essential component of doing justice to
difference. In conversation, the other is allowed to express and articu-
late their individuality and particularity. It can be suggested that this
apparent consensus stems from the shared interpretive or hermeneutic
orientation of critical theory, philosophical hermeneutics and poststruc-
turalism, and the recognition of the centrality of language this entails.
This amounts to an acceptance that human lives are constructed in terms
of meaning in important ways. Stemming from this acceptance, justice
is achieved by the recognition of the particularities of individual or col-
lective meanings. Conversation, therefore, becomes the obvious place
in which recognition is achieved or aspired to. While different perspec-
tives make different contributions to the understanding of the meaning
of dialogue, and emphasise different aspects of communication, they
nonetheless concur that communication, rather than coexistence or as-
similation, is central to any concept of a just community.
Linklater, for instance, has identified a recognition of good dialogue
in the work of Lyotard, and especially in his Amnesty International
202
Lectures in 1993. There, Lyotard emphasised that ‘all human beings have
an equal right to take part in dialogue and to “establish their community
by contract” using “reason and debate” ’.47
Likewise, a commitment to open dialogue and to certain rules of en-
gagement in conversation, can be seen in Derrida’s writings. In particu-
lar, in the afterword to Limited Inc., which is subtitled ‘Towards an Ethic
of Discussion’, Derrida suggests how discussion can or should be con-
ducted. This piece aims ‘to serve as an invitation to others, in the course
of a discussion that is both open and yet to come’.48 Indeed the value
of an open dialogue informs much of Derrida’s work, and helps us un-
derstand the aim of deconstructive readings, which is the identification
and recognition of the role of violence in communication and discus-
sion. The recognition of violence, he argues, will not necessarily remove
it entirely, but may nonetheless serve to make for a less violent discus-
sion. The afterword draws attention to that aspect of his work which is
directed towards identifying the violence in academic discourse:
[T]he violence political or otherwise at work in academic discussion or
in intellectual discussions generally, must be acknowledged. In saying
this I am not advocating that such violence be unleashed or simply
accepted. I am above all asking that we try to recognise and analyze
it as best we can in its various forms: . . . And if as I believe violence
remains in fact (almost) ineradicable, its analysis and the most refined
ingenious account of its conditions will be the least violent gestures,
perhaps even nonviolent, and in any case, those which contribute most
to transforming the legal ethical–political rules: in the university and
outside the university.49
In this way, there is evidence to suggest that Derrida also appeals to the
Socratic ideal of a nonviolent discussion, in which all participants aspire
to speak and to be heard without violence. His focus is on the violences
which accompany any mode of expression. This aim appears to be com-
patible with the goal of envisioning a form of inclusive conversation that
allows all to speak and be heard free from violence. Therefore, there is in
Derrida’s work a commitment to an idea of communication as freedom
and justice to difference, through openness in dialogue, even if at the
same time he problematises the rules of any particular dialogue. In this
way Derrida asks: what does it mean to speak freely and what obstacles
are put in the way of free thought and discussion?
47 Lyotard quoted in Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, p. 98.

48 Derrida, Limited Inc. p. 111. 49 Ibid., p. 112.
203
Further support for an ethics of good dialogue can also be found in

some comments made by Foucault. When asked why he doesn’t engage
in polemics, he answered that polemics essentially deny the equality of
those to whom they are addressed, and the goal of mutual truth seeking.
He states that a conversation is preferable over polemic because
In the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal
elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in
the discussion . . . The person asking the questions is merely exercising
the right that has been given him: to remain unconvinced, to perceive
a contradiction, to require more information, to emphasise different
postulates, to point out faulty reasoning etc. As for the person answer-
ing the questions, he too exercises a right . . . by the logic of his own
discourse he is tied to what he has said earlier, and by the acceptance
of dialogue he is tied to the questioning of the other . . . The polemicist,
on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in
advance and will never agree to question . . . the person he confronts is
not a partner in the search for the truth, but an adversary, an enemy who
is wrong, who is harmful and whose very existence constitutes a threat.
For him then, the game does not consist of recognising this person as a
subject having the right to speak, but of abolishing him, as interlocutor
from any possible dialogue; and his final objective will be, not to come
as close as possible to a difficult truth, but to bring about the triumph of
the just cause he has been manifestly upholding from the beginning.50
In referring to the rights of speakers and the confrontation with truth,

Foucault reflects an understanding of conversation as a mutual pro-
cess of truth seeking, in which self and other are accorded equal rights.
Therefore, while this statement cannot necessarily be said to prove that
Foucault endorses the idea of universal communication community, it
nonetheless resonates with the words of both Gadamer and Habermas.
The understanding of dialogue as a means of achieving recognition
and equality between participants can be said to be common to a num-
ber of approaches concerned with achieving justice to difference. This
common understanding of dialogue argues that in dialogue all par-
ticipants must be free to speak and to be heard; no position can be
excluded or judged prior to its articulation in conversation. By partici-
pating in discourse in this way agents are recognised and their equality
and difference simultaneously confirmed. A sense that no agent should
be excluded, that arguments cannot be judged prior to the articulation
50M. Foucault, ‘Polemic, Politics and Knowledge’, in P. Rabinow, The Foucault Reader
(London: Penguin, 1984), pp. 381–2.
204
and that understanding involves being open to the possibility that one
might learn from the other, that they may have a truth to communi-
cate in regard to a common matter of discussion, are all components
of a model of dialogue which seems to have broad support from a
variety of perspectives, including those which are critical of the philo-
sophical hermeneutic project. In this way, the criticisms of philosophical
hermeneutics discussed here do not necessarily amount to an opposi-
tion to the possibility of developing a thin dialogical cosmopolitanism
based on its model.
Conclusion
The recreation of the Aristotelian polis on the global scale is a common
aim of philosophical hermeneutics and critical theory. Habermas and
Gadamer share an understanding that the chief virtue of the Greek polis
was the aspiration to develop a realm in which discussion, persuasion
and argument could occur free from the threat of violence. However,
proceeding from this general recognition, larger differences emerge re-
garding what counts as good discussion and what the discussion should
be oriented towards. Habermas, we have seen, has sought to redefine the
meaning of good conversation in terms of a universal communication
community, in which discussion relates only to principles of obligation.
Although the meaning of justice was debated in the Athenian polis and
problematised by its philosophers, the deontological account given by
Habermas would be largely alien to them. In contrast, the account of
conversation oriented towards understanding and associated norms of
practical reason provided by Gadamer would, on first glance, appear
to be more familiar to its ancient Greek predecessors. To this extent,
philosophical hermeneutics suggests a form of neo-Aristotelianism.
However, the form of this return to Aristotle provided by Gadamer,
is not one which refutes the goal of a universal communication
community. On the contrary, philosophical hermeneutics is explicitly
universal in scope and ambition. Philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer
argues, seeks to create a universal realm in which practical reasoning
or phronesis can work again. The virtues of the Aristotelian polis, and
the virtue of practical reasoning, he argues, are the most appropriate
for the challenges facing the culturally and normatively fractured
international realm. Philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer suggests,
is essential to the expansion of human solidarity and the expansion of
‘we’ feeling. In this way, philosophical hermeneutics shares a concern
205
with the expansion of human community and the creation of universal

communication community with critical theory, while emphasising
different aspects of conversation and communication.
The overall argument thus far can now be summed up as follows. For
philosophical hermeneutics, the telos of conversation is understanding
oriented towards agreement, understood as solidarity. Understanding,
conceived this way, requires a conversation in which differently situated
participants engage in a process of question and answer in relation to a
subject matter of conversation. The participants in conversation, in order
to achieve recognition must be open to the possibility of learning, and
recognising the possibility of truth in what the other participants have to
say. Conversation oriented towards understanding, in the Gadamerian
sense, is not necessarily agonal or argumentative. Instead, in dialogue
participants attempt to come to share an understanding in relation to a
subject matter of conversation, and they do so by trying to strengthen
each other’s argument. Through this openness to the potential truth
communicated by the other, a form of equality is achieved without as-
similation. From a philosophical hermeneutic perspective, this is possi-
ble because of the situatedness of all linguistically constituted subjects
within traditions or horizons of meaning. The act of conversation also
brings about the basis of shared language, or horizon of meaning, as par-
ticipants come to reach an understanding on the subject matter. The un-
derstanding achieved does not necessarily involve the development of
substantive agreement, but may involve merely the coming to inhabit a
similar frame of reference, or coming better to understand the differences
between the respective horizons. However, no matter what the ‘out-
come’ in this sense, the deeper outcome is the enabling and experience
of solidarity between the discursive partners as they struggle to achieve
understanding. In the conversation oriented towards understanding, in
this sense, no topics of conversation can be ruled out a priori. Achieving
an understanding of another’s horizon requires being open to the entire
particularity of what it is the other has to say. In Benhabib’s terms, it
requires an openness toward both the ‘generalised’ and the ‘concrete’
dimensions of otherness. In this sense, the philosophical hermeneutic
model of conversation precedes the model of conversation outlined by
discourse ethics, which presupposes and requires a degree of human sol-
idarity, which its procedures cannot supply. As Habermas himself notes
[J]ustice conceived deontologically requires solidarity as its reverse

side . . . Justice concerns the equal freedoms of unique and self
206
determining individuals, while solidarity concerns the welfare of

consociates who are intimately linked in an intersubjectively shared
form of life – and thus also to the maintenance of the integrity of this
form of life itself. Moral norms cannot protect one without the other;
they cannot protect the equal rights and freedoms of the individuals
without protecting the welfare of one’s fellow man and of the commu-
nity to which the individuals belong.51
The hermeneutic conversation is oriented towards the creation of shared

meanings where possible, of a sense of human solidarity, in the ab-
sence of, and in anticipation of, more substantial agreement. The form
of conversation necessary for such solidarity building must of neces-
sity be thinner than the strictly deontological conversation outlined by
Habermas. The philosophical hermeneutic telos of understanding is bet-
ter suited to building solidarity, because it provides a broader definition
of conversation. The goal of communication is understanding; that is,
the coming to share aspects of a world-view. Of course, understanding
may not lead to agreement regarding concrete detail or belief, but in
the act of trying to understand or engage with the other in conversa-
tion oriented towards understanding, a different, thinner, shared un-
derstanding is delivered nonetheless. Through engaging in the goal of
understanding a common language or horizon is made possible. While
this common horizon cannot be guaranteed nor assured of permanence,
it nonetheless creates the possibility of further agreement or consensus
and solidarity.
The expansion of human solidarity is the necessary prerequisite for
the flourishing of practical reasoning understood as phronesis. That a
community in which practical reasoning of this type, involving the
mediation between universal and particular, reflection on questions of
justice and the good life, and the cultivation of a sense of human finitude
and openness towards others, can flourish provides the basis for a more
adequate relationship between identity and equality amongst diverse
human beings. Practical reasoning, as understood by Gadamer, is
the orientation towards political practice and community that is consis-
tent with the philosophical hermeneutic description of human being in
the world. The philosophical hermeneutic description of human ‘being
in the world’ is one which emphasises the finitude and plurality of hu-
man experience, while simultaneously recognising unity of the quality
51 J. Habermas, ‘Justice and Solidarity’ in M. Kelly (ed.), Hermeneutics and Critical Theory
in Ethics and Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 32–52, p. 47.
207
and capacity of linguisticality. In other words, the practice of phronesis

in the Aristotelian polis, as understood by Gadamer, is consistent with
linguisticality, which is both bridge and barrier to understanding.
The participants of conversation aspiring to universal inclusiveness
must always be mindful and attentive to those of their practices, values
and procedures which are exclusive or potentially exclusive. They must
also be mindful of the attempts to ‘close down’ and end conversation
and practices of practical reasoning. The thin cosmopolitan conversa-
tion concerned with achieving justice to difference must constantly be
concerned with increasing the inclusiveness of the conversation through
being forever open to new arguments, new modes of argument and alter-
native truths, but must also include moments of suspicion towards the
agreements reached. The recognition of human finitude, which is central
to both philosophical hermeneutics and poststructuralism, should be
cultivated and used to remind the participants of the limits of their own
understandings and of the possibility of new interpretations emerging.
Despite the concerns associated with the Kantian paradigm, and
the paradox of limitation and legislation associated with it, the model
of conversation and political community developed by philosophical
hermeneutics is one that is consistent with and which seeks to expand the
realm of human freedom. The exercise of practical reasoning in the ‘thin’
universal polis requires and embodies the ability of reasonable agents to
engage in free discussion. Conversation in which justice to difference is
achieved strives to embody the goals of equality and freedom, without
this involving the ascription of substantive identity between agents. The
philosophical hermeneutic model of conversation and its development
into a thin model of cosmopolitan community, therefore, can be seen to
aspire to keep the promise of both the Athenian polis and the European
enlightenment by seeking to create a realm in which freedom reigns.
The next question is, how to realise and translate this understanding
of good dialogue into international relations? This question forms the
starting point of the next chapter.
208
6 Towards a thin cosmopolitanism
Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness,

but by the style in which they are imagined.1
This enquiry began with the words of Paul Ricouer, who suggested that
a genuine conversation between the cultures of the world, which was
not an act of violence or assimilation, has yet to take place. This book
has taken the development of a model of such a conversation as its
motivating goal. It has argued that if such a ‘genuine’ conversation of
cultures and civilisations is to occur, then Gadamer’s account of philo-
sophical hermeneutics provides an appropriate model of how it might
proceed. Having outlined the meaning of philosophical hermeneutics
and its contribution to our understanding of communication, the task
of this chapter is to chart the implications of the preceding argument
for the nature of political community and ethical action in international
relations.
This chapter begins, in a preliminary fashion, to outline a more com-
plete account of the philosophical hermeneutic contribution to the cos-
mopolitan project. The principal insight to draw from this discussion is
that the essential task of a thin cosmopolitanism is to enable a genuine
conversation between different cultures and civilisations. Cosmopoli-
tanism, then, is reconstituted, or re-imagined, as a vehicle for inter-
cultural conversation. This chapter also argues that the philosophical
hermeneutic account leaves open the possibility that thicker cosmopoli-
tan communities may develop.
The chapter is divided into two sections. The first offers some gen-
eral reflections and provides a broad brushstroke sketch of what the
1 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism,
2nd edn (London: Verso, 1991), p. 6.
209
thin dialogic cosmopolitanism might look like, and how it might be re-
lated to contemporary trends and, in particular, to the apparent moves
towards a more solidarist interpretation of international society. The
second section of the chapter explores in more detail how the approach
developed in this book might contribute to thinking about human rights.
A thin cosmopolitanism informed by philosophical hermeneutics sug-
gests understanding the issue of human rights as both a political and
philosophical issue. It also suggests that conversation and dialogue have
an important place in any resolution of both these aspects.
The chapter concludes with the suggestion that communicative ethics
do not exhaust the scope for thinking about justice and ethics in IR, but
rather, provide a starting point for the development of more concrete
practices of ethical engagement.
Opening and enhancing communication

The model of conversation informed by philosophical hermeneutics and
outlined in the preceding chapters is directed towards the development
of ‘thin’ understanding of cosmopolitan community, which nonetheless
aspires to something like the recreation of the Aristotelian polis on the
global scale. Dialogical communication was understood as both a means
and an end in the achievement of this form of community. In particular,
conversation was understood as enabling a more just relation between
self and other, and helping to create the conditions necessary for ongo-
ing relationships of equality, by contributing to the building of solidarity
between differently situated agents. Several questions arise at this junc-
ture. The first is: how to achieve such a thin cosmopolitanism and the
expansion of the realm of human solidarity, or in other words, how
to achieve and encourage communication between differently situated
agents? The second question is: in addition to embodying communica-
tive relations, what then would such a thin cosmopolitanism entail, that
is, what might such a thin cosmopolitan community actually look like?
The most important answer to these questions, given the primacy of
communication as both means and ends, is to search to find the means
for opening and institutionalising channels of communication between
differently situated agents. The goal of justice to difference supports the
erosion, transgression or transcendence of boundaries which prevent
communication between differently situated people (and peoples). This
requires reflection on how cultural and sociological aspects prevent ‘the
other’ from being seen as equal and capable of communication. Such a
task requires, at the very least, an analysis which seeks to understand
210
A thin cosmopolitanism
how communication becomes closed, and how difference comes to be

understood as inferiority or threat. It also requires an effort to remove
the obstacles to communication which are institutionalised in political
practices, such as state sovereignty. The difficulty associated with both
of these tasks should not be underestimated.
It was argued in the previous chapter that critical theory and post-
structuralist approaches were particularly adept at drawing attention
to, and analysing, the ways in which communication between differ-
ent agents can be blocked. Crucial to these analyses is the identification
of the way in which difference is cast as inferiority or incommensura-
bility, and the way in which such perceptions function to close down
the avenues for communication. A recent example of how such identi-
fication works to prevent communication has been supplied by David
Campbell’s analysis of the ‘deconstruction’ of Yugoslavia.2 The wars
in the former Yugoslavia are perhaps paramount cases of the break-
down of communicative relations. The ‘deconstruction’ of Yugoslavia,
in Campbell’s appropriate term, is testimony to the triumph of non-
communicative relations based on the perception of ‘the other’ as dif-
ferent and inferior. In the case of situations such as this, genuine dialogue
indeed has a hard task. However, it is precisely in such situations that
justice, understood as communication, is most desperately required, and
every effort should be made to create the conditions whereby communi-
cation is possible. Central to this task is reflection on how the difference
between self and other came to be seen as morally important. This task
requires reflection on the communicative dimensions of prior under-
standings of self and other. The breakdown of the former Yugoslavia
was facilitated by both the triumph of non-communicative relations
within and between its members, but also, in inadequate communica-
tion between the former Yugoslavia and the ‘outside’ world.
Campbell’s reading emphasises the degree to which handicapped
communications between policy makers and analysts outside the for-
mer Yugoslavia and the communities within the former Yugoslavia,
Bosnia in particular, in turn handicapped the perception of how to en-
gage with the conflict by those same people. Campbell’s analysis can
be read to suggest that these actors, rather like Las Casas, saw what
they expected to see. In his account, the preconceptions, prejudices and
blindness of these ‘outside’ actors’ perceptions of what Yugoslavia con-
sisted of, who the warring parties were, and why they were fighting,
2 D. Campbell, National Deconstruction (University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
211
overdetermined their responses. Dominant perceptions of the war in the

former Yugoslavia, and Bosnia in particular, were that it consisted of a
realm of ‘ancient hatreds’ which had been simmering away, or had lain
dormant, and which now were re-awoken and prodded into life. It sug-
gests a perception of Bosnians, Croats, Serbs, and other inhabitants of
the region as possessing a chronic, almost natural, inability to commu-
nicate as equals. This understanding tended to characterise the people
of the Balkans as ‘backward’ or rooted in ancient tribalism, This in turn
suggested a characterisation of them as different and inferior. Most im-
portantly, Campbell emphasises, these preconceptions reflected a failure
of communication, in the sense that they were both the result of an in-
complete familiarisation with the circumstances, and acted to prevent
further familiarisation.
These preconceptions indicate the extent to which understanding of
the situation in the former Yugoslavia was inhibited by a lack of gen-
uine communication. This lack of communication in turn handicapped
responses and maintained a situation in which division rather than un-
derstanding and communication were fostered. The solution achieved at
Dayton, many have suggested, entrenched the ethnic divisions between
the parties and rewarded the separatists rather than sought to overcome
them.3 The implication here is that the sponsors of the Dayton accords
were informed by their understanding of the situation as irredeemable,
and the protagonists as incapable of arriving at less divisive arrange-
ments. Put simply, if one understands the wars to have been caused by
‘ancient ethnic hatreds’ which are unresolvable, then the best solution
is partition between these communities. In other words, understanding
how to increase communicative relations requires reflection to extend
to the solutions envisioned for such crises. It requires that such thinking
is extended, not merely to the participants ‘inside the conflict’ – that
is the warring parties – but also to those ‘outside’ it. A more informed
understanding of the situation in the former Yugoslavia, one informed
by reflection on the adequacy of perceptions of self and other in this
conflict, may have led to a better solution, or even an entirely different
scenario. Thus, pursuing the goals of a thin cosmopolitanism requires
opening the channels of communication, which in turn requires reflec-
tion on perceptions of self and other, and enquiry into the dialogical
basis of those perceptions and whether they reflect genuine or unjusti-
fiable (non-dialogical) prejudices. The telos of understanding reminds
3 J. M. O. Sharp, ‘Dayton Report Card’, International Security, 22. 3 (1997/8).
212
us not to close the door to communication too early, and the task of
practical reasoning directs us towards inquiring into the conditions in
which actions and beliefs enable or disable communicative responses.
Such reflections form only part, and a preliminary part, of the
meaning of communication between equals in a thin cosmopolitan
community. The goal of inclusion also requires reflection on how the
political/institutional channels of communication between differently
situated actors can be opened and explored. The first thing to note about
such a task is that opening the channels of communication between
individuals and political communities requires that the divisions and
differences between them are not seen as absolute. It requires pursu-
ing the argument that communal and individual rights to autonomy
and independence need to be negotiated, and must take into account
the effects of these claims on those excluded from them. It means un-
derstanding claims to independence and autonomy as intersubjective
claims between equals, and not unilateral and non-negotiable ones car-
ried out in isolation. It means understanding claims to sovereignty as
non-absolute and contingent. A commitment to creating a communica-
tive community requires understanding the boundaries between com-
munities as negotiable and flexible. It requires a willingness to question
arrangements which exclude outsiders from dialogue or which unjusti-
fiably restrict communication. In this sense, this ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism
is, therefore, subversive of the sovereign state’s exclusive claim to com-
municative legitimacy. At the same time, however, it is not necessarily
subversive of the maintenance of a relatively bounded community. In-
stead, what makes this ‘thin’ community cosmopolitan is the refusal to
identify the state as the only representative voice, or form, of bounded
community. Such a principle constitutes a cosmopolitan community in
only the thinnest possible sense.
A thin cosmopolitanism is, therefore, consistent with the creation of
multiple channels of communication between its members. It is con-
sistent with the creation of ‘global civil society’ and the supplement-
ing of interstate discourse with intersocietal discourse as the medium
for intercommunal communication. In turn, this requires reflection
on the communicative dimension of policy-making in international
institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and states. It re-
quires the incorporation of dialogical relations into all such bodies,
ensuring that policies, practices and procedures are oriented towards
achieving maximum communicative input from all affected by their
actions. It requires that international institutions and NGOs reflect on
213
the relations between themselves and those whose interests they advo-
cate, and those who are excluded from their self-definition. An exam-
ple, though perhaps a difficult one, is in the area of emergency relief
and humanitarian aid. In such situations a communicative relationship
suggests that it is vital for aid agencies and other institutions to commu-
nicate with those whom they wish to provide relief and aid to. This, in
turn, requires that the beneficiaries of aid be seen not merely or only as
victims in need of rescue, but as dialogical equals who have a say in the
arrangements which govern the distribution of aid and humanitarian
relief. It is especially vital that the loss of agency, which is arguably expe-
rienced by refugees and the victims of natural disasters, not be replicated
or compounded by the very agencies seeking to remedy the situation.4
Beyond international society

Beyond the reform of such practices to include communicative dimen-
sions, the opening of channels of communication consistent with a thin
cosmopolitanism has significant implications for the current institutions
whereby order is maintained. If the current form of universal commu-
nity can be understood as being restricted to international society of
states, as suggested by Mervyn Frost and Chris Brown, then a com-
mitment to building solidarity and opening the channels of commu-
nication necessarily requires both building upon and superseding the
achievements of international society. In the Transformation of Political
Community Andrew Linklater pointed to Richard Rorty’s argument that
thinking about matters of universal moral community must begin, not
from the defence of the ‘epistemological foundations’ in a transcenden-
tal subject, but from ‘where we are’.5 Rorty argues that western liberals
must acknowledge the historicity of their own beliefs in universality
and not assume universal grounds for them. Rorty’s emphasis on start-
ing from where we are now suggests a compatibility with Gadamer’s
insight that understanding takes place only within a pre-given, if prob-
lematic, tradition. In the context of international relations and the re-
thinking of political community, a recognition of ‘where we are now’
involves a recognition of the roles played by international society and
its most important institutions, both now and in the past. In other words,
whether or not there are epistemological or transcendental foundations
4 See the comments in J. Edkins, ‘Sovereign Power, Zones of Indistinction, and the Camp’,
Alternatives, 25. 1, Jan–Mar. (2000), 3–25.
5 See A. Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the
Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), p. 77.
214
for human community is, to a certain extent, beside the point. Recog-
nising where we are now involves recognising that the institutions of
international order have in the past, and will in the future, play a role
in maintaining and expanding the human conversation. Therefore, any
attempt to engage in the transformation of human community, so that
it might approximate a thin cosmopolitanism, can start from the cur-
rent situation which involves the existence of an international society
of which states are the primary members. If the development of inter-
national society suggests a process of cultural interaction, allowing the
development of minimal, universal principles, then it is possible to con-
ceive that a ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism may develop out of that process.
Such a transformation, however, requires moving beyond international
society as it is currently conceived.
In order to understand this progression an examination of the his-
torical contexts of inter-cultural communication and an understanding
of the current international order is required. Samuel Huntington has
argued that the possibilities of inter-cultural conversation are virtually
non-existent.6 Instead, in the future, different cultures and civilisations
will (almost inevitably) continue to clash and engage in violent and un-
equal relations. For Huntington, the near total incommensurability of
the major civilisational groupings guarantees a future of conflict and a
withdrawal from understanding. This incommensurability stems, he ar-
gues, from the fact that these clashes will be between different identities.
In the future, conflicts will no longer be over what a person believes, but
over who they are. In the dimension of identity, according to Huntington,
there is no room for negotiation or accommodation.
Despite Huntington’s assertions, there exists enough evidence to sug-
gest that culturally different societies have, over the course of history,
been able to come to agree on certain principles and engage in a prac-
tice of mutual coexistence, if not always of understanding. According
to Bull, Wight, Watson and others, different civilisations and societies
have been able, through the institutions of international society and
over time, to come to share certain understandings and norms and even
identities.7 For writers, such as the early Bull, these norms have princi-
pally been restricted to the norms of sovereignty and non-intervention
6 S. P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs, Summer (1993), 22–49.

7 See especially H. Bull and A. Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford
University Press, 1983), also M. Wight (G. Wight, and B. Porter, eds.), International Theory:
The Three Traditions (Leicester University Press, 1991); M. Wight, Systems of States (Leicester
University Press, 1977).
215
and, on occasion, extended further to include the rules for both Jus in
bello and Jus ad bellum. Some, such as Mervyn Frost, as seen in chapter 2,
have argued that the norms of international society now exceed those
minimal goals of mere coexistence and incorporate thicker values such
as the recognition of universal human rights. Bull’s comments on the
need for international society to be more inclusive of the ‘third world’s’
demands are often cited in this regard.8
This suggests that international society can be understood as an arena
in which states have not only negotiated their interests but also one in
which different societies, cultures and civilisations are able to engage
with each other in relative equality. Bull and Watson’s investigation
into the expansion of international society demonstrates this point. The
establishment of international principles of order has involved a pro-
cess of inter-civilisational learning and dialogue, though not necessar-
ily a conversation between equals. It is certainly true that the norms
and principles of international society have been and continue to re-
flect the norms and values of the most powerful societies, and it is true
that the norms of international society were spread through the use of
force and unequal conversations. However, it is also true that appeal
to international society has also been a means by which some com-
munities have in turn attempted resistance to assimilation, and have
attempted to articulate their resistance to the dominance of the most
powerful.9 In articulating their claims in this way, these communities
are acknowledging the necessity and desirability of maintaining chan-
nels of communication. Furthermore, as Bull’s comments on the ‘revolt
against western dominance’ suggest, international society has in recent
decades come to be seen as a forum in which those subject to western
dominance now pursue their equality. Thus, while acknowledging the
deeply assimilatory history of this encounter, it is nonetheless possible
to conceive of the institutions of international society as having served
the purpose of maintaining international political order while allowing
a greater intercivilisational conversation of humankind to emerge.
Furthermore, to proceed from ‘where we are’ requires an acknowl-
edgement of the existing tension between pluralist and solidarist forms
of international society. Starting from ‘where we are’ means starting
from an international society in which pluralist and solidarist tendencies
8 See H. Bull, Justice in International Relations (The Hagey Lectures), (University of
Waterloo, 1983) and H. Bull, ‘The Third World and International Society’, Yearbook of World
Affairs (1979), 15–31.
9 Again see Bull’s discussion of ‘The Revolt Against Western Dominance’ in Bull, ibid.
216
exist, and in which non-state actors claim an important role, and struggle
to be recognised.
A pluralist interpretation of international society emphasises its role
in providing order between disparate political communities who lack
consensus amongst them, regarding substantive conceptions of the good
life and morality. This is the ‘egg-box’ conception of international soci-
ety discussed in chapter 1. However, in the period since the end of
the Cold War, international society has arguably moved in what Bull
labelled a solidarist, or interventionist, direction.10 Specifically, the in-
ternational order in the 1990s has been characterised by a number of
circumstances which have challenged international society to develop
and uphold some minimal standards for state behaviour which go be-
yond merely the mutual recognition of sovereignty, and which require
its members to act together to enforce these standards. Such a move goes
beyond the pluralist principles of coexistence. To move in a solidarist
direction necessarily involves a shift away from the foundational prin-
ciple of sovereignty. This is so because the central feature of solidarism
is a commitment to the principle of consensus rather than consent. The
principle of consensus means that international society can act against
recalcitrant or criminal states when there is an ‘overwhelming major-
ity, a convergence of international opinion’.11 The shift to a consensus
interpretation of international law has an impact upon the norms of in-
ternational society because it suggests that something like ‘the will of
the international community’ can, under certain circumstances, over-
ride the sovereignty of states. This is a demotion of sovereignty from its
status as a ‘primary goal’ to a somewhat secondary one.
The move to a more solidarist international society suggests the need
to develop new means for assuring the legitimacy of international law
and of international society in general, through the establishment of a
genuine international consensus on the values underlying solidarism. If
the shift to a solidarist international society replaces a consent-based in-
ternational law with a consensus based one, then that consensus must be
10 See H. Bull ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, in H. Butterfield and
M. Wight (eds.) Diplomatic Investigations (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966) and also Bull,
Anarchical Society; also N. Wheeler and T. Dunne, ‘Hedley Bull’s Pluralism of the Intellect
and Solidarism of the Will’, International Affairs, 72 (1996), 1–17.
11 Richard Falk quoted in Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 148. This is opposed to the prin-
ciple of consent in which international law is upheld only by states willing to do so, i.e.
international law requires the consent of those affected by it. For a discussion of the norm
of consent see Christian Reus-Smit, ‘The Constitutional Structure of International Society
and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions’, International Organisation, 51. 4, Autumn
(1997).
217
assured and genuine. In the context of Bull’s and others’ long-standing

reservations about such projects, the normative and practical questions
revolve around the task of pursuing and achieving consensus on inter-
national norms of behaviour.
From a cosmopolitan position, it stands to reason that, if the principles
and practices of international society are moving in a more intervention-
ist and solidarist direction, involving a shift beyond principles of mere
coexistence, then forms of legitimation are required which rest on the
consent of citizens as well as states. For international society to take a
solidarist turn and its members to act on the basis of consensus, then the
legitimacy of this consensus must be assured. Therefore the replacement
of state consent by a principle of consensus requires in turn the extension
of consent, that is that laws should be made by those subject to them, to
the citizens of states. If the institutions of international governance and
the practices of international society are to be truly global in their scope,
then they are in need of universal, cosmopolitan, forms of legitimation.
Such forms of legitimation must necessarily be inclusive of a wide va-
riety of cultural differences. The model of conversation deployed above
provides one principle with which to engage in thinking about these
questions. The model of conversation oriented towards understand-
ing and recreation of the Aristotelian polis, and embodying the logic of
practical reasoning, is one means of thinking about how to legitimate
solidarist practices of international society.
The shift from pluralist to solidarist international society suggests the
possibility that more solidaristic and communicative arrangements may
be aspired to, and may develop out of the current order. However, for
a thin cosmopolitanism to be developed out of international society, it
must move beyond both pluralist and solidarist forms of international
society. Furthermore, a moral community in which justice to difference
is pursued requires the transformation of international society into a
thin cosmopolitanism. International society as it currently stands re-
mains state-centric. Even the incorporation of thicker principles such
as human rights into the realm of agreement does not undermine the
fact that it is states who are the members of international society. For
international society to become more just, it needs to become more cos-
mopolitan and move beyond the principle of state-centrism. While the
presence of international society provides evidence of the possibility
of developing transcultural normative discourses and principles, ‘in-
ternational society’ itself must be transcended if the goal of justice to
difference is to be pursued further.
218
As such, new agreements recognising these dimensions are required.

However, doing so requires that international society envisage the dif-
ficult task of moving beyond the question of sovereignty; or, alterna-
tively, redefining it so as to be more inclusive and less restrictive. Thus,
a concern with justice to difference requires acknowledging the gains of
international society, while at the same time transcending its limitations
and transforming it into a ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism, in order to achieve a
more equal conversation between different cultures.
A variegated cosmopolitanism
The previous discussion has outlined some of the implications of a com-
mitment to inclusion, through dialogue, to current understandings of
international society and international institutions. This section turns to
a discussion of the broad features of a thin cosmopolitanism informed
by philosophical hermeneutics and constituted by the goal of dialogi-
cal inclusion. In other words, this section addresses the question ‘what
might such a thin cosmopolitanism look like?’
The first and most important answer to this question is that the pri-
mary characteristic of such a thin cosmopolitanism is that it does not
prescribe the ‘thick’ moral content of the community prior to dialogue
between those concerned. Instead, it allows that content to be filled in
by the participants themselves. It is in this manner that the cosmopolita-
nism community is ‘thin’, because it does not prescribe the thick norms
associated with other forms of cosmopolitanism, such as the model ad-
vanced by Beitz and discussed in chapter 1. In this way the thin cosmo-
politan informed by philosophical hermeneutics shares a similar goal to
that outlined by Linklater. A thin cosmopolitanism is a form of dialogical
universal moral community where the moral content and norms which
govern the relations between its members are the product of discursive
engagement between the members themselves, and are not delivered
by philosophic fiat or acts of ‘monological reasoning’.12 Likewise, such
a realm is one in which norms are not simply imposed by the strongest
over the weakest, and do not necessarily reflect the thick norms of any
12 Such justification extends to a substantive morality of communication itself. The goal

of universal community in which justice to difference is achieved through dialogue is
itself a ‘thick’ goal. It represents an interpretation of the values arising from within Euro-
pean/Christian traditions of thought and seeks to extrapolate those values to the world.
The claim that is being made here is that the formulation offered here is substantively
‘thinner’ than some other interpretations. As has been suggested in the introduction and
again in chapter 4 it is impossible to formulate a conception of community that is without
substance (i.e. in some degree thick) at all.
219
particular moral horizon, tradition or political power. With these in-

sights in mind it is possible to reflect further on the forms which a thin
cosmopolitanism may take.
The global moral community envisioned here and consistent with
these principles is compatible with the idea that, rather than one cos-
mopolitan community, it might be possible to develop a variety of
cosmopolitanisms. A thin cosmopolitanism involves, not necessarily a
single conversation, generating a single universally thick or thin com-
munity, but the possibility of many conversations developing forms of
community in which some parts are more ‘cosmopolitan’ and others
less so. Rather than one cosmopolitan community, it might be possible
to develop a variety of ‘cosmopolitanisms’, characterised in different
ways in different times and places.
The traditional account of cosmopolitan community suggests that it
is a reproduction of the supposedly unitary domestic community at
the global level. However, the emphasis on a community constituted by
understanding and solidarity between radically different agents, means
that it is openness to conversational engagement, rather than the pro-
duction of specific arrangements, which announces the presence of a
cosmopolitan ethos. Therefore, a commitment to conversation, informed
by practical reasoning, does not require that every social arrangement
in every community be submitted to impartial universal approval, and
does not produce a single ‘community’. What it does suggest, instead,
is that a commitment to universal community and to recognition of dif-
ference in conversation might result in a cosmopolitanism characterised
in different ways in different times and places.
The thin cosmopolitanism envisioned here is thin in the same
sense intended by Linklater, because it is consistent with a variety
of different forms of association. According to Linklater, there is no
reason for thinking that discourse between differently situated agents
will necessarily bring about a uniform cosmopolitan community, in
the thick or solidarist sense.13 There are reasons for believing, on the
contrary, that certain parts of the system would, under conditions of
a free and open dialogue, resist this movement and agree to disagree,
limiting the obligations each demands of the other. Linklater argues
that international society, for example, may develop along either
pluralist and solidarist routes, indicating the manner in which different
parts of the international system may develop according to different
13 See Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community.
220
logics, while nonetheless, remaining consistent with the principles

of open and universal discourse.14 Such a conception would require
a conversation that is sufficiently flexible and open, while at the
same time acknowledging the pragmatic and practical limits of such
conversation in any given situation. The advantage of the account of
conversation and praxis informed by philosophical hermeneutics is
that it is flexible enough to allow this, because it does not legislate the
dimensions of the cosmopolitan community that it aspires to.
Such a model suggests that, while some parts of the globe may be
willing and able to engage in something resembling either Beitz’s lib-
eral cosmopolitanism or Linklater’s Post-Westphalian community, oth-
ers may choose to restrict interaction to a mode of coexistence which
does not move beyond, say, the rules of coexistence currently operative
in international society as articulated by Brown. Thus, some communi-
ties may discover or achieve a higher, or ‘thicker’, level of solidarity than
others. It may be possible that some societies may identify areas of com-
mon agreement that extend to principles of citizenship, including a high
degree of specificity of rights and responsibilities. On the other hand,
some communities may not be able or wish to develop such arrange-
ments, and may agree to restrict the level of transnational agreement
to principles of orderly interaction. The important point here, is that a
principle of discursive inclusion does not legislate the outcome of con-
versation itself, nor the procedures in which agreement can be pursued.
What constitutes these different arrangements as cosmopolitan, is that
they should result from, and be consistent with, a commitment to open
communication between members of human society as a whole.
An approach taking into account the variety of engagements between
different societies, cultures and groups, must, if it is to remain committed
to doing justice to difference, also be sensitive to, and aware of the degree
to which these bodies themselves are not cohesive, and contain disputes
between their members. A principle of communication, therefore, does
not restrict conversation to the acknowledged representatives of a given
community, but must be inclusive of the wide range of voices within any
group. This conversation is attentive to the voice of different groups
and cultures, while aspiring to universal inclusion, and is, therefore,
consistent with a variety of ‘cosmopolitanisms’.
14 See A. Linklater, ‘Citizenship and Sovereignty in the Post-Westphalian State’, European

Journal of International Relations, 2. 1, March (1996) 77–103 and Linklater, The Transformation
of Political Community.
221
This formulation of community is suited to a world of radical dif-

ference because it settles for neither coexistence nor assimilation and,
instead, investigates the possibilities of a communicative cosmopoli-
tanism. Such a thin, variegated, cosmopolitanism is more attuned to the
realities of the present world order because, while this order is domi-
nated by states and societies engaged in modernisation and partaking
in the capitalist world economy, it also contains interactions between
cultures and groups that are not commensurate with states, or whose
engagement with modernity might be more limited. The contemporary
world can be understood as involving interactions between varieties of
levels, and types of social organisations and individuals requiring dif-
ferent conversations. Some societies, cultures, religious or ethnic groups
are universalistic in aspiration, while others are perhaps content to re-
main parochial; some wish to resist the worst aspects of modernisation,
while holding onto and using some of its advantages, in order to secure
their own survival.15
In such a context, it is necessary to be attentive to the different types of
relations which may exist between the different aspects of this world so-
ciety. The relations between societies which are dominated by what we
might call universalising cultures are likely to be different, in some ways
more confrontational and in others less, than relations between univer-
salising cultures and parochial or particularistic ones. For example, the
type of conversation and community that may come about in relations
between west-European societies is likely to be different from that which
may come about in relations between west-European societies, domi-
nated by the universalism of Christianity and the enlightenment and
societies dominated by Islamic teachings and practices. Likewise, con-
versations between Islamic societies and indigenous peoples are likely
to produce different results again. This being the case, then, a thin cos-
mopolitanism aims to be inclusive of the full variety of societies, cultures
and different normative universes and flexible enough to recognise that
different societies have different agendas and are likely to have differ-
ent concerns in relation to each other. The point of this argument is
that any account of a universal ethical life which aspires to do justice to
15 An example of this might be the use of modern media and political institutions by
certain indigenous groups, such as the Yanomani of the Amazon and the Penan of Borneo,
to articulate their claims to a wider universal audience. These claims are largely claims
to a form of self-determination in relation to a dominant state, but also include a claim to
resist the intrusion of certain aspects of modernity into their relatively bounded societies.
In this way, these people both exploit and resist ‘modernity’.
222
difference should take into account the possibilities for different types of
relations between communities, states, societies and the universal com-
munity. Where thicker universalism is aspired to, the hermeneutic ac-
count would require it to be the product of ‘genuine’ conversation. What
this would mean is that, rather than the expression of any particular cul-
ture, any thicker universal agreements must be just that, the result of
inclusive conversation. Such agreements may be a fusion of a number of
positions, or the creation of something new that is not unique to any cul-
ture. It may even be possible that one culture or society has been able to
persuade the others of the universal merit of a given norm, for example
freedom from torture, or even the concept of human rights. What is cer-
tain is that the participants in the conversation must be open to the possi-
bilities for learning from others, and any substantive agreement should
reflect that learning. The argument of this book has been that the model
for such a conversation is provided by philosophical hermeneutics.
By way of further comparison, this thin cosmopolitanism can be dif-
ferentiated from the account of cosmopolitan conversation provided
by Charles Taylor. In ‘The Politics of Recognition’16 Taylor argued that
the fusion of horizons resulting from a conversation between different
cultures will not only aid mutual understanding but also create the cat-
egories whereby we can judge their relative contributions and worth.
Taylor argues that, in order to ensure equal recognition, the ‘starting hy-
pothesis with which we ought to approach the study of any other culture
[should be that] all human cultures that have animated whole societies
over some considerable stretch of time have something important to say
to all human beings’.17 While Taylor’s formulation captures much of the
essence of the argument for recognition, and draws upon philosophical
hermeneutics, there is nonetheless something troubling in his hypoth-
esis that suggests a type of conversation different from that consistent
with the thin cosmopolitan conversation being described here.
The goal of discovering the contribution of different cultures would
seem to be another variation on the idea that there is something to be
learnt from them in understanding. The problem is that, for Taylor, not
only should we start with a presumption of worth, but the purpose of
conversation is to endeavour to assess that worth. The purpose of un-
derstanding, therefore, is not merely coming to an understanding, but
an assessment and judgement, in terms of an unspecified contribution to
16 C. Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in C. Taylor and A. Gutman, Multiculturalism:
Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton University Press, 1994).
17 Ibid., p. 66.
223
a universal humanity. Taylor’s account, therefore, seems to share with

Kantian accounts, discussed in chapter 2, a rejection of the possibility
that local truths may remain just that, local, and have no obvious uni-
versal applicability, truth or contribution. The unspoken presupposition
that guides conversation is that cultures only have worth in so far as they
are able to contribute to humanity as whole. In Taylor’s account then,
recognition is conditional rather than assumed.
This criticism is not meant to suggest that judgement and under-
standing are incompatible, and that participants in conversation should
refrain from moral judgements of the practices or beliefs of others. Un-
derstanding does not require the abandonment of identity or of one’s
own beliefs or standards of judgement – these are always a condition of
engagement. Conversation, however, allows different agents to come to
understand the reasoning behind practices and beliefs, and then to make
an informed judgement. Furthermore, conversation permits the devel-
opment of a shared language of moral discourse in which judgements
may be conducted. It is understanding which constitutes the moment
of recognition as equality, not judgement. However, on the other hand
to withhold from judgement, as in a practice of coexistence, involves
a lesser form of equality, and so cannot be dispensed with altogether.
The history of inter-cultural contacts, especially in the last four hundred
years, has been dominated by too-hasty judgements and a lack of gen-
uine dialogue between cultures. Given this history, and in the absence
of any thick cosmopolitanism, a conversation which ignored the task of
understanding would have significant limitations.
The thin cosmopolitanism being described here does not rule out the
search for transcultural validity of moral claims or the possibility that
different horizons have contributions to make to a global community.
However, it does emphasise that the primary task of conversation is the
building of solidarity through understanding, and this is not necessarily
consistent with a conversation the aim of which is to rank different cul-
tures according to their overall contribution to humanity, or in terms of
their place in any ‘great chain of being’. The goal of seeking to do justice
to difference encourages the attempt to resist the language of hierarchy,
while not surrendering the capacity to make reasoned judgements.
Human rights and dialogue

The reflections above have served to help clarify where a commitment
to communicative inclusion based on philosophical hermeneutics might
224
take the international order, and inform thinking about certain types of
actions and institutions. This section offers an exploration of how a
commitment to communicative inclusion might contribute to thinking
about questions of human rights.
If there is one issue in international relations today which most di-
rectly speaks to the concerns of a thin cosmopolitanism it is the idea
of universal human rights. The pursuit of universal human rights and
their institutionalisation as an international norm since the end of the
Second World War are of central importance to the goal of creating a
thin cosmopolitan community for several reasons. First, it is the clearest
expression of a moral universalism which goes beyond the morality of
states, evident in the international realm today. As such, the incorpora-
tion of human rights into the norms of international society is, whether
states perceive it this way or not, a commitment, however thin, to the
idea of universal community of humankind. The commitment to hu-
man rights suggests that states, as well as individuals, have obligations
and duties to humankind that are superior to the obligations they have
to maintain order, or that individuals have to their states. Second, the
norms of universal human rights, in a sense, underpin most other nor-
mative developments in international society, including the shift from
a pluralist to a solidarist understanding. Third, human rights are also
a key focus for debates regarding the rights to cultural difference and
diversity. Just what human rights are, where they have their grounding
and how they can be defended as universal, are central philosophical
questions which have arisen alongside, and as part of, the usual po-
litical objections to universal moral projects. In this way, they can be
seen as a paradigm case for how a communicative approach can inform
moral debates in international relations. Finally, any conception of thin
cosmopolitanism must be informed by some sense of universal human
right to participate in dialogue. However, such a commitment must be
accompanied by a recognition that it must itself be defended argumen-
tatively and established discursively. The discussion below offers an
attempt to think through how to proceed in this vein.
In a recent contribution the moral philosopher Bikhu Parekh has pro-
posed an important and viable approach for thinking about human
rights in international politics, which is largely consistent with the ap-
proach to community outlined in this book.18 Parekh’s argument begins
18 B. Parekh, ‘Non-ethnocentric Universalism’ in T. Dunne and N. Wheeler, Human Rights

in Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
225
by examining the epistemological questions which are often seen as pro-

viding the grounding for human rights. The question which has dogged
most discussion of human rights has been ‘Are human rights universal?’
This question is a version of another more important question, which is:
‘What grounds can we provide for convincing others of the a priori uni-
versality of human rights?’ Parekh’s approach is based on the argument
that epistemological questions do not actually constitute the core issue.
He argues that the challenge facing those wishing to advocate univer-
sal human rights is not one of epistemology but persuasion. Parekh’s
approach is in keeping with a dialogical cosmopolitanism: ‘If univer-
sal values are to enjoy widespread support and democratic validation
and be free of ethnocentric biases, they should arise out of an open and
uncoerced cross-cultural dialogue.’19 He argues for a recognition that
the attempt to use epistemological arguments in order to justify uni-
versal human rights has not been fully convincing, either within the
west or outside it. As a result, arguments based on such foundations
are no longer fully available to those who wish to pursue universal hu-
man rights. All attempts to ground or provide secure foundations for
universal human rights, such as natural law arguments, have suffered
similar fates, in remaining unconvincing to many. These insights sit well
with post-war developments in the philosophy of the human sciences.
The interpretive turn as argued in chapter 2 has emphasised the extent
and manner in which human life, including its moral values, is socially
constituted.
Parekh’s argument suggests that, in keeping with this development,
projects such as the defence of universal human rights should be seen
as having their origins not outside the realm of human intersubjectivity,
derived from some sort of transcendental insight, or existing in some
sense outside of human values, that is, residing innately in human be-
ings or natural law. In contrast, the values of universal human rights
should be understood as part of the social constitution of reality. How-
ever, unfortunately for many, this recognition has, as with the communi-
tarians, been seen to lead away from the defence of moral universalism
in the form of human rights, rather than towards it. The communitar-
ian approach can, with some qualification, be identified with this line
of thinking. Communitarians, it was argued in chapter 1, hold that, be-
cause values are socially constructed then different societies construct
them differently. This is then followed by a series of riders such as, that
19 Parekh, ‘Non-ethnocentric Universalism’, p. 139.
226
these traditions are incommensurable, that different traditions have no

ability to judge other cosmologies and their practices, and that further-
more, they have no right to do so. Therefore, in the communitarian
philosophy the prospects and perhaps even the desirability of universal
human rights are thin.20
However, the argument of this work has been that the recognition
of the social construction of human rights, or the rootedness of human
rights as a discourse, does not necessarily lead to a strictly relativist
conclusion. On the contrary, it is the social and intersubjective, and ulti-
mately linguistic basis of human rights, as discourse as well as practice,
that provide the best hope for actually achieving universal recognition
of human rights. If we understand social reality to be socially consti-
tuted then we can understand human rights like other values to be, as
Parekh points out, the product of reasoning and agreement. Values, he
argues ‘are a matter of collective decision, and like any other decision it
is based on reasons’.21
Therefore, instead of asking the question, ‘are human rights univer-
sal?’, and looking for an epistemological answer, the moral, as well as
the political, questions that arise from a recognition of intersubjectivity
should instead be posed thus: ‘How can we achieve universal human
rights?’, or, ‘How can we come to achieve understanding on human
rights?’, or as Onora O’Neill might put it, ‘What type of universal hu-
man rights community can we construct?’ In other words, agreement on
universality can be achieved only through dialogue. The task is to build
a dialogue on human rights and in that dialogue to ask what human
rights are and which human rights are universal? At the same time, a
universal dialogue which seeks to pursue understanding on the mean-
ing of human rights serves to entrench the human rights of participation
in conversation.
The challenge of communitarianism and the charge of incommensu-
rability have been met by the attempt to think through the meaning
of dialogue in a world of radical difference, or what Nick Rengger has
called radical value incommensurability.22 However, the model of di-
alogue is really only the starting place. There are at least three ways
20 See for instance the discussion in C. Brown, ‘Cultural Diversity and International
Political Theory: From the Requirement to “Mutual Respect” ’, Review of International Stud-
ies, 26 (2000), 199–13.
21 Parekh, ‘Non-ethnocentric Universalism’, p. 140.
22 N. J. Rengger, ‘Incommensurability, International Theory and the Fragmentation of
Western Political Culture’, in J. Gibbins, Contemporary Political Culture (London: Sage,
1988), pp. 237–50.
227
of understanding the way in which a dialogue on human rights might

proceed. The first might be that it is a conversation in which the pur-
pose is to persuade ‘others’ that ‘our’ conception of human rights is
correct. Another is to understand the conversation as a search for trans-
cultural validity of universal human rights; in other words, it may be
possible to find or recognise common elements shared by different cul-
tures. Such a conversation is engaged in discovering which pre-existing
values can be found to be consistent with the conventional understand-
ing of human rights. A further response is also possible, and this is the
one most consistent with the model of conversation developed here and
supported by Parekh’s argument. This conversation proceeds from an
assumption that shared commitments to and definitions of universal
human rights are a matter to be constructed; that through dialogue a
universal human rights consensus may be achieved. This model em-
phasises that dialogue may bring about a consensus on issues of human
rights which may or may not stem from pre-existing cultural values
and beliefs. This conversation is a search for transcultural validity, but
understood as a transcultural validity that, in Rorty’s words, should
be ‘shaped rather than found’. Such a conception does not rule out
the possibility that pre-existing transculturally common norms may
be found, but it does not direct the conversation exclusively in that
direction.
This model of conversation understands universal human rights not
as a truth which ‘we’ possess and must convince others of, but rather
as a common subject of conversation, in the manner of ‘die Sache’ in
Gadamer’s model. In this sense, the meaning of universal human rights
is a subject placed before the participants in conversation and forms the
focus of that discussion. Each participant possesses their own under-
standing of the meaning of this subject, and the conversation is oriented
towards achieving further understanding. If we understand the conver-
sation surrounding human rights as concerned exclusively with getting
‘them’ to agree with ‘us’ then it cannot be understood as a dialogue
between equals. However, if we understand human rights as an issue
or subject about which all are concerned, stemming, for example, from
reflection upon what it means to be human and what constitutes proper
treatment for those considered human, then a dialogue between equals
becomes possible.23
23 In their comments on Parekh’s argument Dunne and Wheeler suggest that it suffers
from a prior assumption of that which it seeks to achieve, i.e. a universal sense of the
228
Such a model of conversation proceeds from the assumption that the

meaning of universal human rights is to be negotiated and that human
rights may come to have different connotations in different times and
places. What it might mean to uphold human rights, and indeed what
human rights are, cannot always be understood in the abstract and in
advance. What is meant here is that the answers to the question ‘are
human rights universal’ can only be decided upon in conversation, and
in the context of application of particular definitions in particular times
and places.24
Such a dialogue provides no guarantees. Dialogic engagement and
understanding may occur without producing any substantive consen-
sus or shared values which the parties can agree upon. Alternatively,
there may be limits to the degree of consensus achieved. Agreement
upon universal human rights may only go so far or may not cover, for
instance, the range of human rights covered by existing UN resolutions
or organisations like Amnesty International. For example, amputation
may not be seen as violation of human rights in some states ruled by
Islamic Law, nor the use of the death penalty in the United States. Finally,
such a conversation is not necessarily inconsistent with a search for, or
advocacy of, particular accounts of human rights. The model of con-
versation drawn upon here in which all partake as equals, does not
involve the complete surrender of one’s own position nor necessarily
prevent one from seeking to have one’s own interpretation of human
rights (and of which human rights are the most important) secure recog-
nition or become adopted by others. It only requires that the ‘other’ may
have something different to say and that one be open to the possibil-
ity of learning. In this way the conversation on universal human rights
seeks to avoid becoming a repeat of the requirement (see Introduction)
in which the meaning of human rights, or human dignity, is assumed
and imposed rather than discursively proposed.
human. But this point runs the risk of absurdity if taken too far. In order to have a dialogue
about human rights two things are necessary. The first is that there is something called the
human to which these rights refer. What the definition of the human is may differ across
cultures and individuals but the concept at least must be present and there must be some
minimal recognition of the subject matter as having something in common for all. This is
the opening of Socratic dialogue.
24 In such a conversation a number of further questions arises. Instead of asking are
human rights universal in the abstract, we can ask two further questions: can universal
agreement on human rights be achieved and which human rights might be capable of
such a consensus? Thus for instance there may be universal agreement that human rights
are universal in the sense that everyone deserves the right to life but there may not be
universal agreement on the proposition that everyone deserves free universal health care.
229
In all of these cases assessment of what may be achieved in dialogue

can be made only after, or as, it takes place and not before. The upshot
of this argument is that the task of pursuing universal human rights
cannot proceed without a basis in dialogue, the question ‘can we achieve
universal human rights?’ cannot be answered until dialogue has taken
place.
Beyond reflection on the manner in which dialogue might proceed
and how the issue of universal human rights should be understood
philosophically, is the issue of how to think about human rights politi-
cally. Human rights is of course a deeply political issue, and a response
to the above reflections might be that ‘that’s all very well but people
are suffering now and human rights need to be defended and upheld
now, we can’t wait for a conversation to take place’. Another response
might be to ask ‘Who should partake in this conversation? Should it
be a conversation between states when it is states who are mostly to
blame for human rights violations?’ The first reply to these questions
is that any political practice oriented towards defending human rights
will be more successful when supported both by sound philosophical
starting points, defences and arguments, and by a shared understand-
ing of what human rights consist of and how they should be defended.
Without such defences, and it is suggested here these defences can be
derived from a conversation, the programme for universal human rights
becomes, indeed, just another version of the ‘requirement’.
A second response is that from a thin cosmopolitan perspective there
are no reasons for restricting the conversation to states alone. Indeed,
as it is states who are the most likely perpetrators of human rights vi-
olations, there is every reason to be concerned with the voices of the
victims. Booth is correct in reminding us that it is the victims of human
rights abuses that we should listen to, rather than just the perpetrators
of them.25
Furthermore, given that the world is now a world of states, we should
not be surprised that it is states, or those who aspire to run them, who
are resistant to universal human rights claims. Human rights, as uni-
versal doctrine, have their origins not only in the western philosophical
tradition but also as a product of a political struggle for recognition
and freedom over and against the state. It is, for the same reason, that
they may and do appeal to many in the non-west, and why the voices
of individuals should be listened to. This, in turn, supports Parekh’s
25 K. Booth, ‘Three Tyrannies’, in Dunne and Wheeler, Human Rights in Global Politics.
230
argument that we need to move beyond the epistemological defence of

human rights, and opens up other means by which human rights might
be made more persuasive. If the political and social circumstances in
which human rights thinking evolved in the west are remembered, and
cited as arguments in favour of them, then they are more likely to ap-
peal to others who find themselves in similar situations, that is those
resisting the encroachments of states and other agencies which seek to
deny freedom to those who oppose them, or hold different conceptions
of how to conduct themselves or their place in society. Thus, ironically, it
might also be that it is the universality of the state form which provides
the best ground for the universality of human rights. If human rights
grew out of a resistance to the state, then those who are best served by
human rights will be those who are suffering under them.
Finally to return to the question, ‘what happens to the task of universal
human rights, and more importantly, to the victims of human rights vi-
olations, in the meantime, that is, as conversation takes place?’ Is it
possible and justifiable to act against abusers in the absence of such a
consensus? The political problems associated with human rights return
us to Rorty’s observation that we must begin from where we are. Where
we are is a heterogenous international society with an incipient global
civil society and not a pre-existing thin cosmopolitan community. How,
then, to proceed from where we are? The first thing to acknowledge
is that a conversation concerning human rights has been and is taking
place. While this conversation is largely dictated by political agendas
and processes, because it is carried out by means of the vehicle of inter-
national society and the institutions of the UN, it has produced both a
series of documents and resolutions to which states can now be held ac-
countable and a wider conversation between non-state actors, NGOs, re-
ligious organisations and others. This wider conversation might be less
motivated by political jockeying and more by a search for genuine un-
derstanding. Such processes and agreements provide the starting point
for action on human rights while the larger conversation continues.
Finally, there is nothing in the philosophical hermeneutic model of thin
cosmopolitanism which prevents concerned agents acting or seeking
to condemn the actions of states or other bodies which do not respect
universal human rights, where those actions stem from the pleas or re-
quests of the victims of human rights. There is, on the contrary, every
reason why their voices should be heard and acted upon.
These thoughts have been offered in the manner of preliminary reflec-
tions on how philosophical hermeneutics might inform thinking about
231
the issue of universal human rights. They are not proposed as the defini-
tive or even the right approach to addressing these issues. Instead, they
should be understood as an attempt at a thinking through of possi-
ble implications. The philosophical hermeneutic model of conversation
and the thin cosmopolitan ethics informed by it do not necessarily have
the solution to all problems associated with human rights and moral
universalism. However they do provide a means which is consistent
with the aspirations, central to the project of achieving human rights, of
universalism and the recognition of difference.
232
Conclusion
Justice is like the pre-original, anarchic relation to the other, and akin
to the undecidable. It represents the domain of the impossible and the
unrepresentable that lies outside and beyond the limit of the possible
and the representable.1
This investigation began by suggesting that the goal of reconciling com-

munity with the recognition of difference represented an impossible
task. The argument that followed was premised on the assumption
that the goal of achieving justice to difference in a universal commu-
nity should be pursued nonetheless. This book has presented an ac-
count of a thin cosmopolitanism which endeavours to accommodate
the widest possible variety of cultures and cosmologies. It has argued
that philosophical hermeneutics in dialogue with liberalism, commu-
nitarianism, critical theory and poststructuralism can help to provide
such an account. While aspiring to a thin community in which differ-
ence is engaged with equally the model of conversation itself embodies
a substantive moral position which is not neutral, in the liberal sense of
impartiality.
Philosophical hermeneutics informs a particular variant of a commu-
nicative approach to addressing moral issues and conceiving of commu-
nity. It is informed by an argument that communication provides a supe-
rior form of relationship to the alternatives of annihilation, assimilation
and coexistence. However, the argument has not rested here. The claim
made for philosophical hermeneutics in this book is that communica-
tion requires a rehabilitation of the concept of truth. It has been argued
that the achievement of dialogical equality between self and other rests
1 D. Campbell, ‘The Deterritorialisation of Responsibility: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics
After the End of Philosophy’, Alternatives, 19 (1994), 455–84, p. 472.
233
on the possibility of encountering or experiencing truth. A claim to have

achieved understanding involves coming to experience a new, or differ-
ent, truth. The moment of equality in conversation occurs at the point
in which a participant acknowledges not only the limits of their own
knowledge, but also the possibility that the other participant(s) may be
able to bring to light new ways of seeing or understanding, which are
of equal or greater validity. This encounter permits the other to be seen
as both different and equal. The concept of truth is pivotal to this rela-
tionship of equality. Without it the relationship of understanding risks
becoming one in which the knowledge of the other is objectified and
employed for one’s own ends. Alternatively, without the openness to
truth there is a risk that both self and other’s positions can be dismissed
as mere opinion or prejudice. Truth plays the role of allowing one’s own
knowledge, and that of the other, to have some purchase or claim to be
worth listening to.
Making a claim for the centrality of truth is not a fashionable pur-
suit in contemporary social and political theory. Often, and for good
reason, truth is associated with unsustainable claims to have revealed,
or to be able to reveal, some foundational knowledge or position with
which to exclude others. The advantage of philosophical hermeneutics
is that it provides a non-foundational account of truth which is deployed
in order to include other positions. For philosophical hermeneutics, it
is the possibility of truth, which allows the recognition of one’s own
finitude, which is the essential precondition for openness to the other.
Furthermore, without this ingredient there is little or nothing to provide
motivation for engaging with others, or to move beyond the practices
of assimilation or coexistence. A commitment to the possibility of truth
also provides the guidance and criteria, and something of a standard,
as to how engagement and communication can be undertaken.
The rehabilitation of truth is also what distinguishes philosophical
hermeneutics from other ‘post positivist’ or interpretivist positions, and
which provides its unique contribution. It has been emphasised that no
single account is, in itself, sufficient to the task of pursuing the pos-
sibility of justice. The pursuit of justice requires a mutually illuminat-
ing dialogue between a variety of perspectives. However, it has been
the argument of this book that philosophical hermeneutics provides
a particular, distinctive, contribution which, until now, has not been
recognised. This contribution consists of the provision of a via media, a
means for achieving a better reconciliation of universalism and particu-
larism (or relativism), which seeks to incorporate the advantages, while
234
Conclusion
rejecting the limitations, of each. Philosophical hermeneutics advances

the prospect of a non-foundational universalism. To be more specific, it
offers an alternative epistemology, ontology, and morality to the unprob-
lematic universalism of liberal cosmopolitanism, to the slightly more
problematised universalism of Frankfurt School critical theory, and to
the perceived anti-universalism of poststructuralism/postmodernism.
Philosophical hermeneutics incorporates the anti-foundational insights
of poststructuralism while rejecting the relativist implications which fol-
low. Likewise, it retains the universalism of liberal cosmopolitanism,
while rejecting the foundationalism or quasi-foundationalism of lib-
eral cosmopolitanism and critical theory. In this way philosophical
hermeneutics celebrates the existence of differences, while providing
hope that difference can be bridged and communication and agreement
achieved. In so doing, it contributes to finding a way out of the inter-
regnum, described by Ricoeur, ‘in which we can no longer practice the
dogmatism of a single truth and in which we are not yet capable of
conquering the scepticism into which we have stepped’.2
The way out of this interregnum begins with a recognition that achiev-
ing communication means that we must start from ‘where we are
now’. An attitude towards communication informed by philosophical
hermeneutics does not require the engineering of a new human being,
nor an acceptance that human finitude rules out improvements in the
human condition. Philosophical hermeneutics takes it that the capacity
for cross-cultural understanding is real and accompanies the develop-
ment of language itself. This means that movement towards a ‘universal
horizon’ requires only the linguisticality of the human species. The ca-
pacity to reason and understand inhabit language itself, and are not the
exclusive property of any particular sector of the human population.
Language provides us with all the resources we need to understand
each other, and to build commonality and solidarity. And at the same
time, language, or languages, provide the obstacle(s) to, and limits upon,
our ability to understand and communicate. Linguisticality points to the
limits of human understanding of ourselves, others, and the world(s)
which we inhabit and create. Philosophical hermeneutics brings this
awareness to the forefront by reminding us of the capacity of language
to act as both bridge and barrier. Furthermore, the insights of philo-
sophical hermeneutics, as used here, suggest that, while there may well
continue to be real and irresolvable political obstacles to the expansion
2 P. Ricoeur, History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), p. 283.
235
of human political community, at the ‘philosophical’ level there is little

to prevent a universal moral conversation from taking place.
However, the claim has not been made that philosophical hermeneu-
tics in particular, or a communicative approach, in general, either
resolves all moral/ethical problems or exhausts the scope of ethical
and moral activity in international relations. Certain situations do arise
wherein communication has ceased or is not possible. Some of these
situations nonetheless call for moral or ethical action. What has been
argued here is that communication should, wherever possible, be as-
pired to and communicative approaches be incorporated into solutions
to ethical/moral problems at all stages. While it is always possible, and
indeed probable, that opportunities for communication will be excluded
at an early stage where issues of ‘national security’, survival, or military
intervention are required, there is a need to keep channels of communi-
cation open while recognising that sometimes moral/ethical demands
might require a non-dialogical response.
In such cases, or cases where communication or dialogue are abused
or used in order to gain strategic advantage, there is an obvious lack
of good will between the partners. At least two responses are possible,
both valid. The first is to recognise that communication between the ma-
jor protagonists is not possible in a genuine sense, that is, that there is
no goodwill between us and them. In such a situation it is possible that
other actions, including coercive ones are required if justice is to be done.
However, a commitment to a communicative ethic also requires that the
results of such coercive or non-communicative actions be anticipated.
In particular, it requires the much harder task of attempting to antici-
pate which actions will lead to a communicative closure and which will
prevent such closure. In addition, none of this is to say that ‘goodwill’
should necessarily have been extended to all parties at all times.
A second response is to seek to find communicative responses, or
modes of communicative engagement. This, in turn, requires seeking to
achieve good will and to build the circumstances for solidarity. Creat-
ing the conditions of communication is especially difficult in the realm
of international relations. Realists constantly remind us of the obstacles
to successful communication engendered by a chronic systemic secu-
rity dilemma. In places such as the former Yugoslavia these obstacles
are heightened. However, rationalists have also emphasised the ele-
ment of dialogue and intersubjective agreement between states, which
reduce the tension associated with a security dilemma and lead to the
creation of an international society of states. Likewise, the work of the
236
Conclusion
constructivist approach has demonstrated the dialogical constitution

of the components of the international system and the institutions of
international order.
What these arguments suggest is that dialogue and communica-
tion cannot be put off until the security dilemma has been resolved,
but rather that understanding based on communication (interpreted
broadly) is crucial to ameliorating and, on occasions, escaping the secu-
rity dilemma. Thus, what has not been offered in this book is an idealist
recipe removed from international realities. On the contrary the argu-
ment is that the realities of international politics cry out for an enquiry
into how communication can be furthered and solidarity built upon. In
this sense, philosophical hermeneutics lives up to its aim to be a practical
philosophy.
The argument presented in this book does not exhaust the possible
applications of philosophical hermeneutics to international relations.
Little has been said here about how Gadamer’s thought might apply
to the issues of methodology which arose in the so-called third debate.
Needless to say, the insights contained in Truth and Method add another
voice to the debate about the nature and possibilities for theorising and
understanding international relations, which might serve to indicate
possibilities and interpretations other than those provided by critical
theory and poststructuralism. Amongst the possible contributions of
philosophical hermeneutics to this debate is that it provides a means
of reflecting and reinterpreting the concerns of the English school. It is
possible to interpret the English school’s concerns with history of the
development of international society as the development of a tradition
of thought oriented towards the possibilities for communication across
cultural barriers.3 Beyond that it might be possible to see the mode of
theorising undertaken by authors such as Hedley Bull and R. J. Vincent
as examples of a form of practical reasoning in the Aristotelian sense.
Bull’s reflections on justice serve as illustrations of a mode of thought
which seeks to accommodate change within the context of a pre-existing
tradition and to reflect on universal principles in the light of particular
issues.
This interpretation of Bull’s approach brings the attention back to the
issue of phronesis and practical reasoning and the argument presented
in this book. The development of thin cosmopolitanism informed by
3 See R. Epp, ‘The English School on the Frontiers of International Society: A Hermeneutic
Reflection’, Review of International Studies, 24, Dec. (1998), 47–53.
237
philosophical hermeneutics has raised the issue of the nature of prac-

tical reasoning or phronesis and suggested that this mode of reasoning
presents a suitable model for thinking about how to approach moral and
ethical issues in international relations. If this is the case, then further
enquiry should explore this avenue. A crucial part of any investigation
into these concerns would be an exploration of the relationship between
neo-Aristotelianism and more emancipatory approaches. It is in the di-
alogue between these two and the negotiations of their tension that a
productive future for moral/ethical thinking in international relations
might lie.
This book has been dedicated to the task of conceiving a form of uni-
versal human community which can include, celebrate and facilitate
conversation between all the cultures and individuals of the world. The
fundamental premise on which it is based is that membership of a par-
ticular community does not have to exclude membership of a larger
community. The capacity of human beings to engage in reasoned un-
derstanding of each other creates the basis for a cosmopolitan order and
suggests that to be situated in a particular community does not have to
make one the enemy of humankind.
238
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Index
abstraction, 40–1 Ashley, Richard, 80, 93, 95, 99, 101, 102, 104
agency, 27, 39, 40, 60, 61, 93, 104, 105, 110, assimilation, 13, 15, 16, 18–19, 21, 34, 40,
121, 183, 202, 214 42, 61, 72, 77, 94, 96, 120, 126, 129,
communitarianism and, 42–3 139, 174, 178, 199, 202, 206, 209, 216,
conceptions of, 40, 41 222, 233, 234
cosmopolitan/communitarian divide communication and, 50, 196
and, 44 identity and, 22
discourse ethics and, 88–9, 116, 117, impartiality and, 38
122, 126 veil of ignorance and, 39
freedom and, autonomy, 120
ethics of, 100 claims to, 213
pursuit of, 120 human, 124
human, 34, 38, 69, 93, 119, 125 individual, 118
Kantian approach to, 40–2
philosophical hermeneutics and, Being, 135, 136, 138
161, 167 hermeneutics of, 190
relation to reason, 162, 166 truth of, 149
postconventional, 94, 122, 184 Being-in-the-world (see Dasein)
poststructuralism and, 100 Beitz, Charles, 4, 5, 9, 27, 32, 34, 39, 42,
reason and, 162 89, 219
agreement, 170, 177, 189, 191, cosmopolitan morality and, 36
195, 196 liberal cosmopolitanism and, 37, 161,
conversation and, 168, 173 221
fusion of horizons and, 149 Benhabib, Seyla, 88, 105, 106, 109–114,
philosophical hermeneutics and, 115, 128, 165, 167
168, 171–2 abstract other and, 69
understanding and, 25, 171 generalised and concrete other and,
universal, 173, 178 34–6, 42, 206
alterity, 15, 16 universalism and, 108, 111, 116, 127
anarchy boundaries, 32, 34, 210
sovereignty and, 65, 66 communication and, 201
annihilation, 15, 16, 17, 19, 22, 72, 139, communities and, 213
197, 233 dialogue and, 201
Aristotelian moral, 26, 33
phronesis, 152, 154, 157, 176, 186 philosophical hermeneutics and,
polis, 82, 160, 204, 208, 210, 218 201
art sovereign, 202
importance of, 148–9 sovereignty and, 65, 100
248
Index
Brown, Chris, 27, 30–1, 32, 34, 44, 45, 46, communication and, 31, 48
47, 57, 60, 214, 221 community and, 31, 46, 49, 78
Bull, Hedley, 6, 8, 56, 58, 237 concrete other and, 42
international society and, 215–18 critical theory and, 83
criticism of Rawls, 9
Campbell, David, 5, 13, 63, 64, 66, 73–75, difference and, 31, 46, 111
76, 79, 93, 104, 105, 211 discourse ethics and, 111
citizenship, post-Westphalian, see international relations and, 46
post-Westphalian citizenship justice and, 42–3
coexistence, 13, 15, 16, 22–24, 34, 47, 48, 60, other, generalised and, 43
72, 77, 137, 139, 157, 174, 178, 202, poststructuralism and, 77, 78
216, 217, 218, 221, 222, 224, 233, 234 self and, 34
communication and, 24–6 community, 2, 27, 33, 78, 90, 92–4, 99,
communitarianism and, 46 104, 105, 176, 222
discourse ethics and, 88 building, 176
ethics of, 44, 46 communication and, 131, 183, 204,
rules of, 48, 88 205–6
communication, 16, 27, 51, 73, 76, 77, 92, communitarianism and, 31, 46, 49, 78
93, 98, 106, 193, 195 conversation and, 3, 118
assimilation and, 50, 196 cosmopolitan, 3, 4, 82, 83, 86, 89–91, 93,
boundaries and, 201 95, 117, 131, 132, 152, 161, 177, 197,
coexistence and, 24–6 208, 220, 221, 231
proposition and imposition and, 25 definition, 3
colonialism and, 21–2 dialogical, 131, 189, 201
communitarianism and, 31, 48 difference and, 2, 3, 31, 60, 94, 96, 105,
community, 131, 183, 204, 205–6 122, 126, 129, 175
conversation model and, 28 discourse ethics and, 122
cosmopolitanism and, 31 discursive, 83, 86, 128, 175, 187
dialogical, 210 expansion of, 157
difference and, 26, 28, 93–94, 95, human, recognition by states, 6
211 individuals in, 59–60
discourse ethics and, 122, 126 international relations and, 6, 8, 53, 62,
domain of discourse in, 60 96, 198, 200
equality and, 26, 95, 124 cosmopolitan/communitarian divide,
ethics of, 51, 62, 80, 96, 127 30–1
freedom and, 71, 203 just, 202
justice and, 15, 26, 51, 95, 211 justice and, 43
inter-cultural, 215 moral, 6, 7, 32, 34, 46, 50, 118, 201, 214,
knowledge and evaluation and, 18 218, 219
philosophical hermeneutics and, 28, philosophical hermeneutics and, 137,
132, 167, 187–8, 193, 209, 233, 235 157, 174, 175, 176, 177, 199
poststructuralism and, 98, 102 political, 91
recognition and, 12–13, 28 poststructuralist approaches to, 62, 64,
settled norms in, 60 77, 79, 93, 98, 99
violence in, 203 phronesis and, 153
communicative sovereignty and, 65, 66
ethic, 210, 236 thick, 158
ethics, 128 thin, 174, 233
inclusion, 225 universal, 2, 7, 8, 83, 92, 105, 118, 131,
rationality, 121 132, 188, 200, 214, 220, 223, 233
communitarianism, 27, 33, 34, 47, Connolly, William, 65, 67, 68, 70–1,
92, 226 72, 75, 95
agency and, 42–3 consciousness,
coexistence and, 46 hermeneutic, 176, 199
ethics of, 44 postconventional, 119, 120, 122, 183
249
Index
consensus, 2, 95, 98, 106, 108, 120, 125, 127, philosophical hermeneutics and, 131,
128, 147, 148, 176, 178, 183, 191, 196, 137, 160, 161–3, 166–8, 169, 170–3,
202, 207, 217, 218, 228, 229, 231 179, 206, 208
purpose of, 105, 110 poststructuralism and, 102
consent, 86, 87, 107, 201, 218 prerequisites, 121
cosmopolitan community and, 86 purpose of, 103, 104, 105, 106–7, 108,
norms and, 108 124, 125, 126, 147, 169, 170, 171,
post-Westphalian citizenship and, 91 174, 175, 176, 206, 223, 224
universal, 108, 177 reasoned, 166
constitutive theory, 27, 52, 53, 54–57, recognition and, 12–13, 93, 202, 206
59–61, 93 self and, 88, 169
conversation, 3, 93, 105, 108, 110, 117, 119, self/other relationships and, 28, 50–1,
195, 197, 203, 206 88, 131, 147, 193, 200
agreement and, 168, 173 strategic, 169
as Kantian project, 122 subjectivity and, 72–3
as procedure, 127 truth and, 148, 178, 204, 206
coexistence and, 48 understanding and, 141, 147, 148,
community and, 3, 118 150, 151, 152–3, 167, 178, 179,
consent and, 87 205, 206–7
cosmopolitan, 168, 174, 208, 223 universal, 114, 120, 159, 166
cosmopolitan/communitarian divide universalism and, 108, 128
and, 39, 42 veil of ignorance and, 39–40
culture and, 25 cosmopolitan
difference and, 147, 178, 220 community, 3, 4, 82, 83, 86, 89–91, 93, 95,
discourse ethics and, 86, 88, 96, 117, 131, 132, 152, 161, 177, 197, 208,
105, 106, 116, 121, 127, 128, 162, 213, 220, 221, 231
171, 176 consent and, 86
dispute resolution and, 128 thick, 209
emancipation and, 83 thin, 213, 219, 230, 231
equality and, 26, 95, 124, 234 conversation, 168, 174, 208, 223
exclusion from, 123, 162, 166, 167, 176, democracy, 90, 91, 92
195, 208 ethos, 220
freedom and, 71, 120 morality, 36, 51
fusion of horizons and, 145 project, 85, 88, 94, 209
good, 95, 195, 205 cosmopolitan/communitarian divide,
hermeneutic, 141, 143, 145, 147, 27, 32, 52, 53, 59, 60
152, 175 agency and, 44
Socratic dialogue, 150–2 community and, 30–1, 48–9, 92
hierarchy in, 126 conversation and, 39, 42
identity and, 147, 148, 166, 178 justice and, 31, 34–42, 43–4
inclusion, criteria for, 120 morality and, 44
intercultural, 209 poststructuralist approaches to, 62,
international society and, 45, 209 77–80, 93–4
justice and, 15, 39, 128, 173 cosmopolitanism, 4, 5, 8, 27, 32, 34, 90,
language and, 147, 166 92, 161, 176, 197
model of, 28, 94, 98, 114, 115, 116, central propostion of, 7
138, 157, 158, 162, 167, 175, 233 communication and, 31
discourse ethics, 168, 206 community and, 31, 43, 82, 83
human rights and, 227–9, 232 concrete other and, 34, 35
Kantian, 97 critical theory and, 83
philosophical hermeneutics, 166–8, culture and, 7
170–3, 208 difference and, 12, 31, 197
moral, 46, 116, 127, 235 discourse ethics and, 89–90, 122,
other and, 88, 104, 120, 148, 161, 165, 168, 161, 197
170, 176, 178, 202, 210 generalised other and, 34–5, 42
250
Index
intercultural conversation and, 209 heterogeneity, 8

interpretations of particularism, 44
liberal-rights based, 36 recognition, 11
levels of, 29
liberal, 32, 34–5, 36, 37, 38, 40, 89, 111, Dasein (Being-in-the-world), 131, 134, 135,
161, 221, 235 184, 207
multicultural, 161 deconstruction, 28, 29, 198, 201
philosophical hermeneutics and, 177, philosophical hermeneutics and,
210, 235 188–95, 196
poststructuralism and, 77 democracy, 76
realism and, 7 agonistic, 75, 76
thin, 105, 106, 126, 174, 177, 180, cosmopolitan, 90, 91, 92
209, 210, 214, 215, 218, 233, ethos of, 68, 80–71
237 sovereignty and, 65–6
characteristics of, 219–24 Derrida, Jacques, 76, 197, 198, 203
human rights and, 225, 231 deconstruction and philosophical
thick, 130, 224 hermeneutics, 188–95, 196
universal poststructuralist criticism and, 180
dialogic, 115 undecidability and, 75
human rights and, 225, 231, 232 Devetak, Richard, 63, 100, 101, 102
critical dialogical community, 131, 189, 201
reflection, 181–182 dialogue, 54, 76, 80, 86, 92, 95, 106, 108,
theory, 27, 29, 52, 53, 83, 92–3, 95, 176, 113, 118, 129, 161, 202, 204, 224, 227
187, 195 agonistic, 72
Aristotelian polis, 82 boundaries and, 201
boundaries and, 201 consent and, 87
communitarianism and, 83 discourse ethics and, 88, 90, 93, 95,
emancipation and, 124 126, 169
false consciousness, 199 emancipation and, 125
freedom and, 81, 117 ethics of, 204
international relations and, 82, 85, fusion of horizons and, 144
90, 92 inter-civilisational, 216
legislative and exclusionary aspects, not knowing and, 152
98 philosophical hermeneutics and, 132,
modernity and, 100 169, 176, 187–8, 195
notion of autonomy in, 100 post-Westphalian citizenship and, 91
philosophical hermeneutics, criticism universal, 13, 105, 120
of, 181–3, 185–9, 195 difference, 2, 92, 175, 178, 197
poststructuralist approaches to, 62, annihilation and assimilation and, 22
80–3, 98–9, 197 communication and, 26, 28, 93–4, 95, 211
purpose of, 124, 125, 126 communicative ethics and, 128
reason and, 100, 201, 202 communitarianism and, 31, 46, 111
reflective capacity of, 182–3 community and, 2, 3, 31, 60, 94, 96,
relationship to other, 96, 167 105, 122, 126, 129, 175
critique, 97–8, 165, 184, 199, 201 constitutive theory and, 93
of domination, 186 conversation and, 147, 178, 220
of ideology, 185 cosmopolitanism and, 12, 31, 197
understanding and, 164 democratic ethos and, 71
culture ethics of coexistence and, 46
as obstacle to cosmopolitanism, 7 equality and, 22, 24
conversation and, 25 fusion of horizons and, 147
cultural impartiality and, 38
differences, 43, 222 international relations and, 12, 95
international politics and, 12 language and, 184
international society and, 8 moral theory and, 10
251
Index
difference (cont.) post-Westphalian citizenship and, 91

poststructuralists and, 62, 67, 77, 79, practical, 106, 109
196, 198 principle of, 107, 108
recognition of, 232, 233 state domain of, 56–7
sovereignty and, 65, 67 discursive
to justice, see justice to difference community, 83, 86, 128, 175, 187
to otherness, 189 inclusion, 115, 118, 176
universality of Christianity and, double-gesture, 75-6, 80
19–20
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 133 emancipation, 28, 68, 81, 82, 86, 92, 94, 100,
discourse 101, 123, 125, 164, 167, 183, 186, 199
domain of, 55, 60, 93 communication and, 83
equality in, 121 critical theory and, 124
ethics, 12, 27, 28, 83–6, 88–91, 94–5, 96, dialogue and, 125
102, 111, 113, 115–16, 130, 176 discourse ethics and, 124–8
agreement and, 168, 171 language of, 126
agency and, 88–9, 116, 117, 122, 126 phronesis and, 152, 157
coexistence and, 88 enlightenment, 100, 101–2, 124, 185, 199,
communication and, 122, 124, 208
125, 126 prejudice of, 163, 182
communicative universality in, 116 reason and, 164, 184
communitarianism and, 111 equality, 19, 86, 96, 105, 126, 171, 173,
community and, 122 175, 178, 206, 207, 208, 210
consent and, 86 communication and, 26, 95, 124, 234
conversation and, 86, 96, 105, 106, 116, conversation and, 26, 95, 124, 234
121, 127, 128, 162, 171, 176; model difference and, 22, 24
of, 168, 206; philosophical discourse and, 121
hermeneutics and, 168, 170–1; identity and, 11, 18, 20, 40
strategic, 169 knowledge and, 17
cosmopolitanism and, 89, 90, 122, power and, 17
161, 197 recognition as, 224
definition of justice in, 106 truth and, 234
dialogue and, 88, 90, 93, 95, 126, 169 ethics, 45, 110
discourse of modernity and, 122 communicative, 210, 236
emancipation and, 124–8 deterritorialised, 72
exclusion in, 106, 108 discourse, see discourse ethics
freedom and, 116, 118 of care, 111–12
gender bias in, 111, 113 of coexistence, 44, 60
good and, 109, 110 of communication, 51, 62, 80, 96, 127
identity and, 89, 122 of critical freedom, 101
inclusion and, 117, 120, 121, 127, 166 of engagement, 72
justice and, 106, 122 of freedom
learning and, 169 agency and, 100
limitation and legislation and, 122 of freedom/democracy, 67, 71, 79
model of conversation, 96, 105, 167 of good dialogue, 204
moral claims and, 120 of responsibility, 67, 73–7
norms and, 84–5, 118, 171 of resistance, 70
of modernity, 122 of understanding, 119
philosophical hermeneutics and, international, 54
132 poststructuralist approaches to, 62,
right and, 109, 110, 117, 162 67–73, 77, 79
rules of, 114 sovereignty and, 65, 66–7
subjectivity and, 122 subjectivity and, 73, 76, 104
universalisation and, 118, 127, 128 experience (Erlebnis), 149
universalism and, 107, 116, 117 (Erfahrung), 134, 156
252
Index
feminism, 186 phronesis and, 152–9, 176, 208

finitude, 137, 138, 151, 152, 156, 164, 167, power and, 186
169, 176, 178, 194, 208, 235 rationality and, 163
Foucault, 62, 101, 129, 197, 204 reason and, 164, 177, 183–4, 207
truth and power and, 63 Sache and, 140–1, 228
Frankfurt School, 82, 83, 235 solidarity and, 161
freedom, 69, 76, 79, 86, 95, 96, 98, 100, 103, techne and, 154, 187
120, 173, 175, 186, 202, 208 understanding and, 184, 187, 196
agency and, 100, 200 theory of, 142, 145, 147, 148, 149, 166,
abstract other and, 69 171
as inclusion, 117 types of, 138–40
as self-determination, 118 see also Habermas/Gadamer debate
communication and, 71, 203 Gilligan, Carol, 35, 111
conversation and, 71, 120 Good. the, 174, 179, 197
critical theory and, 81 conception of, 175
democratic ethos and, 68 discourse ethics and, 109, 110
discourse ethics and, 116, 118 life, 173–5
international relations and, 98 good will, 200, 236
meaning of, 117 psychoanalysis and, 191
of speech, 97 Socratic conversation and, 151
other, concrete and, 69 towards the text, 189
politics of, 96
poststructuralism and, 68, 70, 95, 101–2 Habermas/Gadamer debate, 28, 181–8
purpose of, 117 Habermas, Jurgen, 27, 83, 84, 87, 89, 99,
register of, 67–8, 71, 77, 99, 101, 109–10, 112, 123, 153, 165, 168, 173,
104, 129 188, 202
sovereignty and, 68 conversation and, 204–6
truth and, 70 critical theory and, 181, 189
universal, pursuit of, 83, 102, 164 discourse ethics and, 12, 86, 105, 106,
universality and, 118 107, 113–20, 122, 126, 130, 161
Frost, Mervyn, 4, 5, 64, 82, 214, 216 conversation and, 106–7, 127, 170
constitutive theory, 54–7, 59–61, 93 language and, 184–5
fusion of horizons, 142, 143, 152, 160, 162, moral development, conception of,
166, 169, 171, 183, 193, 196, 223 119
as agreement, 149 principle of universalism, 107, 111
conversation and, 145 rationality and, 163, 166, 183
dialogue in, 144 Socratic conversation, 150–2
difference and, 147 see also Habermas/Gadamer debate
Heidegger, Martin, 133, 190
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 106, 176, 199, Hegel, G. W. F., 82, 93, 147
204, 205, 214 philosophy of right, 58
art and, 148–9 hermeneutic
being and, 136 consciousness, 176, 199
conception of good, 175 conversation, 141, 143, 145, 147,
conversation and, 144, 166, 171, 175, 101–52, 175
178, 206 understanding, 147, 148, 150–2, 157, 171
model of, 28, 162 hermeneutics
finitude and, 137 definition, 1, 133
fusion of horizons and, 142, 149 of Being, 190
good will towards the text and, 189 of suspicion, 63
I–Thou relationship and, 138 ontologisation of, 131, 135
philosophical hermeneutics and, 2, 131, phronesis and, 158
133–5, 140, 144, 152, 158, 159, 165, psychoanalysis and, 191
184, 189, 209 reasoning and, 153
deconstruction, 188–95, 196 see also philosophical hermeneutics
253
Index
human cultural difference and, 8

agency, 34, 38, 69, 93, 119, 125 difference and, 12, 95
autonomy, 124 ethics and, 57, 209
nature freedom and, 98
knowledge of, 138–9 international society and, 214
rights, 29, 55, 210, 216, 218 justice, and; as recognition, 12;
model of conversation in, 227–9, meaning of, 9
232 moral debates in, 225
dialogue in, 230 morality and, 6
dialogue on, 227–8 normative issues in, 57
international politics and, 225–7 normative theory and, 5
norms of, 225 other and, 62
sovereignty and, 58, 59 poststructuralist approaches, 61–2,
states and, 225, 230–1 63–7, 77, 96, 100
universal; cosmopolitanism and, theories of, 6–7; critical, 82, 85,
225, 231, 232 90, 92
Hutchings, Kimberley, 5, 97 society, 44–5, 46, 47, 58, 210
conversation and, 45, 209
I–Thou relationship, 138–9, 148, 150 egg-box conception of, 45, 217
idealisation, 40–1 development of, 215
identity, 10, 11, 18, 76, 95, 193, 207, 215 expansion of, 216
assimilation and, 22 international relations and, 214
conversation and, 147, 148, 166, 178 legitimacy of, 217, 218
definitional, 39 norms of, 54, 57, 59, 215–16, 217, 218
democratic ethos and, 71 pluralist, 48, 57, 220; interpretation
discourse ethics and, 89, 122 of, 217
equality and, 11, 18, 20, 40 solidarist, 217–18, 220
freedom and, 70 states and, 44–5, 46, 47, 58, 210, 216,
language and, 13 218
non-sovereign, 100 interpretations, 145–6, 162, 194
poststructuralism and, 64, 79, 100
sovereignty and, 65, 67 justice, 1
inclusion, 106, 107, 124, 126, 162, as recognition, 10–11, 53, 173, 201, 202
187, 197 international relations and, 12
communicative, 225 assimilative, 50
discursive, 115, 118, 176 coexistence and, 24
freedom and, 117 communication and, 15, 26, 51, 95, 211
universal, 108, 116, 122, 125, 130 communitarianism and, 42–3
individuality, 55, 59, 60, 202 community and, 43
international conversation and, 15, 39, 128, 173
ethics, 54 cosmopolitan/communitarian divide
poststructuralist approaches to, 62, and, 31, 34–42, 43–4
67–73, 77, 79 discourse ethics and, 106, 122
sovereignty and, 65, 66–7 distribution and, 10
institutions, 213, 215 double-gesturing and, 75
law, 217 idealisation and, 41
politics judgements of, 109–10
human rights and, 225–7 justice and, 9, 12
moral theory and, 9 law and, 154
relations meaning of,
communitarianism and, 46 moral theory and, 9–10
community and, 6, 8, 53, 62, 96, 198, morality and, 3
200; political, 209 practical reasoning and, 154
cosmopolitan/communitarian divide, proposition and imposition, 25
30–1 Rawls and, 9
254
Index
to difference, 10, 11–12, 14, 15, 43, 50, post-Westphalian citizenship and,
51, 76, 89, 94, 105, 131, 138, 156, 91–2, 221
177, 195, 197, 200–4, 208, 210, 218, logocentrism, 188, 189
219, 221, 224, 233
veil of ignorance and, 39–40 Marx, Karl, 81, 93
meaning, 190
Kant, Immanuel, 3, 39, 40, 84, 89, 97, 123 language and, 192–3
Kantian truth and, 191
approach to agency, 40–2 metaphysics, 189, 190–1, 192
critique, 97 of presence, 190
limitation and legislation paradox of, 97, modernity, 100, 109, 165
105, 106, 113, 116, 122, 129, 166, 208 discourse of, 122–3
model of conversation, 97 moral
morality, 41, 47 action, 3, 42, 113
project, 97 realism and, 7
conversation as, 122 boundaries, 86
universal kingdom of ends, 124 communication and, 26
knowledge, 16, 32, 42, 93, 152, 164, claims, 84, 107, 224
169, 171, 178, 182, 194 conversation and, 128
authoritative, 97 discourse ethics and, 120
communication and, 18, 135 validation of, 116, 126
equality and, 17 codes, 119, 120
finitude and, 137 community, 6, 7, 32, 34, 46, 50, 118,
hermeneutic, 137, 148 201, 214, 218, 219
moral, 153 consideration, 90
phronesis and techne and, 154–6 conversation, 46, 116, 127, 235
power and, 17 debates
international relations and, 225
language, 46, 50, 190, 191, 202, 235 deliberation
conversation and, 147, 166 monological account, 42
difference and, 184 development, 123
identity and, 13 conception of, 119
meaning and, 192–3 dialogue, 105
philosophical hermeneutics and, 184–5, judgement, 77, 224
193–4, 235 knowledge, 153
reason and, 162 life, 165, 171
understanding and, 193, 198 women’s experiences of, 112–13
universality of, 135 obligations, 6
learning, 170, 200 point of view, 32, 107, 109, 114, 128
inter-civilisational, 216 realm, 3, 38, 98, 111, 112, 113
linguisticality, 165, 166, 193–4, 235 reasoning, 37, 38
understanding and, 143, 164, relativism, 45
185, 208 responsibility, 104
Levinas (Emmanuel), 73, 74, 75, 104, theory
105 difference and, 10
liberalism, 48, 78, see also cosmopolitanism international politics and, 9
limitation and legislation paradox, see international relations and, 12
Kantian justice and, 9–10
Linklater, Andrew, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 27, 32, maternal thinking and, 112
54, 80, 82, 83, 87, 93, 95–6, 99, 100, universalism, 41, 83, 115, 225
106, 117, 118, 119, 123, 129, 165, 197, validity, 84, 127
198, 200, 202, 214, 219, 220 universal, 106
discourse ethics and, 84–6, 88–90, 94, morality, 32, 110
105, 115–16, 126, 127, 130, 169 care and, 112
emancipation and, 124–5 communicative, 51
255
Index
morality (cont.) particularism, 80, 83, 90, 91, 95,

communitarianism and, 43 122, 234
cosmopolitan, 36, 51 philosophical hermeneutics, 2, 3, 5, 29,
cosmopolitan/communitarian divide 99, 195
and, 44 account of agency in, 161, 167
international relations and, 6 agreement and, 168, 171–2
justice and, 3 argument and, 164
Kantian, 41, 47 boundaries and, 201
postconventional, 87–8 communication and, 28, 132, 167,
poststructuralist approaches to, 62 187–8, 193, 209, 233, 235
community and, 137, 174, 175, 176,
Nardin, Terry, 45 177, 179
Neo-Realism, 80–1 expansion of, 157
Neufield, Mark, 80, 89, 110 continuity and, 199
Aristotelian polis and, 82 conversation and, 131, 137, 160, 161–3,
Nietzsche, 62, 190, 191 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 206
normative discourse ethics and, 168, 170–3
issues, 55, 57 model of, 166–8, 171, 176, 206, 208
theory 5 strategic, 169
norms, 27, 54, 61, 102, 128, 137, 154, cosmopolitanism and, 177, 210, 235
158, 165, 173, 206, 219 criticisms of, 180
consent and, 108 critical theory and, 181–3, 185–9,
discourse ethics and, 84–5, 118, 171 195
moral development and, 119 language and, 184
of human rights, 225 deconstruction and, 188–95, 196
of international society, 54, 57, 59, dialogue and, 132, 169, 176, 187–8, 195
215–16, 217, 218 global scale of, 159–60
of sovereignty, 215 just relationships and, 177–8
settled, 55, 56, 59, 60 language and, 184–5, 193–4, 235
universal, 61, 102, 127, 128 phronesis and, 152, 153, 158, 205
universality and, 126 poststructuralism and, 189, 198
validity of, 107–8, 117, 127 power and, 186–7, 196
not-knowing purpose of, 132, 157, 160, 189
experience and, 156 reason and, 162, 164, 165, 166,
Socratic, 151–2 184, 201, 202
O’Neill, Onora, 27, 32, 34, 49, 50, 88, 227 self/other relationship and, 131–2, 165
Kantian approach to agency, 40–2 solidarity and, 160, 205, 206
other, (the) 28, 103, 169 Stimmung of, 198–9, 200
abstract, 69–70, 71, 78, 173 tradition and, 181–4
as different, 50 truth and, 149, 168, 234
as equal, 150 understanding and, 131, 132–4, 137, 138,
concrete, 34, 35, 42, 44, 46, 47, 50, 59, 60, 152, 159, 160–1, 162, 165, 166, 171,
62, 69, 71, 72, 83, 92, 94, 96, 111, 113, 176, 178, 179, 184, 187, 188, 193–4,
114, 161, 165, 167, 173, 206 195, 199
conversation and, 88, 104, 120, 148, 161, see also hermeneutics
165, 168, 170, 176, 178, 202, 210 phronesis, 152, 153, 157–9, 176, 181, 186–7,
ethical relationship to, 76, 92 205, 207, 208, 237–8
generalised, 34–5, 36, 37–8, 40, 42, 43, difference from techne, 153–5
44, 50, 60, 92, 96, 111, 112, 206 distinction between hermeneutics
linguisticality and, 193 and, 158
moral consideration and, 90 polis, 82, 83, 131, 160, 204, 208,
poststructuralism and, 96, 102 210, 218
tradition and, 183 politics, 186
veil of ignorance and, 39 of freedom, 96
voice of, 144, 196 tradition and, 186
256
Index
postconventional pluralism, 39, 48, 79

agency, 94, 122, 184 democratic ethos and, 71
agent, 163, 165, 171, 183 purpose (telos), 104, 106
consciousness, 119, 120, 122, 183 of consensus, 105, 110
morality, 87–8 of conversation, 103, 104, 105, 106–7,
poststructuralism, 195 108, 124, 125, 126, 127, 147, 169, 170,
boundaries and, 201 171, 174, 175, 176, 206, 223, 224
communication and, 98, 102 of critical theory, 124, 125, 126
communitarianism and, 77–8 of freedom, 117
community and, 62, 64, 77, 79, of philosophical hermeneutics, 132, 157,
93, 89, 99 160, 189
conversation and, 102 of universalisation, 117, 127, 165
model of, 98 of understanding, 173, 212, 223
cosmopolitan/communitarian divide of validation, 107, 119
and, 62, 77–80, 93–4
critical theory and, 62, 80–3, 98–9, 197 question and answer,
difference and, 62, 67, 77, 79, 196, 198 dialogic structure of, 151
ethics and, 62, 67–7 polemics and, 204
exclusion and, 66 understanding and, 145–6, 148
freedom and, 68, 70, 95, 101–2 questions, 194
identity and, 64 evaluative, 109
international relations and, 61–2, 63–7, moral, 109, 114
77, 96, 100 of the right, 173–4
modernity and, 100
morality and, 62 Rationalism, 6, 81, 198
philosophical hermeneutics and, 189, rationality, 108, 111, 163, 183, 197
198 communicative, 121
power and, 63 Rawls, John, 11, 32, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40,
reason and, 64, 100, 201, 202 42, 88, 109
relationship to other, 96, 102 criticism of, 9
theory, 27, 52, 53 social contract and, 36–7, 89
truth and, 63–4 realism, 6, 7, 80
sovereignty and, 62, 64–70, 76–80 moral action and, 7
subjectivity and, 64, 65, 69, 72, 79, 100 reason, 38, 113, 177, 183–4, 194, 195,
universalism and, 78–9, 197–8 202, 207
post-Westphalian citizenship, 89, 91–2, 221 agency, 162
power, 194 enlightenment and, 164, 184
emancipatory, 183 philosophical hermeneutics and, 162,
equality and, 17 164, 165, 166, 184, 201, 202
language and, 185–6 poststructuralism and, 64, 100,
meaning and, 190 201, 202
knowledge and, 17 techne model of, 153, 200
philosophical hermeneutics and, tradition and, 163–6, 183
186–7, 196 reasoning, 162
poststructuralism and, 63, 77 communal, 159
relations, 184 hermeneutics and, 153
political, 186–7 monological, 219
sovereignty and, 65 moral, 37, 38
tradition and, 185 practical, see phronesis
truth and, 77 reciprocal illumination, 195–200
prejudice, 164, 183, 184–184, 194 recognition, 93
against prejudice, 163 communication and, 12–13, 28
of enlightenment, 163, 182 content of, 14
rehabilitation of, 164 conversation and, 12–13, 93,
rights of 182 202, 206
257
Index
recognition (cont.) community and, 65–6

equality and, 224 democracy and, 65–6
justice as, 10–11, 12, 53, 173, demotion of, 217
201, 202 difference and, 65, 67
of difference, 232, 233 ethics and, 65, 66, 67, 73, 74
reflection, 164, 183–4, 186 freedom and, 68
right, the, 173–5, 176, 179 human rights and, 58, 59
rights, human, see human rights identity and, 65, 67
Rorty, Richard, 192, 197, 214, mutual recognition of, 217
231 norms of, 215
rupture, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198 other and, 165
poststructuralist approaches to, 62,
Sache, die, 140–1, 145, 168, 64–70, 76–80
171, 228 power and, 65
self, 28, 100 reason and, 163
communitarianism and, 34 register of freedom and, 67–8,
conversation and, 88, 169 71
critique, 96, 103 self/other relationships and,
determination, 117, 118, 125 66, 67
ethics of responsibility and, 73–4 states
veil of ignorance and, 39 centrism of, 218
self/other relationship, 13, 25, 50, 98, citizens as constituents, 58, 92
101, 103, 105, 122, 125–6, 152, community of, 57
174, 178, 211 consent of, 218
conversation and, 28, 50–1, 88, 131, 147, cosmopolitan community and,
193, 210 213
ethics of responsibility and, 73–5 culture and, 7
philosophical hermeneutics and, discourse ethics and, 56–7
131–2, 165 emancipatory movements and,
Todorov and, 14–25, 139 186–7
see also I–Thou relationship exclusivity, 85
social human rights and, 225, 230–1
contract international society and, 44–5, 46,
Rawlsian, 36–7, 89 47, 58, 210, 216, 218
forces, 185 liberty and freedom in, 58–9
society modernisation and, 222
global civil, 213 moral theory and, 9
Socratic recognition of human community,
conversation, 150–2 6, 93
experience, 151–2 security dilemma and, 236–7
ideal of non-violent discussion, 203 Stimmung
not-knowing, 151–2 of philosophical hermeneutics, 198–9,
Socrates 200
two faces of, 194–5, 198, 199 of poststructuralism/postmodernism,
solidarity, 132, 159, 174, 176, 177, 179, 187, 198
189, 195, 198, 199, 200, 207, 210, 214, subjectivity, 55, 60, 78
224, 236 conversation and, 72–3
philosophical hermeneutics and, 160, democratic ethos and, 71
205, 206 ethics and, 73, 76, 104
universal, 157, 159, 160–1 other and, 73
sovereignty, 57–8, 65, 92, 215, 219 poststructuralism and, 64, 65, 69, 72,
anarchy and, 65, 66 79, 100
boundaries and, 65, 100 responsibility to other and, 73
citizens and, 65 sovereignty and, 65
claims to, 213 synesis, 159
258
Index
techne, 153, 175, 187 purpose of, 173, 212, 223

difference from phronesis, 153–5 question and answer and, 145–6
technical instrumental model theory of, 142, 145, 147, 148, 149
of reasoning, see techne types of
telos, see purpose dialogical, 139–40
Todorov, Tzvetan, 13 historicism, 139, 140
self/other relationships and, 14–25, knowledge of human nature,
139 138–9
totalisation, 69, 70, 73, 74, 78, 79, 100, 197 universal, 33, 154, 198, 207, 221
tradition, 162, 184, 192, 193, 201, 214 agreement, 173, 178
historical, 136, 142 community, 2, 7, 8, 83, 92, 105,
understanding and, 137, 138, 143 118, 131, 132, 188, 200, 214,
other and, 183 220, 223, 233
philosophical hermeneutics and, 181, consent, 108, 177
184 conversation, 114, 120, 159, 166
politics in, 186 cosmopolitanism,
power in, 185 dialogic, 115
reason and, 163–6, 183 human rights and, 225, 231, 232
transcultural validity, 228 dialogue, 13, 120
truth, 127, 137, 149, 152, 164, 168, 169, moral, 105
170, 172, 182, 194, 224, 233 ethical principles, 119
conversation and, 148, 178, 204, 206 freedom, pursuit of, 83, 102, 164
Socratic, 152–3 human rights, see human rights
equality and, 234 humanity, 224
freedom and, 70 inclusion, 108, 116, 122, 125,
meaning and, 190 130
openness to, 151 justice, see justice
philosophical hermeneutics and, 149, kingdom of ends, 124
168, 234 norms, 61, 102, 127, 128
poststructuralism and, 63–4, 100 principles, 113, 154, 171
power and, 63, 77 rational discourse, 120
situated notion of, 141 redemption, 108
solidarity, 157, 159, 160–1
undecidability, 75 universalisation, 84, 106, 107, 109, 112,
understanding, 126, 199, 214, 224 116, 117, 118, 127, 128, 165, 167,
agreement and, 25, 171 173, 176
change and, 169 universalism, 51–2, 78–80, 83, 87, 90,
common meaning and, 152 91, 95, 111, 122, 127, 198, 223,
conversation and, 141, 147, 148, 150, 232, 234
151, 167, 178, 179, 206–7 conversation and, 108, 128
critique and, 164 discourse ethics and, 107, 116, 117
fusion and, 143 discursive, 88–9
genuine, 149, 187 moral, 41, 83, 115, 225
hermeneutic, 147, 149, 152, 171 poststructuralism and, 197–8
Socratic conversation and, 150–2, principle of, 107
157 rationality and, 108
historical tradition and, 137 universality, 114, 117, 183, 214,
interpretation and, 162 227
just relationships and, 14 as inclusion, 122, 126
language and, 135, 198 communicative, 116
linguisticality and, 143, 164, 185, 208 freedom and, 118
philosophical hermeneutics and, 131, language and, 135
132–134, 137, 138, 152, 159, 160–1, maturity and, 119
162, 165, 166, 170, 171, 176, 178, 179, philosophical hermeneutics and,
184, 187, 188, 193–194, 195, 196, 199 158, 162
259
Index
validation Walz, Kenneth, 6, 80

of norms, 107–8 Walzer, Michael, 9, 12, 27, 32, 34, 40,
of moral claims, 116 42–3, 46–7, 49, 60
of principles, 120 wisdom, practical, see phronesis
purpose of, 107, 119
‘veil of ignorance’, 37, 88 Young, Iris Marion, 10, 51, 107, 117
assimilation and, 39 generalized other and, 37–8
conversation and, 39–40 impartiality and, 38
other and, 39 Yugoslavia
violence, 203, 205, 209 deconstruction of, 211–12
260
66 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.)

The power of human rights
International norms and domestic change
65 Daniel W. Drezner
The sanctions paradox
Economic statecraft and international relations
64 Viva Ona Bartkus
The dynamic of secession
63 John A. Vasquez
The power of power politics
From classical realism to neotraditionalism
62 Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.)

Security communities
61 Charles Jones
E. H. Carr and international relations
A duty to lie
60 Jeffrey W. Knopf
Domestic society and international cooperation
The impact of protest on US arms control policy
59 Nicholas Greenwood Onuf

The republican legacy in international thought
58 Daniel S. Geller and J. David Singer

Nations at war
A scientific study of international conflict
57 Randall D. Germain
The international organization of credit
States and global finance in the world economy
56 N. Piers Ludlow
Dealing with Britain
The Six and the first UK application to the EEC
55 Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer and Volker Rittberger
Theories of international regimes
54 Miranda A. Schreurs and Elizabeth C. Economy (eds.)

The internationalization of environmental protection
53 James N. Rosenau
Along the domestic-foreign frontier
Exploring governance in a turbulent world
52 John M. Hobson
The wealth of states
A comparative sociology of international economic and
political change
51 Kalevi J. Holsti
The state, war, and the state of war
50 Christopher Clapham
Africa and the international system
The politics of state survival
49 Susan Strange
The retreat of the state
The diffusion of power in the world economy
48 William I. Robinson
Promoting polyarchy
Globalization, US intervention, and hegemony
47 Roger Spegele
Political realism in international theory
46 Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds.)
State sovereignty as social construct
45 Mervyn Frost
Ethics in international relations
A constitutive theory
44 Mark W. Zacher with Brent A. Sutton
Governing global networks
International regimes for transportation and communications
43 Mark Neufeld
The restructuring of international relations theory
42 Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.)
Bringing transnational relations back in
Non-state actors, domestic structures and international institutions
41 Hayward R. Alker
Rediscoveries and reformulations
Humanistic methodologies for international studies
40 Robert W. Cox with Timothy J. Sinclair

Approaches to world order
39 Jens Bartelson
A genealogy of sovereignty
38 Mark Rupert
Producing hegemony
The politics of mass production and American global power
37 Cynthia Weber
Simulating sovereignty
Intervention, the state and symbolic exchange
36 Gary Goertz
Contexts of international politics
35 James L. Richardson
Crisis diplomacy
The Great Powers since the mid-nineteenth century
34 Bradley S. Klein
Strategic studies and world order
The globl politics of deterrence
33 T. V. Paul
Asymmetric conflicts: war initiation by weaker powers
32 Christine Sylvester
Feminist theory and international relations in a postmodern era
31 Peter J. Schraeder
US foreign policy toward Africa
Incrementalism, crisis and change
30 Graham Spinardi
From Polaris to Trident: The development of US Fleet
Ballistic Missile technology
29 David A. Welch
Justice and the genesis of war
28 Russell J. Leng
Interstate crisis behavior, 1816–1980: realism versus reciprocity
27 John A. Vasquez
The war puzzle
26 Stephen Gill (ed.)

Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations
25 Mike Bowker and Robin Brown (eds.)
From Cold War to collapse: theory and world politics in the 1980s
24 R. B. J. Walker
Inside/outside: international relations as political theory
23 Edward Reiss
The strategic defense initiative
22 Keith Krause
Arms and the state: patterns of military production and trade
21 Roger Buckley
US–Japan alliance diplomacy 1945–1990
20 James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds.)

Governance without government: order and change in world politics
19 Michael Nicholson
Rationality and the analysis of international conflict
18 John Stopford and Susan Strange

Rival states, rival firms
Competition for world market shares
17 Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (eds.)

Traditions of international ethics
16 Charles F. Doran
Systems in crisis
New imperatives of high politics at century’s end
15 Deon Geldenhuys
Isolated states: a comparative analysis
14 Kalevi J. Holsti
Peace and war: armed conflicts and international order 1648–1989
13 Saki Dockrill
Britain’s policy for West German rearmament 1950–1955
12 Robert H. Jackson
Quasi-states: sovereignty, international relations and the
Third World
11 James Barber and John Barratt

South Africa’s foreign policy
The search for status and security 1945–1988
10 James Mayall
Nationalism and international society
9 William Bloom
Personal identity, national identity and international relations
8 Zeev Maoz
National choices and international processes
7 Ian Clark
The hierarchy of states
Reform and resistance in the international order
6 Hidemi Suganami
The domestic analogy and world order proposals
5 Stephen Gill
American hegemony and the Trilateral Commission
4 Michael C. Pugh
The ANZUS crisis, nuclear visiting and deterrence
3 Michael Nicholson
Formal theories in international relations
2 Friedrich V. Kratochwil
Rules, norms, and decisions
On the conditions of practical and legal reasoning in international relations
and domestic affairs
1 Myles L. C. Robertson
Soviet policy towards Japan
An analysis of trends in the 1970s and 1980s

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Justice, Community and Dialogue in

RICHARD SHAPCOTT is Lecturer in International Relations, Deakin

Justice, Community and Dialogue in

Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of

Series list continues after index

  

© Richard Shapcott 2004

First published in printed format 2001

ISBN 0-511-03482-2 eBook (Adobe Reader)

Acknowledgements page viii

In England I was fortunate enough to receive real encouragement and

agreed to read, meet and talk with me on several occasions. Michael’s is

Insofar as hermeneutics is more than a theory of the human sciences,

This book faces an impossible task and suggests an impossible solution.

to ‘otherness’ or ‘difference’. These questions are part of an impossible

The meaning of community

justice are intertwined in this book: inclusion can only be moral if it

What this book does and does not do

The moral problematique of international relations

Indeed it is possible to follow Linklater’s lead and argue that almost

further. In this reading the principles of coexistence evident in theories

10 H. Bull, Justice in International Relations (The Hagey Lectures), (University of Waterloo,

Justice as recognition of difference

impartial justice in which the aim is to establish the nature of moral

The politics of recognition refers not only to people’s relationships to

The principle of justice to difference, in so far as it is an account of jus-

15A. Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the

16 T. Todorov, The Conquest of America (New York: Harper), 1982.

Self/other relations in the conquest of America:

significance of Todorov’s book lies in the introduction of a set of cat-

between submission to the other and the other’s submission there is

Annihilation, assimilation, coexistence and communication exist pri-

Discovery and conquest

20 Ibid., p. 185. 21 Ibid., pp. 31 and 35.

more knowledge of the Indians than when he arrived. Instead, he sees

22 Ibid., pp. 176–7. 23 Ibid., p. 128. 24 Ibid., p. 129.

as it seems and reveals the difficulties and problems of the category of

29 Ibid., in note 3, p. 152. 30 See ibid., p. 153.

33 Ibid., p. 163. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., p. 165. 36 Ibid., p. 162. 37 Ibid., p. 168.

Equality and inequality exist on the axiological level, concerning val-

42 Ibid., p. 146. 43 Ibid., p. 165.

barbaric practice of human sacrifice appear a Christian act. He did

44 Ibid., p. 188–9. 45 Ibid., p. 189. 46 Ibid., p. 190. 47 Ibid., p. 193.

Proposition allows communication and reciprocity, imposition denies

to otherness. Communication involves a formulation of equality that

category of communication to this divide suggests the possibility of ef-

substance of chapter 3 which engages in more detailed discussion of the

Stimmung, or mood, which emphasises continuity over discontinuity or

we want equality without its compelling us to accept identity; but

In recent years the question of community in IR has been dis-

ultimate moral significance on the individual and the species, while

3 It is these possibilities that form the focus of chapters 3 to 6.

communication; and beginning the task of overcoming the divide be-

The cosmopolitan/communitarian divide

ourselves. In assuming the standpoint, we abstract from the individu-

Liberal–cosmopolitanism privileges the generalised other. It employs

Benhabib uses these categories to help negotiate a position transcending,