Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T22:08:46.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Postmodern Ethical Conditions and a Critical Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Neta C. Crawford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Postmodern, poststructural, and critical theorists say that there are no universally valid foundations for norms. Whether or not we think that ethics exists in international life, or ought to, these theorists maintain that there are no firm grounds for any particular ethical belief. Rather, they argue, ethics is contextual.

Many, perhaps most, students of international ethics believe that such approaches have little to offer considerations of international ethics. Christopher Norris says postmodernists are nihilists: “Postmodernism is merely the most extreme (or as some would say, most consistent and consequent) version of this desire to have done with all truth-claims beyond what is presently and contingenty ‘good in the way of belief.‘” Ken Booth argues: “If one scratches a committed post-modernist one will almost certainly find a comfortably well-off Western urban liberal. Those who live against the wall, or who have emancipated themselves from such a position, do not hold these views.… The reason for this is obvious, and relates to the fact that post-modernism—certainly that of a doctrinaire variety—does not deliver an ethics for the emancipation of victims across the world.”

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 12 , March 1998 , pp. 121 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Norris, Christopher, Uncritical Theory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), p. 63Google Scholar.

2 Booth, Ken, “Human Wrongs and International Relations,” International Affairs 71 (January 1995), pp. 103–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 116.

3 For introductions, see Cornell, Drucilla, The Philosophy of the Limit (New York: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar; Hoy, David Couzens and McCarthy, Thomas, Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)Google Scholar; and George, Jim, Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Habermas, Jürgen, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), p. xliGoogle Scholar.

5 Bauman, Zygmunt, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 32Google Scholar.

6 See Benhabib, Seyla, Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar; Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Bat Ami Bar On and Ferguson, Ann, eds., Daring to Be Good: Feminist Essays in Ethico-Politics (New York: Routledge, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

7 George, Jim and Campbell, David, “Patterns of Dissent and the Celebration of Difference: Critical Social Theory and International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 34 (September 1990), pp. 269–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 281.

8 Der Derian, James, “Post-Theory: The Eternal Return of Ethics in International Relations,” in New Thinking in International Relations Theory, edited by Doyle, Michael W. and Ikenberry, G. John (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 54–76Google Scholar, at p. 57.

9 Der Derian, James, Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 7Google Scholar.

10 George and Campbell, “Patterns of Dissent and the Celebration of Difference,” p. 281.

11 See Der Derian, James and Shapiro, Michael J., eds., International/Intertextual Relations (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989)Google Scholar; Ruggie, John Gerrard, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 4 (Winter 1993), pp. 139–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Litfin, Karen, Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

12 Der Derian, “Post-Theory,” p. 60.

13 See, for example, Walker, R. B. J., Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Campbell, David, Politics Without Principle: Sovereignty, Ethics, and Narratives of the Gulf War (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993)Google Scholar; Falk, Richard, Explorations at the Edge of Time: The Prospects for World Order (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

14 Campbell, Politics Without Principle, p. 93.

15 Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Pantheon, 1972)Google Scholar.

16 Chomsky, Noam, “‘Humanitarian Intervention’,” Boston Review 18 (December 1993–January 1994), pp. 3–6Google Scholar, at p. 3.

17 Carr, Edward Hallett, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 81Google Scholar.

18 See, for example, Beitz, Charles R., Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Vincent, John, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Booth, “Human Wrongs and International Relations.”

19 Booth, “Human Wrongs and International Relations,” p. 113.

20 Jones, Dorothy V., “The Declaratory Tradition in Modem International Law,” in Traditions of International Ethics, edited by Nardin, Terry and Mapel, David R. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 42–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 44–45; and Jones, Dorothy V., Code of Peace: Ethics and Security in the World of Warlord States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

21 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 1, 3.

22 Lukes, Steven, “Five Fables About Human Rights,” in On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993, edited by Shute, Stephen and Hurley, Susan (New York: Basic Books, 1993), pp. 19–40Google Scholar, at p. 20.

23 See Campbell, David, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1992)Google Scholar; Weber, Cynthia, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Biersteker, Thomas J. and Weber, Cynthia, eds., State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Habermas, Jürgen, “Reconstruction and Interpretation in the Social Sciences,” in his Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, translated by Lenhardt, Christian and Weber, Shierry (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 21–42Google Scholar, at p. 42.

25 Perry, Michael J., “Are Human Rights Universal? The Relativist Challenge and Related Matters,” Human Rights Quarterly 19 (August 1997), pp. 461–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley, introduction, On Human Rights, pp. 2–18, at p. 3.

27 Richard Rorty, “Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality,” in On Human Rights, pp. 111–34, at pp. 116–17.

28 Jürgen Habermas, “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification,” in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 43–115, at p. 48. “Moral intuitions…instruct us on how best to behave in situations where it is in our power to counteract the extreme vulnerability of others by being thoughtful and considerate.” Jürgen Habermas, “Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegel's Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics?” in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 195–215, at p. 199.

29 Habermas, Jürgen, “Morality, Society and Ethics: An Interview with Torben Hviid Nielsen,” in Habermas, Jürgen, Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 147–76Google Scholar, at p. 151.

30 Moon, J. Donald, “Practical Discourse and Communicative Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, edited by White, Stephen K. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 143–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 143.

31 Apel, Karl-Otto, “Is the Ethics of the Ideal Communication Community a Utopia? On the Relationship Between Ethics, Utopia, and the Critique of Utopia,” The Communicative Ethics Controversy, edited by Benhabib, Seyla and Dallmayr, Fred (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 23–59Google Scholar; Habermas, “Discourse Ethics”; and Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference.

32 Habermas, “Discourse Ethics,” p. 71.

33 Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 4–5, 19.

34 Habermas, “Discourse Ethics,” p. 65.

35 Ibid., p. 89.

36 Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 122–25.

37 Discourse Ethics, pp. 58, 92.

38 Ibid., p. 92.

39 Habennas, Jürgen, Vorstudien und Ergazugen zur Theorie des Kommunkativen Handelns (Frankfurt: Surkamp, 1984), p. 107Google Scholar, quoted in Outwaite, William, Habermas: A Critical Introduction (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 41Google Scholar.

40 Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 22.

41 Jane Flax, “Displacing Woman: Toward an Ethics of Multiplicity,” in Daring to Be Good, edited by Bar On and Ferguson.

42 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, and Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations.

43 Habermas, “Discourse Ethics,” p. 103.

44 Ibid., p. 89.

45 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 118.

46 See Keeley, James F., “Toward a Foucauldian Analysis of International Regimes,” International Organization 44 (Winter 1990), pp. 83–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Rorty, “Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality,” pp. 118–19.

48 Noddings, Nel, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Ruddick, Sarah, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Tronto, Joan C., Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar.

49 Tronto, Moral Boundaries, pp. 104, 105.

50 Ibid., p. 108.

5l Ibid., p. 177.

52 Rorty, “Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality,” pp. 122–23.

53 Ibid., p. 128.

54 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, p. 19.

55 Habermas, Jürgen, Postmetaphysical Thinking (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), p. 140Google Scholar.

56 Haacke, Jürgen, “Theory and Praxis in International Relations: Habermas, Self-Reflection, Rational Argumentation,” Millennium 25 (Summer 1996), pp. 255–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 260–61.

57 Huntington, Samuel, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 7 (1993), pp. 22–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 22.

58 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, p. 8.

59 Neta C. Crawford, “The Making of World Politics: Argument, Belief and Culture”(unpublished ms).

60 Normative arguments are a discursive strategy in a Foucauldian sense, although Foucault did not emphasize the process of argument. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language.

61 Haas, Peter, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International Organization 46 (Winter 1992), pp. 1–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 See Flax, “Displacing Woman”; Bauman, Postmodern Ethics; and Campbell, Politics Without Principle.

63 Booth, “Human Wrongs and International Relations,” p. 115.

64 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, p. 121.

65 Campbell, Politics Without Principle, p. 3.

66 Mueller, John, “Changing Attitudes Towards War: The Impact of the First World War,” British Journal of Political Science 21 (January 1991), pp. 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 25–27, and Crawford, Neta C., “Decolonization as an International Norm: The Evolution of Practices, Arguments, and Beliefs,” in Emerging Norms of Justified Intervention, edited by Reed, Laura and Kaysen, Carl (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993), pp. 37–61Google Scholar.