Tragedy, world politics and ethical community

International Relations

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 127-137

  Beardsworth, Richard ^a  

^a AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS   (France)

Author keywords

Ethical community; Ethics; G. W. F. Hegel; International relations; Political construction; Tragedy; Tragic fate

Indexed keywords

EID: 40549104800     PISSN: 00471178     EISSN: 17412862     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0047117807087246     Document Type: Article

References (10)

1. Mervyn Frost, 'Tragedy, Ethics and International Relations', International Relations, 17(4), 2003, pp. 477-95; James Mayall, 'Tragedy, Progress and the International Order: A Response to Frost', International Relations, 17(4), 2003, pp. 497-503; Nicholas Rengger, 'Tragedy or Scepticism: Defending the Anti-Pelagian Mind in World Politics', International Relations, 19(3), 2005, pp. 321-8; Richard Ned Lebow, 'Tragedy, Politics and Political Science', International Relations, 19(3), 2005, pp. 329-35; Chris Brown, 'Tragedy, "Tragic Choices" and Contemporary International Political Theory', International Relations, 21(1), 2007, pp. 5-14; and Peter Euben, 'The Tragedy of Tragedy', International Relations, 21(1), 2007, pp. 1-22.
2. Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
3. Lebow, 'Tragedy, Politics and Political Science', p. 330; Lebow, The Tragic Vision, pp. 25, 59, 116 and 258.
4. Lebow, The Tragic Vision, Chapter 7, especially p. 268 on the 'normative values of international society'; p. 275 on the necessary implication of justice and interest for power to work long term; and pp. 328-9 on the everyday practice of state compliance to international norms that imply a community of cooperation. These conceptions are all considered in terms of the notion of nomos.
5. For the classic argument concerning the aporia between community and society at an international level, see H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Palgrave, 2002). International institution presupposes international community to be legitimate but international community presupposes international institution to emerge as such. This aporia affects all political will-formation. The idea of an ethical community immanent to the non-communal forms of political practice attempts to negotiate this aporia in tragic terms: By increasing recognition, through the widening of sensibility, of the need for new political practice.
6. See Simon Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: Global Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
7. G. W. F. Hegel, 'Spirit of Christianity and its Fate', in Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), pp. 182-301.
8. Hegel, 'Spirit of Christianity', pp. 229-30.
9. Hegel, 'Spirit of Christianity', p. 233.
10. Rengger, 'Tragedy or Scepticism?', p. 322.