Description
International relations (IR) theory is replete with intellectual traditions, such as the Machiavellian-Realist, Kantian-Liberal, and Grotian traditions. However, adopting “contextualist” perspectives, IR scholars like Beate Jahn and R. B. J. Walker argue that IR “traditions” are fictional “perennial debates” concocted by the false imposition of contemporary assumptions on historical concepts. This article aims to problematize this IR reception of contextualism and revisit the methodological implications of Quentin Skinner’s contextualist method for IR. It examines the potential of Skinner’s mature contextualism to construct intellectual traditions by comparing the methods used to investigate the concept of liberty in Skinner’s Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal and Reinhart Koselleck’s Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society.
This article finds that, when reread as an Anglophone form of conceptual history, Skinnerian contextualism’s focus on temporality does not prevent the construction of intellectual traditions but offers an alternative way to define a tradition. IR contextualists consider traditions lasting for centuries ahistorical because they follow early Skinner in maintaining that concepts can be understood only synchronically within their respective historical contexts. However, like Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte, Skinner’s later contextualism views the concept of liberty not only as a register of synchronic historical contexts but also as an instrument that shapes historical transformations. As a form of conceptual history, mature contextualism offers IR scholars the hermeneutic possibility of evaluating concepts diachronically, thereby allowing us to identify the dynamic continuity and change of concepts across historical periods. Instead of nullifying IR traditions, mature contextualism encourages IR to redefine its traditions not as substantial claims about “perennial debates,” but as constructed stories about interconnected concepts travelling from the past to the present that shape our conception of the global challenges in the coming decades.
