Description
Ideal principles of global justice, or what Michael Goodhart calls ideal moral theory (IMT) positions itself as uncontaminated by context, thus putting action and knowledge, politics and morality in separate realms. This presupposes the neutrality of the researcher as an ultimate expert discovering moral truths, putting action and practice in an inferior realm. This approach still prevails in international political theory (IPT), preventing theorists and practitioners from understanding inherently experiential side of international ethics, the normative practice and experience of the international. Drawing on pragmatist arguments, particularly those by John Dewey, the paper explores an alternative take of the practice of international ethics, based on the logic of experimentation. This logic is based on (1) evolutionary and non-linear change, (2) epistemic and ontological uncertainty, (3) change-orientation, (4) situationism and (5) new knowledge creation as its core premises. The paper reconsiders international normative practices, particularly that of responsibility in international institutions and NGOs, as fields where agency of practitioners is fully acknowledged as a subversive epistemic force, creating their own ethicality through social and political practices. Researcher, then, is removed from epistemologically privileged position of a normative knowledge producer, recognising the validity of normative knowledge developed through everyday international practices.
