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Original Papers
Critical international theory has firmly established itself in the discipline of international relations (IR). Since the early 1980s when scholars such as Richard Ashley (1981), R.W. Cox (1981), Andrew Linklater (1982), John Maclean (1981), and R.B.J. Walker (1981) argued that the study of IR required the activation of a critical and reflective attitude, critical international theory has grown considerably in influence. Arguably, it opened the way for an array of different critical methods and attitudes to surface in IR - including post-structuralism, feminism, post-colonialism, constructivism, and the variety of post-Marxist approaches - which offer alternative understandings of world politics. While these critical international theories are agreed in their commitment to a post-positivist agenda, no such agreement has been achieved on what makes a theory 'critical' or how such a theory ought to be pursued.
A striking feature of the post-positivist intellectual terrain is the heightened interest in philosophy of science, meta-theory, reflexivity, and moral and political philosophy (Neufeld 1995; Fluck 2010; Kurki 2011). Critical international theories have taken flight into abstract theories of epistemology and ontology, recondite rationalities, and deontological and deconstructive discourses.1No doubt this has been a valuable exercise. However, this philosophical intensification risks creating the impression that theory is the provenance of philosophy; and that philosophy alone is in a position to decide what counts as 'theory', what qualifies as 'critical'. The aspiration to develop a reflexive, normative social philosophy of IR has increasingly led critical international theorists away from history. Historical research becomes extraneous to arguments framed by the normative distinction between the right and the good (Neufeld 2000), engaged in the reconstruction of Habermas's theories of communicative action or discourse ethics (Risse 2000), or developed through the application of dialectics or meta-dialectics (Roach 2007; Brincat 2010). In these and other cases philosophy supervenes as a critic tasked with reflecting on and judging the foundations and history of IR (as both a subject and a discipline) from the vantage point of a universal or dialectical reason.
Without denying the value of philosophical reflection in pursuit of critical international theory, this article challenges the supposition that concedes to philosophy a superintendent role. Philosophy is neither the only source of theory nor the only...