Hegel and Marx on international relations

David Boucher

pp. 217-239

in: Tony Burns, Ian Fraser (eds), The Hegel-Marx connection, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Abstract

Modern international relations theory has recently taken a normative turn and begun seriously to explore the place of ethics in the relations among states. Such theorists at once reject what was the dominant aspiration in various guises in the discipline, namely the search for objective explanation, and deny the Realist contention that talk of morality and ethical principles disguises the underlying motivations, namely power and security. If ethical principles are to play a role in international relations, then they must have some basis of justification. A number of theorists have sought to identify the source of the principles of international ethics in either cosmopolitanism or communitarianism, while suggesting at the same time that these two categories adequately conceptualise normative thinking in international relations since the time of Kant. There are, of course, different types of cosmopolitanism and Marx is typically identified as one of its main variants along with utilitarianism and Kantianism. Similarly, communitarianism comes in different guises, but Hegel is exemplified as its principal exponent. In order to dissociate the broader implications of modern communitarianism from the specifically Hegelian and idealist versions such international relations theorists as Mervyn Frost and Chris Brown prefer to use the term constitutive theory.¹ Both authors jettison Hegelian metaphysics and present their own ideas in a secular Hegelianism.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Marx Karl