Pragmatism and International Relations
1468-2486
Abstract
Gunther Hellmann Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University When Stanley Hoffmann characterized International Relations (IR) as an “American Social Science,” the America he referred to mainly stood for two things: a world power in search of a broader intellectual grounding of its new-found role in world politics and a country with many huge political science departments highly receptive to the wave of mostly European immigrants “all concerned with transcending empiricism” (Hoffmann [1977] 1987:9). However, it was not the America of pragmatism, that is, that tradition of thought which is widely regarded as the most genuinely American philosophical tradition in the first place (Joas 1992:7–15, 96–113). Rather, it was an America associated with the “exact sciences” and the epistemological foundations derived from logical empiricism on the one hand, and political realism on the other—both of which were, at their very core, as “European” as can be. Ever since the often dualistic “isms-” debates of the discipline (idealism versus realism, rationalism versus constructivism, etc.) have largely been void of any reference to the quintessential American “ism.” Only recently has there been a rising interest in pragmatism.