The Modern Requirement? Reflections on Normative International Theory in a Post-Western World

This paper is presented on the principle that ideas are not like souffles — it does no harm to take them out before they are fully cooked. The author has learnt much from, among others, Nicholas Rengger , Mark Hoffman , Keith Webb and the author's students at Kent, none of whom are responsible for what follows .

For the 'morality of states' see, e.g., the discussion in R.J. Vincent , Non-Intervention and International Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1974). Chapter 9; and the extended critique by Charles R. Beitz in his Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1979), Part 2. In general in this paper no attempt will be made to link specific propositions with specific thinkers, on the principle that it is the overall trend of thought that is important.

J.M. Roberts , The Triumph of the West (London: British Broadcasting Corporation. 1985), p. 214. The text of the Requirement is abstracted in Lewis Hanke (ed.), History of Latin American Civilisation: Sources and Interpretations Vol. 1 (Boston, MA: Little. Brown, 1973), p. 93.

J.H. Parry remarks that 'The obligation was taken literally but not always seriously '. See J.H. Parry , The Spanish Seaborne Empire ( London: Hutchinson, 1977), p. 138. Lewis Hanke's account of the Requirement substantiates this point and deserves extensive quotation: the Requirement was read to trees and empty huts when no Indians could be found. Captains muttered its theological phrases into their beards even a league away before starting the formal attack.... Once it was read in camp before the soldiers to the beat of the drum. Ship captains would sometimes have the document read from the deck as they approached an island ...

See Lewis Hanke , The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America ( Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1965), p. 34.

Sensitive analysts of human rights are, of course, aware of these dimensions of the notion. See, for example, R.J. Vincent , Human Righrs and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

The best account of these issues currently to be found in the literature is Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), and in particular the essays in Part 4. The debt this account of the dewesternisation of the world owes to Adda Bozeman's chapter 'The International Order in a Multicultural World' will be apparent.

Pinning down such writers is notoriously difficult, and for those for whom the original texts are a source of strain (including the present writer) secondary sources are a great help. See Quentin Skinner (ed.), The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), David Couzens Hoy (ed.), Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) and Christopher Norris , Derrida (London: Fontana Press, 1987).

Thomas S. Kuhn , The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962), Paul Feyerabend , Against Method (London: New Left Books, 1975), Richard Rorty , Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980) and, especially, Richard Rorty , Consequences of Pragmatism ( Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982).

As exemplified, for example, by most of the essays in Charles R. Beitz, Marshall Cohen. Thomas Scanlon and A. John Simmons (eds.), International Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985).

For a splendid account of an ethic of coexistence based on the denial of common substantive purposes amongst states, see Terry Nardin , Law, Morality and the Relations of States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), discussed in Chris Brown , 'Ethics of Co-existence: the International Theory of Terry Nardin', Review of International Studies (Vol. 14, No. 3, July 1988).

For an account of 'late modern' thought stressing the notion of ambiguity see William E. Connolly , Politics and Ambiguity ( Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).

For Jurgen Habermas's notion of rational consensus based on undistorted communication in an 'ideal speech' situation, see Jurgen Habermas , Communication and the Evolution of Society (London: Heinemann, 1979) and for his assault on anti-foundationalism see his The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity ( Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987). Habermas is singled out here because his notion of 'critical theory' is seen by some as providing a route away from the dilemmas of late, or post, modernity - see, for example, Mark Hoffman , 'Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm Debate', Millennium: Journal of International Studies (Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1987). The problem is not only that there is no reason to believe in the possibility of undistorted communication, but also that the search for this chimera may degenerate into an authoritarian enterprise.

R. Rorty , 'Method, Social Science and Social Hope' in Consequences of Pragmatism, op. cit., is a brilliant summary of this argument. See also chapters 7 and 8 of Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, op. cit. From the other side of the great divide in philosophy, J.-F. Lyotard , The Post-Modern Condition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983) and J.-F. Lyotard and J.-L. Thebaud , Just Gaming (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) develop the same line of reasoning.